Welcome to the MeghanBPhD Newsletter!

I am a sociologist who is keenly interested in the changing nature of work, both academic and otherwise, and also in how we navigate work culture broadly and the pursuit of equity and belonging in contemporary work environments specifically. Like many, I made a major career shift during the pandemic, leaving a tenured Full Professorship, where I had also served for six years as a Department Chair at a small liberal arts college. I moved into private industry in 2020, where I’ve done Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Strategy work, Consumer and Workforce Research, and Learning & Development. 

I’ve found that many folks in my professional and friendship networks are hungry to talk about contemporary workplaces –how we navigate fairness and belonging, efforts to situate work in the broader context of our lives, how we grapple with the identities we bring to work, and how we best act on the good intentions we hold –all while honoring that we almost never get it perfectly right but instead have to dust ourselves off over and over and keep trying. 

There is also a lot of work still to be done in the landscape of DEI, even more so because of political efforts to sideline the progress toward equity and inclusion that movements for racial and social justice have fostered. We’ll grapple with whiteness, gender, language, contemporary politics, and what “the work” really looks like –no matter where you work, all with an intersectional lens (one that explores how our many social identities matter to others, and interact). 

Finally, I have enough people reaching out to me about leaving academia that I’ve had to limit networking calls to one per week –calls where I often repeat the same stories and advice to those hungry to think more expansively about their experience in higher education and how they might forge lives beyond the academy. This newsletter will pull in those insights and experiences to enrich the broader discussion of DEI and work.  The focus there will be less about how to leave higher ed, and instead about why some do leave, and what shifts around them when they do.

These three categories are intimately connected: they are about our work, our worth, and the sometimes-weird cultural practices that can either keep us stuck or foster our growth. This newsletter will weave those strands together to speak to, and with, those curious about doing better: better at work, better at THE work, and better at living lives that reach toward the ideals we often share but don’t always know how to realize. It will also depend on YOUR questions, in a monthly Ask Me Anything series where I take your anonymous questions and offer advice, perspective, and education about topics within those areas that you are grappling with. I’ll also nurture a shared community as best as possible, fostering space for your voices and perspectives in discussion threads on both serious topics like when you challenged a peer at work and fun topics like the worst icebreaker you’ve ever suffered through.

To that end, most of the posts in this newsletter will be paywalled; this is a subscription-based newsletter. I do this for a few reasons: the first is that in my pivot to industry, I’ve learned how to better value and respect my time, labor, and expertise –that is part of what you pay for as a subscriber, and it also reflects the rigor with which I treat this work. I think you’ll see it’s well worth the $5 per month you’ll pay me for these efforts. 

Further, and importantly in this political climate, a paywall also helps to keep out bad-faith actors who might enter a conversation in order to derail it, and better protects those who engage in our community discussions, which may feel vulnerable to some, given the sensitive nature of these topics. And so, when you invest in this subscription, you’re also investing in that community, that safer space for and with each other, and in yourself. I’ll promise to defend that community with both ferocity and care. 

I do hope you’ll join me. There’s a lot here to unpack and discuss, and I can’t wait to do it with you.  See you twice a week, starting June 1st.