Lisa Walker (PhD in History '03) wrote her dissertation on public health in 19th century Russia. Now she works with former Soviet biological weapons scientists to help them to redirect their expertise toward civilian research. Informational interviews paved the way.

Lisa is employed by the US Department of Health and Human Services in an office called the Biotechnology Engagement Program. She manages and helps develop collaborative scientific research projects that aim to solve significant contemporary public health problems in Russia and the other Newly Independent States (NIS). Their funded projects engage former biological weapons scientists on the NIS side and help them to re-orient their research agendas and integrate themselves into the international scientific community.

She's responsible for the day-to-day management of multi-year collaborative research projects that involve both NIS scientists and US counterpart scientists. She surveys incoming ideas and proposals from US scientists who have had contact with former Soviet scientists with whom they'd like to work, or from NIS scientists who have drawn up a proposal. Shortly, she'll also be shepherding these projects from the development stages to their completion (and often into new lives). She and her colleagues maintain active ties with public health professionals and policy-makers in the NIS in order to maintain an awareness of the health issues that are most important and to which their scientists might contribute to a biotechnological solution.

What led her to pursue this kind of work?
As she neared completion of her dissertation, Lisa began to think more and more about options outside of academia, although her primary goal remained to find a tenure-track faculty position as an academic historian. Her decision to explore other options came about, as she puts it, "in part because I simply wanted to have a realistic plan for finding employment after graduate school, and in part because my dissertation topic had inspired in me some new thematic interests in contemporary public health." It also helped that she'd had a National Security Education Program fellowship during her dissertation research. Because the fellowship has a service requirement after fellows' degree programs are completed, this program is very much geared toward informing graduate students in international fields about their options for working in the federal government.

How did she begin looking for jobs in the field?
She began by saving articles she had read in the press that touched on public health issues of interest to her, often taking an afternoon to research the people or organizations that were mentioned in them. While she was careful to avoid the trap of "getting bogged down in web-surfing during a job search," she asserts that this research helped her to "learn more about the field of international public health and to define the areas that were interesting to me and where I thought I could realistically be hired with my background." Most importantly, she took the difficult step of "moving from that passive, impersonal research to interviewing with live people." She makes a point of stressing that "informational interviewing was definitely the key for me personally in finding a job; the Internet research was an important prelude to the active interviewing stage."

How did she find this particular position?
She began by speaking to a few people she knew in Washington, DC, where she knew there were more likely to be jobs in international and especially post-Soviet affairs. She started with the "easy" people - friends, or people those friends knew well - and kept records both of what she was learning through her research, especially the different connections between organizations and people, and also of the interviews she did. She did phone interviews with about ten people and email interviews with about five more in the nine months between when she began seriously exploring options and when she received an offer. As she explains,

"My current job is, it seems to me, an especially good fit for my interests, and I recognize that I have been quite lucky to find it. But at the same time, the experience of the past year has made me a believer in the informational interviewing and networking (even though I really dislike that word) process and the way it can position you well to find a job."

In what ways did her PhD prepare her for this job?
As Lisa explains, "Although there is some overlap in the topics I focused on in my degree program and my job (it has certainly given me important background information about public health and biomedical sciences and their history in Russia), I find the content of my PhD work less important than the general practices I learned in completing my degree." Simply put, the PhD gave her a very good training in gathering, organizing, and processing information, which she now applies to the two content areas of her current work: maintaining familiarity with the health problems facing Russia today, and being conversant in the science being undertaken by the virologists and epidemiologists whom they fund.

What else helped her secure this position?
Lisa credits her fluency in Russian (required and helped by her PhD) and her experience before graduate school working as a program administrator in a non-profit as important elements in her favor when applying. She thinks her employment experience while in graduate school also contributed: she had not especially sought out non-teaching work, but her various jobs as research assistant and editor of academic and non-academic materials served as helpful components of her resume. Finally, she had help from other PhDs working in the federal government as she created an appropriate resume and translated the RA-ships she had had into resume entries that reflected their value.

What advice does she offer other Cal PhD students?

• Understand "the importance of the informational interview process and of translating appropriately one's experiences within academe to potential employers outside; the potential in seeking any possible help from previous employers or granting agencies; and the usefulness of combining thorough research of your target sector with active interviewing and networking."

• She also recommends Career Center PhD workshops, stating that "although I was already at the stage where I had done much of what was suggested, it was still very valuable to see other people, to get out and talk with others about the problems or the good opportunities that I was encountering, and the content of the workshop would have been extremely helpful had I attended the workshop even 3 months earlier."

• A deliberate approach to interviewing. Acknowledging that "active interviewing is perhaps the most difficult part of the job search for many," Lisa suggests that "it's important to begin by talking to people whom you know and feel comfortable with, especially if you are exploring an area that you know little about; contact anyone you can think of with whom you already have a connection." She also asserts that "in any informational interview, I think it helps to keep reminding yourself that this is fundamentally an opportunity to learn more. It's about information-gathering - what PhDs do best."