Last year I left a tt social work faculty position at an R1 to work as a UXR in social impact & equity @Meta. I got laid off Wed. Would I do it again? Yep, here's why.

(1) foremost, it vastly accelerated my learning, growth, and skillet. I've been building expertise at the socialwork/tech intersection for years and now I understand internal workings in big tech.

(2) it broke me free from the idea that tt r1 is the holy grail. Academics are overworked & underpaid. There's so much limiting ego involvement for many of us, by design. We are our work. Now I know balance is possible and that I am not my labor though my labor has value.

(3) earning a role in a place with such a high hiring bar and working with such smart people gave me confidence and perspective, and I made some great friends at Meta

(4) I learned more about how social work can collaborate with and inform other disciplines for social good, and I will take that to my future work

(5) in academia we often avoid strong recommendations in our research. They are valued in industry. It was good practice to take my expertise and say "this is what we should do." Yes, we know something, let's do something!

What now? Meta provided an excellent severence package for the 20k (!) people laid off. For now I plan to build out strategic consultation & training for higher ed and social services who need help adapting to and preparing the workforce/faculty for the tech wave in our field.

I am open to other amazing fits. Though I'd never say never, it is highly unlikely I'd return to a traditional tt faculty role. I need more space for flexibility & creativity to prioritize my goal of real world impact.

I am also building out my business helping child welfare agencies bring Motivational Interviewing onboard & making it stick with implementation science and leadership consulting: traumainformedMI.com

If you know of a social work department that needs help bringing faculty on board w tech, updating curriculum for tech, improving online programming send me a message

I also want to keep talking to social workers about how to be industry influencers and prepare themselves for #altac roles. We can make important contributions in unconventional settings!

I left academia overwhelmed and burned out. I feel excited about my work again. If I've been slow to get back to you in the recent past, check in- I have a little downtime. 😉

I'm excited to find opportunities to collaborate on ideas again with academic friends too - this is what I miss most about academia @socworkpodcast @TheGinaGi @lauranissen @njsmyth @JimmySW @laurelhitchcock @DrNPJones @aykanian