Making the Leap: A Non-Academic Career Planning and Job Search Boot Camp

Speakers

Organizer

Yaihara Fortis-Santiago, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Dr. Yaihara Fortis-Santiago is the manager of Science Alliance, the professional development branch of the New York Academy of Sciences. Yaihara develops and implements innovative workshops and courses that provide early career scientists with a range of soft and business skills that will be essential for all careers. As the manager of Science Alliance, Yaihara works closely with career development offices and student and postdoc organizations to consolidate resources and implement new ideas for professional development programing. Yaihara obtained her bachelors’ degree in Biology from University of Puerto Rico and her doctoral degree in Neuroscience from Brandeis University and then completed the Science and Technology Policy Fellowship under the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where she was assigned to work at the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Speakers

Jane Bliss Birk

JBCC

Jane Bliss Birk is an executive coach and consultant with more than 18 years of experience in coaching, training, professional development and communications. Jane coaches clients personally and within organizational settings to help them find clarity around their lives and careers, develop critical life and professional skills, and set goals to transform into their highest, most productive selves. She has coached leaders, consulted clients and designed and facilitated various programs for clients such as Columbia Business School, Google, JPMorgan Chase, kayak, NYU Medical School, the New York Academy of Sciences and PwC. Jane also consults with professional and entrepreneurial organizations on strategies and programs to increase training efficiency and effectiveness.

Jane founded her independent practice in 2010 after a successful corporate career, the last 6+ years of which she worked for Google, New York, leading a training team, creating an in-house coaching program, managing communications for Google's largest acquisition (DoubleClick), and regularly designing and facilitating professional development training programs to help leaders and teams increase self-awareness, improve communication and resolve conflict.

In addition to ongoing personal and executive coaching engagements, a few examples of Jane’s work include:

• For leaders at several Fortune 100 companies and various entrepreneurial firms: coaching and leading experiential workshops on topics such as Leadership Styles, Conflict Resolution, Leading Difficult Conversations, Executive Presence, Building Trusted Relationships, Emotional Intelligence, Presentation Skills and Myers-Briggs preferences
• For Columbia Business School MBAs and EMBAs: coaching and training on Career Success Through Mindfulness
• For PhDs and postdocs at  What Can you Be with a PhD? academic career program: developing a strengths-and values-based career satisfaction model and workshop
• For PhD-level members of the NY Academy of Sciences: designing and facilitating Networking (for Making the Leap), Career Development, Conflict Resolution workshops
• For a boutique media/communications firm: revamping its internal training program
• For coaching and facilitation clients in organizations and academia: partnering with leading couples therapist and best-selling author Terry Real to develop and lead workshops on leading effective relationships and strengthening communication

Jane holds a B.B.A. in Marketing and is a CTI and ICF ;certified coach. She is a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Certified Practitioner and is becoming certified in Brené Brown’s, “The Daring Way” shame resilience curriculum. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and five-year old son and loves practicing yoga and singing old standards in West Village jazz clubs.

Keith Micoli, PhD

NYU Langone Medical Center

Keith is the Postdoctoral Program Director at NYU Langone Medical Center, as well as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Postdoctoral Association. He received his BA in marine biology/neurobiology from New College of Florida in 1993 and his PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2001. Keith continued at UAB as a postdoc on an NRSA T32 fellowship, additionally serving as a research associate and Instructor in the Department of Pathology and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biology at Samford University.

Keith's interest in postdoctoral training at a national level was developed by volunteering with the National Postdoctoral Association, where he was Chair of the Policy Committee, Strategic Planning Committee, and a member of the Outreach, Membership, Finance, and Meeting Committees. He served on the NPA Board of Directors for four years and was Board Chairman from 2004 to 2006. During this time, the NPA transitioned from a special project of AAAS into an independent 501(c) non-profit corporation. During his tenure as Chair, the NPA successfully worked with the NIH to start the K99/R00 grant mechanism and helped NIH and NSF develop a unified definition of a postdoc. Keith rejoined the NPA Board in 2013, and was elected Chairman for 2014-2015.

He left academic research to pursue a full-time position with New York University School of Medicine as Postdoctoral Program Director in 2008. Since that time, the program has developed numerous formal programs to foster postdoc training, including a grantwriting course, lab management series, and a course in pedagogy. He is the Primary Investigator of NYU’s Science Training Enhancement Program, funded by the NIH BEST program. This initiative currently funds 17 institutions, and is intended to change the culture of scientific training to embrace the full spectrum of rewarding careers open to PhD-trained scientist.

His biggest challenge has been the organization of What Can You Be with a PhD?, a career symposium that brings together over 1000 graduate students and postdocs from New York City for two days of talks and workshops. This program featured over 80 speakers and covered 20 different career options and numerous career development workshops in 2013, and will be offered again in October of 2015.

His passion is encouraging postdocs and graduate students to take responsibility for their own success and providing the resources they need to develop their own careers.

Zach Marks

Oystir

Prior to Oystir, Zach worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he developed strategies to hire talent from non-traditional sources. He advised large public, private and social sector clients on a range of organizational strategy topics with a focus on economic development, including an engagement designing South Sudan’s first national agriculture plan. Zach received a BA in Ethics, Politics and Economics from Yale University. He is writing a book on chai wallahs, India's roadside tea vendors.

Rudy Bellani, PhD

Oystir

Prior to Oystir, Rudy was a Junior Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company, where he served pharmaceutical, education, and technology clients. At McKinsey, Rudy specialized in innovation and talent development strategies including how to identify and hire talent from non-traditional backgrounds. In addition to his client work, Rudy helped lead PhD recruiting for McKinsey's New York office. Rudy received a PhD in Neuroscience from Rockefeller University where he studied the developmental origins of brain asymmetry. He has an extensive collection of vertebrate brains.

Victoria Blodgett

Assistant Dean, Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs
University of Connecticut

After brief stints as a business owner/entrepreneur and a high school teacher, Victoria landed firmly in a career in higher education administration. Honed over nearly 30 years, (at Keene, Cornell, Yale and UConn) her career has focused the last 24 years on the supporting the academic career of graduate students (primarily Ph.D.s) at research universities. Part advisor/counselor, cheer squad, advocate...part mad woman on a mission...Victoria will pull out all the stops to help graduate students find, and successfully navigate their career/life goal. When she isn’t playing with her two lap dog Bernese Mountain Dogs, or planning adventures with her partner of 25 years, you can find her at UConn where she serves as the Assistant Dean for Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Affairs.

Amy Pszczolkowski

Associate Director, Office of Career Services, Princeton University

Amy Pszczolkowski has worked in higher education for over 20 years providing leadership in wide range of areas from institutional advancement to career services. Most recently, she serves as the Associate Director for Graduate Student Career Services at Princeton University where she provides leadership in the area of career counseling and programming for doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars on all aspects of professional and career development for both the academic and non-academic job markets. Amy received her Masters of Science in higher education administration from Miami University of Ohio and has work in a variety of institutions throughout her career. She is serving her second term as an executive board member of the Graduate Career Consortium, an organization dedicated to supporting the provision of professional and career development for doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars.

Panelists

Rudy Bellani, PhD

Oystir

Prior to Oystir, Rudy was a Junior Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company, where he served pharmaceutical, education, and technology clients. At McKinsey, Rudy specialized in innovation and talent development strategies including how to identify and hire talent from non-traditional backgrounds. In addition to his client work, Rudy helped lead PhD recruiting for McKinsey's New York office. Rudy received a PhD in Neuroscience from Rockefeller University where he studied the developmental origins of brain asymmetry. He has an extensive collection of vertebrate brains.

Juan Carlos López, PhD

Roche

Juan Carlos López was born in Oaxaca, México, in 1967. He obtained his first degree on Biomedical Research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, majoring in neuroscience. Juan Carlos got his Ph.D. degree from Columbia University (New York) in the laboratory of Eric Kandel, studying synaptic plasticity in neuronal cultures. He then carried out postdoctoral work at the Instituto Cajal (Madrid), studying presynaptic mechanisms of transmitter release. During this period, Juan Carlos wrote a book on the neurobiology of memory (“El Telar de la Memoria”, Algar Editorial), with which he won the IV European Award of Scientific Dissemination in 1998. Two years later, Juan Carlos left experimental research to become Editor of Nature Reviews Neuroscience in London. In January 2004, he returned to New York to become the Chief Editor of Nature Medicine.

In February 2014, Juan Carlos left the publishing industry to become Head of Academic Relations and Collaborations at Hoffmann-La Roche. In this role, he and his team are charged with fostering interactions of his company with academic institutions worldwide with the aim of promoting the advance of translational research and the discovery of new medicines.

Juan Carlos has also served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board and of the Board of Directors of Noscira, a Spanish biotechnology company interested in neurodegeneration. He is member of the Board of Directors of the Eureka Institute, an international initiative that aims to promote translational research by fostering the education of MDs and PhDs interested in bridging the gap between bench and bedside, and of the Board of Directors of Keystone Symposia, non-profit organization devoted to the advancement of science through its prestigious series of conferences.

Paul Corrigan, PhD

IBI Group

Paul graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in 2007 with a PhD in Physics. His thesis work focused on mid-infrared laser attenuation for optical communications applications (experimental and theoretical analysis). He subsequently undertook a 3-year postdoctoral appointment at Princeton University and The City College of New York. There he continued to work with mid-infrared technologies but in their application to sensing where he developed several trace gas sensor systems.

After auditing a postdoctoral course in Systems Engineering, Paul opted for a career change and joined IBI Group, a multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy in 2011.

In his new role Paul has worked principally in the transit systems domain, developing integrated rail and bus technology systems with local and national clients.

The scope of his job today focuses in two key areas:

• Systems Engineering - applying Systems Engineering to the design and implementation of transportation systems
• Business Development – building an engineering practice in the New York City region

Jenny Mahoney, PhD

John Wiley and Sons

Jenny studied physics at Fordham University in the Bronx, NY and received both her M.S. (2004) and Ph.D. (2007) in Physics at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ. Her doctorate focused on electron-driven processes for plasma technology. After that, she won a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology and used nanotechnology to build ultraviolet light sources. From 2009-2011, she was a research scientist at St. Peter's University in Jersey City, NJ, where her research focused on plasma physics. She was highly involved in outreach, including teaching physics to undergraduate and high school students using hands-on experiments. Since 2011, she has been an Editor at Wiley in Hoboken, NJ. Specifically, she is the Deputy Editor of the Journal of Polymer Science: Polymer Physics. Her main responsibilities include managing the peer review process for the journal as well as outreach within the community by attending conferences and meetings.