Name: George Philip “GP” LeBourdais (he/him)
PhD: Art History and Digital Humanities, Stanford University, 2018
What is your current job?
I am the Founder & CEO of Didametic in San Francisco, California.
My job involves marketing, educational consulting, user research, and growth consulting.
Above all, my favorite thing about this career is the flexibility.
How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?
I created the job after leaving another business position.
PHD ➡️ Postdoc ➡️ head of partnerships ➡️ head of strategic initiatives ➡️ founder
Why did you decide to not pursue a career in academia? Was this a difficult decision or one you felt came easily?
There were three reasons I left academia: family constraints and the academic job market, increased compensation, and the chance to make a difference on a larger scale.
What are three pieces of advice you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?
Find companies and organizations doing work related to your area of expertise. Just knowing about them and following their work is a great head start on plotting a path outside of academia
Research what the major skills hiring managers are looking for. Many key skills and project management or communication are in high demand and are likely things you’ve developed already during your PhD.
Make new connections! Some people call this networking, but I like to think of it as just reaching out to people who do cool work and telling them that you’re interested in their path and would love to learn more about how they got there.