Success by Design: Early Career Program for Women in STEMM

As an early career academic often feeling pulled in several directions, juggling teaching, research, leadership, and services, and excited by new opportunities, I found myself in a place where I was drifting towards burnout and losing sight of who I am as an academic.

This is where Janine’s ‘Success by Design’ program couldn’t have come at a better time! Just after three one-on-one consultations, Janine helped me develop clarity around my ‘Academic Identity’, a concept I was not aware of but was unconsciously working towards building, in a scattered approach. What amazed me is how Janine transformed our conversations into a 5-year plan, really, breaking it into manageable and realistic performance targets for the first 1-3 years, setting the foundation for larger scope and impactful work for years 4-5, along with examples of activities to achieve this. Now that is VALUE!!! I am already seeing clearly what being ‘intentional’ and ‘strategic’ with your academic career development looks like and how to transform this vision into action – doing more of what we already do but aligning that effort and energy towards clear goals with broader impact.

Beyond all of this, ‘Success by Design’ allowed me to make new connections with an academic community of wonderful and ambitious women with shared experiences and it has been wonderful! I am very grateful for the opportunity to be in this program and for the conversations I had with Janine who carefully listened, guided, validated, and transformed all of these conversations into a ‘strategy’. I highly recommend to any academic who is ambitious, seeking growth, and does not want to burnout along the way!

Zeena A, University of Canberra