
You can leverage your skills and expertise to earn more money, have greater impact, and expand your influence.
You don’t have to leave the academy to try new things.
Are you an academic who wants to learn how to earn money and expand your impact beyond your academic work? Not just for the sake of making money, but because while you love your work as an academic, you know that you have the capacity, creativity, and desire to have impact beyond your current role or while between positions? If you are, you may be unclear on how to actually make money doing something you enjoy. You may have tried to offer your services or products in the past, but you just weren’t sure how much to charge or how to confidently discuss your rate.
You want to have social impact and relevance beyond your academic teaching and research. You may only have an inkling of an idea, but you’re curious about how far that idea can go. Right?
I get it. I’ve been just where you are.
Just like I do, you have skills, knowledge and expertise that are valuable beyond the academy. And the best part is that you can build a profitable side business while still working a full-time academic job or while between jobs.
Monetize your hard-earned skills and expertise by turning them into profit.
In this new course, I’ll teach you how to use your existing skills to expand your impact and to make additional income outside of your academic teaching and research. I’ll help you to see, to explore, and to take advantage of opportunities to earn additional income by leveraging your skills and creativity.
I’ve packed this course with everything you need to get started. I’m even providing pre-work to help you prepare for the course and worksheets and templates to help you implement what you’ll learn in the course.
By the end of this course, you’ll be prepared to:
- Set the foundation to start your own side business
- Create a set of materials to describe and promote your business
- Have business and money conversations with confidence
- Find and secure your first client
Who Is Fatimah Williams, PhD?

University of Tennessee – Knoxville, PEER Symposium for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Fellows in Biomedical and Behavioral Sciences

OASIS Leadership and Professional Development Program, Office for the Promotion of Women in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics at Rutgers University

UNC Charlotte, Graduate School Professional Development Conference
People often ask Dr. Williams Castro how she came to be an entrepreneur of professional development consulting and a career coach for academics. Given that she has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology, she “should” be a professor or at least working in international development somewhere.
Instead, she is an entrepreneur making a living on her own terms working with high caliber organizations and clients with multiple contracts per year ranging from $5000 up to $30,000.
After being awarded the nationally competitive
Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2011, Dr. Williams Castro began to question whether life on the tenure track was truly what she wanted. She started to find that there were other parts of herself that she wanted to express. She loved speaking in front of groups. She enjoyed creating new things—building them from the ground up. She wanted collaboration and fresh ideas, as well as a shorter time to reward. Promotion and tenure are measured in years. And knowledge production in her field was painstakingly isolating.
So, she took the leap into small business ownership, and through her consulting and coaching company, she has helped hundreds of academics find and pursue fulfilling non-academic careers beyond the tenure track. She provided professional development keynotes and workshops on university campuses to include Yale, CUNY Graduate Center, University of Kansas, University of Tennessee, and more. She has also been a consultant to organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, March of Dimes, and OASIS Leadership and Professional Development Program.
Dr. Castro holds a doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from Rutgers University and bachelor’s degrees in Foreign Affairs and African American Studies from the University of Virginia. She has published scholarship in the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Latin American Perspectives, and Anthropology Now. She writes “The Career Change” column at The Chronicle of Higher Education. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Inter-American Foundation
Grassroots Development Fellowship, New Jersey Minority Academic Career Fellowship, and Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (honorable mention).
Where you’ve seen Fatimah Williams, Ph.D.
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This intensive, intimate course is designed for busy academics who don’t want a long ramp up period to get started. Because of this, I’m limiting enrollment to 20 people. I’ll help you to:
Also, I will teach you how to:
Ready To Do The (Side) Hustle?

Are you ready to set the foundation for your side business and launch projects that are important to you?
Get excited! This course will help you to:
- Gain more confidence.
- Own your own labor
- Earn money when you want it or need it
- Discover new sectors where your skills and degree are highly valued.
- Find your professional voice.
- Satisfy your curiosity about how academics are received in other industries, without risking your current position.
- Earn money for things you want to do in life – take your spouse on a vacation, classes for your children, etc.
We are limiting this course to just 20 people, so get on board!