You: Part Time Entrepreneur

2018-10-02T02:29:26+00:00July 12th, 2016|Tags: , , |

Over the past two blog posts, I’ve talked to you about my story--the story of an accidental entrepreneur who turned curiosity into a growing business. Today, I provide consulting to individuals and organizations, speak at conferences and at universities, and create professional development products for academics who want to enhance their skills both on and off the tenure track.  Most importantly, I live a life that I’ve designed, on my own terms. I’m a full-time entrepreneur. But you don’t have to be. You can experience the same type of fulfillment that I do providing your services part-time. The Academic Entrepreneur Through my work, I’ve had the opportunity to coach and train hundreds of academics to greater career success both within and outside of the academy. I’ve also consulted academics who were interested in starting their own full-time businesses. My goal in starting [...]

How I Made the Leap to Entrepreneurship

2018-10-02T02:29:26+00:00July 6th, 2016|Tags: , , |

In 2011, I completed my doctorate in Cultural Anthropology with a focus on black political mobilization and black identity formation in Colombia, South America. I’d had a great run in my graduate program, and by most accounts, I was a model graduate student. University and national fellowships. Authorship and co-authorship of publications in leading scholarly journals. Presentations at national and international conferences. A research fellow at the Center for Race and Ethnicity at my university. And, an amazing offer for a postdoctoral fellowship that came with all the bells and whistles – a 1:1 teaching load, faculty development training, mentorship, and a competitive salary. (Did I mention that the university was located near my family, which would make visiting my mom and aging grandparents so much easier?)  Still, something about moving forward in academia didn’t feel right. I felt like I wouldn’t [...]

How to Use Your Academic Skills to Create the Perfect Side-Hustle

2018-10-02T02:29:26+00:00June 29th, 2016|Tags: , , |

If you’re a regular reader of Beyond the Tenure Track or you read my column in The Chronicle of Higher Education, you know me as the career coach to PhDs. I travel all across the country each year and speak on college campuses to provide career strategy to academics. I also provide one-on-one consulting to clients, build online courses, and author publications to help academics achieve their career goals. As my clients and colleagues have watched my company grow each year, I’ve started to get more questions about my actual business--how I built it and how I’ve gone from a Cultural Anthropology graduate student to a consultant to national philanthropies and government agencies with contracts upwards of $30,000 each. I’m not at all surprised by this influx of entrepreneurial interest. While some readers who follow my business may think that I’m solely [...]

If not academia, then what?

2018-10-02T02:29:29+00:00January 31st, 2014|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

*Disclaimer: I'm writing this post on the go so I will return later to fill out the piece in a subsequent post. I've gotten lots of questions about career exploration (aka, how do I know what I'd do outside the academy). Chances are if you've been in academia for years you are not very familiar with sectors outside of education. Heck, most PhDs don't really consider education beyond higher ed and the professoriate. So when you get curious about what else you'd do besides becoming a tenure track professor, the options ahead can look unclear at best. If you've asked "if not academia, then what?", you are really asking a question about how to determine which career or job is right for you.  There may be no one "right" career or job for you. However, when exploring your options you want to [...]

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