Your Unapologetic Career® Podcast

Dr. Kiara Alvarez is a child clinical psychologist, a researcher focused on mental health inequities in the field of youth suicide prevention and the wellbeing of Latinx and immigrant youth and their families. She is also an alumni of my Get That Grant coaching program and an ongoing amazing coaching client. Take a listen to hear some real behind the scenes of her coaching journey: - What her ‘uni...

It’s easy to say No to the things you don’t want to do. But what about all of the things you DO want to do?! How do those fit into the regular rules of space and time? This advice came smack in the middle of the roller coaster ride of 2020 and remains urgently applicable today. If you are struggling with FOCUS amid ‘all the things’ in your career – this week’s episode of Your Unapologetic Career i...

We are not robots and we are absolutely going to miss deadlines and not get things done! We can give ourselves grace and still want to be clear on how to avoid repeating the same patterns. The bottom line is that some of our productivity wounds are self-inflicted. Not *all*, but some. We usually only have one refrain for this – being angry or disappointed and then trying again. Rinse and repeat.  ...

Most of us start out with aspirational boundaries that crumble under pressure – and that’s normal. We don’t need to judge ourselves for this! We do need to know that these reactionary, two-dimensional boundaries are where we may start, but not where we have to end. Effective boundaries are a mandatory requirement of a successful, sustainable, and nourishing career. They are not optional, they are...

Dr. Shekinah Elmore is a radiation oncologist, essayist, public speaker, and clinician-researcher who is dedicated to improving multidisciplinary care for Black patients with cancer, especially in a global context. She is also an alumnus of my Get That Grant coaching program and an ongoing amazing coaching client.   Take a listen to hear some real behind the scenes of her coaching journey:  Why, w...

It’s easy to shy away from a bold proclamation of high standards – especially when the focus might be right back on YOU. We also have a very confused ‘wellness’ conversation going on in academic medicine that conflates striving for EXCELLENCE and overworking as synonymous – which is a lie.   In this week’s episode, I’m sharing my thoughts on how this erroneous coupling came to be, why you have ful...

We are not here for mediocrity. Period. But sometimes that leaves us wondering if we are consigned to overworking?? The answer is – Absolutely not!  This week I talk about how we got to the place where striving for GREATNESS in your career has somehow become synonymous with overwork and burnout. That’s some institutional mindset y’all. I’m breaking that down and reminding us all that YES, we can b...

Constant Vigilance. I feel it too. That never-ending feeling “Am I doing enough?” The reason that you say you are ‘at capacity’, but more and more things keep getting added to your plate. The energy that fuels a constant renegotiation of our worth in our careers. Constant Vigilance is toxic. And I’m here to tell you, it is NOT yours to carry.  The truth is that the game is rigged. And we can waste...

Elevating your self-concept is a coachy-phrase that I would eye-roll at until it smacked me dead in the face. In a lot of ways disenrolling from trainee mindset, dreaming big, and having an unapologetic career is identity shifting work. This is a personal episode on my recent shift. I’m sharing because I must – and I want to ignite courage in the rest of us to do the same.  In this week’s episode...

Most of what goes into deciding to embark on coaching and then finding the ‘right’ coach for your needs is internal. At some point, you decide that the status quo is no longer going to cut it, and you are ready for growth and development without institutional conflict of interest. That alone is a major step. Then, that’s when I start getting all of the questions in my DMs. How should I choose a co...

I recognize that my thoughts in this episode go counter to so much early career advice, and I don’t care. I’m leaning in anyway. I care about this so much, because underneath the frenzy to “do anything to get a grant” is something quite problematic - a deep-seated devaluation of your value and worth. And we’re 👏🏾 not 👏🏾 having 👏🏾that👏🏾!  This week I talk about why you need to use STRATEGY...

So here’s the thing – I get stuck too! There are many ways we can feel stuck in our careers – wrong job, wrong mentor, failed research, and unending rut….  The stagnation is exhausting. It’s the place where many many poor choices are born. In this episode, I open up about how I got majorly stuck earlier this year – and went and used my own advice to get out. Take a listen for a peek behind the sce...

None of us ever want to fail. Ever. And yes, we know ‘failure is required on the way to success’ and all of that nonsense – but still, failure sucks. And because it does, we’ve got some pretty creative ways we are socialized to deal with failure in academic medicine.    They are effective - they are just not without consequence. In this episode, I detail the main approaches I see to how we deal wi...

With regard to opportunities, we get told 2 things: Say No and blame your mentor and Never say Yes right away, ask for time to think about it. So, both of these are reasonable and also horribly incomplete. If you’ve been trying to follow this advice and still at a loss for how to deal with ‘opportunities’ this episode is for you.   The truth is that delaying a decision - without a process to make...

For the busy bee, delegation offers incredible value. It’s become a buzz-worthy resource that’s considered a privilege. But what about when you delegate only to end up with similar stress levels as before?! If you aren’t yet seeing the fruits of your delegated labor - this is for you. In this episode, I challenge you to rethink the way you approach delegation. We’ll break down how to prioritize th...

Here is the truth I realized: There is no one responsible for creating the career I want but me.   Hi, I'm Kemi! I have a biomedical engineering degree from Duke University, went to Columbia P&S for med school, and on to Chicago for OBGYN residency training, UNC for gynecologic oncology fellowship, and a post-doctoral research fellowship in Health Policy and Management. I secured 3 indepe...

If I was forced to put everything I have to say in 1 podcast episode, this is as close as I could get. The beginning of any and all career transformation, the HOW behind getting those grants and winning the game *sustainably*, the logic that underlies pretty much everything else to follow all start with this – The Ten Lies of Academic Medicine. Today, we’re going in and we’re not taking prisoners....

The process of building a successful career on your terms calls for a self-leadership mindset which too few of us have truly learned how to cultivate. In this episode, I explain my concept of the CEO, the Scientist, and the Worker Bee.                                                                                                        Throughout my time in academic medicine, I've recognized...

Listen, there are really no new ideas when it comes to productivity. In fact, pretty much all of them can be boiled down to 3 core elements.   In this episode, I explain what these elements are and why they are NOT actually the root of productivity struggles. We’ll unpack why although they’re super simple, we find them so hard to implement – and what to do about it.   C’mon achievers, let’s go not...

Facing failure sucks! It throws us off balance and usually into one extreme (Being) or another (Doing).    In this episode, I spotlight the need to strike a balance between all the feelings and actually taking action. Often we don’t even recognize which rut we are in.   Whether we’re recovering from grant rejection, difficult colleagues, botched experiments or any other kind of ‘failure’ - the pri...