“Karen is a fearless visionary and her confidence is contagious. I was in real despair after years of adjuncting and on maternity leave when the pandemic shut down my options. She brought me back into the job market in 48 hours by helping me apply for an administrative role in a university center. When I got the interview, she made time in her busy schedule to run a mock interview. Her intervention saved the day. After my anxieties surfaced, her compassionate and strategic debriefing built my confidence for the real interview. I GOT THE JOB! And channeling Karen, effectively advocated for a salary increase.

I have attended many career workshops but never met an expert as smart or as helpful. Karen brings a blend of administrative, academic, and coaching experience and applies ALL her skills in working with you. She helped me think more critically and optimistically about the work I want to do. I was empowered by her capacity to analyze the nature of a position and tailor my materials strategically, validating relevant experiences I had neglected to promote. She re-envisioned my profile in a more holistic way. I am in awe that my professional persona now captures who I really am. After working with Karen, I will no longer settle for work that does not feel authentic and valorizing. As a female minority and an interdisciplinary scholar, I never thought I could compete with this much confidence and competence. Karen’s keen insight and care was truly transformative!”

“Karen is amazing. I can’t say enough good things. I hired her in 2021 for a full package of documents for a fellowship application and found her to be a superb editor and consultant with a fantastic eye for detail. Karen not only brushes up your language but provides conceptual/idea development and looks deeply into thematic preoccupations. She is professional, knowledgeable in her craft, down-to-earth and friendly. Her editorial help has made me a better writer and a competitive applicant: I got the fellowship! I intend to employ her in the future and I highly recommend her to everyone I know.”

“Your polished draft of your book chapter on interviewing was so, so helpful. Especially combined with our mock interview! I did a better job of answering questions fluidly, with the right tone throughout. They asked about how I worked with shifting priorities and how I’ve dealt with feedback and a setback, so our preparation was really apt. Your help was *essential* and I feel way, way more prepared to be fantastic in the next interview, whoever it is with.”

“Karen is a highly requested, experienced and successful coach — she has a unique background that bridges the academic and alt-ac, has extensive career coaching and advising experience, as well as hands-on skills at helping you conceptualize and write your application documents. Most important of all, she has a truly deep understanding of, shall we say, “higher values”—i.e. that your work needs to have meaning, and is an expression of your larger aspirations in life and in the world. Karen understands that this isn’t just a job search: it’s a re-evaluation of your sense of self, and some of your deepest values. ”

“I took advantage of Karen’s “quick fix coaching” in a moment when I needed some candid insight. 30 minutes later, I’d had a leadership tune-up! She asked great questions and got right to the heart of the matter. I will never forget her answer to my lament that maybe I just need to grow a thick skin: “As leaders, we don’t need skin that is impervious to others’ hurts or feedback, but after being pierced by an experience, we can clean and heal our skin through compassionate and right action.” I left with a toolkit of productive steps and follow-up inquiries. Karen has such a gift for empowering clear and courageous leadership.”

“When I came to Karen in early 2021, I found myself terrified to take what seemed an impossible leap: to leave my tenured position for a better quality of life for me and my family. After just a few consults, I learned how to think more expansively about work (and life in general), and felt a sense of both possibility and freedom. I learned how to design job materials highlighting the strengths of my unique background, engage in my job search with an open mind, and simply, take action! Each time I felt frozen because of fear or “shoulds,” my exchanges with Karen left me feeling empowered to move forward. Thanks to Karen, I was able to take the leap and moved to my family’s desired location while obtaining a new job and vision for my career trajectory moving forward.  I feel more self-assured and in control of my own destiny than I ever have. Thank you for helping me achieve that.”

“What a relief to talk to someone who understands the struggles of PhDs AND who has expertise in both ac and non-ac applications! Karen helped me reinvent my professional self. I had the limited mindset that I “should” become a professor, and that I only knew my dissertation topic. Karen outright told me to delete “should” from my dictionary and gave me the courage to explore who I really am. She is truly an expert whose insights cut across fields. My applications for academic, private sector, and non-profit roles ranged widely but each was tailored to the industry and presented me as someone very professional and confident.

Karen really gets to know you: she cares, remembers your details, and sees the gems in your experiences that you take for granted. She is a counselor, cheerleader, and mentor in one. I would regularly write to her for advice as well as some cheerful spirit and calming attitude before an interview. Karen has given me both a new perspective and practical skills. I have more authenticity in my professional development, and have developed my own way of decoding job ads and tailoring my materials.

I worked with Karen on 8 different applications for tenure-track faculty positions, business consulting firms, and international development organizations. I landed a great job with a great salary in international development that suits my interest, background, and level of expertise. Years later in 2021, Karen’s help was again essential: she helped me pursue and land a significant promotion in my organization!”

“Before I came to Karen I’d spent 7 years psyching myself out of a job search. I was a tenured full professor at a small liberal arts university—in the Humanities, this is the brass ring, right?—feeling a peculiar mix of shame and fear. I was grateful for the job but it wasn’t enough, and as a middle-aged woman who’d invested most of her energies into teaching and university service (vs. scholarly stardom) I felt like a cliche. I knew I had a lot of relevant expertise, but appeared to be simultaneously over-qualified and under-qualified for virtually everything that caught my eye, in and out of academe.

Karen took my 17-page CV and translated it into a 2-page resume that became a touchstone as well as a tool— clarifying the version of myself I wanted to be next. During our Skype sessions and mock interviews she helped me find the focus and courage I needed to seek, and find, a new job in a new region. My life feels like an adventure again. The position is off the tenure track, and it feels remarkably fine—liberating, even—to see myself as a more strategic and and flexible professional.”

“Karen’s prompts for materials sent in advance of the initial consult showed the kind of insights I could expect. Given that I was mentally “stuck,” it helped that she had concrete next steps at the end of the consult: gather 2-3 appealing job ads. Small, actionable steps helped get the ball rolling. When I had to write the resume and cover letter, she was so good at encouraging me to make changes. The process became smoother and faster.

Her analysis of different jobs was also useful. The non-academic world has a different vocabulary for things that academics do without acknowledgment in the academic CV. This contributes to learned helplessness, making us believe we lack transferable skills and are trapped in a vicious cycle without exit. Fortunately, I had prior exposure to the public sector. But it’s one thing to have those skills. It’s quite another to articulate and translate them. Karen helped me do that and added a nice, human touch to my documents—emotional intelligence, really. That is something I most appreciated about her work.

Karen’s “Building Blocks” method of interview preparation helped me organize my answers into manageable units. As soon as I heard a keyword, I immediately had substantive content to talk about. The technique worked in actual interviews, making me feel calm, cool and collected. And it is effective regardless of the order of questions! Karen also taught me how to be proactive and handle contingency. For instance, when a reference hadn’t gotten back to me on time, she encouraged me to send in the reference at a later date. Grad school has a tendency to make one feel powerless; these empowering expressions of agency increased my confidence. Karen provided timely, constructive encouragement — a dream mentor! ”