Spring 2025 Career Development Series

This intentionally-designed series blends OACD programming with top-rated virtual content to give advanced doctoral students and postdoctoral trainees at Pitt access to an expanded set of sessions covering a variety of career development skills, career options, and key transitional steps that will help you identify, prepare for, and succeed in landing the next step of your career (see the career-specific stage and the career transition stage of the ADAPT model for more information).

List of acronyms: BtP: Beyond the Professoriate; HSLS: Health Sciences Library System; NPA: National Postdoctoral Association; OACD: Office of Academic Career Development.

January 8, 2025 NPA: Telling Your Story: Building a Narrative for Career Development

Time: 1pm ET
Location: Virtual
Presenter: Urmila Venkatesh

Register Here after logging into the NPA site.

If you are not yet a member, join by going to this page and sign up as an "Affiliate Individual Member", selecting the option, either postdocs or graduate students, that matches your career stage.

Description: Why do stories matter, and how do we get better at telling our own? Every opportunity we are given only happens because we are asked to tell a story first. Our careers are a cycle of doing things, reflecting on them, and sharing a narrative about what we did - to get the next opportunity and repeat the cycle. In this webinar, you’ll learn about the power, practice, and prevalence of storytelling in our career development. We will talk about stories as a tool for identifying our skills and values, storytelling as a means to articulate our accomplishments, and the narrative arc as a way to make meaning of our experiences.

Speaker Bio: Urmila Venkatesh, Assistant Director of Career Education, Stanford University, brings 20+ years of higher education experience to her current role as a coach, facilitator, and assistant director of alumni career education at Stanford University. Prior to this role, Venkatesh was a fellow in Stanford’s Life Design Lab, and managed a team of career coaches as the assistant dean of career education for doctorates and postdocs. She is dedicated to helping students find meaningful careers in and beyond academia and communicating the transferable lifelong skills and knowledge gained from their academic training, extracurricular pursuits, and life experiences of all kinds. Venkatesh holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of California Berkeley and a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Michigan.

Venkatesh’s leadership positions in higher education have spanned Stanford University, The New School for Social Research, and the University of Michigan. She has devoted her career to creating greater educational equity and well-being by using tools like design thinking, storytelling, reflective practices, active listening, and experiential learning. Throughout, Venkatesh has centered her efforts on the needs of marginalized populations, and is especially dedicated to supporting international students, first-generation students, and women of color at all stages of their academic careers.

January 9, 2025 OACD: Find Your Dream Career: Discovering Your Path with the PerL Program *RECORDING AVAILABLE*

Time: 12-12:30pm ET
Location: Virtual
Presenter: Laura Miller, PhD, PC

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Description: Are you a trainee who is feeling lost and unsure of your career path? Imagine the excitement of discovering your ideal job and finding true fulfillment in your work! Introducing the Personal Assessments to Launch, or PerL, program specifically designed for Pitt trainees like you. Through this self-directed program, you will uncover your passions, explore different career options, and ultimately identify your perfect fit. Join us for a session that will explain the step-wise process and highlight how you and your peers can support each other on this journey. Invest a small amount of time now for a huge impact on your future success. Don’t let uncertainty hold you back – let the PerL program pave the way to your dream career!

Presenter Bio: Laura Miller, PhD, PC, received her PhD in Medical Neurobiology from Indiana University School of Medicine and is the Associate Director of the Office of Academic Career Development (OACD) for the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences. She is responsible for the strategic planning, development, marketing, execution, and assessment of career development programs, workshops, and special events for biomedical scientists, clinical researchers, and trainees across all six schools of the health sciences to develop leaders and drive career excellence. In this role, she developed the Personal Assessments to Launch, or PerL, program, an easy, step-wise process to support Pitt trainees in identifying their ideal career that was piloted in 2024 and is now available to all Pitt trainees in the health sciences.

January 15, 2025 BtP: Why A Successful Job Search is A Focused Job Search

Provided by Beyond the Professoriate (BtP)

Time: 12-1pm
Location: Virtual
Presenter: TBA

Description: Academic and professional employers have very different criteria when evaluating job candidates, which means grad students and PhDs must adopt a different strategy when applying for non-academic jobs.

Join the Beyond Prof team for this webinar on why grad students and PhDs will need to focus their job search on a specific career pathway and shift their strategy when applying to non-academic jobs.

This webinar is uniquely designed for doctoral students, PhDs, and postdocs from all academic disciplines who are wondering:

What are the differences between academic and non-academic hiring?
What do academic and non-academic employers value?
Why do I have to focus my job search on a specific career pathway?

To register, log into Beyond the Professoriate, selecting "through your institution" (Pitt), and then REGISTER HERE. Advanced registration is required.

Please also be sure to mark “member@beyondprof.com” as a safe sender to receive our email reminders.

January 28, 2025 NPA SmartSkills: How to Become a Principal Investigator

Provided by National Postdoctoral Association (NPA)

Time: 3pm ET
Location: Virtual

Presenter: Jaime S. Rubin, PhD

If you are not yet a member, join by going to this page and sign up as an "Affiliate Individual Member", selecting the option, either postdocs or graduate students, that matches your career stage.

Description: Making the transition from a mentored postdoctoral position to directing your own research group can be very difficult, if not intimidating. Those that utilize a thoughtful and informed approach have the best chances for success. This webinar will discuss the many issues faced by investigators as they prepare for their first independent position and their early years as a junior faculty member. This includes new skill sets to acquire as well as previously unfamiliar career milestones to achieve. Included in the discussion are practical suggestions to meet these challenges.

February 5, 2025 BtP: How PhDs Can Identify Non-Academic Career Options

Provided by Beyond the Professoriate (BtP)

Time: 12-1pm ET
Location: Virtual
Presenter: TBA

Description: Are you struggling to identify non-academic career options where you can leverage your education and training? Wondering where PhDs from your discipline land non-academic jobs?

Join the Beyond Prof team for this webinar on how PhDs can identify and research non-academic career options through informational interviews. Informational interviews are incredibly common outside of academia. It’s how people learn about different jobs, learn about companies of interest, and build a network that can later help connect them to a job.

This webinar is uniquely designed for doctoral students, PhDs, and postdocs from all academic disciplines who are wondering:

What are my career options as a PhD with a background in [X]?
Where do PhDs with my academic background work?
How do I connect with PhDs and other professionals? What are informational interviews?

To register, log into Beyond the Professoriate, selecting "through your institution" (Pitt), and then REGISTER HERE. Advanced registration is required.

Please also be sure to mark “member@beyondprof.com” as a safe sender to receive our email reminders.

February 19, 2025 BtP: Writing Resumes that Communicate Your Value to Employers

Provided by Beyond the Professoriate (BtP)

Time: 12-12:45pm ET
Location: Zoom

Description: Much of the job search process is about persuasive communication: you want to convince a hiring manager that you’re the right fit for the job. So how can PhDs effectively communicate their skills and advanced training to employers?

Join Beyond the Professoriate in this upcoming webinar where you’ll learn what employers look for in candidates, and how you can write resumes that communicate your value to employers.

This webinar is designed for doctoral students, PhDs, and postdocs from all academic disciplines who are wondering:

What do employers look for in job candidates and their resumes?
How do you determine what an employer wants?
How do I show I’m the right person for the job in my documents?

To register, log into Beyond the Professoriate, selecting "through your institution" (Pitt), and then REGISTER HERE. Advanced registration is required.

Please also be sure to mark “member@beyondprof.com” as a safe sender to receive our email reminders.

February 25, 2025 NPA SmartSkills: Applying a Project Management Lens to Your Job Search

Time: 3pm ET
Location: Virtual
Presenter: Pallavi Eswara, M.S.

Register Here after logging into the NPA site.

If you are not yet a member, join by going to this page and sign up as an "Affiliate Individual Member", selecting the option, either postdocs or graduate students, that matches your career stage.

Description: Searching for jobs can be daunting! To make the process of finding your next position more manageable, we will learn about project management principles and how they can be applied to finding and securing a job. Specifically, we will learn to treat job search as a “special project" and map the search to the five stages of project management: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closing.

March 5, 2025 BtP: Going Beyond LinkedIn: How to Unlock the Hidden Job Market

Provided by Beyond the Professoriate (BtP)

Time: 12-12:45pm ET
Location: Zoom

Description: Nearly 70% of companies hire through employee referrals. These job openings may not be posted online, or employers may choose not to advertise them publicly. Instead, they approach employees and internal networks as trusted sources to help fill positions.

As a job seeker, you need to find a way to break into this “hidden” job market. For PhDs it is one of the most effective ways to get hired quickly, make a career transition, or land your first non-academic job.

Join the Beyond Prof team for this webinar on how to unlock the hidden job market. This webinar is designed for doctoral students, PhDs, and postdocs from all academic disciplines who are wondering:

Why do I need to think about the hidden job market?
How do I access the hidden job market and connect with people?
Who do I connect with and how do I grow my network?

To register, log into Beyond the Professoriate, selecting "through your institution" (Pitt), and then REGISTER HERE. Advanced registration is required.

Please also be sure to mark “member@beyondprof.com” as a safe sender to receive our email reminders.

March 19, 2025 BtP: How to Ace Your Non-Academic Interview

Provided by Beyond the Professoriate (BtP)

Time: 12-12:45m ET
Location: Virtual
Presenter: TBA

Description: You’ve submitted job applications and are now waiting to hear back about interviews. Maybe you’ve already booked your first screening interview and you’re wondering what to expect. What kinds of questions will be asked? How should you prepare for a phone screen or virtual interview?

Join the Beyond Prof team for this upcoming webinar on how to ace your non-academic interview.

This webinar is designed for doctoral students, PhDs, and postdocs from all academic disciplines who are wondering:

How do I prepare for non-academic interviews?
What types of questions can I expect to be asked?
What is the best way to stand out as a candidate during interviews?

To register, log into Beyond the Professoriate, selecting "through your institution" (Pitt), and then REGISTER HERE. Advanced registration is required.

Please also be sure to mark “member@beyondprof.com” as a safe sender to receive our email reminders.

March 26, 2025 OACD: From Postdoc to Professor: It’s Possible at Pitt

Time: 3:30-5pm ET
Location: Virtual
Moderator: Beth Shabaan, PhD, MS, MPH

Panelists: David Gau, PhD, Lacey W. Heinsberg, PhD, RN, and Jami L. Saloman, PhD

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Description: Are you interested in learning how to make the leap from postdoc to faculty? Join us for a virtual panel featuring former postdocs who successfully transitioned to faculty positions here at Pitt. Hear directly from them about their paths and the strategies that helped them along the way. This is a valuable opportunity to gain insights into the faculty hiring process, get tips on building professional connections, and learn how to leverage your time as a trainee to prepare for a faculty role.

Moderator Bio:

Beth Shabaan, PhD, MS, MPH, is a Population Neuroscientist, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, and Associate Director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center Outreach, Recruitment, and Engagement Core at the University of Pittsburgh. She is training faculty in the Population Neuroscience of Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease T32 Training Program in the Department of Epidemiology. The population neuroscience perspective fuses her expertise in advanced epidemiologic methods, multimodal brain health assessments (e.g., MRI, PET, cognition), and social and behavioral determinants of health. Dr. Shaaban’s work integrates novel study design and analytic methods to enhance the quality of statistical inference and external validity and includes examination of gender/sex differences, ethnoracial differences, structural and social determinants of health, and intersectionality in ADRD. Dr. Shaaban also has a line of work evaluating early career academic training and employment including examining factors associated with US health sciences postdoctoral fellows’ successful transition to academic career independence and how to best support early career dementia researchers around the world. Dr. Shaaban presently serves as the Immediate Past Chair of the Professional Interest Area (PIA) to Elevate Early Career Researchers (PEERs) in the Alzheimer's Association International Society to Advance Alzheimer's Research and Treatment (ISTAART) and is a member of the ISTAART Advisory Council.

Panelists Bios:

David Gau, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Pathology Department. Previously, he was a postdoc and PhD student in Dr. Partha Roy's lab in the Bioengineering Department and he also was an undergraduate student in Bioengineering here at Pitt. Dr. Gau is a K99/R00 awardee and also co-directs CLRES 2076 (Intro to Grant Writing class for postdocs and graduate students). Dr. Gau's research interests are in the area of understanding how the actin cytoskeleton influences the physiological and pathological events. Specifically, Dr. Gau is interested in how the cytoskeleton regulates mitochondrial dynamics and the impact of this regulation on diseases such as kidney cancer. In this virtual panel, Dr. Gau will share his experience with navigating into an academic career while having his entire education at one institution and in the same lab.

Lacey Heinsberg, PhD, RN, is an Assistant Professor of Nursing and Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh. She specializes in applying genetic- and genomic-based research approaches to complex disease phenotypes, with a specific interest in pregnancy outcomes and child growth.

Jami Saloman, PhD, completed post-doctoral training in the Department of Neurobiology before transitioning to a tenure track faculty position in the Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition in the Pitt School of Medicine. She runs a sustainable lab that utilizes a bench to bedside approach involving both animal models and patient data to investigate the role of the nervous system in health and disease. Her interdisciplinary research spans neuroscience, immunology, oncology, cell biology, and pain. She is an active member of the Centers for Neuroscience and Pain Research as well as the Hillman Cancer Center. Dr. Saloman is a part of the graduate training faculty. As Pitt faculty, she has successfully competed for intramural and extramural funding from the NIH as well as multiple foundations. Dr. Saloman’s current interests include, 1) Peripheral nervous system function and nociception. 2) Neural regulation of tumorigenesis, anti-tumor immunity and cancer pain. 3)Nervous system circuits regulating homeostatic and pathological pancreas function. 4) Diagnostic, predictive, and therapeutic biomarkers for pancreatitis and pancreatic pain.

April 2, 2025 BtP: What PhDs Need to Know about the Academic Job Market

Provided by Beyond the Professoriate (BtP)

Time: 12-12:45m ET
Location: Virtual
Presenter: TBA

Description: If you’re thinking about going on the academic job market this fall, part of your preparation will involve evaluating your readiness to apply for faculty positions. And if you’re still deciding between an academic and a non-academic career, one factor to consider is the availability of jobs in your discipline and your competitiveness for those positions.

Join the Beyond Prof team for this webinar on what PhDs need to know about the academic job market.

This webinar is designed for doctoral students, PhDs, and postdocs from all academic disciplines who are wondering:

How do I know if I’m competitive and ready to go on the academic job market?
What is the state of the academic job market for my field?
How do I prepare to go on the job market this fall?

To register, log into Beyond the Professoriate, selecting "through your institution" (Pitt), and then REGISTER HERE. Advanced registration is required.

Please also be sure to mark “member@beyondprof.com” as a safe sender to receive our email reminders.

April 10, 2025 OACD: How to Launch Your Biotech Career *RECORDING AVAILABLE*

Time: 3-4:30pm ET
Location: Virtual
Presenter: Kerry Boehner

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Description: Ready to make your mark in biotech? This talk flips the script by starting with your end goal - a biotech scientist. Learn the strategic steps, essential skills, and insider insights needed to transform from job seeker to industry scientist. Walk away with actionable steps to launch your biotech career.

Presenter Bio: Kerry Boehner brings unmatched expertise to talent acquisition in biotech and life sciences. She’s a powerhouse at connecting the right people to the right roles, from entry-level to executive, across every corner of the industry—research, clinical development, regulatory, manufacturing, and beyond. What sets Kerry apart is her ability to bridge the gap between deep scientific knowledge and recruitment savvy, making her an indispensable ally for organizations looking to build top-tier teams from discovery all the way to commercialization.

May 27, 2025 NPA Smartskills: Surviving and Thriving in the First Year as a Faculty Member

Provided by National Postdoctoral Association (NPA)

Time: 3pm ET
Location: Virtual
Presenter: Victoria Hallinan, Yale University; Alark Joshi, University of San Francisco

Register Here after logging into the NPA site.

If you are not yet a member, join by going to this page and sign up as an "Affiliate Individual Member", selecting the option, either postdocs or graduate students, that matches your career stage.

Description: Join us for an online webinar designed for postdocs transitioning into their first faculty position. In this webinar, we will discuss issues related to navigating the landscape of academic life, offering expert guidance on balancing teaching responsibilities, maintaining an active research agenda, strategically engaging in service, and effectively building your professional reputation. We will share practical strategies for recruiting students, engaging in reflective teaching practices, and maintaining research productivity while establishing yourself in your professional field.