Reimagining Career Trajectories: Insights from Anthropology, UX, and the Written Word

Adam  00:00

In a world where the term career is as fluid as ever to trailblazers who stand at the forefront, reshaping not just their paths, but guiding others through the labyrinth of professional life, welcome to the center of Life. I'm your host, Adam Gamewell. Now today, we're venturing into the question of developing a career and navigating career pivots from the unique angle of anthropology, user experience and the written word with Amy Santee and Amy Goldmacher. If you're wondering how does a UX researcher morphin to a Career Strategist empowering professionals to wield their experiences as tools for profound impact? Or what prompts an anthropologist to pivot towards becoming a beacon and a coach for aspiring authors? Their journeys are not just about career transformations. They're about viewing the familiar with a new lens, challenging the boundaries of traditional professions. You see, Amy s and Amy Goldmacher published a special edition of practicing anthropology 10 years ago. And they brought in 11 Voices of anthropology practitioners and explored what it was like to be a practicing anthropologist early in their careers that have marked the 10 year anniversary of this edition. I was curious to see and ask them, What does it mean to be an anthropologist today in 2024. And the cool thing is, Amy and Amy both challenge the very notion of what it means to wear the anthropologist hat in the modern age. Because here's the thing in shedding labels and embarking on entrepreneurial journeys that pick them, sometimes places that feel far away from the discipline itself, they've unearthed a more profound connection to their discipline than ever before. So today, they're going to share with us the paradoxes of carving new paths while staying true to one's roots, and bending the arc of anthropology towards uncharted territories. And the surprising ways and anthropological lens can real insights, whether in the boardroom or in writers, workshops. So it's a conversation that promises to reimagine the way that we perceive success, contribution and the very essence of work, to prepare to be inspired, challenged, and perhaps to see your own career in a new light. Let's get to it. Still,

Amy Goldmacher  01:50

I have pivoted my own career from sort of consult research, consulting, to book coaching. And I take my perspective as an anthropologist as being good at you know, looking for patterns, not in business anymore, but now in people's texts to help them figure out like, what's, what's the structure of your work? What do you want to say? How do you say it best so that your audience can internalize it? So I still identify as an anthropologist, I don't work as an anthropologist, I'm not closely affiliated with a discipline, but I'm always interested in what's going on. So I think that represents sort of how an anthropology career can evolve over time. You don't have to be in the discipline to be an anthropologist. Yeah,

Adam  02:30

I would agree with that, too. It's interesting, too, because it's like, I found too, that even even in my own career, too, that I've fluctuated closer and further away from the discipline, right, as it were, sometimes I have the word Anthro. In my title, sometimes I don't. But it's like still in the in the last one is DNA, I suppose. Right? I

Amy Santee  02:45

was looking back, I was looking at sort of thought, I should probably review it just to see what I wrote about and have some things to talk about. And what was this whole project we did. And I remembered that I made an observation, back during this time that I should stop calling myself an anthropologist to like be more effective in the workplace, or at least to initially, more effectively communicate my skill set and what I can contribute to an organization. And so that's something actually discussed like, wow, you know, I've always had this really strong anthropology, anthropology identity, since I don't know 2004, when I got into college, and 2011, when I exited my master's program, and that was so important to me, and such a huge part of my holistic personal identity. And then something big, something I realized was I needed to kind of let that go or change it up. And not just with the language with, but with also how I even conceptualize doing anthropology.

Adam  03:51

Yeah, and so I mean, with that, that's a great point to then kind of think about what has changed in the past 10 years. Who knows, you look back at that, because you kind of said, this is something that's really important for my identity. But I remember we've had conversations about this to where it's like, yeah, like the title Anthro doesn't always help, especially people don't know what it is, you know, if you're going to a marketing agency or branding, branding project, you know, consumer insights is I think the funny thing is one of the changes that has happened, I guess we'll just proceed is that people are more comfortable using the title anthropologist in, in places like that, like marketing, or branding, or consumer research that we didn't see as much before. Which is, which is interesting, because we don't see it as much also necessarily in tech all the time. But before I dive into that, I'm kind of curious your perspective to have like, as we think about this, we have seen some of those changes, both, you know, whether it can be through your career is also kind of evolving into into a coaching practice. You know, you're both entrepreneurs also, right, you both run your own businesses. And so that's something else is interesting, that provides some kind of latitude of how we find the work that we that we find ourselves in, right on one level we created and so I'm curious on that pathway to to think about this idea of working as an entrepreneur. You know, how have you seen some of those shifts in terms of either using the title anthropologist or like, where are we seeing anthropology or or, or, you know, features of an anthropology degree or framework kind of shifting through through the past 10 years.

Amy Goldmacher  05:08

I think I remember, sort of maybe later grad school, that kind of thing was to think about, think like an entrepreneur about your anthropology career. And I think like the ultimate expression of that was consulting. Like, if you can be an independent consultant, as an anthropologist, that's kind of like the sort of far reaches of what you could do with your career. And I think that has changed. But to go back to, there was no training for that there was very little talk about like, how to run your own business, I think the expectation was, you know, you get your degree and maybe get some work experience along the way. And then you find a job somewhere, whether it's an academia or industry, and I'm guessing, and I know, Amy has a lot more to say about this, that, you know, the industry landscape has changed. I think 10 years ago, anthropologists were going into, you know, the health field or medical devices or public policy, or, you know, we were finding places in other industries. But I feel like that landscape has changed a little bit now to

Amy Santee  06:12

something we talked about in the introduction to the special issue is that anthropologists have a decades long history in industry, right, starting out kind of small and finding folks and you know, a handful of tech companies, like Xerox PARC is one of the most famous examples. And you know, since the 1970s, basically, and at the time, we were both in school, and by the time we worked on this special special, what am I trying to call it special site, no special issue, which was special issues. Yes. By the time we wrote this special issue, we been seeing our presence grow even further. But it still felt sort of lightweight, it still felt a little unclear how to get into industry. And when we ended up there, we had, I think, certain expectations for how others would understand us and our skills and like, what were we doing there? And that's the name of the essay rose, what are you doing here? Because someone said that to me one day. But since then, I you know, our presence has just continued to grow. That's of course, in part because academic jobs and tenure track positions keep shrinking there are I suppose what do I want to call it? Like, old school professors are, you know, kind of retiring and younger people with different perspectives, maybe more varied perspectives are coming in with more knowledge about different career paths. And even though I think some anthropology programs are still not still kind of behind the times, I'm, I feel like this is so offensive in the old school mind. Anyway, okay, let me just let me just come to my point, we are out there, people are more familiar with us and what we do and if I were starting my career today, I think I would embrace the title, anthropologist, or at least say, you know, I'm a UX researcher, and anthropologist, whereas 1012 However, many years ago, when I got started, I just got rid of it altogether, because I didn't see it as helpful. I just think there's more familiarity with us with different social sciences, not just anthropology, but psychology, social psychology, sociology, also humanities of different kinds as well.

Adam  08:45

Is that like, just because I want one? No, we've been like Geopoint like when that when you wrote the piece, it's like, we've already had a decades long kind of decades long kind of presence in industry and but now we're just 10 years later. So it's like, we've just been there longer now. Is that Is that what's added to the familiarity? Like one of my conspiracy theories is that you know, that there has because we've also seen like, Organizational Psychology has joined industry a little bit earlier than anthropology didn't like kind of stuck around and we didn't we kind of dropped out for various reasons, which I'm also learning are somewhat related to the Cold War and science of psychedelics, but not cuz we took it 20 drugs, but just because there was a kind of Fallout between how research was was proffered, but the the idea also that we have seen a lot of sort of organizational psychology, in industrial organizational psychology in industry for a while. But then my conspiracy theory is that we are seeing, you know, part because of globalization part kind of because of the rise of the Internet that there's so much more interconnections and so many, so many more cultural touchpoints in which there's, there's, you know, kind of multicultural engagement, that a psychological focus on both the individual and the brain can't quite capture the actual complexities that are happening there is of course important neurological in the He real science things happening. But beyond that there's there's these cultural factors that at least like to think are in the purview of anthropology, you know, and so I kind of wonder about that or kind of what your what your take on this too is that like is, is that perhaps one of the reasons that we're seeing some more familiarity is that we're asking bigger questions in business. I don't wanna give CEOs too much credit, either versus old school professors. But you know, that's something that that like that, at least resonates me you can say, no, that sounds really stupid. But I'm curious, your thoughts there.

Amy Goldmacher  10:24

I thought that what you said about, we've been out there longer, and then breeds familiarity. I think that's interesting. I didn't think about it that way. But we've literally it's, you know, whatever, it's 1015 years after we last assessed, what we were what the field looked like, Amy and I. So that's an interesting way of looking at it. And I certainly think the world has gotten more global, in the intervening years as well, certainly hasn't gotten the less global. So, you know, anthropologists were good at that. Yes, there's that. So, you know, it's just, it's, I guess, it's an even better landscape for anthropologists to play in talking about culture and global issues, and the all of the things that have been the same topics of consideration for a really long time.

Adam  11:10

It may be that to that some of the topics that we just naturally gravitate towards are becoming in vogue also kind of in the business landscape, which is interesting, too, you know, so it's, it did feel a little bit like a, I don't know, like a bit of a stroke of luck. You know, as in the past five years, as people have been doing industry that it's like, oh, it seems like there's a lot more pathways. Now. You know, obviously, user experience UX is one of the big ways and like through tech, that a lot of anthropologists started entering into industry. But that's interesting, too, because I want to get your thoughts on this, because it's like, we are seeing a lot of challenges with tech, there's a ton of layoffs happening in 2024 and 2023. Also, and even, you know, we are seeing you know, just the other day I was reading that, like we're seeing also communications and marketing departments kind of drop people off to which is interesting as they're kind of shoring in in organizations, I mean, IBM themselves, this is I was reading that they they're cutting a bunch of like comms and marketing roles to, we're trying to sell the anthropologist but you know, research tends to go first thing comms and marketing. So we, again, we have this very interesting spot where like UX was this kind of entree for a while. And now it seems much less so. And again, I think we're seeing spillover effects and other other arenas too. So you know, how do we think about this, you know, in terms of like, what is getting a job to Anthro training look like if we are seeing this kind of shift away from the at least the past five years, but we a lot of us could go through the UX door, that door is not really open right now. So how do you think about that?

Amy Santee  12:27

Yeah, that door really isn't open right now. And that's not an exaggeration, it might be like, there might be a little crack that you can get through. And that's really, because in the past two years, so starting in mid 2022, there have been at least a half million layoffs. And that is, you know, based on layoffs dot FYI, that's the main tracker I look at but it doesn't reflect certain data points. There's some data missing from that, which leads me to believe that the number is higher than what is stated. And that's across all tech jobs. And not just in tech companies. When I say Tech, I talk when I say tech, what I mean is anyone doing a technical job in industry, or perhaps even in other sectors, but you know, primarily industry. And that can be at tech companies, big tech, like Google, and meta, and Amazon and Netflix and all of these well known brands. It can also be at smaller companies that have developers and designers and researchers. So yeah, there have been a lot of layoffs. And that really is the reason why it is so hard right now, it's hard for people who have already been working in design and technology for 1020 years, five years, two years. But if you're just now coming out of school, it's you know, I don't want to say impossible, but nearly impossible to get your first job without some kind of practice oriented experience. That said, there are folks coming out of the social sciences that maybe they have like a mixed methods skill set, or maybe they're more quant or data analytics focus, like there are certain skill sets that are still in higher demand than your you know, your average qualitative researcher that works on software. So that's really the the main contributor there. But yeah, by the time I got out of grad school in 2011, that's when all of that was really starting to pick up and you could much more easily get a job once you figured out how to interview well and tell your story effectively and explain why your anthropology skills were relevant. If you could do that, then it was you know, fairly easy to get a job in a corporation or a consulting firm or go freelance which you know, I did all of those things. Amy G has a mix of experience too. And things were so good for, you know, basically about 1012 years until 2022. Now,

Adam  14:55

here we are, right. Like a MUJI like what does it look like for you, you know In terms of because you've both in your career evolution, and I was obviously thinking about me, yes, just sit here. But the part of the question is like learning how to tell our story, right? Obviously, doing book coaching is a huge part of helping people tell their story. But I'm curious in your spotlight, thinking about the timeline there, too, in terms of your own pathway. Moving into coaching, as you know, was this a, on the one hand kind of response to what you saw in industry, and that that you thought about this to be, you know, something that would be a safer move or something that you just you had a different your passion kind of moved you in a different direction? Like, how did that process look for you?

Amy Goldmacher  15:34

I am pretty lucky in that I was able to follow my passion around 2019, it had nothing to do with the pandemic, I just started to feel like, there's something else I want to do with my life. So I started moving in a different direction. And it was gratifying to find something that I could do that brought together a lot of my background interests and the skill set that I had developed in anthropology and as an anthropologist, and I thought what Amy said about kind of the secret to getting a job back in the day, was figuring out why your anthropology skills were relevant to whatever job you were applying for, and being able to articulate that that was kind of the thing that got you in the door. And I still think that's important today. I mean, I I've been out of the corporate workforce for a long time, over 10 years now. So I'm not really of use to people who are looking for jobs. But I do think that being able to say you know, what it is about your, your training, and your education and whatever experience you have, whether it's anthropology related or not, how that relates to the thing you have in hand. That's the key, I can't imagine that that has changed, just the types of jobs you would be looking for will have changed.

Amy Santee  16:45

And people still have a problem with that, or rather a challenge a learning curve. Yeah, it's hard. It is. Yeah, it is hard, especially if you're, you know, in a Master's or PhD program, you're working on your research, maybe you're teaching you're doing stuff with and for your professors. And the focus is not typically on career development or selling your skills, right. Like, I, I've been kind of tapped out of what departments are doing. And I know, there are some awesome folks out there who are still making this happen, who are still doing their best to prepare students, whether it's in anthropology departments, or external sort of career, prep departments that universities might have. But my general sense is that things haven't budged that much. I mean, I know there are still folks like Elizabeth Brighty and round Olin, and like all these people who are still even though they're like, retired or almost retired, right, like they're still trying to make this happen. But it does seem that things really kind of haven't shifted as much like, is that your sense? Still in terms of career prop?

Adam  17:57

Yeah, yeah, I would say yes. In noting this, like, you know, because you and I've worked with John and Jharia, you know, Brandeis before, I also have a professor who's, you know, younger, comparatively to little brighter, you know, but like, but still, like, they're kind of on a similar trajectory in terms of like, how do we bring into the academy? Well, you know, enjoy your works in a university in variety works outside of one, but like, the idea there of like, how do we be more explicit about career questions and development as part of our anthropologic entomology curriculum, I can also say, like, from working with the American Anthropological Association, same kind of thing, like there's a, there's a known gap between that we, you know, it's something like less than 30% of any PhD of any discipline goes into tenure track today, you know, 2024, in in, you know, so anthropology, the percentage, I think, is even smaller than that. So it's just this idea that, like, the vast majority, you know, of all PhDs are not going into tenure track teaching. And so we have to ask ourselves, the actual question of then, so where are they going? Right? What are they doing with those with those degrees. And so given that, though, like, there is still this this unknown gap that we don't see a ton of national recognized kind of career development as part of anthropology curriculums, you know, and I think part of the interesting is that like, so much of training in universities, right, to your point is like, you're kind of working in your individual research area, and you have to then the outputs are something like a master's thesis or dissertation writing fieldwork. And while it is not impossible to translate a dissertation or master's thesis into a, you know, trade press book or a business book, it's pretty hard to do when you're trying to finish your degree and then it's a lot less incentivized when you're not in that school anymore or not getting your degree so there's this kind of back and forth of like, when would you even make that move with the stuff that you already have to put out so there is that interesting point you know, it's it's on the one hand like heartening to see there's you know, there's like the people project that then project is put together in the in the European you know, anthropology Association that's connecting a couple of schools to, you know, design from architecture firm, different places where they can do a straight up internship. right in another language, and you know that I've seen some people push for it. But you're right, like, by and large, we don't we don't see that that much. And I think that's kind of interesting because, you know, maybe we can we can kind of talk a bit about like, where do we see like the common things anthropologist go into, we've mentioned UX and Tech is one area that they were going into the not as much. And again, not the anthropologist wouldn't go into it, but there's just not that many jobs today. Right. But of course, things like government medicine, you know, nonprofit, so I'm kind of curious, your perspectives in this as well as, like, as we think about how we can help folks tell their stories, you know, how did their anthropology be useful to a certain kind of job? You know, I guess AMI SSI like for career coaching? Do you see people coming to you with questions that point in certain, you know, areas with with anthropology degrees in, you know, and then for a MUJI, on the other side to have, like, as we're guys helping people think about how we tell our stories and how you tell your own story to like, are there certain ways that have you've seen be more effective in like, telling one story and kind of putting their skills out there. So either way, you can go first, you know, ABS or AVG kind of career direction, or story direction, where you can talk about both answers if you want, that's cool, too.

Amy Santee  21:04

Yeah, you know, because of the job market changes over the past couple of years, I've reduced my work with transitioning academics pretty significantly, every now and then I still do, but I made it as a business decision about I don't know, a year or so ago to say, look, I want to work with people, when what they are trying to achieve is going to be possible to achieve within the amount of time that they've set for themselves, right. So used to be very common for a PhD to come out, work with me on telling their story, getting their resume, you know, their CV turned into a resume turning their case studies that are framed very academically into something that would resonate more with a business audience, right, like thinking about all of that, making sure they speak the language and know the concepts of business and design enough to get a job to make that happen in like three months, perhaps to have multiple offers from cool companies, you know, around the same time, and that's just really not a thing, again, not just for transitioners, but anyone in the field with any amount of experience is having a hard time. So I decided, you know, I don't want to get people's expectations of And while our our work could still be helpful, you know, I made that shift. And so in 2022, I worked with I think 40% of my clients were academic transitioners. And now it's, you know, just shrunk down into the single digits because of that. So anyway, my point being that whether it was two years ago, or today, I do still see people having the same learning curve when it comes to those items that I mentioned. And that's what kind of leads me to believe that things haven't shifted very much in terms of career prep. And, you know, I used to be someone to maybe blame professors and blame departments in a very, like, critical sort of way. And I still do have that critique to an extent, but I also have come to realize that part of it is like they're trying to save their own asses from like, their departments closing down and trying to like, keep their jobs and teach their students and they have their priorities as well. Capitalism does not make the existence of like educational institutions. Easy. And it doesn't make career paths. Easy, right? Like there's there's a lot of multiple causes for all of these things. I still think there could be improvements. But anyway, yeah, people still have the same challenges and need help with. Okay, how do I turn my giant dissertation on this, like really kind of specific topic into a case study or two that I would present to someone a hiring manager or hiring manager or a team at Google? Who I want to give me a job? Like, what do I tell them about my work to show them that I can come in and be a design researcher be any, you know, whatever role it is that I'm looking to get into? How do I? How do I translate my skills? How do I soften the academic jargon? How do I carry with me and continue to care about social science theory and methods while not solely focusing on those items and thinking more broadly about the impact of my work? What are the outcomes of my work, even the hypothetical outcomes of my work, right? So there's a lot to be done with that a lot to be done with materials like website, interview portfolio, LinkedIn profiles, you know, networking, all of that stuff, even just being strategic with a job search, to interviewing itself. So I just still see the same sorts of challenges that I also had when I came out of grad school and that's interesting to me because I went to an applied program University of Memphis is a very well known applied program. I they may have shifted like their tracks You know, since I went there, but back then there was like a sort of like business and design area focus, there was a healthcare one. And so they do a great job generally speaking, but I still wasn't quite prepared to figure out not only how to get a job, but how to exist in a corporation. And that's another big transition, kind of the culture shock of going from academia or anthropology into like an organization that could have 50,000 employees. Right. So yeah, pretty much the same stuff.

Adam  25:33

But as much as much as the timeline goes forward, it doesn't doesn't change. st same tune still playing, which is interesting, you know, which is either like, that means we have a Sufi specifici inquest, where we push the rock up the hill, and it rolls back down again, you know? Or is it like, you know, there is an actual way out? You know, there's an actual way to kind of make that change. And it seems like part of it is this idea of like, can we can institutions, organizations, or educational organizations, educational institutions, you know, actually work on career development as part of their their project? Cuz I mean, every university has a career center. Right. But it's always it's separate, right. And I think but even somebody said about the kind of the just understanding what are the outputs, or the hypothetical impacts of the work that I'm doing? You know, what might that look like? Is? And, you know, I remember in graduate school thinking this was like, a profoundly difficult question to answer, you know, for myself, because it was just like, I don't I don't, I'm not sure how to think about that, right. Having not worked in business before. I feel like I got a little bit of a leg up, because working with an NGO, and we were doing conservation work, so it was like, Okay, that wasn't too far of a stretch to say, well, if this works, we'll conserve some key law. You know, like there was there's some concreteness to that, but but I know a lot of folks that like they don't, they're just doing straight up field work working with the community, like there's not necessarily as a outcome that you can derive directly, especially, you know, if you're like, Well, my impact is a theoretical implications of something, you know, in drawing on some kind of anthological theory, which, which can be helpful. But, you know, again, saying what that would mean for businesses is a harder question. I think, I'm curious AVG in your, your work to also in terms of like, helping people, like, kind of work through how I tell or explain or work through what I'm working on. So I guess I'm curious, like, do you do, on the one hand, primarily work with, like, nonfiction or fiction depends on whoever's writing, but I mean, either either way, like, I do think that like, the process of how we get our story out, I think is fundamentally important, right? And it can be can be similar, right? There may be fact checking versus Well, I'm in the fantasy land of orcs and elves, I don't have to actually fact check if there was 10 at this battle, or 100. But how does that how does that How do you think about that, because you're kind of walking people through. This is how you articulate your your story.

Amy Goldmacher  27:47

I think that's a really good parallel, actually book coaching as a form of translating your experience into something somebody else can understand. So I'm a nonfiction book coach. So that would be could be like how to do something. Or it could be narrative nonfiction, like something that's researched, and you're reporting it, or it could be a memoir, you know, this is the story that happened to me. And one of the things that I see people who aspire to write a book struggle with is getting really clear on what the point they're trying to make is like, what if you could boil it down to a bumper sticker, or just one sentence? Like, what's the point you want to make? And I think that would be useful for people who are job hunting and coming from a social science background is like, what what's the benefit of my experience? You know, what did I set out to do? What did I discover? And then what's the result of that? Or what's the impact? Even if it's theoretical, you know, what do we think could happen if we implemented these changes? So just being able to distill everything you know, and that's in your head into a message that someone else can understand, you always have to think about it from your, your reader or your audience perspective, you know, I'm talking to this person, what's the what's the easiest way to explain it, pretend you're just explaining it to a five year old or to your grandmother, you know, like, keep it simple, no jargon, and keep it really focused on what you were trying to get across.

Adam  29:04

I think it's super important to you know, this, this idea that when we think I want to write a book, or I'm working on a research report, right, we begin thinking that's, that's a lot of pages of this a lot of ideas, right, but it's like, everything can be boiled down to some like, what's what's the specific point, right, with the bumper sticker, the one sentence kind of summary. And, as we know, too, it's like, you know, oftentimes when writing that the hardest thing I found is like the introduction of a nonfiction if you're especially like a research report or something, it's like you want to because that's where you're gonna start and say, Here's lay everything out. So it's like, you have to kind of write the middle piece, maybe even the ending, right? And then then kind of coming back to that part of it too. Because it also then has to say, here's the point of, of what we're doing. Right. And I remember there's something that is my, my graduate advisor had had pointed out to me was was this idea that she's like, you know, just write, you know, putting your ideas down there, like, oftentimes, like, you don't really know what you want to say until you've written it. You know, when you're writing like, oh, you know, that made me feel better because like, I don't know what the hell I'm writing with this with this. or dissertation, you know, then you kind of realize you get somewhere. And then it feels like okay, I've hit, I've hit some nerve somewhere, you know, I've been mining through these ideas, and then now I've got something I can I can hang on to. And that's, that's something that has kind of always stuck with me. So I'm curious in as you're coaching people to like, as they think about that, like, do do, do you find that process works similarly, for other folks where it's like, I'm gonna kind of write to think and then then chisel it down like a Michelangelo style, you know, with a block of marble or is it like building it up from nothing, and then you'll have a sculpture from the ground up? I think

Amy Goldmacher  30:30

you could do it either way. And I think one way or another will work for you in a specific moment, I was writing something. I was working on some chapters for a nonfiction book. And I was just struggling. And it just what I had to do was just dump all my ideas down on the page, and then start to organize them. And I was literally asking myself, What does my reader need to know first? And what does my reader need to know next? So having the marble to work with and then chipping away at it until I got something meaningful out of it? That was one approach. But it's also some people find it really useful to like, brainstorm at the 30,000 foot level, like, what are the broad topics I need to cover in order to reach this conclusion? And then what order do those topics need to go in? So it can work? Either way? It kind of depends, you know, what, what's in what do you need at the moment?

Amy Santee  31:20

It's so funny. It's so funny, we're talking about this, because it just reminds me of all of the commonalities between our career paths. First of all, our names are both Amy. So there's that. But you know, anthropology to design UX tack, some freelancing, some working with agencies and companies, both going into coaching, and helping people and just kind of carrying this through line of helping people come to insights and communicate insights and communicate themselves. And something, Amy, that you and I have talked about a couple of times, and we did like a guest blog post on each other's blog, which is about the writing process, and professional branding, and telling your story and all of that. And so I just love that we're touching on this topic. And it does remind me of my own evolution as a writer from like, grad school style to today, which is like LinkedIn posts, and I have a podcast now and, you know, go on other people's podcasts. And I still have my blog, I don't write such long form posts, as I used to, you know, when I, I started my old blog, anthropology arising and 2011. And that was kind of an extension of me just continuing to want to think through writing and put ideas out there. But again, it was very verbose. It was long, it was much more anthropological and intellectual and theoretical, and all of that. And yes, that stuff still remains to some extent, but it's very much evolved along the way, just based on the different career experiences I have. And I definitely think I'm much better at it now as well. But yeah, I love how all of this is tying together.

Adam  33:09

No, I appreciate that as well, in this something I was kind of thinking about this, as you're saying that to that is, I think would be helpful for folks in underscores that, on the one hand, like career paths themselves are wish to give as pads, right? They're not necessarily eliminated from the get go. And then they're often winding and then you kind of take many, many directions that you wouldn't think and, yeah, it's no surprise that we do not live in the age where we all have one career for 40 years, and we retire anymore, that's gone. You know, and it's like, 10 years ago, it was dying, now it's gone. And so it's like, that's an interesting to note that like this, I think is also an important point to be like, the number of kind of jumps that you have both made. And I've made, not quite as many, but also, but similarly, like just enough, like, they seem almost random. If you're, if you're looking forward looks random, you look backwards. Okay, it makes sense. I did this to this, this move to that move. And so part of it, I think, is that so, you know, how can you know, folks think about this, right? Because it's like, I think it's both for like, you know, choosing our story. And it is for talking about a career path, right, like, making sense of like, not only what can my anthropology do, but like understanding, you know, what does success look like to me, if I'm trying to put together my set of ideas of like, what I want to get either out of life, which is a good education to ask that question, you know, but then on top of that, like, you know, what steps do I need to take then, so even the way you were talking about me, when kind of either choosing an idea or kind of building up was actually really helpful to get this idea that, you know, I need to know, What does my, you know, interlocutor, my reader, my interviewer need to know, right now, and what do I have to have next in play for that to be able to make sense? So I think, as I'm running about this, around this idea of success, right, like, how do I know what success looks like for me or for my clients? So I'll just I'll pitch that question out there and see, like, you know, as we recognize the, the most circuitous pneus of like, are we actually getting trained to bring our things out there and then beyond that, like our paths are quite winding. You know, how do we think about the idea of success? Like how do we ask ourself Was that question and begin to make sense of like, I don't know what I want to do. But I know that I want to either make money or I want to have a job that I liked that's passionate about XYZ or whatever, you know, how can we help folks kind of think through that process?

Amy Goldmacher  35:12

I think the the very question, you know, what does success mean for me right now is a really good one. Because it's going to change, you know, whatever, you, you come out of college with a bachelor's in anthropology, what does success look like for you is going to be very different from what it is 15 years later, 30 years later, whatever. Maybe even, you know, a year later. So I think just asking yourself that question, what, what will fulfill me what will make me feel validated? You know, what won't give me purpose? You're the only one who has answers to those questions. So I would ask that repeatedly throughout one's career, and I'm sure Amy has come across that, like, that's a great coaching question. Yeah,

Amy Santee  35:50

that's something I start out with most people, whether they're coming out of school, or switching careers, or their, you know, whatever other career related goals they have, it's like, what are your core values, and I have an exercise for that. And I find that once people get clear on that, and when I have done it, you know, multiple times in the past, it's helped me to make better decisions about moving forward. And know, we can't always predict them, I never thought I'll be a career coach, you know, starting in 2020, you know, owning my own business, right? Like I, these things sort of just started coming together over time. And I think when you can be exploratory, always paying attention, seeing what's going on around you learning, interacting with others, networking, trying new things, like that's what will plant seeds for different ideas. You know, I have had coaches in the past, and that may have been a part of, you know, planting a seed for that idea for me, like you said, Amy, I kind of, I became less interested in doing UX research and working within corporations. And there's a lot of frustrations and challenges with that kind of role that I don't know are pretty ubiquitous amongst people who work in UX and tech in general. And so I just had, you know, light bulb moment, one day, like, Okay, I've always been interested in careers. I like mentoring people, I can run a business, alright, I'm going to, you know, put a shingle out, as they say, for a coaching practice. And then, you know, I kind of put things into place for that. But, yeah, it's really good to know what you care about. And perhaps when you come out of school, it's like, I just need to get a job that's hopefully related to my degree. Okay, great. Now, now I'm working. Okay, now I can develop a more specific or intentional career path. It doesn't have to be so vague to start with, though. And that's what I appreciate, appreciate about Jonathan's program at Brandeis, which is like trying to help students prepare in a more strategic way, like, what do you care about? And it's okay, if it's different than what your professors care about? And how can you start planning now for the path that you're gonna have to take in a few years once you get out of school? So that clarity is really, really important. And I also find that people who are, you know, 1015 years into a particular career path are asking the same questions like, do I really want to keep working in tech, you know, I make $300,000 a year, that's awesome. I have a family to support, but I'm really burned out or, you know, I'm really not having the impact I want to have, or I'm just getting frustrated, or I just want something new, like, what can that be, and we might have ideas or fantasies about what we'd like to do. And it's important to kind of experiment and test out some hypotheses for those things before diving straight in, right? Like, going back to students, you might think you want to be a professor, and that may very well be true, knowing that it is a very challenging path to take is one thing, but really interrogating, like why do I want to be a professor like, what do I want to get out of that? Am I okay, with maybe not making as much money, you know, or, you know, I would like to go work in industry and I can make a lot of money. And that is okay to make a lot of money in this system, but it kind of like rubs against my core values for social justice and democratic institutions, and, you know, justice and all of that, like, can I still fit into that world, knowing that there's a tension there. So it's just, you know, treat it like a research project, collect your data, use different methodologies, triangulate that stuff and pay attention over time because you do change over time, your values and your goals can also shift as well.

Adam  39:39

I mean, it's always one of those right? That that context is king or queen or the monarch, right that like we have to follow because it is it's gonna shape a little bit like how both what's possible for us but then also like, what, what our values aren't, I think it's, I think it's an important point for us to remember is that, you know, we change over time to write this as much as we want to set a path forward and have Either something clear clear for us, right? You know, like, we want that we want the clear, easy path. You know, oftentimes we actually come away from more challenging experiences with a greater sense of either autonomy or that we did it, we've made it, or at least at least he survived, you know, and there's, I think there's a huge value to that as well, right? Like, partially, you know, the, it's the kind of graduate school joke that we all like, learn that we suffered together. And that helps us a man, you know, we have we have some a series of bonding rights that the band of brothers kind of phenomenon, right from HBO, there's the idea that it's not from HBO, right. But they had a show, you know, but the idea, like, you know, you kind of bond through through shared suffering. And so, I think there's, there's something I think it's really valuable about that, too, of like, also talking with peers that are thinking about that, obviously, what we're doing right now, you know, is like, how do we have conversations with folks that have been both on similar paths, but also quite different at the same time, you know, and like, there's a huge value in that this is actually I mean, I forget now, when it was rare, but you know, like Amy s, and I met over slack or something like in like, 2013, or something like that, like, way longer than I was, when I first began my looking outside of academic pathways. You know, and it's a part of it, too, is like, Who's, who's visible that we can also talk with, and so it's like, the good thing is, you know, if we have internal departmental programs that are doing that, that's great. You know, but I think, as we're saying that we don't see that many yet. Hopefully, we'll see more, but then, like, there's a lot of folks that are that are, you know, have done that that pathway before, or tried different things and seeing what that looks like. And so it's like, I agree, I think they did, like being willing to experiment is really important, you know, and I think it's more fun to you know, because the idea of like, trying to find a career is, it's hard like to say what I want to do, you know, what, what am I want to do? How does that line up with a job, you know, in are those career is that vocation? Like, you know, what is that and so, you know, even kind of recognizing that some of the terminology, the pathways that we have developed, like, aren't really great for, like, developing the self necessarily, are, some of them are, but some of them are not, you know, and like, how are we okay with doing that. And so because one of the things that I was thinking about, on the flip side there of like, people might hear us and say, let me go experiment, do some hypotheses, but it sounds a lot to me also, like hustle culture, right? Like, get out there and hustle and work on your side, hustle your, your, you know, it's like the entire productivity trap of YouTube, of like, watch this 10 minute video of how to like, take a bullet journal and improve your morning and get up at 5am and drink orange juice and take a run like everybody else, you know, whatever it is. So, you know, how do we how do we help make sure people don't think they're gonna fall into that trap of like, well, I can't have three side hustles you know, and, and raise kids and pet my dog, you know, so So I guess, experimenting doesn't mean, side doesn't necessarily right. So how do we think about that process your perspectives?

Amy Goldmacher  42:30

I had somebody reach out to me the other day, she was just starting our graduate program. And she was like, how do I, you know, I want to be an independent consultant when I am done with it. And I totally deferred, I was like, I don't, I don't think I can help you right now. But I think that was because I think that like consulting as a goal is great. Or being an entrepreneur is a goal is great. But there are steps along the way to take to get there. One does not just simply become an entrepreneur, like you have to, you have to have experience work experience, whether that's getting a you know, a some job just to support yourself, or deliberately constructing a career, from the get go, I do think that this has not changed in the last 10 or 15 years, like you still have to get a job, you still have to have work experience. And you still have to learn how to use that to build the foundation of the next thing, you know, be able to talk about it in terms of the skills that you developed or the the processes that you use or the outcomes that you got. So I don't remember what the question was, but I hope I answered it with my story. No,

Adam  43:36

that's great. Yeah, it's just it's this idea of like, how do we not flick click on the trap of like, over productivity or hustle culture? Yeah, as part of that?

Amy Goldmacher  43:44

Yeah, I think just put a put a bow on it is just I don't think entrepreneur is a career path. It's something that's built out of a lot of little little jobs along the way, but jobs that become a pattern. Once you look back on it, I'll turn it over to me now. Well,

Amy Santee  44:00

the nature No, I love everything you said. And if we zoom now, it's like the nature of the world we live in is that it requires us to have a certain level of productivity or we die, right? Like you have to work to get a job to get some health insurance or you have to live with or be involved with someone who can provide those things, but you still have a lot of other work you need to be doing right it's you know, very few people can just kind of like sit around and be independently wealthy and so like the system we live in recording Yeah, I know. It sucks, right? We shouldn't do that. Yeah, where do I get that job? Be a billionaire that inherits a bunch of billions of dollars from some other billionaire and exploit a bunch of people. That's basically how you do it. So yeah, I think it we are forced to be doing a lot of things at once, but we can try to be strategic with it. And so if you're a student, you have a job Like, you're gonna have to, ideally fit some time in to be doing informational interviews, just do one or two a week, if you're exploring career paths, right, like go to an event every week, like just pick one thing to do every week and be targeted. So you might start more broadly and go, Okay, I 100% know that I want to work in government, okay, let's start there and kind of look at different options. Look for the things that are more of an easy stepping stone, right? Like, it might not be the ideal thing you want to do. But it could be something in the meantime, being strategic means being very intentional with how we use our time and our energy and all of our resources, our money. And so even if you're just looking for a job, like let's say, you're not a student, you don't have a job, you're not like a full time parent, like you're just, you know, just someone and you spend all your time looking for a job. That's a lot of work in and of itself. And you'll only have so much time. So okay, if I want to do networking, who do I want to network with? And how often? And where, how do I how do I be really targeted? So I'm talking to the right people? I need to know the questions to ask them like don't ask them things you can google ask them very specific things that only they can help you with, I need to work on my materials. Okay, let me find examples of materials for the type of role I'm looking for, right? Like how can you kind of narrow your scope as you go on, and experimenting, or testing hypotheses is kind of just like, you know, investigating something, just enough to make some conclusions about whether or not you want to pursue it or not. So it is a lot of work. But when you implement a strategy, which is essentially like you have your goals, and you work backwards to design your actions that you're going to take, if you, if you do it strategically, you're not going to be all over the place, you're not going to be overwhelmed, necessarily as much as someone who's kind of just doing things ad hoc, who isn't really thinking about how they spend their time and resources. So that's really the approach that I tried to teach people, which is also something that's worked for me and I still have to do it as a business owner, Amy, you have to do it to Adam, you have to do to it's like, Alright, I'm I am running this business. I'm working on this project, like I only have so much time and energy, how do I want to spend that I could be working on these 10 things, but this one is going to read me the most benefits immediately. So maybe I should prioritize that. So also prioritization is important.

Adam  47:33

Yes, that's something that I definitely struggle with. But I agree, it's like it is a very important. So do I write? What color is my flag on my to do list? Is it a red, orange, or blue? Is it it's like super high priority?

Amy Santee  47:44

Which lists? Do I look at the one on sticky notes? The one on my calendar, the one in my email, the one in this other piece of paper? Like it's not a perfect process? And it's hard to practice, but it does help? Absolutely. Yes,

Adam  47:57

lists lists are helpful, like you keep picking list, you know, yeah, because I agree, you know, it's like we do need, it's, I mean, it's like what he was saying two or three parties like externalizing, what you're trying to say, right, and like, even though like I don't know what the process will be, but I also don't necessarily know what the job is going to be or how to really talk about my potential skills. But I do know that I want to get a job in a certain area, or at least you don't want to talk to people in a certain area. Right. And oftentimes, like, you know, one of the questions that I get asked a lot is, when folks, you know, reach out to you to probably ask about career things, you probably get asked, as well as like, Well, tell me about your path or your process. Right. And that's, that's a great question. Because you can't, you can kind of Google that, I guess, but you know, it's always better to hear the person themselves tell it. But you know, Amy's Yeah, you know, something you said that's really important about that, too, is that we can look back at that pathway and tell you what the pathway was. But like, when it's going forward, it's actually very hard to see it, you know, you can kind of, you know, to your point, ABS is like, as we get smarter about how to think strategically and then to make actions that will help us bring those goals to life, then we can kind of see forward to right, but it's like really, a lot of it is hindsight. And so I kind of was gonna think about this, too, of like, how we can help. You know, folks think about this, like, because one of the the other things that I want to touch on here at the end, which are like is that? Yeah, you know, I think that you both have said when we were talking before this is that, like, we're not of the discipline, but we're not we're not in it, but we're of it right of anthropology and that's interesting question to kind of, as we move forward to think about this idea to have like, we wouldn't all three of us wouldn't have seen that coming necessarily, right. It's like, but then we can look back and say that's an interesting way to realize like, we were over here in anthropology camp, and now we're over here in coaching land and like, we you know, we're, we like jumped ship a little bit, but at the same time, like we still have the skill sets and the backpack and like the name badge, got the flag, you know, so people can you can still say, hey, anthropologist over here, you know, and so, like, you know, how do we, you know, get into the discipline to be having conversations about this, like careers that move beyond it, you know, it's like it's an interesting idea that this as much as I don't like the Star Wars Episode. I Get the last Jedi one thing that's good that Yoda does say in that movie is that, you know, the burden of all teachers is that we are what they move beyond this the students, you know. And so there's this interesting idea for this to have, like, you know, does the, to the Anthro masters have to like kind of, or who kind of hold that the castle as it were like, except that people move beyond and like, our get us into politics, but like, you know, are moving so far away from the quote unquote, center of anthropology into like, we're the other parts of the world that need it, you know, talk about it differently, you know, do how can we help the discipline kind of have those conversations? I guess we're doing one right now. But you know, what are your thoughts on this in terms of like, I think that is, I think a really intriguing conversation that we should all be having going forward is is is like, careers that are going to move beyond, you know, anyway, traditional blockage of what anthropology is.

Amy Goldmacher  50:45

That's a That's a tough question. I wonder that I guess that's just the question at hand, how do you increase the visibility of anthropological careers to students while they're at school, and actually, that was what my dissertation was about. One of my main findings was that students literally took on the behaviors of their professors, because that was the career they were seeing modeled for them. So how can we more visibly model a career that's not traditional or academic? Or, you know, whatever stuck in the past something that's very current? I don't have an answer. But I think maybe increasing the bill of visibility is a strategy towards that. Well,

Amy Santee  51:21

Adam, your podcast, right? Like you have so many different people in anthropology, practicing, you know, people who do it more traditionally, like, we need more podcasts, we need more ebooks, more more books, more like different opened access, right? Like I can't even read the the journal we edited. Unless I pay for it. I did save a copy. But my point being that I can't actually access my own work because it's behind a paywall. So we need things that are accessible to the public. We need things that are accessible to younger people who are on different types of social media platforms, right. So like, I don't know, Tik Tok, like I don't use Tik Tok, but I know who is there. And it's very powerful tool socially and for learning and for movements and things like that. LinkedIn is a really good one. But going back to our journal, like we gathered 11 people to write about their experiences from all, you know, we had someone from NASA, we had someone from civic tech, you know, we had folks who were working in finance, different perspectives, people, you know, with 10 years or less of experience, and we focused on that specifically, because we've had all these amazing folks over the past few decades who have been like the main voices of business anthropology, design anthropology, right. And I still have those books on my top shelf here. Like, uh, you know, those are a special part of my background and my history, but I think we just need more folks doing that. And what I like seeing on LinkedIn is that there are people kind of taking the reins on that, right. So Amy, you and I did our, you know, our part. And we've moved on to other things, and we're still contributing here and there, right, like, in whatever way, but there are new people who are coming out of school, and they are doing mentoring, and they're talking about their experiences and what it's like to do that kind of work. And so I think, you know, I think it's happening in different places, there does still still seem to be that disconnect, academia, professors, grad students, and folks, I guess I could say on the other side, we have a lot to gain and coming together. But I'm glad to see that these questions of how to go into anthropology, what does it look like? What does it even mean? To do it are being discussed in lots of different places? That's, you know, I think we just need to keep it growing.

Adam  53:55

Yeah, well, then thank you both for being a part of that process. Right. This is, this is what we need. We agree we need to do so again, I appreciate you reaching out for conversation has been awesome to talk with you both. And I think, you know, I'm coming away excited that like, you know, the mystery is still there, you know, but at the same time, like, we know that it's important to have it in that we recognize a little bit I think more now like there's there's more places we can look, which I think is the positive the red, the net positive is like, yes, there might be like a big textureless close, but that's actually better, because there's so many other places that we can go that we should be going to right. And as much as I think anthropologist needs to be in tech, we need to be in book writing. We need to be in career development. We need to be in media, podcasting, right, like we need to be in these spaces where we can also impact I think, and provide positive social science influence, you know, to these these other areas. And so yeah, thank you both so much for joining. This has been a lot of fun. And let's let's keep doing it. Thanks.

Amy Goldmacher  54:44

Thanks for facilitating. It's a great, great skill to have a great conversation. I appreciate it.

Adam  54:49

And that wraps up another thought provoking episode of this Anthro life through a journey today illuminated by the insights of Amy Goldmark, her and Amy Santi we've navigated the evolving terrains of anthropology career is jumping beyond the traditional academic pathways or even business itself into the realms of consulting, UX, tech and even book coaching. Each narrative share today serves as a resume of resilience of adaptability and the undeniable perseverance that typifies the anthropological and entrepreneurial spirit. And a heartfelt thank you to my guests, Amy Santi and Amy gold locker as our guest experts for their invaluable contributions. Their stories, not only shed light on the personal evolutions within the field, but also underscore a broader shift in anthropology, and how it's applied and understood the contemporary world. So as we reflect on our experiences, I invite you to consider how these narratives resonate with your own paths, and the ways that anthropology can influence society at large. You know, in what unexpected places have you found anthropology at work? If you yourself are a practitioner, I'm curious to hear of the different unique ways that anthropology might have popped up in your career, especially in unexpected places. You know, how has the discipline influenced your view of the world and your career and even your personal development, showing your experiences could eliminate the multifaceted impact of anthropology in ways that we've yet to explore? So let's keep doing that I'm incredibly grateful for your unwavering support and curiosity that keeps This Anthro Life thriving. If today's discussion sparked your interest, I encourage you to dive deeper into the subject. And you can check out Amy gold markers latest book, designing an anthropology career professional development exercises, this offers further exploration into the realms where anthropology makes its mark and how you can do it, too. If you have thoughts, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes, I want to hear about it. So you can share your ideas or reflections through the Anthro curious substack blog. Get in touch on social media or drop me an email or message on the website. And of course, don't forget, subscribe to this afterlife. If you haven't already. You can catch us on YouTube. If you're watching on a video, you can catch us on audio on any podcast platform that you love. We're everywhere that we can be. And please consider sharing this episode with someone who would appreciate the fascinating world of anthropology as much as you do. Till next time. I'm Adam Gamewell. And you're hanging out with this after life Stay curious.