>> So, how did I get from Rutgers to CEO?
So I graduated in 2011 with my doctorate in cultural anthropology.
Great time here at Rutgers.
I had awesome advisors, you know, dissertation advisors who I still keep in touch with today,
and they really support what I do today.
So after graduating I kind of sat at a crossroads.
I had to decide "Will I take this post-doctoral fellowship offer that I have
or will I take this offer for a job in a non-profit?"
And that's a really challenging offer for someone who has studied and trained
for several years to become a faculty member.
However, my particular story -- and this is not always the story of my clients --
but my story is that I felt like there were some things I was not able to do
and I probably would not be able to do for some time in my career had I gone
through with becoming a faculty member.
And so I had to sit, much like I tell my clients to do, to think about where is it that you want
to be in your life; what kind of goals do you have for yourself; what's the quality
of life you want; how do you want to work; how do you see yourself,
envision yourself working every day?
And when I kind of put those questions in the balance, I decided to take that leap
and do the work in the non-profit sector.
And so that was my first job outside of the academy.
So once I graduated that's what I ended up taking.
And from there I had an awesome time helping to develop a new project, actually right here
in New Brunswick, some of which you can see the effects of today in things
like the New Brunswick Ciclovia, the New Jersey Partnership for Healthy Kids.
So I was able to bring in pieces that I'd actually done in my dissertation work
and the work that I did as a cultural anthropologist
into my work into the non-profit sector.
So I could really show some continuity in the things that I was doing.
And so from there, after working there for a couple years,
I kind of got that entrepreneurial itch.
My mother is an entrepreneur.
And I kept getting phone calls from graduate students asking me, "How did you do it?
How did you make this transition successfully?"
And so I was able to -- you know, I'd be on the phone, talking to them in the evenings
after work, emailing them, sending them materials that I'd created
or things I'd found in my research.
And from there I decided, "You know what, I have something here.
And I'm going to take that next leap, and I'm going to try and see what it would be
like to offer this out on the private market."
And so that's how Beyond the Tenure Track was born.