Sales Representative Pursued a Path to Joy

Name: Brook Sweeten (she/her)

PhD: Neuroscience, Eastern Virginia Medical School, 2020

What was your main area of research?

My career has been focused on stress neurobiology from a few different angles. During my PhD, I studied stress-induced disruptions in sleep.

For these projects, I was investigating how the limbic system was involved in stress-induced changes in rapid eye movement sleep. During my postdoctoral work, I continued studying stress neurobiology by focusing on the amygdala and how individual cells in that brain region responded to different treatments and how their response changed following a stressor.

What is your current job?

I am a Sales Representative for 3Brain in the Southeastern United States.

As a Sales Representative, my responsibilities are to connect customers with the scientific solutions that we provide at 3Brain. This includes reaching out to customers, attending conferences, and doing site visits.

My favorite thing about my job is being able to talk to people about their research projects and help provide exciting scientific solutions. I speak with scientists from a variety of different fields, which means I need to keep up with the latest literature.

I love that I get to take my experiences and use them to help other people accomplish their goals.

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

I found this job through networking!

PhD graduate ➡️ postdoctoral fellow ➡️ Sales Rep

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

I decided not to pursue a career in academia because it felt like the entire basis of my career would be based on luck and not skill or hard work.

I hated grant writing because of the peer review process. I never felt like I was being judged on the quality of my science or my ideas, I was being judged on things out of my control at that moment.

I also was getting tired of studying the same thing all day every day. I wanted to interact with other scientists, I wanted to make a difference, and I didn't feel like the academic path was getting me what I wanted.

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

Network, network network!! This is what helped me land a job and has kept me in the loop in the job market. Get on LinkedIn or whatever platform you enjoy and just start reaching out to people who have a job title that you're interested in. Go to conferences and talk to the vendors, ask people how they got their job. I found that most people are willing to chat and be helpful.
Consider joining a networking group - there is nothing wrong with asking for help.
The best advice I was ever given was to "think about what brings you joy and pursue that". What part of your PhD did you love? Do you enjoy teaching, presenting, writing, the benchwork, etc? Figure out what you enjoy doing and start looking for jobs that allow you to do that. For example, I loved teaching, talking about science, and problem solving - now I get to do that every day as part of my job.