Alternate Careers for PhDs: Taking the Path Less Traveled
I suspect by the growing numbers of people who read BioJobBlog, that some of you may be beginning to wonder who I am. While nobody has taken me to task about my credentials or musings to date, I figured it may be worthwhile to share my “story” with those BioJobBlog readers who may be at a crossroads in their careers. I credit my graduate school experiences and PhD degree for the tenacity, perseverance and the ability to reinvent myself during an eclectic, and oft times, circuitous career path.
Taking the Path Less Traveled
I had always liked science but by age 10, I had already decided that I wanted to be a veterinarian. However, after seeing the film Ben Hur at age 11—during which two of the main characters who have leprosy are miraculously cured—I fantasized what it might be like to be able to discover cures for infectious diseases. As corny as it may sound, the movie convinced me that my true calling in life wasn’t veterinary medicine but microbiology. Nevertheless, I attended Cornell University as a pre-veterinary medicine undergraduate with a dual major in animal science and microbiology. During my senior year at Cornell, Dr. Brooks Naylor, my food microbiology professor at the time, invited me to do a senior research project in his laboratory. After several weeks in the laboratory I was hooked and knew that graduate school and not veterinary school was in my future.
I entered graduate school in 1974 and did my PhD work in Bob Deibel’s laboratory in the Department of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying the pathogenesis of Salmonella gastroenteritis. Because Bob was Chairman of the Department and a food microbiology consultant, he wasn’t around much. This forced me to become self reliant and an independent investigator very early in my scientific career. Interestingly, when I started graduate school, my goal was to earn a PhD degree and teach microbiology at a small liberal arts college. However, after three years at Wisconsin, I decided to eschew a career as a science educator in favor of becoming a tenure track faculty member at a prestigious research institution.
I received my PhD degree in 1981and chose to do a postdoctoral fellowship with Stephen Morse in the Department of Microbiology at Oregon Health Sciences University where I investigated the pathogenesis of Neisseria gonorrhoeae. After two years in Stephen’s lab, I realized that the field of molecular biology had finally taken off and I needed to develop molecular biological skills to compete for my coveted tenure track faculty position. In 1984, I joined Howard Shuman’s laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Microbiology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York City where I studied the molecular pathogenesis of Legionella pneumophila, the causative agent of Legionnaires Disease.
In 1987, after spending three more years as a postdoctoral fellow, my newly acquired molecular biology training coupled with a respectable publication record helped me to land a tenure track faculty position in the Department of Microbiology at the University Of Miami School Of Medicine. I spent the next seven years feverishly doing laboratory research, teaching medical and graduate students, publishing papers and mainly writing grants to establish an independent research program on the role of lipopolysaccharide in the molecular pathogenesis of L. pneumophila. While I was a productive researcher, who regularly published and was recognized on several occasions for teaching excellence, I failed to consistently win grant support to run my laboratory. Consequently, in 1994, I was denied tenure and forced to leave academia—an emotionally devastating event that that ended a life-long dream of becoming a world class research scientist.
Luckily, at that time, the American biotechnology industry had finally hit its stride and I landed a job as a scientist at a New Jersey-based biotechnology company where I managed an antibacterial drug discovery program. My time in industry—which lasted only two years—provided me a firm understanding of the business side of science and perhaps, more importantly, convinced me that industrial research wasn’t for me. This, coupled with a yearning desire to teach again, prompted me to successfully apply for a job as Chairperson of Biology at a local community college. While a good idea at the time, I quickly realized that while I still loved to teach, administration wasn’t my strong suit and I left the community college job after a year.
Unfortunately, by 1998, I had effectively exhausted most traditional career options for scientists with PhD degrees and I desperately needed a job—mainly because I had a wife and three young children to support. Fortunately, while working at the community college, I successfully helped several professional recruiters place new hires into jobs at biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. This prompted me to seriously consider professional recruiting as a career option and in early 1999 I landed a job as a recruiter at a local recruiting firm. As a new hire I had to attend recruiter school for six weeks. Surprisingly, this training would prove to play a pivotal role in subsequent decisions that helped to shape my career.
After three successful years as professional recruiter, an Australian biotechnology company recruited and hired me as a science and business consultant to help guide their antibacterial drug discovery program. The new job led to an almost four year stint as an independent management consultant advising private and publicly-traded biotechnology companies on business, scientific and financial matters. Also during this time, I decided to indulge my own entrepreneurial fantasies and in 2001 I founded BioInsights (www.bioinsights.com), Inc, a bioscience education and training company. In 2003, Abe Abuchowski and I founded Prolong Pharmaceuticals (www.prolongpharmaceuticals.com) a drug delivery company with two drugs in early stage clinical development. Unfortunately, the rigorous demands of running BioInsights and starting Prolong ultimately led to the demise of my consulting practice and by 2004 I was forced to consider another career move.
Luckily, in 2002, I had begun to write for several biotechnology industry trade publications. Although I wasn’t getting paid to write, it enabled me to hone and polish my writing skills. In late 2004, a medical communications expert who I knew suggested that I take a stab at medical writing. At the time, I didn’t know much about medical writing but I quickly learned that it pays well and medical writers are always in demand. I took her advice and landed my first medical writing job in 2005. Since then, I have worked at a variety of medical communications agencies and pharmaceutical companies preparing manuscripts, posters, slide presentations and other work. Currently, I am freelance science and medical writer, blogger (www.biojobblog.com) and social media enthusiast who, along with Dr. Vincent Racaniello, started an online social networking site for bioscientists called BioCrowd (www.biocrowd.com)
Unlike most scientists, my career path has taken many unexpected twists and turns. I never intended it to be as eclectic or convoluted as it has turned out to be. Nevertheless, I believe that my unusual career trajectory has transformed me into a better rounded scientist than I would have been if I had been able to pursue my intended academic career. In retrospect, I attribute my career successes to solid problem solving skills, an unrelenting desire to continue to learn and an unwavering ability to take risks. Finally, and perhaps most important, I learned that there is no right or wrong career path in the life sciences—only the one that you choose for yourself!
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!
I don’t want to brag but I have been touting career options in health informatics and health information technology (HIT) for the past year or so. Today, I came across a post by CareerBuilders declaring health informatics and HIT are the hottest new career trends to hit the market in recent years. As the drive towards digitizing medical and healthcare records continue, there will be literally thousands of job opportunities for people with the right skill set. This is what the post had to say about health informatics and HIT careers and job opportunities. .jpg)
By now, most of you have heard or read how vital networking is to either advance your career or find a job. Like it or not, learning to network is another skill that everyone must master (including scientists) to insure a successful career trajectory. Not surprisingly, most scientists are notoriously poor at networking—mostly because they haven’t been taught to network or perhaps more egregiously they have been told that it isn’t worthwhile or necessary to find a job. For example, in 1974, during a seminar series required of all incoming graduate students in the Department of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin, a very famous and influential microbiologist sanguinely quipped: “your science should speak for itself and that’s all that matters!” In other words, if we graduate students do “good science” then others will recognize it and we shouldn’t have difficulty finding a job upon completion of our training. How wrong he was—it took me over five years (and two post docs) before landing a faculty position at the University Of Miami Shcool Of Medicine in 1987!
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I just learned from Diego Pineda who runs the 
After yesterday's post about career planning for life scientists, one of my soon to be former students in the Fundamentals of Bioscience Program aptly pointed out that my readers might have benefitted more if I had, in fact, offered information about alternate career possibilities for bioscientists. I don't want the student to get too overconfident but I had the same thought immediately after I uploaded the post. 
Yesterday, I gave a lecture entitled “Alternate Careers: Taking the Road Less Traveled” to over 100 members of the University of Pennsylvania’s Biomedical Graduate Student Association. As always, there were many good questions and comments during and after the presentation. Some of the career anecdotes offered by several of the students reminded me of a conversation that I had several weeks ago with one of my Fundamentals of Bioscience students—I teach a Product Development and Regulatory Affairs course in the program—who refreshed my memory about a typical graduate student approach to career development and job searching. “We don’t think about jobs or our careers until we begin writing our PhD theses” she said. “Until then, our advisers don’t talk about careers or jobs and only bring it up because our funding will run out” she added. Admittedly, I had forgotten this because so many years have passed since my graduate student days. That said, it forced me to consider how much the life sciences job market has changed since I was graduate student and how vitally important it is for today’s graduate students to think about and possibly explore different career options throughout the course of their graduate training..jpg)
By now, I think that most BioJobBlog readers understand that the job market for life scientists is lousy and that it isn’t likely to improve anytime soon. I know that many of you have spent close to 10 years training for a shot at an R&D job but the reality is that everybody needs to work to put food on the table—whether or not you find a job in your chosen profession. To that end, now may be a good time for those of you who are finding it difficult to land a job to consider one more year of training to get a certificate in a field that keeps you in science but not in R&D.(1).jpg)
For those of you who want to learn about why Vincent and I created 
Like most graduate students, I diligently followed the advice of my thesis advisor and was lucky enough to land tenure track position at the University Of Miami School Of Medicine. While I was slogging my way toward that appointment, I began to experience some troubling and persistent concerns about my career as an academic. I really didn’t like doing bench research that much, I wasn’t a very good politician and I had a burning desire to teach. Unfortunately, I chose to listen to what others thought was in my best interests rather than listen to myself.
For the past five years, I have been giving career development seminars that offer graduate students and postdoctoral fellows alternate careers choices (instead of research) for life scientists. The intent of these seminars is to get students who may not be enamored with a possible life long career at the bench (I know that there a lot of you out there) to think about what they really want to do after they complete their graduate or postdoctoral training.
Bruce Charlton, a professor of theoretical medicine at the University of Buckingham and Editor in Chief of the journal Medical Hypotheses .jpg)
I first thought about starting a social network for life sciences professionals about a year ago after joined I Facebook and LinkedIn and then learned about SciLink, one of the first social networks for scientists. Apparently, others had the same idea and today, there are currently, by my reckoning, no fewer than 20 social networks for scientists—each promoting a unique approach to networking for scientists..jpg)
I want to let my readers know that a beta-version of 
I just returned from the .jpg)
I became a medical/science writer after a rather circuitous, unconventional and sometimes, checkered career. Along the way, I learned a few things that I thought would be important to share with other PhDs who are seeking to change careers, t broaden their horizons and or simply to bring home a paycheck! I am sure that I missed a few things but here are my top 10 reasons to consider a career in medical/science writing:
Who hasn’t heard the old adages “Beauty is only skin deep” or “It’s not what’s on the outside but what’s on the inside that counts?” While these sayings may be apt when looking for a soul mate, they are absolutely not true when it comes to networking or job interviews. I know this may seem shallow and superficial, but the stark reality is that appearance does count when making a first impression or finding a job. There is nothing wrong in adopting a “superficial” persona when it comes to job interviews or networking. I know; we scientists work hard to avoid being superficial and shallow, but let’s face it, sometime you just gotta do what you gotta do to get or job or advance your career!
For those of you who are interested, I wrote an article about contract work in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry that appeared in 
