Author: PhD Career Stories

A Podcast for people interested in career possibilities after a PhD with Tina Persson, Michele Manzo, Maria Sjögren and Paulius Mikulskis.

#084: Sonia Jaeger Story

Sonia Jaeger is German-French psychologist, psychotherapist, and PhD.

She has been living a location independent life as a digital nomad for the past four years while working as an online therapist, providing online counselling to expats and other globally mobile clients in German, French, and English.

After finishing her PhD she decided to take a break and travel the world. However, instead of returning home afterwards she decided to start an online private counseling practice and has been traveling the world ever since.

In 2018 alone she went to (and worked from) 12 different countries, from Australia to Europe all the way to Latin America. Currently, she has not only started to mentor other psychotherapists who want to work online but also facilitates workshops that broach the issues of mental health while living globally.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsoniajaeger/
Website: https://www.sonia-jaeger.com

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#083: Matt Hotze Story

Matt Hotze graduated with a doctorate in Environmental Engineering from Duke University in 2008 and he is currently Administrative Director at Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment Engineering Research Center.

From his story, you will learn how almost failing the GRE exam brought him to the managing position he has now and how to apply business principles in academia and life. 

Matt also shares his experience with the dual-career challenge that many PhD couples face after their graduation and offers good advice on how to find a job and keep a relationship at the same time. 

By understanding people and how you interact with them you can improve your results, your research results.

Matt Hotze, PhD in Environmental Engineering

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#082: Pearl Osirike Story

In this episode Pearl Osirike shares her story and some of the most important lessons she has learned during her PhD so far.  Pearl is a biochemist with an interest in drug discovery and infectious diseases. She holds a first-class degree and a masters degree from the University of Benin, Nigeria, where she also serves as an Assistant Lecturer. Currently, she is a second year PhD student of Molecular and Cell Biology of Infectious Diseases at the West African Centre for Cell Biology and Infectious Pathogens at the University of Ghana. 

Pearl is passionate about teaching and research and she is excited to share her story to motivate and inspire others. 

As a PhD student, the workload is vast, so I have learnt to break down enormous tasks into smaller, chewable sizes for effectiveness and to celebrate each small victory along the way. I find that each little victory gives me the strength to push on when the going gets tough.

To learn more about Pearl’s story, please listen to this episode. If you also have a story to be told or if you know someone, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Enjoy Listening!

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#081: Fabian Taube tips and tricks

This is the second episode of Fabian Taube, in which he will share five tips on how to survive outside of academia after an academic career.

In his first podcast Fabian shared his story transforming from academia to a specialist in preventive medicine at the Swedish Armed Forces Center for Defense Medicine. So if you have not listen to his first podcast, don’t hesitate to do so.

Bellow you find the title of these tips:

1-Sort out the pros and cons before accepting a certain position. 

2-Let the organization know your big advantage. 

3-Make contact and collaborate.

4-Make yourself and your coworkers satisfied.

5- If you aim at becoming a leader you should first question your purpose of wanting to become a leader.

Let the organization know that the big advantage with you it’s not your skills in a specific scientific area. It is your skills in being able to take off on any kind of problems with the critical and analytical view.

Dr. Fabian Taube

To learn more about Fabian’s tips, please listen to this episode. If you also have a story to be told or if you know someone, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Enjoy Listening! 

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#080: We celebrate the three years anniversary and talk about resilience

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PhD Career Stories podcast marks its third anniversary!

We can hardly believe it ourselves, but we are extremely proud that for three years we managed to bring you every two weeks a new inspiring story from our speakers and share with you our thoughts about PhD life and – importantly – the life after it. 

We are also happy to say that we are not going to stop – our team is continuously growing and new exciting projects and ideas are waiting to be realized. So stay tuned and keep us in your podcast subscriptions!

To celebrate, one lovely summer evening a part of our team sat at the virtual round table to discuss one of the hardest topics in career development – how to stay resilient during the career transition? 

Tina Persson offered for this discussion the questions that helped to unfold the concept of “resilience” and brought interesting notions and personal tips from the team members Michele Manzo, Jo Havemann, Subu Surendran, and Natalia Stolyarchuk:

1. Why do so many PhDs stress out at the end of their PhD?

2. What is an academic “bubble” and how does it prevent PhDs from looking beyond their thesis?

3. What could help PhDs to be more confident and resilient in the process?

4. How – and why – shall we talk about failures? 

5. Why digital platforms such as FB and LinkedIn are still so unpopular among PhDs? 
6. Why is it so hard for many PhDs to just stay between jobs?

Listen to the episode to know what came out of it!

#079: Presenting the team: Nika and Alice Stories

In this episode two member of PhD Career Stories team, Alice and Nika, talk about their experience during PhD, earned skills and their career after PhD. They also talk about how they joined PhD Career Stories podcast. 

Alice is currently working in the healthcare organization in Sweden and She believes her PhD skills like “science communication” helped her to get to her job. 

Alice also shares what she has learned during coaching seasons by Tina Persson:

“It helped me not to be stuck at some point and think a bit forward to see that one experience doesn’t build all your personality…”. 

Nika is going to start her new career path as postdoc at Columbia University in New York City. She believes one of the major skills that she learned during her PhD is scheduling meetings from all over the world with a time difference.

In this episode you can also listen to Alice and Nika ‘s tips regarding job interview as both have gone through many job interviews before getting their dream jobs.

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#078: Michalina Lewicka-Yammine Story

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Michalina Lewicka-Yammine‘s passion for Neuroscience evolved during her master degree at the Jagiellonian University and her exchange studies at Uppsala University which led her to a PhD degree at Karolinska Institute in Developmental Neuroscience. 

After graduation, her passion for marketing got her engaged with three startups and establishing her own consultancy firm. At Karolinska Institute she worked as a course leader and later as a project manager at the Alumni Office. 

Throughout that journey Michalina gained many new experiences as well as gave birth to two children, and found her way to balance between being a mother and delivering and performing at work. 

Nowadays, Michalina is raising two kids, running a freelance consultancy and has a full-time job as a product manager at Spiber Biomaterial – all powered by the stamina and resilience gained from motherhood.

Connect with Michalina on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

 

I’m still having my own company and doing some small projects. On the side I’m working fifty percent for a biotech company and fifty percent on maternity leave. As I said, don’t give up! Try it! And see if it’s for you and if you don’t like it, try something else and try from a different angle – try to find your balance and what suits you the most.

Dr. Michalina Lewicka-Yammine, mother, freelancer and product manager at Spiber Biomaterial.

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