Researcher on a Mission to Drive Social Impact

Name: Nicky Sullivan (he/him)

PhD: Psychology, Stanford University, 2024

What was your main area of research?

I studied how children think about race and racial inequality, with a specific focus on the conversations White parents and children have about race. My research explored both how conversations impact children's beliefs, and how White parents could have more effective conversations, as well as how we can motivate White parents to engage in conversation in the first place.

What is your current job?

I am a Senior Researcher at Impact Justice based in San Francisco, California.

I do evaluation research: designing participatory research to evaluate how programs operate and what their impacts are, including literature review, research design, data collection and analysis, report preparation, presenting

What is your favorite thing about your job?

Everyone I work with is united around a shared mission to drive social impact.

What is the most important skill you developed or experience you had during your PhD that now helps you in your current position?

Presenting research to different audiences: a lot of my current work involves communicating about research to a variety of audiences, including community partners, and it's really valuable to communicate clearly to people with all sorts of different familiarity with the research process.

How did you build the skills necessary for your current role?

I did some collaboration with a community partner during grad school, especially as I was thinking about leaving academia, which I found to be helpful as a way to begin to explore potential non-academic careers.

How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?

I looked on Idealist, and also had heard about the org from a friend.

PhD graduate ➡️ Senior Researcher

If someone is interested in a similar role, what would you recommend they start doing now to prepare?

Gain experience interacting with people outside of academia (e.g., community partnerships, science communication).

When did you decide to not pursue a career in academia?

I was pretty confident I would leave academia by my third year in grad school. I came into grad school on the fence about academia, and it didn't end up being a difficult decision.

What advice do you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?

Start planning early! Think about what career you might want, and use the training model of a PhD to build those skills (e.g., taking classes that will help you build a skill you might need).

And build a network. Much like in academia, a lot of finding non-academic jobs comes down to having connections, so start interacting with people outside of academia (or with non-academic connections) early.