Senior Analyst, Bayer Corp.

Although she has a PhD in experimental psychology from Kent State University, Anne Marie Apanovitch, PhD, doesn't see herself as a psychologist, per se.
"I think of myself in terms of the skills that I've acquired, rather than by my degree," says the senior marketing analyst at Bayer Corp. "I'm a manager, critical thinker, communicator and statistician."

Apanovitch says her career path has always been a quest to team-build by applying my skills." Now at Bayer, "I work on various projects in different groups," she says, noting she most enjoys "the applied aspect" of marketing.
She is part of a special quantitative team performing strategic analysis for clients within Bayer.  "We try to do an objective, cost-effective analysis of different marketing programs," Apanovitch explains.  "I analyze the different marketing programs used to promote drugs, see which are most effective and then make recommendations to the internal clients."

 Moving from the classroom to the boardroom, Apanovitch didn't miss a beat; the skills of an outstanding research leader met the demands of Bayer's marketing team from the outset.  "My background and skills were crucial to getting me to where I am today," she says.

Apanovitch’s colleagues, most of whom hold MBAs, value the skills she garnered in academia.  "Being a successful team member means utilizing the skills of everyone at the table.  We each offer complementary skills," she says.
Apanovitch attended Saint Olaf College in her home state of Minnesota, earning a joint degree in Spanish and psychology.  Inspired by a memorable professor, Chuck Huff, PhD, under whose tutelage she performed her first research for a study on capital punishment, Apanovitch directed her desires toward graduate school.  After graduating from Kent State in 1996, she served as a project director of HIV/AIDS prevention research at Yale University for four years before moving to Bayer.

 Apanovitch calls entering the pharmaceutical industry "a natural progression from what I was doing at Yale."

Integrating herself in "a very team-oriented environment" was "not a matter of rebelling against the academic tradition," she asserts.  "I continue to grow as I would in academics.  Both are viable options; I simply chose this way instead."
Market analysis was enticing because "being a good manager, communicator and working well with people are really valued, she says.  "I'm also now out of the laboratory and in a very applied setting, which is exciting for me."

Preparation and a pinch of good -fortune lead, she believes, to myriad career options.  "Think about your long-term options and the skills that you'll need to be successful performing those jobs.  Then work on building up those skills every day.  The opportunities come for everyone, it's those that are prepared to take them that will be successful, she urges.  "In that sense, I feel very lucky."

return to menu

Health Science Administrator, National Institute of Child Health

When Margaret Feerick, PhD, graduated from Cornell University with a doctorate in developmental psychology, she wanted a job where she could apply her scientific background and use the writing and public relations skills she garnered as an undergraduate and as a fund-raiser.

It sounds like a tail order, but she's found the perfect marriage of her interests as a program director for the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

 "My psychology training is essential to what I do," Feerick says.  But she also relies on the writing and people skills she developed earlier in her career.
Feerick, who graduated in 1998, administers one of the largest grant portfolios at NICHD-Cognitive, Social and Affective Development, and Child Maltreatment and Violence.  She oversees about 155 active grants and another 100 in various stages of submission and revision that cover a range of areas like cultural change in child-rearing beliefs and practices or the effects of improving children's mental health care and developmental outcomes.

Feerick reviews the scientific progress of grantees and works with grant applicants to help them develop their proposals.  "I spend a lot of time walking them through the process and helping them decide on the relevance of their research for the institute," she says.

She then reviews all applications for her program area and makes funding recommendations to NICHD's national advisory council.  Feerick also keeps an eye out for research gaps in her program area.  Once a gap is identified, she collaborates with experts in the field to develop the specifics of the funding initiative, and then recommends how much money NICHD should allocate.
Her job description also includes writing program announcements and organizing conferences and workshops to inform principle investigators and other psychologists about the NICHD grant process.  "A lot of times, people don't understand that they can submit applications at any time within our grant cycles," explains Feerick.  "They donut need to be responding to a particular call for applications."

Her PR training comes in handy for responding to congressional and public requests for information on her program, requiring her to translate the science into lay terms.  Feerick developed those communication skills at her first job out of college as director of development and contributions for a private junior high school in New York.

By the time she finished her doctorate at Cornell, Feerick had worked on several federally funded research studies and had developed and written numerous grants.
"I really thought it would be interesting to take my research grounding and apply it in some way," she remembers.

She's shepherded the program for two and a half years now, and both its applications and funding continue to grow by leaps and bounds.  Last year alone, her active grant portfolio increased by about 50 percent.

return to menu

Director of Internet Product Development, Blackboard, Inc.

Doug Kaufman, PhD, an enthusiastic psychologist with a penchant for teaching and education, seems perfectly suited for a faculty position at a major university.  Not so.  Kaufman discovered during graduate school that classrooms of 20, 50 or even 100 students just weren't going to be big enough for him.

"My voice wasn't reaching as far as I really wanted it to," says Kaufman.  "I thought there might be a way to extend my reach beyond the confines of the classroom and have a greater impact on students and education as a whole."
At the education technology company Blackboard Inc., Kaufman found the global classroom he'd dreamed about--one with millions of students, dozens of subjects and endless possibilities.  Kaufinan is director of Internet product development at the Washington, D.C.-based Blackboard, a company that creates software that enables schools--including every Ivy League university but one--to offer online courses and manage school services.

"We've developed solutions that provide institutions with all the features they need to build an online campus," says Kaufman.  "Students can register for courses online, upload their homework and pay their parking tickets through us."
Kaufman, the only psychologist among Blackboard's 450 employees, is responsible for Blackboard's latest project-researching, developing and expanding online resource centers geared toward faculty who teach Web-based courses and students who take the courses.  He and his staff have developed 253 online centers-on topics ranging from psychology to finance-each offering full-text journal articles, online communities, news and Web links.

Kaufman was no stranger to online resource centers before working at Blackboard. While earning his PhD in social psychology at the Virginia Commonwealth University, he developed Web sites for courses he taught and created the site www.alleydog.com, an online resource center for psychology students across the country.  Just when Kaufman thought the Web site might serve as the foundation for his own company, the site attracted the attention of Blackboard's founders, who persuaded Kaufman to join their company and build similar resource sites for Blackboard's wider audience. 

Now a days Kaufman can't imagine a more exhilarating job or better place to put his social psychology skills to work.  His training has helped him to manage his staff at Blackboard, research content for the resource centers and develop ways to market the centers.  He's enjoying being at the head of the class in the online learning industry, playing an occasional game of football to spark his creative juices, and developing new services through partnerships with companies such as America Online and textbook giant Pearson Publishing.

"Just the other day I was thinking, 'Here I am meeting with one of the biggest textbook publishers in the world, and just a few months ago I was in a classroom using these books we're talking about!"' he marvels.  "I am lucky to be at a company that is having a real impact on education and opening doors for me."

return to menu