Karen Kelsky, PhD

Karen Kelsky, PhD

Founder, The Professor Is In and The Professor Is OUT. I love to coach scholars for success inside and outside academia. (And I also sell vintage jewelry on Ebay!)

Eugene, Oregon, United States
2K followers 500+ connections

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    Career Development Coaching, Diversity & Inclusion, Interview Preparation, Negotiation, Resume Review, Educational Consulting, Leadership Development, Training, Public Speaking, and Grant Writing

About

Dr. Karen Kelsky (she/her 🏳️‍🌈) started The Professor Is In in 2011, and since then it has helped over 15,000 PhDs find fulfilling careers inside academia and beyond. Dedicated to demystifying the hidden curriculum of the academic career, The Professor Is In provides services ranging from job application editing, interview and campus visit coaching, and negotiation support to support for tenure and promotion, book proposals, grant proposals, and career strategizing at every stage. Her book, The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job, is available from Random House (Three Rivers Press).

Equally central is her work helping academics LEAVE academia, under the sister initiative, The Professor Is OUT. Her private Professor Is Out Facebook group, now at 36K members, is the most dynamic space on the internet for academics (including TONS of tenure track and tenured faculty) looking at the door. Her post-ac coaching team works one on one with clients to shift their thinking, translate their skills, and apply for positions (or create their own!) across the wide world of work.

She speaks around the world on all these themes, at places like Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics, ETH Zurich, University College Dublin, Harvard, Brown, Duke, UCLA, Brandeis, CUNY Graduate Center, NYU, and many other campuses.

Karen lives in Eugene, Oregon and in her free time she dances with a women's dance group, sings with a Queer Choir, repairs and sells vintage jewelry on Ebay in her shop Mad Bunny Jewelry, hangs with her partner, productivity coach Kel Weinhold, and keeps a watchful eye on two GenZ kids who live far away, and two rabbits who live underfoot.

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Experience

  • Mad Bunny Vintage

    https://www.ebay.com/str/badbunnyvintage

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    Oregon and the World!

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Education

  • University of Hawai'i

    Ph.D. Cultural Anthropology

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  • University of Michigan Graphic

    University of Michigan

    BA Japanese Language and Literature

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Publications

  • The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job

    Three Rivers Press (Random House)

    The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job

    Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked…

    The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job

    Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration.

    Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options.

    Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers.

    Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D.

    “Every graduate student in academe should read this book. But also: if you teach graduate students, if you mentor graduate students, if you worry about graduate students, and even if you’re thinking about becoming a graduate student, you should read this book too. It’s just that indispensable.”– Michael Bérubé, Director, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Penn State University

    "Kelsky offers smart, frank, and often witty advice to lead applicants through the complicated process of securing a tenure-track position..this cogent, illuminating book will be indispensable." - Kirkus

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Languages

  • Japanese

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