William (Bill) Lindstaedt has been helping scientists and engineers launch successful careers for 30 years. From 2001-2023, he supported the career development needs of PhD students, postdocs and their faculty mentors at the University of California San Francisco. In his career counseling practice at UCSF, he developed particular expertise working with biomedical scientists as they transition from training positions to faculty careers and to positions in the biotech/pharma sector. Bill co-authored Science’s “myIDP”, a web-based career development tool which has been used by more than 300,000 scientists and is recommended by dozens of graduate and postdoctoral programs around the country.
Recently retired from UCSF, he now serves as co-Investigator on the NIH-funded pd|hub Collections initiative to build STEM PhD professional development resources across institutions. Additionally, he serves as a contracted career consultant with the Academic Programs Office at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and with Emory University’s Office of Postdoctoral Education.
Alaina Levine
Alaina G. Levine is an award-winning professional speaker, STEM career consultant, TEDx speaker, science journalist and corporate comedian. She is the author of three books: Networking for Nerds, (Wiley, 2015), which beat out Einstein (really!) for the honor of being named one of the Top 5 Books of 2015, Create Your Unicorn Career!, and Your Unicorn Career Workbook.
As President of Quantum Success Solutions, LLC, she is an expert and a prolific speaker and writer on career development and professional advancement for scientists, engineers, and communicators. She has delivered ~1000 keynotes and workshops for clients in 15 nations, on 5 continents, and in 35 US states, and has written ~500 articles in publications like Science, Nature, Scientific American, National Geographic News Watch, World Economic Forum, and Smithsonian. She previously wrote “Your Unicorn Career”, a careers column about finding your professional bliss in Science Magazine, the number one science magazine in the world. Levine authored two online courses for Oxford University Press on career development and entrepreneurship, and is a consultant, speaker, and writer for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. As a STEM career coach and consultant, she has helped hundreds of clients in diverse fields, professions, industries, and regions hone their leadership abilities and create and land their own Unicorn Career. As a speaking coach for STEM-educated professionals, she has enabled leaders to improve their advocacy and influence and land huge grants. A recent project with the University of Arizona involved coaching teams of faculty who pursued $120 Million in grants from the NSF and NIH, as well as a NASA commercialization project, in which she provided coaching and training for STEM faculty and students from Minority Serving Institutions who pursued $300k in seed funding from NASA for a national wildfire tech commercialization challenge. Before launching her own company, Levine directed the Professional Science Master’s Program and taught her award-winning, graduate course in Topics in Entrepreneurship for Scientists at the University of Arizona. The winner of over 20 business and leadership awards, Levine was recently named the Johnson Lecturer in Science Communications at Penn State University. She holds bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and anthropology and a certificate in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona, and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo as a US Department of Defense Boren Fellow.”
Rick McGee
Dr. Rick McGee is the Associate Dean for Professional Development at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. His primary responsibility is to support the initiation and development of the independent research programs of early career faculty. His career path to this unique role began with 20 years of laboratory research in neurobiology and cellular pharmacology. His career then evolved to designing and leading research training at multiple levels, including postbaccalaureate, PhD and MD/PhD, and advanced research training for clinicians. He also began developing new group coaching models to complement research mentoring. The most impactful of these new group models are the grant writing coaching groups which are the primary focus of his current position. He leads groups of 3-5 faculty in real-time proposal feedback during weekly meetings. In this way he teaches grant writing as a complex skill to be approached from a teaching and learning perspective rather than only relying on attention paid to it by research mentors. After leaving bench research, he also became interested in actually studying how young scientists develop and differentiate into different careers using qualitative research methods and social science theories. A strong theme throughout his career has been in diversity efforts related to both gender and racial/ethnic equality. Today, in addition to his professional development role, he leads a team of social science and education researchers in the NIH-funded National Longitudinal Study of Your Life Scientists. Finally, Dr. McGee is deeply involved with new approaches to promoting effective mentoring relationships and grant writing skills through the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN). In addition to the NIGMS MIRA award that funds his primary research, he is a co-Investigator of NIH-funded randomized trials studying Culturally Aware Mentorship, and four different variations of grant writing coaching groups.