Speakers | Humanities Without Walls Career Diversity Workshop 2023

Meet the Presenters

Dr. Ilene Dawn (Ida) Alexander

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I work with instructors in the UMN system and graduate students in Preparing Future Faculty courses to (re)design accessible, inclusive, learning-centered courses for a broad range of learners in a variety of learning spaces.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
Writing and researching in interdisciplinary contexts, creating co-learning/-teaching classrooms.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
If tuition band is still available, the Preparing Future Facutly program courses (either Teaching for Learning at one-credit, or Teaching in Higher Education, 3 credits) for foundation in learning science/learning-centered approaches to teaching and learning; the one-credit Practicum can be a follow up to either of this, and the mentored part of the course doesn't have to be at UMN or in a classroom, it could be in a teaching center, instructional technology unit serving a university or a similar smaller unit such as a department or college. Another option would be the TA/Post Doc Professional Development program offered by the Center for Educational Innovation, for which participants curate their own professional development plan from workshop/seminar offered by CEI and partners. Conferences, workshops, and publications offered by The Teaching Professor, International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and POD - Professional Organizational Developers can provide excellent grounding for understanding the profession.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I was part of professional development (PD) peer cohorts throughout graduate school and early career department-based teaching, whether as a participant, builder of new PD programs, or leader of PD programs; as much as I liked teaching, I like working with other teachers even more. While teaching and doing PD work with Toni McNaron in the UMTC English department's, she encourage me to apply for an opening in the UMTC then Center for Teaching where I could teach grad courses and mentor faculty/instructors. Support from Toni, as a co-creator of that Center was the nudge I needed to pursue a full time teaching consultant position at mid-career.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
Favorite: Teaching, preparing Future Faculty courses, and working 1-1 with instructors/faculty.

Get in touch with Ilene:

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Dr. Derek Attig

Assistant Dean for Career and Professional Development, Graduate College, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
PhD, History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Derek Attig, PhD (they/them/theirs) is Assistant Dean for Career & Professional Development in the Graduate College at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Derek is also President of the Graduate Career Consortium, an international professional organization for those working in graduate-level career development. Derek was part of the team that build the ImaginePhD career planning tool for humanists and social scientists, and they have collaborated regularly with the American Historical Association, Modern Language Association, and other humanities organizations on career-related initiatives. Derek has a PhD in History.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I help graduate students claim agency in the paths through and beyond graduate school.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I use my teaching skills every day, most obviously, but I also benefit significantly from being able to think about systems and recognize patterns (both central parts of my research training).

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
It fulfilled many of the things I enjoyed about teaching and research in a new setting

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My favorite thing is seeing people gain power over the stories they tell about themselves. The most challenging is navigating complex bureaucracies with incentive structures sometimes at odds with the best outcomes for graduate students.

Get in touch with Dr. Derek Attig:

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Sarah Atwood

Head of Research and Engagement, Center for New Democratic Processes
PhD - American Studies - University of Minnesota

Sarah Atwood is Head of Research and Engagement with the Center for New Democratic Processes, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic engagement organization. She has designed, implemented, and/or contributed to public deliberation projects on a diverse range of topics including data use and governance (UK), nuclear waste storage and disposal (AUS), artificial intelligence guidelines (UK, US), climate change and public health (US), as well as antimicrobial resistance (global). She has led interdisciplinary collaborations with clients and partners including the New York Times, Pfizer, Inc., the National Health Service, University of Manchester, University of Liverpool, and Wellcome Trust. Sarah completed her PhD American Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation documented how race, class, and gender have shaped the US secondhand clothing market. During her MA and PhD she worked with a number of humanities institutions including the JFK Museum, Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota Humanities Center, and Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

Jackie Austin

Dr. Abby Bajuniemi

User Experience Research Lead, Android Expression, Google via Magnit Global
PhD Hispanic and Lusophone Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics, University of Minnesota

I hold a PhD in Hispanic and Lusophone Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics from the University of Minnesota. My doctoral work focused on sociolinguistics and language acquisition. I spent a few years as a VAP at Macalester College before I pivoted to User Experience Research in private industry. Since then, I have worked as a consultant or full time researcher in the logistics, e-commerce, medical device (hardware and software), and Software as a Service (SaaS) fields. I am currently on a contract at Google where I get to use my PhD directly, helping Android understand how people are communicating via their phones, whether that is through the customization of their phones or through actual messaging apps.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I research how people express themselves with content like emoji, stickers, memes, gifs as well as through the customization of their Android phones.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
My research skills apply pretty much 1:1, it's just in a different context. I've used my understanding of research design throughout my career in UX, but now I specifically use my expertise in sociolinguistics to uncover insights on how people communicate with and through their phones!

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
Whew, this is a very big question right now. I used to say no, but the market is super tough right now, so it's going to be challenging for anyone without significant industry experience. I think finding internships that allow folks completing an advanced degree could be a really helpful way to break into the field. There's starting to be more of them, mostly from the bigger tech companies. Bootcamps will not be useful if what you want is to continue doing research. If you want to be a designer, it could be helpful. There are so many bootcamp grads, though, that hiring managers sometimes are wary of giving them a chance.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
The barrier to entry did not seem steep since the research methods I used as a linguist were basically the same as the methods used in UX. I also already had connections in tech, which made doing informational interviews easier. I also was generally aware of what working in tech was like.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I love talking to people, I love seeing how they use products my team makes, seeing what confuses and frustrates them, and then bringing those insights back to my team to make it even better. I love that I get to think about emoji and stickers! It's super fun to be on a team that actually makes emoji and works with the Unicode subcommittee on emoji. The most challenging is trying to chase stakeholders down and remind them you exist to help them make better products.

Dr. Angela M. Carter

Associate Director for Racial and Social Justice Education, Office for Equity and Diversity at the University of Minnesota
PhD Feminist Studies, University of Minnesota

As a Ronald E. McNair scholar, Angela M. Carter (she/her) became a first-generation college graduate in 2009 when she earned her BA in English from Truman State University. Dr. Carter completed her Ph.D. in Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota in 2019. Broadly speaking, her academic interests include: social justice pedagogies, critical disability studies, trauma studies, queer/crip theory, and feminist epistemologies. Angela is a founding member of the Critical Disability Studies Collective, an organization that advances intersectional and critical inquiries around disability, ableism, and access at the University of Minnesota. In recognition of her contributions to the University, she received the President’s Award for Outstanding Service in 2021. Angela has also supported the UMN community as an Access Consultant in the Disability Resource Center and as the Access and Inclusion Pedagogy Specialist with Minnesota Transform - a Mellon funded grant initiative engaging anti-colonial and racial justice work through the public humanities. Angela returns to the Office for Equity and Diversity in summer of 2023, as an Associate Director for Racial and Social Justice Education. She brings to this work over 15 years of experience teaching, researching, and advocating around experiences of injustice and inequity in higher education. Outside her professional endeavors, Angela loves cuddling with her dog Cricket, watching HGTV, and playing Beyoncé songs on her bass guitar. She identifies as a white anti-racist, multiply-disabled, rural queer, feminist educator.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
Foster critical engagement with social justice education throughout the UMN community.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
Teaching skills; public speaking / communication; report writing; project management.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
yes! any trainings that deepen workshop facilitation (not the same as the classroom); quant and qual data collection and analysis; evaluation or assessment; everything "DEI" you can find.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I am committed to education as a path toward liberation and the TT path is not accessible for me as a disabled person.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I'm not sure I start on 7/24 :-) From what I know now, I'd say my favorite thing is supporting folks through their learning process and my least favorite thing is the way "justice" is co-opted by institutions.

Dr. Allie Cooperman

Graduate Programs Coordinator, University of Minnesota
PhD Quantitative Psychology, University of Minnesota

Allie Cooperman (she/her) grew up in Connecticut and first moved to Minnesota while attending Carleton College for her Bachelor's degree. After working in Massachusetts and Illinois, she returned to the Land of 10,000 Lakes for her Psychology PhD at UMN. Allie specialized in Quantitative/Psychometric Methods with research on test fairness, latent variable models, and measurement of change. While at UMN, Allie particularly enjoyed working with her department to improve students' graduate experiences. Her interests in program coordination and inclusive academic spaces led her to become a Graduate Programs Coordinator in September 2022!

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I manage the daily operations and administration of our department's graduate programs.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
In so many ways! I routinely apply my skills in project management, data visualization, and communication. My PhD taught me how to clearly communicate complex processes, which is handy when demystifying a graduate program's many milestones and policies. I also get to share my knowledge of research design and analysis. Everyone here knows how much I love R!

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
I've found that my experiences as a graduate student strongly support my work today, but I don't think that it's necessary to pursue a graduate degree just to become a GPC. Future GPCs would benefit from training in accessibility, particularly digital accessibility. I use, and continue improving, these skills every day.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I was fortunate to serve in various service positions in my own graduate program. Through these positions, I realized that I found the most joy in my day-to-day responsibilities when helping students navigate the complexities of a graduate degree. In addition to my research and personal learning about DEIA, I wanted a career where I could apply my skills toward creating more inclusive spaces in graduate programs.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I love working with graduate students, hearing about their work and joys, and finding new ways to improve their experiences while at UMN!

Dr. Elena Costello

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
Anti-Racism in every aspect of healthcare at Hennepin.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position? Patience with those who think they know but don't. Ability to critical analyze scholarly research.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
My degrees gave me clout, but also gave me understanding to things like IRB, pedagogies, and so I am thankful for graduate degrees.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I love teaching, I love the science behind healthcare and this combined a way I could do what I love, improve access for people I love, and get paid.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I sometimes get to see change happen in real time and that gives me hope to keep moving forward despite knowing that I will most likely never see health equity in my lifetime.

Dr. Oscar Omar Diaz

Lead Academic Advisor, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, College of Liberal Arts, Presidents Emerging Scholars
PhD Curriculum and Instruction, University of Texas at Austin

Hi, I'm Dr. Diaz, an Academic Advisor with the College of Liberal Arts and the Presidents Emerging Scholars Program, and I am passionate about celebrating your academic journey and beyond. This El Chuco scholar, educator, and kitchen alchemist hails from the vibrant sister cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, bringing the rich flavors, style, and stories of the border to the Twin Cities. Want to discuss how cultural wealth compounds? Or how our ways of knowing and being nourish and heal us? How about how appreciative and narrative inquiry are really labors of love? Then say no more! Come curious and let's talk!

Dr. Roque Diaz

Senior Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, MacPhail Center for Music
PhD Music Education, University of Minnesota

Dr. Roque Diaz is the Senior Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at MacPhail Center of Music and founder of Progressing Forward, a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Consulting Practice who helps individuals and organizations in the Arts & Culture Sector to build capacity in centering DEI in their policies and practices. Roque is passionate about balancing representation for those who have been historically excluded and marginalized. He is a DEI Practitioner who is committed to assuring more inclusive, culturally diverse, and relevant experiences through the lens of DEI. Roque serves as the Minnesota Music Educators Association’s Equity and Diversity Chair; is involved in the National Association for Music Education Equity Committee; is a Member on the Culturally Responsive Arts Education Committee in Minnesota; and is a trumpeter - performing in major international orchestras and Broadway musicals. He has been described as passionate, persistent, driven, and an astute leader. Roque works relentlessly to disrupt the status quo within arts education through providing programming, opportunities, and culturally responsive learning for students and educators alike. Outside of his work, he collects Transformers and has over 500 action collectable figures. He enjoys creating epic war stories with his son on weekends.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I guide employees at MacPhail Center for Music to build capacity in centering DEI in their practices.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position? Research and data are a key component to my DEI facilitating.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
For personal and professional reasons due to being a historically marginalized person of color.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
Establishing and cultivating relationships with my employees is rewarding and at times very difficult.

Dr. Jenna Dreier

Director, Field Implementation Team, Jobs for the Future
PhD English, University of Minnesota

Jenna Dreier is a director at Jobs for the Future and a member of the Center for Justice and Economic Advancement. As a subject matter expert in the field of postsecondary education in prison, she oversees the technical assistance for postsecondary education in prison programs to help them leverage the existing expertise in the field in order to design for equity for incarcerated learners. Before joining JFF, Jenna led the development of postsecondary education in prison program at the University of Minnesota and co-founded the TREC Partnership. TREC, or Transformation and Reentry through Education and Community, is a partnership between the U of MN, Minneapolis College, and Metropolitan State University offering integrated AA and BA degree pathways at three state correctional facilities. Earlier in her career, Jenna completed extensive fieldwork research on prison arts education programs and taught a wide variety of college courses in literature and writing. She earned her doctorate and master's degree at the University of Minnesota and holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa.

Dr. Amy Fairgrieve

Writing Center Coordinator, Normandale Community College
PhD English, University of Minnesota

Hi! I'm Amy (she/her/hers) and I am an English Literature PhD turned Writing Center Coordinator at Normandale Community College. Professionally, I enjoy the opportunity to support peer writing tutors as they grow as people and professionals, researching equity best-practices and more general trends in the field, and working alongside creative and dedicated higher ed professionals who provide all manner of student support. I am a proud union member (MAPE) and steward. In the past, I worked briefly at an emergency services (think rent, utility payments, food, etc.) non-profit and completed a year of a Master's of Social Work program. I continue to be passionate about Mental Health support for all and am Mental Health First Aid trained. Outside of work, I love spending time with my partner, son, and friends. I love gardening, camping, swimming, hiking, cat cuddling, reading, and thrifting. I am always trying out some new creative hobby or other (sometimes with sucess, sometimes not!) and am currently working on making bird baths from repurposed materials. and a couple indoorsy ones too (cat cuddling, reading). I am so excited to meet all of you incredible participants in the Predoctoral Career Summer Workshop. I hope I will share something of value to you and know that I will learn from you all as well.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I do all things Writing Center: budget, hiring and training, ongoing tutor support, tutoring, research, creating policies, outreach, etc.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I use many of the skills I learned during my academic training. I use teaching skills on a daily basis to provide tutoring to students and training and support to peer tutors. I use research skills to keep up with trends in the field and understand larger issues that effect the work I do at a community college (things like ableism in academia, equity issues in developmental education, etc.). As the primary decision-maker and implementer of changes and support in my Writing Center, I use the time management and general prioritization skills I learned in graduate school (during which simultaneously I tutored, taught, researched, babysat, led a research subfield, etc.) everyday.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
For my particular line of work, it helps to have a degree in Writing Studies or English, though I think folks in many Humanities majors could make a case, especially if you have experience tutoring writing or teaching a writing-intensive class in your field. In student affairs more broadly, it can be helpful to have an education or even student-affairs specific degree, but it is certainly not a requirement in many jobs.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I briefly took time away from academic to work at a non-profit and deeply missed working with students. I missed getting the opportunity to witness so many people around me focused on growing as people and professionals. I started looking for academic advising jobs and found the posting for my current job during that search.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My favorite thing about my job is the time I get to spend with student workers. Since I work at a community college, I often have a largely new staff each year, and again and again I find that I learn so much from all of them and get so much satisfaction out of supporting them. The most challenging part of my job for me is prioritizing tasks; it is a job that is largely open-ended (I can do as much with it as time allows), so making decisions about how to spend my time is often a challenge.

Dr. Clare Forstie

Education Program Specialist, Center for Educational Innovation at the University of Minnesota
PhD Sociology, Northwestern University

Clare Forstie is a teaching consultant at the University of Minnesota, where they support graduate students, early career faculty and instructors, and liberal arts colleagues in making their teaching more effective and inclusive. Clare’s most recent book is Queering the Midwest: Forging LGBTQ Community (NYU Press, 2022); they have also published numerous articles focused on the social contexts of gender and sexuality. Their teaching, research, and writing addresses the complexities of queer and academic life through multiple critical lenses. Clare earned a PhD in sociology from Northwestern University in 2017.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
Drawing on research and my experience as a faculty member, I offer programming and consult with faculty and instructors about how to make their teaching more effective and inclusive.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I use my research, course design, and facilitation and coaching skills extensively in the work I do now. Knowing how to quickly find and parse research on particular teaching topics is essential in my teaching consulting work, and my teaching skills translate directly to the consulting and programming work I do. I know how to quickly develop effective workshops, how to facilitate tough conversations that sometimes need to pivot from our plan, and listen and respond to specific, contextualized teaching concerns from my clients. Being a sociologist is helpful, too, as it gives me a sense of some of the bigger-picture forces that affect teaching in higher ed.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
If you're interested in consulting about teaching, or just interested in teaching in general, I strongly recommend taking GRAD 8101 if you can (and not just because I teach it, along with my colleagues!). It's a way to signal to future institutions that you've invested in teaching professional development. You could also participate in the Teaching Assistant Professional Development Program (TAPD) that CEI, my unit, offers. We have a number of (free) teaching development programs, and there are others beyond the U that I'd recommend, too (sometimes free, usually have a cost). Happy to have a conversation about what might be the best fit! One last suggestion: for folks interested in doing what I do, I'd strongly recommend getting on the POD listserv: https://podnetwork.org/ You should be able to subscribe for free, as I did, and the active listserv will give you a good sense of what the job market looks like in this field.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
Three reasons: I strongly value teaching as an essential craft in higher education, I wanted to live with my family in a community that was a good fit for us (geography matters), and I wanted a good work-life balance.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging? I love that I'm doing work that materially improves the lives of students (usually), and faculty and instructors, too. My work changes all the time, and I get to stay engaged in the complex and critical work of teaching in ways that are important to me. One challenge is that teaching is fundamentally devalued across higher education, especially at large R1s like the U, who tend to hire faculty based on research productivity and not teaching skills. There are so many ways that universities communicate how they devalue teaching, and it can be tough feeling like I'm often needing to prove that the work I do is important.

Dr. Rachel Gail Grewell

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
Owner of a chain of Automotive Repair Facilities and Organizer of community related events.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I use the principles of Community Based Research all the time when engaging with community groups and customers.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
Absolutely. I have worked with a number of coaches that are specific to the industry. Any and all help has helped me grow the business to where it is today.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I was working alongside a partner part time during grad school and as the business started to grow I continued to participate in the community building events and relationship building. The field felt open and expansive, much different than academia. I liked using both the theoretical as well as the practical skills I have to find meaningful work.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My favorite IS the most challenging. Cars are easy. It's the people, the relationships with community members, customers, vendors, employees, other business owners that I love the most and is the most challenging.

Dr. Lydia Garver

Associate Director, Center for Premodern Studies, University of Minnesota
PhD Anthropology (Archaeology & Social Context), University of Indiana-Bloomington

Lydia Garver is the Associate Director of the Center for Premodern Studies, an interdisciplinary center focused on supporting the historical humanities and social sciences, based at the University of Minnesota. Her prior leadership experience includes managing both restaurants and archaeological field schools. She is committed to creating scholarly spaces that are collaborative, supportive, and rigorous but also weird and enjoyable. She holds a PhD in Anthropology with a specialization in Archaeology and Social Context from the University of Indiana-Bloomington. Her research interests include human/object interactions, particularly household consumer practice and ideas of religion and morality in the Early Modern period. She reads a lot of fantasy novels and is the co-owner of a bar. You can listen to her talk about ceramics and why archaeologists should be opposed to time travel on The Premodern Podcast!

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I am a catalyst and enabler of scholarly opportunities and collaborations in the historical humanities and social sciences.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position? Archaeology appealed to me as a field because I am interested in the past holistically and in its relationship to the present. I think this perspective has served me well in my work for an interdisciplinary center. I also have experience engaging a variety of informational sources including novels, paintings, historical documents, and environmental studies. This allows me to work with scholars from a variety of disciplines and identify opportunities for connection. Most archaeological projects are large and collaborative. My experiences working on sites prepared me for managing complex projects and personalities while maintaining collective goals and sense of community.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
I am opposed to the idea that all valuable experience can be achieved via some form of certification or degree. Key skills for my position include strong public-facing communications, the ability to build community, and effective project and events management. There are a lot of ways to build these skills including volunteer work and side jobs outside of the academy. Applied experience often looks better to potential employers, and it provides more opportunities to build your network.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I am a curious person who found in higher education a community of people and resources for humanistic inquiry. Despite all the challenges facing higher education and the historical humanities, there is something weirdly wonderful about connecting with the past and the possibilities of new ideas and discoveries that I am not willing to let go of.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My favorite part of my job is learning about and supporting the research projects and ideas of all the faculty and students that I get to work with. Challenges in my role include the University often not being set up bureaucratically to support work across departments and people being very maxed out. Faculty, students, and staff have a lot of responsibilities and pressures. It can be difficult for them to find the time and space to do the kind of collaborative and community-focused work that they might like to do.

Dr. Michelle Garvey

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I connect and mentor on campus and off-campus community partners with student, grad student, and community interns.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I make the values taught in my program--e.g. intersectionality, engagement, standpoint, justice--actionable.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I'm passionate about redistributing University resources into movements for justice.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
Favorite: working with people who forge new pathways in an often unjust institution. Challenge: forging new pathways in an often unjust institution!

Alexander Greff

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I compose the technical specifications of Medtronic medical devices into instructions for use that assist to inform the safe use of those devices by patients and clinicians, while remaining compliant with global labeling standards.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position? Project and information management are the most recurrent tasks that reflect my academic training. As with any academic writing, technical writer relies on the ability of one to absorb large quantities of detailed information before synthesizing them into a focused message. This is regularly complimented by critical reading, that is, by knowing when one's amassed knowledge of a device does not align with what needs to be communicated about the product. This is generally resolved by collaboration with various subject matter experts, ranging from mechanical engineers to clinicians, to determine the form and content of presenting device information. Technical Writing is an application of research and information management skills to the service of sharing detailed product information.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
Technical Writing gave me an opportunity to utilize my research and writing training outside of academia. It also provided better growth opportunities than higher education is currently able to support.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
Collaboration with various subject matter experts has been a very refreshing part of my work. Opportunities to work as part of a team is often limited in academia, so I have greatly enjoyed the opportunity to work towards common goals as part this role. Related to this, it has been a significant challenge to engage with new fields that do not relate to my training as an historian. Developing a degree of technical knowledge and expertise about the design and manufacture of Medtronic devices has been time consuming. Likewise, the scope of Technical Writing touches on every feature of a product's life, so I have been tasked with developing expertise in multiple areas, from risk assessment and quality control to the human factors of understanding the day-to-day use of the product by our various customer bases.

Britney Hayes

Cargill Thrive Program Coordinator, College of Food, Agriculture, Natural Resource Sciences- Office for Diversity and Inclusion
M.S - Counseling and Student Personnel, College Student Affairs -Minnesota State University, Mankato

Britney Hayes works at the University of Minnesota helping students convert their education and experiences into meaningful careers. With a background in career development and student services, Britney uses her strengths to support students through teaching, individual appointments, workshops, and experiential learning activities. She specifically enjoys supporting students through topics that may seem challenging or intimidating, such as offer evaluation and negotiation, interviewing, and networking. As the first in her family to attend college and earn both a bachelor's and master's degree, Britney is passionate about serving first-generation college students from diverse backgrounds and intersecting identities. Britney seeks to use her personal lived experiences to help and support students, while using her role as a professional to advance issues of social justice, equity, and anti-racism.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
Support the leadership and career development of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and women students pursuing careers in agriculture, business and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position? Career counseling.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
Support college students during their academic and career journey.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
Building authentic and meaningful relationships with students is my favorite part, while it is challenging to navigate the politics and barriers in higher education.

Dr. Aimzhan Iztayeva

Program Associate, Graduate School at the University of Minnesota
PhD, Sociology, University of Minnesota.

Dr. Aimzhan Iztayeva is a program associate at the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota working on academic and professional development initiatives for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty. Her work supports over 13,000 graduate students pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees, 700 postdoctoral scholars, and 6,000 faculty members at the University of Minnesota. A native from Kazakhstan, Dr. Iztayeva has a BS degree in politics with economics from the University of Bath (UK), an MS degree in gender studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), an MA degree and a PhD degrees in sociology from the University of Minnesota (USA). Her doctoral dissertation examined employment discrimination against single fathers in the United States. In her free time, Dr. Iztayeva enjoys practicing aikido and playing volleyball.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
Support graduate students, postdocs, and faculty in academic and professional development.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I rely a lot on my research skills when it comes to reviewing best practices in supporting graduate students, postodcs, and faculty. I also use my instructional design skills because I am responsible for designing various workshops, courses, and learning tools. Grant writing is another important skill I use because there's not enough funding to support all of our initiatives and it's a good idea to bring in outside funding. I can also mention collaboration as another useful skill because right now I work a lot with other people both in and beyond my main unit.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
Definitely, I can think of project management, leadership, communication and collaboration, data visualization, and storytelling.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I liked the idea of using my skills in a job that didn't require teaching but was still a part of an academic institution, and I was also drawn to the idea of developing various learning tools to support different populations at the university. In general, career and professional development is a fascinating field to me because of the changing nature of work we are currently facing.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I love the idea of supporting graduate students because I've been one and I know how difficult it can be. Meetings is the most challenging part, sometimes it's hard to find time to do your actual work.

Dr. Jasmine Kar Tang

Co-Director, Center for Writing and Minnesota Writing Project; Affiliate Graduate Faculty, Literacy & Rhetorical Studies, University of Minnesota
PhD, American Studies, University of Minnesota

Jasmine Kar Tang (she/her/hers) thinks a lot about what equitable practice looks like in writing consultations, supervision, group facilitation, and the minutiae of everyday administrative work. Jasmine serves as Co-Director of the Center for Writing and the Minnesota Writing Project and is affiliate graduate faculty in Literacy and Rhetorical Studies at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, where she also received her PhD in American Studies. Jasmine also applies her training to art/community spaces as the dramaturg of Aniccha Arts, an experimental performing arts group in the Twin Cities.

Leesa Kelly

Founder and Executive Director, Memorialize the Movement
BA, Tourism, Western Michigan University

Leesa Kelly is an activist, writer, public speaker, and curator. Leesa is the Founder and Executive Director of Memorialize the Movement, a living archive located in Minneapolis dedicated to the preservation and activation of over 1,000 plywood murals that emerged following George Floyd’s murder and the Minneapolis uprising in 2020. Through her work with Memorialize the Movement, Leesa has spoken at over 20 conferences and universities, organized large-scale exhibitions in the Twin Cities and New York, and has led workshops on cultivating BIPOC representation and visibility in the museum and conservation industry. She believes in dismantling oppressive systems and rebuilding new systems that work for ALL people.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I preserve protest art from the Minneapolis Uprising of 2020.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I rarely use the skills I learned in academia in my current position.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
Graduate students interested in grassroots preservation should involve themselves with grassroots organizations in their city to understand what it takes to do this kind of work.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
It chose me.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My favorite thing is seeing the way my work is healing my people. The most challenging thing is finding the support I need to keep the organization alive.

Dr. Mearah Quinn-Brauner

Senior Director for Strategy and Policy, Office of the Provost, Northwestern University
PhD English Literature, University of Pennsylvania

Mearah Quinn-Brauner has worked as a teacher, food service worker, public parks programs manager, researcher/writer, editor, advisor, caregiver, career and professional development expert, and administrator. As Senior Director for Strategy and Policy in the Office of the Provost at Northwestern University, Mearah provides strategic and tactical support for a wide range of activities within the Office of the Provost and the University more broadly, including senior searches, oversight of new degree programs and international partnership agreements, fulfillment of accreditation and state authorization requirements, the review of sitting deans, and the development of university policy. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I create and execute plans to advance university strategic priorities.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I rely on my ability to synthesize large amounts of information and write for particular audiences. Close reading and scrutiny of evidence also come in handy.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I wanted to build on the work I'd done in graduate school and as a University teacher and am fascinated by learning about universities from the inside.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I love learning about how the university works and getting to work on a variety of projects. Central university administration comes with a high level of pressure and stress, which is challenging.

Dr. Brittany Lewis

CEO / Founder of Research in Action and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, Research in Action & University of Minnesota
PhD Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota

Dr. Brittany Lewis is the Founder and CEO at Research in Action, a ground-breaking social benefit corporation established in 2018 to reclaim the power of research by centering community expertise. In deep collaboration with hundreds of community members, she co-created the innovative Equity in Action model that redistributes power and is accountable to the inherent leadership of impacted community members at every step of the research process. A former University Professor and Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank Scholar-in-Residence, Dr. Lewis has spent more than 15 years working in partnership with local communities impacted by racial injustice to co-create new knowledge and drive policy change that makes a real difference in people’s lives. Her research has been used to catalyze action in myriad ways, including but not limited to: • in a Minnesota Supreme Court to expand rights for tenants facing evictions • at the Minnesota State Legislature to inform the human services and public safety impact agenda • at Hennepin County to remove a harmful self-pay policy at homeless shelters • at the City of Minneapolis to guide the creation of a tenant protection ordinance.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
As Director of Operations, I drive the broader vision of the organization and head development. As Director of Research, I co-produce all materials with my team and attend all council or action committee meetings to co-facilitate the action research process.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I used my interdisciplinary education across public policy, urban housing, black feminisms, action research methods, and mixed methods analysis in my work everyday to both teach, train and coach, co-design research tools and innovative data collection strategies, and build intentional relationships.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
Yes, the best bootcamp or training comes directly from working with community. It is your experience doing engaged work and the impact of that work that matters the most.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
Truthfully, the field and the method choose me. It was my passion that led me to graduate school, but the community I loved that gave me my focus. I choose a field that would embrace my interdisciplinary way of thinking and then I had to create a program and experience that got me closer to my goals of being a part of using research to create practice and policy change, not just memorize the problem or publish in peer reviewed journals.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
Working in partnership with those most impacted by racial disparities to create lasting practice and policy change through our action research approach. The most challenging part of the job is working with those with differential power and helping them embrace our model of sharing power.

Dr. Laura Luepke

Associate Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota
PhD History, University of Minnesota

Dr. Laura Luepke is an accomplished professional in the field of graduate programs administration. Currently serving as the Associate Director of Graduate Studies (ADGS) for the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, she provides strategic direction for the Psychology PhD program. In this role, Laura oversees day-to-day operations of the program, provides guidance to approximately 130 doctoral students, coordinates recruitment initiatives, and manages the admissions process for over 500 applicants annually. Beyond her responsibilities within the department, Laura actively contributes to the College of Liberal Arts, including as a member of the Graduate Education Advisory Committee and CLA's Equity Lens Policy Review Committee. Laura's educational background includes a dual Master's degree in Library and Information Science (MLIS) and History (MA) from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which she earned in 2009. She went on to complete her PhD in History at the University of Minnesota in 2017. Following two years of teaching experience in adjunct and visiting professor positions with UMN's Program in the History of Medicine she made the transition in 2019 to a career in graduate program administration. Driven by a deep commitment to student advocacy, Laura is passionate about promoting equitable access to, and fostering inclusive experiences in, graduate education. Her work revolves around championing the needs of graduate students and dismantling barriers for individuals from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds. Drawing on her doctoral research on historical obstacles faced by marginalized populations in medical education, Laura aims to address contemporary inequalities within higher education. By raising awareness of the historical roots of these disparities, she strives for transformative changes in graduate admissions, advising, curriculum development, and student support services.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
Direct the operations, advising, and admissions of the Psychology PhD program to ensure that effective and efficient systems are in place to serve student, faculty, staff, and applicant stakeholders from diverse backgrounds.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
My humanities training prepared me to engage deeply with complex problems from multiple perspectives and communicate nuances verbally and in writing. These are skills I use to propose and cultivate buy-in for changes to graduate program policies, procedures, and curriculum. My work is very data-driven so I use my qualitative analysis skills frequently to gather relevant information and interpret it effectively in written reports and verbal presentations where I recommend innovative solutions. I also frequently draw on my experiences in the classroom and my training in writing pedagogy to develop programming. For example, this summer I am redeveloping a program that supports prospective graduate students from diverse backgrounds with the application process, designing orientation and training sessions for new graduate students, and building tools to support faculty advisors’ work with their graduate students.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
Training and certificate programs in equity and diversity, student mental health advocacy, and accessibility can provide helpful skill sets and expertise for advancement in this type of work. Graduate student assistantship positions doing work in program and event coordination can also provide valuable opportunities to build and demonstrate relevant skills and are worth seeking out.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I realized about half way through my PhD program that I did not want a long-term faculty career but that I wanted to stay in a university setting where I could participate in an intellectual community, continue learning, and work closely with students. I was also seeing how graduate school was often more difficult and stressful for myself and my peers than it needed to be, and how effective advocacy by faculty and staff could reduce those barriers and create a more positive and productive learning experience. This led me to focus my job search on university staff positions where I could work in collaborative teams to support students and provide advising services.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I get a lot of satisfaction from working collaboratively with students, faculty, and staff colleagues to come up with creative ways to help students not just survive but thrive in graduate school. The biggest challenge is the emotional toll when laws, policies, and procedures outside my control - but which I am obligated to enforce - create barriers for students and make it more difficult for them to succeed.

Sebastian Manuel Del Valle Alfonzo Manzo

Media Specialist, Minnesota Transform
BA Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and Studies in Cinema and Media Culture, University of Minnesota Twin Cities

My name is Sebastian Manuel Del Valle Alfonzo Manzo. I’m an organizer and a filmmaker. I’m interested in fostering community through conversation and documentation. In 2004, I immigrated from Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela to Saint Paul, Minnesota with my parents. I grew up in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood and graduated from Saint Paul Public Schools. I received my BA in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and Studies in Cinema and Media Culture from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in 2021. After graduating, I worked as a freelance filmmaker. I’m proud of my work on the PBS Frontline film Police on Trial, where I was responsible for recording a historic trial in its entirety, and assisting with everything from filming interviews to building the film’s archive. Parallel to my freelancing, I also worked to develop my artistic practice and build connections throughout the Twin Cities arts world. My efforts catalyzed most notably into receiving an artist residency at NE Sculpture, organizing a film festival at the Parkway Theater, and joining Serpentina Arts. Serpentina Arts (SA) is a collective that fosters creativity and professional development for MN Latinx visual artists. As SA’s program manager, I work closely with our director Maria Cristina Tavera to create opportunities and structures that support our community’s diverse needs. My work with SA is funded thanks to Minnesota Transform (MNT), an organization which I now work with as a media specialist. Thanks to MNT, I have the privilege of supporting transformative community initiatives with media consulting and assistance. My work with MNT and SA, in alignment with my passion for community and art, has led me to my current Hub residency project, Photography Narratives of MN Latinx Immigrants. For this project, I will be creating a collection of oral history interviews with SA photographers about their artwork.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I support transformative community initiatives with media consulting and assistance.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position? Besides the technical media and writing skills I developed, the mindfulness, sensitivity, and passions I cultivated during my academic training serve me everyday.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
It happened organically from pursing my interests, fulfilling work, making connections, and discovering communities.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
The relationships I've built are my favorite thing by far. Balancing responsibilities and managing expectations are the most challenging.

Rose McGee

President and Founder of Sweet Potato Comfort Pie, Sweet Potato Comfort Pie and Minnesota Humanities Center
Masters in Education - Leslie University Cambridge, Massachusetts

Rose McGee is President and Founder of Sweet Potato Comfort Pie: a catalyst for caring and building community. She is author of the books "Story Circle Stories", "Kumbayah The Juneteenth Story", and soon to be released "Can't Nobody Make a Sweet Potato Pie Like Our Mama." She is author of the play, "Kumbayah The Juneteenth Story," selected as Citizen of the Year in Golden Valley, MN where she resides, and is a two-time recipient of the Bill Hobbs Human Rights Award. She works extensively with the Minnesota Humanities Center as a Humanities Officer primarily leading and developing story circles for educators and community leaders.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
Introduce creative ways for people to convene and engage in meaningful dialogues.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
My undergraduate studies was to become a business education teacher, so I learned to think from a business perspective. My plan was to graduate from college and become a teacher. Instead when I graduated, teachers were being laid off. I had to fall back on y business skills (typing, filing, etc.). Honing in on those skills prepared me for my entry into the corporate world of IBM. As a manager for over 13 years in Human Resources with IBM, I finally moved into marketing. Despite all of that corporate dancing, I landed by in education for several years before somehow ending up in humanities and starting my own non-profit that focuses on social justice. Overall, I've been around the career world.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
Law. I think have an understanding of law is critical these days. Does not mean one needs to be a lawyer, just understand law. Policies and procedures are critical.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
Early-on, I really did not have much of a choice. I was to be a teacher or a social worker, or a preacher's wife. That was the expectation. I chose teacher. LOL!

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I do believe that what I do does make a difference for the good in this world.

Sheila McGuire

Head of Student and Teacher Learning, Minneapolis Institute of Art
MA in Art History, University of Minnesota / Graduate Certificate in Online Distance Learning, University of Minnesota

Sheila McGuire is Head of Student and Teacher Learning at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She and her team connect PK-12 students and teachers to the museum’s collection through multi-disciplinary school, studio, and tour programs, partnerships, web-based programs, learning resources, and professional development workshops, centered around Creativity, Critical Thinking, Empathy, and Global Understanding. Her work at Mia also encompasses decades of experience with adult learners, including Mia’s current Vitality Arts programs for older adults. As Director of Mia’s tour guide programs she provided training in art history and pedagogy to hundreds of tour guides from diverse backgrounds and developed a tour program for people living with Alzheimer’s and Dementia and their caretakers. She designs and facilitates innovative workshops, many with hands-on artmaking, not only for teachers, but also for community partners, corporations, law firms, and hospitals. She holds an MA in art history and a graduate certificate in online distance learning from the University of Minnesota. Sheila received the Art Educators of Minnesota award for Art Museum Educator of the Year in 2018-19. In 2022 she was recognized for her completion of the National Art Education Association’s School for Art Leaders.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I design, facilitate and evaluate art museum programs and learning resources with and for PK-12 learners, educators, and community partners

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
In my current position I regularly draw on and build on the broad depth of art historical, historical and cultural knowledge I acquired during my academic training. I rely on the academic research skills I learned during my academic training, but also have to update these skills regularly.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
I highly recommend that graduate students interested in museum education careers focused on working with PK-12 learners and educators complete some coursework in education to prepare them for interpreting art historical content for learners of different ages and stages of development. Gaining work experience in a museum while completing their degree(s)will provide important experience and a competitive edge when entering the museum education field. Art museum educators today must be able to use a variety of strategies to engage learners in conversations that invite them to connect their own experiences to art they are learning about in the museum or classroom.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I chose to pursue art history as an undergraduate because I loved to make art (and was quite good at it) but knew that I did not have the temperment to be an artist! Altough an introvert at heart, i took advantage of any work opportunity in my field including curating exhibitions at campus museums and teaching classes for young people at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I continued to pursue both curatorial and education opportunities because they fed different passions. Ultimately, I pursued museum education because I love to teach and enjoy the creative process of helping to make art accessible to learners of all ages.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My favorite thing about my job is connecting with people of all ages, cultures, and backgrounds. I learn so much from the individuals I engage with every day. I love using art to inspire curiosity, conversations, connections and creativty. The most challenging thing about my job is that there is never enough time to do it all! I have been in this field for a long time, and have to constantly make sure that administrative responsibilities don't get in the way of doing the heart work

Dr. Rose Miron

Director, D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Newberry Library
PhD American Studies, University of Minnesota

Dr. Rose Miron is the Director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library and Affiliate Faculty in the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University. She holds a BA in History and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. A non-Native historian, her research explores Indigenous public history and public memory across the Great Lakes, and her first book, Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory will be published by the University of Minnesota Press in Spring 2024. The book takes readers into the heart of the debate over who has the right to represent Native history by tracing one tribe’s fifty-year fight to recover their historical materials from colonial museums and archives and rewrite their history in public spaces. Based in close collaboration with the StockbridgeMunsee Mohican Nation since 2011, it also emphasizes the importance and reflects on the process of building reciprocal relationships between tribal nations, researchers, and nonNative institutions. Dr. Miron has also worked on and written about several public history projects ranging on topics from the U.S. Dakota War to Indigenous representations in monuments. At present, she is co-directing a multifaceted public history project called Indigenous Chicago, which is an extended collaboration between the Newberry Library, Native community members, and tribal nations with historic ties to the Chicago region. Prior to joining the Newberry, she served as the Program Manager for the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, where she primarily worked on the development of their digital archive project. Her work on repatriation, digital projects, and representations of Indigenous history in the public has been published by the journal Native American and Indigenous Studies, Routledge Press, the North Dakota Quarterly, and the National Council on Public History.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
As Director of the McNickle Center, I work to make materials within the Newberry's collection more accessible to academic researchers, tribal historians, and members of the broader community and work to ensure those materials are being used to improve both academic and public narratives of Native history.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
While conducting my own research is still a component of my job description, I primarily use the archival research skills I developed to help those interested in materials in the Newberry's collection locate items. However, the theoretical frameworks I studied as a part of my American Studies degree have also been crucial. In particular, I think deeply about public memory on an almost daily basis and am consistently thinking about how we can push back on narratives and misrepresentations that erase Indigenous people. My academic understandings about the production of history and the importance of archival texts to that process is also crucial in my day to day work to make the collection more accessible and ensure our policies are aligned with Indigenous protocols.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
The best training I received as a graduate student was through the Humanities Without Walls program and in the Public History Course taught by Kevin Murphy. Particularly in the latter experience, I had to work with a team to design a digital website that promoted a serious rethinking of a historical site. This taught me an extensive amount about community politics, writing content for a public audience, and the process of creating a digital project from conceptualization to execution. That's all to say, I think hands on public history experiences or working on projects that require you to create content with a public audience in mind would be most critical for someone interested in a career similar to mine.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
As a graduate student, I found that the most fulfilling part of my work was the collaboration I was doing with the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation. The direct impact of my work was immediately clear, and as a non-Native person, I felt that it was my responsibility to work on projects that actually benefitted and were identified as priorities by Native people. My dissertation (and now book project) identifies many of the barriers Native people face when trying to access their materials in colonial archives, so the opportunity to work in a colonial archive/library and work to improve some of those access barriers from within the institution was truly a dream for me.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My favorite thing about my job is that I get to do a lot of collaborative, creative thinking. I am regularly thinking about multiple different audiences and how we can represent Native history to those audiences. To my earlier point about seeing the direct impact of my work, I also love getting to partner directly with tribal nations and Native community members on these projects.The knowledge that I am working on projects that matter to and improve the lives of Indigenous people is incredibly important to me. The most challenging part of my role is that there is more work than I could ever accomplish. I think I could work 70 hour weeks and still not be caught up on my email/complete all the tasks I would like to do, and the work of making the Newberry's collection more accessible to tribal nations will be incomplete for decades into the future. Not having the staff capacity to say yes to all of the requests that come our way or all the ideas we have is so difficult!

Briana Mohan

Program Manager, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
MA, English Literature, University of Malaya

Briana Mohan joined the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2023 as a Program Manager in Research Education and Training. She loves the creativity involved in building out new roles like this one, which includes recruiting, special programs, and administration to support postdoctoral scholars who focus on cancer research. In 2022, she moved to Houston with her family from New Orleans, where she had lived for 11 years and where she created institution-wide career support for graduate students and postdocs at Tulane University. In addition, Briana has been a leader and active member of the Graduate Career Consortium (GCC), including serving as Chair of the 2019 conference held in New Orleans, as a two-term Secretary, and now as a member of the Membership and Belonging Committee. As part of the GCC writing group, she has also written for “Carpe Careers” in Inside Higher Ed, a column dedicated to career advice for graduate students and postdocs. Previously, Briana worked in a variety of academic advising, program management, and instructional roles, and has a particular commitment to people who have been historically excluded from educational and professional opportunities. Originally from Austin, Texas, she earned a BA in English with a concentration in Black Studies from Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, and an MA in English from the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where she lived and worked for five years.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I recruit postdoctoral scholars who do cancer research and create special programs for them.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position? Attentiveness to language, structure, human relationships, and meaning-making are all skills I learned from my humanities training that I use in my current position.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
With regard to career and professional development for grad students and postdocs, membership in the Graduate Career Consortium is definitely my primary recommendation. The GCC is lowering the cost of membership for trainee members to $50, in order to make it accessible to grad students and postdocs. Participation in the annual conference, especially the pre-conference day for new professionals, is highly recommended as well. In terms of program management, it is such a broad area that I'm not sure there is one recommendation, other than to seek out opportunities to help manage a program, whether within an institution or across institutions.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
Continued learning about my strengths and availability of opportunities.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My reasonable, supportive supervisor, remote work arrangements, and a well-resourced institution that values me are my favorite things. The most challenging is the learning curve with technology requirements.

Dr. Leah Pennywark

Humanities Editor, University of Minnesota Press
PhD Literature, Purdue University

Leah Pennywark is Humanities Editor at the University of Minnesota Press where she acquires in a wide range of disciplines, including American studies, cultural studies, literary criticism, and cinema and media studies. Before joining the University of Minnesota Press, Leah served as assistant editor at Stanford University Press, where she focused on political science, international relations, security studies, and Middle East studies. Prior to that, she served as acquisitions assistant at Purdue University Press, where she completed a PhD in American literature. She has an MA in literature from the University of Rochester and a BA in English from Rice University.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I acquire and develop books in the humanities with a focus on pathbreaking scholarship.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I use skills from graduate school to assess scholarship and manage multiple deadlines simultaneously.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I enjoy working with scholars and scholarly texts.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My favorite thing is how much I learn. That's also probably the most challenging.

Dr. Anne Elizabeth Phibbs

Founder and President, Strategic Diversity Initiatives
PhD - Philosophy; minor in Feminist Studies - University of Minnesota

Anne Phibbs, PhD, is Founder and President of Strategic Diversity Initiatives and has extensive experience in training, teaching, curriculum development, and training of trainers, delivering workshops and classes to participants in corporate, government, higher education, nonprofit, healthcare, and faith community settings. Anne served as Director of Education in the Office for Equity and Diversity at the University of Minnesota, where she built a successful diversity and inclusion leadership program with a focus on emotional intelligence (EQ). Anne is an EQ Practitioner certified in the EQ-i2.0 and EQ360 method. Anne earned her PhD in Philosophy and Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota and resides in Minneapolis.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I run my own company that specializes in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consulting, training, coaching, assessments, and strategic planning.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
Yes, I think graduate students who want to move into DEI work should take every opportunity to take part in training, education, and practical experiences around equity and inclusion. There is no one program or certificate I would recommend, as there are many great resources out there.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
As an out lesbian/queer woman & feminist (for over 40 years), I have always been interested in social justice. And as a white person, I am committed to using an antiracist lens in the work I do. So I was an activist from a young age, and then an academic. Then I did DEI work within higher education, combining my passions. Now I am able to use my academic skills to educate around social justice in all kinds of settings. I never knew I would end up here (I always thought I would stay in the academy), but I love where I am.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
Favorite - interesting contexts & people; never boring; I'm my own boss, and I get to do what I love. Challenging: running a business & having staff depend on you keeping your business going.

Harshit Rathi

Dr. Zoë Rodine

Director of University Programs and Partnerships, Playwrights' Center
PhD English Literature, University of Minnesota

Zoë Rodine is the Director of University Programs and Partnerships at the Playwrights' Center. For the previous seven years, she taught literature and pedagogy at the University of Minnesota, Metropolitan State University, and Macalester College, with expertise in everything from first-year rhetoric courses to Black literatures to experimental modernist texts. As a researcher, her work focuses on the ways that depictions of embodiment in text have shifted and changed over the past century and how writers push at the boundaries of who and what a human being can be. She's a writer, an occasional singer and performer, and a great appreciator (and sometimes-creator) of good food. She holds a BA from Macalester College and a PhD from the University of Minnesota.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I develop and lead programming for students and emerging playwrights to nurture a new generation of theater artists.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
My knowledge of academic spaces is of paramount importance in my current position. It's essential that I'm able to speak professors' language, intuit their pain points, and partner well with higher ed administrators. I also do lots of research and strategic planning, run the hiring and onboarding process for instructors, attend academic conferences, and meet with students to admit them to our programming. And of course, I do plenty of writing.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
I'm still discovering myself right now which kinds of trainings I should probably have! I think nurturing and building relationships is vital. That's not a training, per se, but it is a skill set that I think often gets overlooked or undervalued.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
It made use of expertise I'd developed, kept me in touch with artists and community, and allowed me to do exciting work in reimagining post-covid higher education. It also brought me back to theatre, which is something I've long been involved in, but never professionally.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I love continuing to work with students, and figuring out innovative ways to increase educational access. I'm challenged by working at the intersection of arts non-profits and the arts/humanities side of academia, both of which are struggling financially and existentially and often feel like really depressive and hopeless spaces.

Dr. Elizabeth Schneider

Senior Instructional Designer, Fairview Health Services
Ph.D. Geography, University of Minnesota

Elizabeth Schneider, PhD (she/they) is a Senior Instructional Designer in Organizational Development and Learning at Fairview Health Services. Elizabeth is accountable for the design of programs that support employee engagement and development initiatives across the organization. Their work focuses on inclusive, accessible, and culturally responsive learning design and strives to create safe educational spaces. Elizabeth earned their PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota. Their research identified when and where wildfire occurred in northern Minnesota forests prior to 1900 and evaluated the causes of those fire events, including climate, terrain, and indigenous land use. While working on their PhD, they received a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant and was a Doctoral Dissertation Fellow. They also taught several courses for the geography department.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I guide the development, design, and implementation of learning opportunities including webinars, eLearning courses, programs, and job aides that support employee engagement and development.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
While my current role is completely different from my educational background and doesn’t align to my dissertation, I find that the skills I gained just by being a student applies to the work that I do. My job includes aspects of project management, research design, course development, collaboration, and writing which I did on a daily basis during my academic training.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
Not necessarily. Many folks in the field of instructional design do not hold role specific degrees or certificates. What I see valued is having some type of experience in education, whether that is teaching, administration, or course design and being able to adapt or translate your experience regardless of the subject matter.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I experienced extreme burnout from my time as a graduate student and as a result I decided to transition away from higher education and even research. When deciding on what to do, I realized that designing courses and creating diverse learning experiences was the type of work that was bringing me joy. I did a lot of research on the types of careers that included what I liked to do and found that positions such as instructional design, learning experience design, and even user experience design aligned with the type of work I wanted to do.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
The favorite part of my job is the variability in my everyday work and having the infrastructure/support to develop when and where I want. The most challenging part of my job is trying to constantly balance the need for individual project time to actually design the product, with the need to have meetings and collaborate to ensure accuracy. I wish I had more time to spend on the design part of my role, but most of my time is consumed with meetings.

Robert Smith III

Senior Program Officer, Thriving Cultures, Surdna Foundation

Robert Smith III (he/him) is the Senior Program Officer of the Thriving Cultures Program, leading a $10 million portfolio focused on unleashing the radical imagination of artists and culture workers in the service of racial justice. He manages the Program’s grantmaking, learning strategies, and collaborations with grantees, partners, and funders that further the Foundation’s social justice mission. Robert’s work is guided by the long struggle for freedom as summed up in these two quotes. “As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make revolution irresistible.” — Toni Cade Bambara, Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara “Without new visions, we don’t know what to build, only what to knock down. We not only end up confused, rudderless, and cynical, but we forget that making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics, but a process that can and must transform us.” – Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination Before joining Surdna in 2019, he served as Associate Director of the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago, IL, the only cultural institution devoted to telling the story of public housing in the United States. Robert has held positions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Historical Society, and OutRight Action International. He has served on the boards of Project Fierce Chicago, a grassroots response to LGBTQ youth homelessness; PFund Foundation, an LGBTQ community foundation based in Minneapolis; and the Brown University Alumni Association. Born and raised in South Florida, he is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Minnesota.

Megan Stielstra

Writer/Creative Nonfiction faculty, MFA in Poetry & Prose/Editor-at-large, Northwestern University Press
MFA, Creative writing, Columbia College Chicago

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life. Her work appears in Best American Essays, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Tin House, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and theatres, festivals, and classrooms across the country. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor-at-large with Northwestern University Press, and is currently a Senior Fellow with the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California, imagining a media that centers human beings.

Jeris Stueland

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I lead McKinsey’s Employer Healthcare Service Line, focused on improving the employer healthcare system in order to reduce costs for employers and employees, and improve access and outcomes for employees and their families.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
As academics we learn how to write, to present, to teach, to solve problems, and to synthesize large amounts of data into "so whats." All of these skills are very important in consulting!

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
If you are interested in a career in consulting, the most important thing to do is to start approaching the world from an analytical and problem solving mindset. Read the business section of the newspaper, and think about why different organizations are making the choices that they are. Think about what analysis you would do to help you make that choice, and what problems you would need to solve to implement it. Practice coming up with creative solutions to solve these problems.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I became a consultant because it seemed like a career where I would be challenged to use a variety of skills and ways of thinking, where I would get to learn new things all of the time, and where I would get to work with people!

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My favorite part and one of the biggest challenges is that we are always learning new things - both content and skills.

Dr. Madison Van Oort

Dr. Meyer Weinshel

Head of Publications, Programs & Research, UMN Center for Austrian Studies
PhD Germanic Studies and History, University of Minnesota

Meyer Weinshel is currently Head of Programs, Publications, & Research Initiatives at the Center for Austrian Studies. He has also worked as Special Collections and Outreach Lead at the Center for UMN Holocaust and Genocide Studies since 2020, and was a Co-PI (and later postdoctoral researcher) for the Minnesota Human Rights Archive project from 2021 to 2022. He currently leads a team of undergraduate and graduate student staff to design the Fall 2023 exhibition for the Minnesota Human Rights Archive: The Local Roots of Global Activism: Minnesota's Human Rights Stories. In August 2023, he will become Assistant Director for the Center for Austrian Studies. Weinshel completed his Ph.D. in Germanic Studies and History in 2022, and taught all levels of German studies coursework in the UMN Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch (GNSD). He also served as a visiting lecturer of Yiddish studies in the Ohio State University's Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures in 2021, teaching Yiddish language and Yiddish cultural history coursework. From 2018 to 2020, he was involved with various Yiddish pedagogy initiatives at the Yiddish Book Center (Amherst, MA)—including the piloting of their new textbook, In eynem, designing and teaching Yiddish community-education courses with Jewish Community Action (Minneapolis, MN), and working for the Steiner Yiddish Summer Program. In addition to German, Jewish, Yiddish studies, and Holocaust & Genocide Studies, other subject specializations include LGBTQIA+ histories and queer studies, memory studies, translation, and migration.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
As head administrator for an academic research center, I manage all daily operations--including budgets, policy, staffing, and projects.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
My academic training provided me with so many important skills (at least on a base level) that I use daily: extreme attention to detail (particularly with writing; copyediting, authoring public and official documents for both university and wider, external audiences, etc), when having to teach, take coursework, and write: wearing multiple hats while effectively completing various tasks; organizing events and liaising with different parties within the university system; backwards design/thinking ahead to plan out long-term projects to meet deadlines; working with students in the classroom leant itself well to supervising student work in other capacities (being in supervisory roles in general)

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
I am on the fence about this, having considered/partially pursued similar things (I applied to graduate programs in library/information science due to my archival experience; I've also applied to boot camps, thinking I wanted to do UX). I generally think that after taking on the opportunity costs of a PhD, for most people it's either not necessary or detrimental to keep attaining degrees, certificates, etc. without gaining further work experience first (if you don't have any, or didn't have any prior to entering graduate school), AND doing the necessary work of completely and adequately articulating the skill sets one already has if they were a "successful" graduate student to begin with (success meaning: obtaining a degree, but also acquiring any set of experience or skills during your graduate career you didn't have before). If your current set of experience/skills isn't enough for the line of work you are fairly certain you want to enter, then yes, pursue the things that are necessary to do that. However, at least in my line of work (and academic-adjacent job within higher ed), as much as further professionalization and networking are always good to do, I would stress "diversifying" work/professional experience (e.g., in the humanities - going beyond teaching roles and getting admin positions, for example) before getting another degree/certificate, especially if if means going into (sometimes more) debt when graduate school was precarious enough in terms of opportunity costs.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I tread lightly with my answer, but (starting with the reason why I'm "not" doing what I felt my graduate training was setting me up to do professionally): I realized during the pandemic that teaching in my particular fields (German, Yiddish, Jewish Studies) meant taking on precarious, short-term, and poorly-paid positions that, at the time as a single person, I could not afford to take. To answer more positively/affirmatively: I realized that administrative roles within higher ed are (even if they come with their own challenges), are a great way to apply skills/subject knowledge one gains in graduate school within a familiar professional setting, while also providing more job stability and benefits.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
My favorite thing about my job, is being able to still work with students, still engage in exciting (and COLLABORATIVE) research, while also having a better work/life balance due to having a more concretely-defined professional role. The most challenging thing, and this is something I would point out to any graduate student at any stage of their career: it is hard to articulate to professional academics (i.e., faculty) just how important (and complicated) the administrative labor is that allows their jobs to exist...this is a perennial challenge; to get certain classes of people to value the many forms of work that make universities function.

Blair Williams

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I develop, produce, and ensure accurate documentation and manuals for cardiac devices and cardiac leads.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I research intensely. I use my experience in global culture to communicate with diverse teams. I edit and fact-check. I educate. I communicate with multiple levels of stakeholders.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I want to help people.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I love coming to work everyday and working on a high-achieving team. The most challenging aspect is learning the operations of a highly-regulated company.

Dr. Ryan Wold

Workforce Development Product Owner, State of Minnesota, Department of Employment & Economic Development
PhD Rhetoric and Scientific & Technical Communication, University of Minnesota

Ryan Wold is the Workforce Development Product Owner at Minnesota’s Department of Employment and Economic Development. He is responsible for a suite of digital products that help Minnesotans overcome barriers to joining the workforce. Ryan is also an adjunct Sr. Lecturer in the Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship Department at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches Business Communication. Ryan earned a PhD in Rhetoric and Scientific & Technical Communication from the University of Minnesota. His research focused on the design, business model, and embedded values of mentor programs. While working on his dissertation, he received the DePodesta Fellowship, which is part of a program designed to help graduate students use the ideas from their research to address issues in higher education. As part of the DePodesta Fellowship, Ryan founded Tablmakr, a mentor program management software platform. Tablmakr is now used by multiple universities to make mentorship more accessible to more students and to make the process of managing a mentor program more sustainable. Outside of work, Ryan enjoys reading with his daughter Sophia, talking philosophy with his wife Britt, and running. As a business communication nerd, he also really enjoys whenever he gets the chance to help his friends and family update their resumes or think through writing a tricky email.

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I am like an internal entrepreneur responsible for the vision, staffing, funding, and execution for a suite of digital services.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position?
I do a lot of research and a lot of writing.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I enjoy getting to work with lots of people and solve meaningful problems.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
I love that my work involves a lot of technical challenges and social complexity. It's also meaningful work. The hard thing with my work is that there are so many people involved.

Katelin Krieg

Summarize in one sentence what you do in your current position:
I try to make technical writers' lives easier in 2 ways: by helping them manage workload and problem-solve and by developing innovative ways to ensure our manuals are compliant with relevant laws, regulations, and standards.

How do you use the skills you learned during your academic training in your current position? Teaching is a good foundation for leading cross-functional meetings where I have no authority, but need to drive to decisions/conclusions. Research and textual analytical skills form the foundation of my work with international laws, regulations, and standards compliance. Mentoring and teaching experiences have made me a better manager.

Would you say graduate students interested in your kind of career would benefit from other trainings, degrees, certificates, bootcamps, etc? If so, which ones? Can you give a brief explanation?
No. Graduate students already appear over-credentialized to outsiders. I care infinitely more about how someone answers the interview questions we pose than what their degree is in.

Why did you choose to enter the career field you're in?
I got here by accident, on some level, and by networking. I wasn't sure I was going to like this job, but I needed something. I wound up really enjoying it--and it was a bonus that my skill set was well-suited to the work.

What is your favorite thing about your job? What is the most challenging?
Favorite: the people I work with. They are smart, thoughtful, well-balanced, and -- most importantly -- kind. Most challenging is often needing to explain who we are and what our role is in the larger organization to folks who don't know.