Finding Harmony Between Credentials and Experience (with Dr. Ashley A. Adams)

In today's episode, I speak to Dr. Ashley Adams about her experience while pursuing her PhD. She discusses everything from isolation, mentorship, and managing your identity outside of your degree. We also talk about the importance of strategic career planning for doctoral students.

Ashley A. Adams, PhD is the senior director of student affairs at an R1 institution in the Northeast and an adjunct professor in the university's college of education. When she's not working with college students, she leads a different classroom as the founder of the podcast and lifestyle brand, Schoolin Life (schoolinlifepod.com) and CEO of Mentor Me (mentor-me.org), a career development platform for professional women. Through Mentor Me, she offers small group mentoring services to help high-achieving women advance their careers. With more than 10 years of professional experience in corporate, non-profit, and educational leadership, she uses mentoring to serve women and teach them how to leverage their leadership skills to thrive personally and professionally.

Follow Dr. Adams on Instagram, Twitter, & LinkedIn. Visit her website.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I worry sometimes that we are over-credentialed and we're so worried about the credential that we're not worried about getting demonstrated and practical experience in the work, and that puts us at a disadvantage and it puts us in debt.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome to the Writing on My Mind podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Emanuela Stanislaus, doctorate coach and diversity consultant. I finished my doctorate in four years while working full-time, traveling the world, and balancing a busy social life, and now I'm on a mission to create community for other BIPOC women to complete their doctorate degrees. Join me as I discuss the ups and downs of pursuing a doctoral degree. I'll be sharing personal stories and I'm bringing some friends along for revealing conversations about their doctoral journey and provide inspiration for others to level up as doc students. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Writing on My Mind podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Emanuela Stanislaus, and again today I have an amazing guest who is going to grace us with her presence and drop some gems for you today. Dr. Ashley Adams is our guest, and I'm gonna just go ahead and jump into her bio empowering women towards taking meaningful action in life and career. Ashley is a powerful speaker, mentor, and public academic who thrives at the intersection of personal, professional, and career development. Through her career and professional development company, Mentor Me, Ashley helps high-achieving women make more money and have more impact in their careers. So please join me in uh welcoming Dr. Adams. Thanks so much for having me. I'm happy to be here. Thanks so much. And so, as I said, you're a doctor, Dr. Adams, and the show is all about the doctoral journey. So why don't you tell us a little bit about um what your journey was? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

So um I was a Ronald E. McNair scholar in undergrad. And um, although I um am not first generation, my father has a master's degree uh before going to college. I didn't know much about higher education. He didn't really talk about his uh college days or college experience. So I kind of went in um pretty blind, right, without a lot of knowledge about the collegiate experience. But I joined the McNair program, I want to say, like my sophomore year of uh college, and they told me as a part of the program, you know, that they were grooming us to um, you know, earn PhDs. And even though I had no idea really what a PhD was, I'm a rule follower. I knew I wanted to be a part of the organization because a couple of my friends were, and they talked about like traveling and having cool summer experiences. Um, and so that's why I signed up and I have just followed the rules all the way from uh probably 2005 when I joined to 2015 when uh I finished my PhD program. Um, but I'm so glad that I did. Um, I am um grateful to be, you know, the foremost expert in my industry, which is um higher education, specifically online education and uh um engaging and um graduating and retaining or retaining and graduating adult learners. And my journey um was complicated by the fact that I worked full-time throughout most of my doctoral degree and and it wasn't a cohort program, so it was really lonely and isolating in a lot of ways. And so I'd be happy to talk more about you know that experience with your audience um because I'm sure that some of some folks can relate to that as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Yes, you you spoke a lot about well, you you pinpoint some things that I definitely want to dig deep into. Let's let's pick one thing, which is the working full-time. Talk to us a little bit about that experience because I I definitely relate to that as well. I worked full-time while uh pursuing my doctorate, and that is quite the experience. So talk about how you managed that and what that experience was like.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Sure. So um I started my when I started my doctoral program, I was working full-time in higher education as an admissions counselor, and I knew I wanted to go back to school. Um, and initially I thought, you know, I'll have to quit my job and go back to school full-time. At the time, I'd asked my um partner, my boyfriend, if he'd be willing to support me financially while I, you know, wanted to pursue my education, and he was supportive of that. So I did. I quit my job. I took an assistantship uh at my um university. I was doing like some administrative and research work for a faculty member. Um, and for the first year of my program, that's what I did. But I quickly realized that um I really wanted to go into administration. And what was gonna happen was I was gonna have a year and a half of practical experience and a PhD. And that was not gonna get me the senior level uh positions that I was gonna have. At most, I was gonna be a coordinator with a PhD and I was not trying to do that. And so I really had to look at my life and my career trajectory and say, you know, Ashley, if you really want to come out of this doctoral program, you know, positioning yourself for director level and higher roles, you really do need to get some more experience because, you know, they're gonna be looking for you to have that experience and the degree. And so I went back to work. So my first year, my doctoral program was through an assistantship. And the second and third year was um I was working full-time. So I went back to work. I was working as a retention counselor for a number of years, and then I, or for like a year and a half, and then I transitioned to an assistant director of student services. Um, and I did that kind of work for uh about a year and a half. Um, and then I uh finished my program and and I graduated in December of 2015 and in January started a new job as a director. And so I'm so glad that I did, you know, recognize that I was gonna need more experience and you know did go back to the world of work so that I could position myself well for those more senior level roles. And it didn't have a financial impact though, because uh I I definitely my first year was paid for uh through my assistantship. And then when I went back to work, I had to pay out of pocket. So that that did mean I had to take on some loans. I took on maybe about $30,000 worth of loans, but it's well worth it because you know I was able to secure jobs that were making, you know, $50,000 to $70,000 more annually than I would have been able to secure had I not had the experience to secure the higher level roles. So for me, it was the appropriate trade-off.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Okay. Again, um, your answer is like spurred on some other things too that I was thinking about or that I want to dig into really. So uh talk to me too about this whole process of deciding to work full time. Uh, because as you said, and I think a lot of people too, I think this would speak to people who are thinking about going for their doctorate or even like current students who don't know what they want to do. How uh how did you go through that process of deciding like to go for go um to leave your assistantship and go for a full-time role? And the reason why I asked that is I think uh that that's a challenge for folks, like in terms of how faculty react to that.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Yeah, I mean, I think that my it was a decision that I felt empowered to make. Um, my program was not one that they were like, oh, you have to be, you know, a professor when you complete this program where you need to do, you know, publish this many articles and you know, do this much research. Um, you know, they they were really they empowered me to make decisions about my career and about my doctoral journey myself. And I'm really grateful for that because they empowered me to do that, then I felt confident in my decision to return to the world of work. And like I said, I'm so glad that I did. I think too often particular Black women in particular feel like, okay, all I need to do is get this degree. I need to secure the degree, and that'll be what helps me advance my career, but that they are misled in that. Um, employers are still looking for someone with adequate and demonstrated experience. And too often doctoral programs do not prepare uh professional or for do not prepare students to go into uh administrative leadership. Um, they just don't. And you need some more work experience to go into those fields. Um, I worry sometimes that um we are over-credentialed and we're so worried about the credential that we're not worried about getting demonstrated and practical experience in the work. And that puts us at a disadvantage and it puts us in debt. Um, and so I'm really encouraging women to find some harmony. Um, even if you are considering earning the um doctoral degree or the, you know, the high highest degree in your field, maybe that's MBA in your field or a JD or, you know, a different doctoral degree. Um, I definitely encourage you to make sure that you still gain that practical knowledge, the demonstrated experience of the competencies, uh, because you'll be doubly frustrated if you have this degree that you are still paying for and you can't secure the type of jobs that you're looking for because you do not have the practical experience.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Talk about it. Uh PhD is not a clear path to like a career. There's so many other things that come to it. Of course, you have that credential, but depending on what you want to do, you have to have some other things to back it up. So glad that you said that and brought that up. So I want to go back to another thing that you said. You said the program or when you were pursuing your doctorate that you had experiences of isolation, which uh is very common. Uh do you mind sharing some of uh the experiences that you had and how you maybe overcame some of those isolating experiences?

SPEAKER_01 10:26

I wouldn't necessarily say that I overcame them. I did get through them. However, uh, overcome is a strong word that I would not use. Um, earning my doctoral degree, specifically the dissertation phase, was one of the most isolating experiences of my life. It was so lonely. It's like I am the foremost expert. No one in the world knows more about this little bitty itty bitty sentence than me, but I can't talk to anybody about it because nobody in the world knows anything more about this itty-bitty sentence than me. My program was not cohorted, which meant that like I wasn't going through my courses at the same time as other people. And even if I were, I was one of the few Black women who were in the doctoral program at the same time. And so it just was really lonely. It was just really isolating. No one in my life could relate, not because they weren't smart or, you know, didn't go to graduate school, but they weren't PhD students. And so they were like, why can't you travel? Why can't you go here? Why can't you go there? Didn't you write a paper last week? Like people just did not get it. They did not understand. And it was so isolating, it was so lonely. And it also was confusing because I was working and I was, while I was in my program, I was in those sort of coordinator slash assistant director type positions, and they didn't really value the fact that I was earning a PhD. Like that, that wasn't really important to them. Like they, you know, I didn't need a PhD to be in those roles. Um, a lot of the work that I was doing, it was a lot of application base. Like I talked about, you need that application base, but it wasn't, I couldn't apply the things I was learning in class necessarily uh at that at that level because I was still kind of, you know, new level, mid-level. Um so I wasn't doing a lot of sort of theoretical process mapping and, you know, making higher-level decisions that I was learning in my PhD program, um, because I I wasn't in the position to apply them. So it was just very disjointing. I have no regrets. I'm glad that I um went to a non-cohort uh program. I'm glad that I worked full-time while I was pursuing my PhD. I don't have any regrets, but it definitely was isolating and lonely. Um, and so if you're experiencing that, if you're you know listening to this, you're not alone, um, even though it is lonely.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Yeah, I could totally relate to that for sure. People not getting it. And so when you find your people, like you really want to be with them all the time because you're like, okay, you may not understand what I'm researching, but at least you kind of have a similar um understanding of uh, you know, the doctoral process and and things like that. I do want to talk a little bit. You you shared a little bit about the McNair program that you were a part of, but did that have any um deciding factor for you in in pursuing your your doctorate? If not, like what made you decide to pursue it?

SPEAKER_01 13:28

It did, but only in the fact that they said that it was a program for people who were going to earn their PhD. And because I'm a rule follower, I just followed the rules. Uh, it's a really well-structured and really valuable program. I'm so glad that it exists and it definitely is a pipeline program for underserved minoritized individuals. And I'm so glad that um I was selected to be a part of it. Um it prepared me to successfully pass my GRE and to do well and to, you know, earn solid scores. It, you know, talked about, you know, what it meant to go to graduate school and what it meant to do research. Um, I had an opportunity to participate in undergraduate research the summer after my uh junior year, which was really awesome. And um, I met friends there that I still connect with to this day. I definitely learned more about like what it meant to be a faculty member, what it meant to engage in scholarly practice. Um, I got to see uh doctors who uh looked like me, um, which is something that I didn't see at um my small liberal arts uh college that I went to for undergrad that was in rural Missouri. I just didn't see that. So that was exciting to be able to know that that existed, even though it didn't exist uh in my at my university, but it did exist in the you know uh McNair program and it allowed me to travel. I had opportunities to go uh to Chicago and San Francisco as the part of the McNair program. Being a part of McNair was the first time I ever flew on an airplane. And and you know, for um, you know, me, that was such a such a surreal and liberating experience. And now, you know, I'm an avid traveler when there isn't a global pandemic, and I'm really happy about that, really grateful for that. So uh it definitely sparked so much more than just earning the PhD, but you know, a life for me that I wouldn't have been able to imagine without the program.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Awesome. So, what about how like what was the process for you uh choosing your program?

SPEAKER_01 15:30

So um I was living in St. Louis, Missouri at the time that I started my doctoral pursuits. I applied for two schools. I didn't get into one of them, and I went to the one that I applied to. So it was pretty simple. Uh, but it was a great school. I went to St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. It's a uh Jesuit, private Jesuit school. I had an outstanding education, and I really believe in the tenets of the Jesuit model and the way they approach their work, their commitment to social justice is strong, and I was a good fit for the program, and it was definitely a good fit for me.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Awesome. And you you um got your doctorate in educational leadership. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yep, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

So, what were your your goals with that? And how does that fit into what you're doing now?

SPEAKER_01 16:24

I think my primary goal was just to graduate. Um, I did, I wasn't one of those students who was like, you know, I want to publish these three papers and I want to collaborate with this professor. It wasn't really like that. I just knew that I wanted to complete the degree and I wanted to work as an administrator in higher education, and I've been able to do that. I'm presently the senior director of student affairs at a large research one institution in the Northeast. I love my work. I'm so passionate about it. I'm paid very well for the work that I do, and um, it's clear that my organization values me and values the work that I do and the contributions I make to the university and to our students. And that is a joy for me. That is exactly why I do this work. It's exactly why I sought to earn my PhD so that I could work as an administrator and feel valued and be paid well. I'm grateful that I get to serve as an example and a mentor to so many other professional women who desire the same through my professional development company mentor me. It really has all lined up in my favor. Um, and I am intentional about making sure that other women experience that as a mentor.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Right. So let's talk about mentor me, your company where you are helping other high-achieving women. Tell me a little bit about how that came about in addition to all the other things that you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Sure. So I have been mentoring women for nearly 15 years, providing direction and support, um, providing pathways and recommendations for how to advance their career. And it wasn't until the summer of 2019 when I was um helping a friend prepare for an interview that she had upcoming, and she said, you know, Ashley, like you're really good at this. Like people would like that you're telling me things that like are not common knowledge. Like this isn't Google. Like the way that you're explaining this to me is like really insider knowledge. Like people would pay you for this. And I was like, I don't know if people would pay me for this. Like, I feel like this is like common knowledge. And she's like, no, it's not. Like the way that you talk about this and the way that like the strategy that you're applying is like something other people don't know. And so I had been podcasting for a number of years for about two years. Uh my podcast is called School in Life Podcast. It's a weekly podcast uh for women. It's about life, love, and occasionally libations. And I had a website for the podcast. Uh, we were doing really well um in that space. And we I knew we had a lot, a large, you know, a female listening base. And so what I did is on my podcast website, I just uh opened up a new tab and I was like, mentor me. Like if you need help with your career development, like let me mentor you. And then I talked about it on the podcast, um, you know, a couple episodes. I would just talk about, hey, you know, I'm um providing mentorship to women. If you think that, you know, you need that kind of support or you know, you benefit from that, you know, you can schedule a session. And lo and behold, like women scheduled sessions. And I would talk to them and they're like, oh my God, this is so good. And then they started getting jobs and then they started getting raises and then they started getting, you know, more of what they needed in their career. And I started to see results and more and more and more. And I was like, oh my goodness, like this is a real thing. And when I when I first launched Mentor Me, I said, you know, I'm gonna put up this website and like if nobody clicks on it, I'll just like delete it and pretend like it never existed. Um, but if it works, then I will tell my graphic designer, like, hey, I'll need a like full website for this. And it did work. And um a couple months, maybe like a yeah, a couple months later, we actually stood up a whole website exclusively for mentor me. And now the business has been running for about a year and a half. Um, I work full-time in my business uh as well as working full-time in my career, and I am so proud of it. I've helped my mentees secure $10,000, uh, $12,000, $15,000 salary increases. Um, with those salary increases and new jobs, they've been able to move across the country, to be closer to family or to move away from their hometowns. I've been able to help uh my mentees navigate this global pandemic. Uh, you know, some of them experience layoffs and furloughs and to be able to secure new um employment, um, like moving from um corporate sales to HR and recruiting, and then moving from uh Houston and um to Chicago, like one of my mentees, Sheldon did. Um, it's just so impressive. And I'm so grateful and proud of the work that they're doing and the results that they're getting as a result of my mentorship. Um, and so if anyone in your audience feels like they would benefit from that, if you're a new or mid-level or even high senior level professional woman who's looking for mentorship, you can start the same way my mentees did when I first opened the business. It's exactly the same. Uh, you're able to schedule a mentor moment with me. It's a 20-minute mentoring conversation. It's really an opportunity for us to just hop on the phone for me to learn more about what's going on in your career right now and how I can best serve as a mentor. And you can schedule those at mentor-me.org.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Yeah, your services are very much needed anytime, right? Because, like we said, sometimes we're overcredentialed and not sure like how to do the things that we need to do to make sure that we are leveraging what we know with the degree, but then also. So during this time where the job market is kind of shaky and people need some some advice. But then additionally it ties into the mission of the Writing on My Mind podcast and the community that we're building too. And so hopefully the audience out there will take advantage of your services and gain a mentor that can help them along this crazy uh career journey because it is windy and crazy and unpredictable. So, you know, with your mentorship, how putting your mentorship hat on, what advice would you have for people who are pursuing their doctorate in terms of like things that maybe you wish you knew when you started your program?

SPEAKER_01 22:47

I think the doctoral program or the doctoral process is meant to make you an expert. And so I just encourage you to lean into that expertise. Black women in particular are so used to like shoo-shoeing away praise or acknowledgement for their brilliance. And I encourage you to push back against that. Really lean into the fact that you are an expert. You are the foremost expert in the thing that you're studying. No one knows more about it than you do. And then I want you to leverage that expertise to make more money and have more impact in your industry. Too often we are afraid to talk about making money. We're afraid to talk about um being paid well for the value that we're bringing that we bring to these organizations, these universities, these students, uh, these industries. Um, but I want you to push back against that fear. I want you to be paid well. I want you not to shrink or hide from the immense value that you bring. And I want you to have impact. I want you to serve the communities you desire to serve, to fix the problems you started to fix when you um, you know, went into this program and to really advance and have impact on the students or customers or clients or communities that you desire to provide them with transformation that they're desiring from the solutions that you provide.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

I agree. Such great advice. And I I think one of the things too that your comment just kind of made me think about is some things that I know that I'm working on personally as well. But like when we don't talk about money or we're when we kind of shy away from getting the criticism, like I feel like we're like I feel like society doesn't value what we bring to the table, but then when we kind of do that, we're kind of co-signing that a little bit. What do you think about that? Like, I I don't know if that's I'm still processing this thought, but like you just brought that up and it made me think about that.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Yeah, absolutely. It's like when we don't ask for the when we don't ask for the amount of money, appropriate compensation to um that mirrors the value that we are bringing to the organization, we're telling organizations that we aren't valuable. When we say yes to everything without asking how much they're going to pay us for these additional duties, for this additional workload, for this additional committee, for this additional project, we're saying that um the work that and the value that we're gonna add to this committee, this commission, this project isn't worth paying us for. Um, when we when we stay stuck in a job where we know we aren't having real impact, when we're saying, oh, I'll just wait um until this person leaves, I'll just wait until this person retires, I'll just wait um until the economy gets better, I'll just wait until the pandemic is over. When we say things like that, we are devaluing our work, we're devaluing the value that we bring to these organizations, we're devaluing the immense talent and skills and our expertise when we don't ask for what we um the when we don't ask for the value that we bring to these organizations, we're cosigning, as you said, we're co-signing um and devaluing our work ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Uh I love that. And I think we really have to break that chain of thinking. And I'm guessing too, through your mentorship, you can help people like you know, break down some of those limiting um thoughts that they might have around what they should be earning, what they should be asking for, and things like that. Okay, so what are three things that helped you succeed in your program?

SPEAKER_01 26:51

I think the things that helped me succeed in my doctoral program are really centered around um what I was trying to combat in the program. So, like I said, it was really isolating. So um I combated that by not isolating. Like I would make time to travel uh with friends, I would make time to date, I would make time to make myself dinner, right? And not postmates every meal because I was trying to combat that loneliness and that isolating um experience that I was having. And that was a that was important to me. I think that I also became an expert at managing my time. Um and I really started to change my mind about how to do that and what time meant and what manage me managing my time meant. So I leveraged the Pomodoro method. And if you haven't heard of that, I definitely encourage you to look it up. It's called the Pomodoro method, uh, but it was a lifesaver then and it is still now as I work to manage my time. Um having a tight lock on my time, um, breaking it down into small bits, uh, doing work in small spurts, not uh letting any one task overwhelm me has carried throughout my entire uh life and career, and it's a tool that I still use uh to this day. And then finally, I think that knowing that I was more than just a doctor was a big deal. So I was still a daughter, I was still a big sister, uh, I was still, you know, a young black woman who uh liked to cash out. I don't know, like you know what I'm saying? Like I was more than just a doctoral student. And even now in my life, and um, I'm more than just a person with a PhD. Uh, and so like making sure my identity wasn't tied to my doctoral pursuits was a big deal as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Great advice. Living your life, having good time management skills, and you're more than this degree. Like there's more to you, and there's more to life after this, too. So one one thing too that that makes me think about is something that uh I definitely want to discuss that a lot of people don't discuss is the depression that happens after you're after you're done with your program. I don't know if you experience that, but I think some of that could be tied to the doctorate taking so much energy, but then sometimes maybe the focus that you put on that and your identity that's tied to that. Did you experience that at all?

SPEAKER_01 29:19

I did not experience that because I was so in it, because it was so critical for me to not tie my entire life, my entire like lived experience of the fact that I was earning a PhD. I didn't experience like depression or sadness or feeling overwhelmed or just disappointed when I was done. Because when I was done, I went and um, you know, secured a position as a director and, you know, was making um, you know, secured like a $30,000 salary increase from the assistant director position that I was in. And so I was moving on, you know, to bigger and better things. And I was leveraging the degree I had just earned um, you know, in the field. I think some of that disappointment comes when you don't have a career plan, when you are a doctoral student. And so you think, you know, okay, I'm gonna get this degree, I have to get this degree, I have to get this degree, and you're not thinking about like how you're gonna leverage the degree to get what you want in your life and career. So then when you finish the program, now you're completely disillusioned, now you're completely disappointed because you have this degree, but you don't know how to use it, or the ways that you think you can use it aren't really valuable or as impactful as you would have hoped. Um, and so this is why, even for folks who are pursuing their doctoral degree, it is so critically important to have a career development plan. It's not good enough to just be a student. Like you have to be a student and a person who is intentional about their career. And whether your career is in the professoriate, whether it is um in administration, whether it's in industry, you have to have a plan on how to leverage the degree to get what you want on the career side, even when you're in the program.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Great advice. All right, so now I want to transfer over to the lightning round questions. So I'll ask some questions, and it's all around the doctoral process for you. And you just say the first thing that comes to mind. Ready? Okay, lightning round, I'm ready. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Okay, so favorite mantra. Oh, I didn't have one then, but my favorite mantra now is I reject overwhelm and invite peace, joy, and ease into my life. Oh, awesome! Did you come up with that? Or I did.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

I love it. Okay, so I'll quote you on that. Okay, I love it. All right, next one one thing you couldn't live without. Butter bacon ice cream. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Favorite hype song. Um, I put on for my city, um, and uh by TI and Flawless by Beyonce.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Oh, yeah, those are good songs. I love it. Okay. Your go-to practice to celebrate your wins.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Doing nothing. I love to like conquer something, kill it, do amazing, and then do absolutely nothing afterwards. Rest is my celebratory practice.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Yes, it is an act of resistance. Love it. All right. So, lastly, best piece of advice you received as a student.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Ooh, as a student, I think the best piece of advice I received as a student was that like the PhD wasn't beyond me. Like it was a thing that I could like achieve. Not having anybody put limitations on me when I was in that program was so transformative because like nobody was like there to tell me I couldn't do it, or nobody was like, oh, I don't think this is gonna work out for you. And so if nobody's told you that you can't do something, then you can do it. And if somebody has told you that you can't do something, then they are lying. Um, and so I encourage you to tell yourself the truth, even if no one else is telling you the truth, um, and to tell yourself the truth. And the truth is that you can do anything, that there's nothing beyond you, that you are limitless. And if no one's told you that, I'm telling you that now. And so I invite you to tell yourself that truth also. Um, and if you've been fortunate enough that no one's ever told you that you couldn't do something that you that you don't know that you uh have limits, then like walk in that um because that was my truth and nothing is beyond me now. Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

What a great way to end this episode with uh those inspiring words. Thank you so much, Ashley, for joining us. And I definitely want to make sure that you let people again know how they can connect with you, how they can follow you now after the episode.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Yes, I am so excited to take you on as a mentee. So the first step in working with me is for you to schedule your mentor moment. Like I said, it's a free 20-minute conversation for us to just really understand um what the pain points are in your life and career right now. Even if you're a student, we can talk about what's going on in your program um and how I can best prepare you for a career after you complete it. Um, so you can do that on my website at mentor-me.org. That's m-n-t-o-r-me.org and schedule your mentor moment. I'm really excited uh to connect with you and learn more about you and how I can best serve you. And you can also follow me on social. You can follow me on Instagram at Ashley Ashire. That's A-S-H-L-E-Y-A-S-S-H-I-R-E. You can follow me there on Instagram, on Twitter, and on Clubhouse. And then, of course, for um professional um connections, you can follow me on LinkedIn. It's Ashley A Adams. So I'm all over the web at Ashley Ashire on um Instagram, Twitter, and Clubhouse. Uh you can, and then um you can schedule your mentor moment on my website at mentor-me.org. I'm so looking forward to connecting with you.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Awesome. And everyone, be sure to check out the show notes where I'll have all of the ways that you can connect with Ashley as well. And again, thank you so much, Ashley, for joining us today. Happy to be here. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Writing on My Mind podcast. If you'd like to support the podcast, make sure you subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts and spread the word to other women of color doctoral students to grow our community. Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Dr. Emanuela. And if you're looking for a group of real women of color doctoral students to help you accomplish your goals, join the Writing on My Mind community by visiting WritingOnMyMind Podcast.com. See you on the next episode.