Networking is one of the most important ways to explore career options and land jobs. But it can be intimidating and overwhelming, especially if you don't have a network. How do you build a network if you don't have a network? In this episode, Maren shares tips and strategies you can use to help graduate students, PhDs, and alumni, build authentic …

Academia is populated with over-achievers competing for scarce resources and reviewing and critiquing each other. It's a recipe for toxic culture. It also means that too many PhDs feel like they're not good enough, that they lack worth and value. We're also hesitant to ask for help or admit we don't know, because not knowing is an invitation for an…

You made the decision to earn your degree and pursue a career in academia. But is that enough of a reason to stay? In this episode, Maren discusses how the sunk cost fallacy keeps people in academia. We've invested so many years earning our degrees and we want that investment to pay off in some ways. But that time, energy, and money is already gone…

Many PhDs worry that leaving academia means giving up job security, especially if they've landed a "golden ticket" and secured a tenure track job. But a job for life traps you. It creates a system where people are chasing a unicorn job, that few will actually achieve. It means that few people enter the system because few people are exiting. And it …

Graduate students and PhDs are making decisions about their academic careers in the absence of data. How many tenure track jobs are there in a discipline? How many applications do departments receive? When are PhDs most marketable? The nuances of the academic hiring process matter. But this data doesn't exist for most academic disciplines. In this …

Academia is awash in a sea of talent, and yet there are few too jobs for all the talented people. The result is a race to the bottom: a reliance on adjunct and postdoc labor that is paid as little as possible. And this reality will be with us for the foreseeable future. In this episode, Maren discusses the harm that happens to PhDs who remain in ac…

Since 2014, Maren has focused on understanding two related problems: what are the emotional, psychological, and social obstacles grad students and PhDs face when they leave academia; and what is the process by which PhDs successfully make career transitions. Research shows that graduate students and PhDs experience depression and anxiety at 6x the …

In this introductory episode, Maren talks about her journey from graduate school to leaving academia and starting her own successful business. Walking away from her dream — of becoming a professor — was not an easy decision for Maren. Like so many PhDs, she worried about being unfulfilled and unhappy in a nonacademic job. Now, 8 years later, she ha…