Leslie:
I’m very excited to welcome my friend and coaching colleague, Dr. Katherine Lee, onto your Words Unleashed Podcast. Katherine is a higher ed coach and career strategist. She’s the founder of Rise With Clarity, a coaching and consulting business for women of color faculty in higher education, and she’s host of the amazing Rise With Clarity Podcast.
As a former musician and trained ethnographer, Katherine is adept at deep listening and observation, and she brings these skills together with her coaching practice and 20 years of experience in higher education. She is ICF-certified as an associate-certified coach. And Dr. Lee received a PhD in ethnomusicology from Harvard University in 2012.
She served as an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at UC Davis from 2012 to 2017 and was associate professor at UCLA from 2017 to 2023. So, Katherine, it is so good to see you!
Katherine: Oh, it’s lovely to see you, Leslie.
Leslie:
Katherine and I have known each other for a few years, and we met as she was starting to seriously consider becoming a career coach and leaving academia. And even though Katherine has published a sole-authored monograph, and I’m sure has lots to say about writing, I actually wanted to have her on to elaborate on the challenges that women of color academics face, in particular.
I think it’s really important to call out and name the additional burdens faced by folks who are marginalized in academic spaces so that they can see they’re not alone. And I also want to help them find strategies and support to help them navigate this often unforgiving career path. I also wanted to mention that Katherine is co-running a group called The Compassionate Cohort.
This group is a supportive and judgment-free online gathering space for former professors who are navigating the logistics and emotional landscape of leaving academia. So important. They meet every other week on Zoom to talk about things like career pivots and processing loss of community and identity.
So I’m really interested to learn more about this new support group too and how it relates to Katherine’s own journey out of the academy.
So let’s get to the questions. So Katherine, can you first tell listeners a bit about your background and your journey through academia?
Katherine:
Sure. Well, I want to thank you, Leslie, for having me on your podcast. It’s a real pleasure and honor to be on your podcast. And I’m a huge fan of Your Words Unleashed. Thank you. Yeah, so I have been in music for my entire academic career. First as a music performance major, a piano performance major, and a musicology major at the University of Michigan as an undergraduate.
I pivoted into ethnomusicology as a graduate student. I went to the University of Washington and Harvard University. And in between grad school programs, I lived in South Korea for close to five years where I studied Korean language. I also studied Korean music and culture, and I worked for an artist management company as well.
So my research in ethnomusicology centers on Korean music and culture. And more broadly, music and politics and global circulations and ethnography. I’m really interested in ethnography as practice and as a genre. So I was very fortunate to have landed a tenure track position right after I finished my PhD in 2012.
And I started as an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at UC Davis. And I was there for five years. And then I moved to another UC campus. I moved to UCLA in 2017 and I was there for six years. So I taught for a total of 11 years in the University of California system.
Last August, I ended up resigning from my tenured faculty position in ethnomusicology, and I left because I was in a toxic and dysfunctional work environment, and I realized that I would never really be able to thrive in that work environment.
So it was a long off-ramp for me, but I ended up starting my own business, a coaching and consulting business for women of color faculty in higher education called Rice with Clarity. So I’m about seven months out from starting a business.
Leslie: So exciting.
What initially inspired you to become a career coach for women of color in the academy?
Katherine:
First, I think it was my own experiences of being coached. So when I was an assistant professor at UC Davis, I worked with a writing accountability coach. And prior to that, I had no experience or knowledge of coaching.
This individual approached me to be her first guinea pig. She has since moved into administration. She was just trying out coaching at the time. But I said yes when she initially offered this to me, and I didn’t realize how impactful coaching could be.
Because my first year on the tenure track, I did not touch my book at all. I was so overwhelmed with writing the lectures for my big survey courses, designing the syllabi for my various classes. I also started up a Korean percussion ensemble. There were so many first things that I had to do on the tenure track that year, that writing really took a backseat.
So when this individual approached me to be her coachee, I jumped at the opportunity, and I really benefited from having somebody who I could be accountable to, who was supportive of me in a gentle way. And who also kind of taught me in certain ways to be mindful of the different political situations that one can find themselves in on the tenure track. So that experience was very important to me.
And then later on, I was in, as I said, a dysfunctional and toxic work environment, and I knew that I had to think about exit strategies. So I hired a wonderful life coach by the name of Dr. Leslie Wang! And, I really decided that I needed to dive deep into my core values to figure out what those were and to then explore possible exit strategies and pivots that were viable. So I worked with you, Leslie, and it was such an amazing experience.
And at the end of those months, I realized that I was interested in coaching. So one possible pivot for me was arts management. And I had taken an online course through the University of Pennsylvania. called Arts and Culture Strategy because I had arts management in my background. I had done that in South Korea, but for some reason at the end of that course, which was eight months, I knew that it wasn’t going to be my path.
It wasn’t really aligned with my values at that time. And with the coaching, I had done something similar to my first writing coach and I approached someone, asked them to be my first coaching guinea pig. And I loved it. I loved working with this person. And by the end of that summer, I had six clients without any social media presence, without a website, because I couldn’t really be open about it.
And that also coincided with our coaching as well, Leslie. So, I just knew that it felt right for me. And I felt a deep sense of gratification being able to help women faculty members. And then I decided that I wanted to niche down to helping women of color faculty on the tenure track specifically. So, yeah, it’s been kind of a long journey, but I did end up going through the coach training process.
I worked with Dr. Katie Linder, and she offers a higher ed coach training program. I went through the process for certification through the ICF, so I am ACC. and I hope to go up for professional certified coach in the next few years.
Leslie:
So what was it that made you decide to focus specifically on women of color academics?
What are the specific issues you helped them resolve and the specific challenges you think they face?
Katherine:
I think that from my own lived experience, what I felt was that even though I was hired into a tenure track position, there wasn’t necessarily support for the issues that I was starting to encounter.
And I realized that I was not alone in this set of challenges. The more and more women of color faculty that I talked to, I realized that we were coping with similar challenges, like having an overload of teaching or having extra service on top of regular duties. Also, not necessarily being recognized as an authority in the classroom.
I think that was something that I encountered a lot during my first year. not being recognized as a professor, being mistaken for a graduate student or even an undergraduate student. So that kind of undermining of authority in the classroom was challenging because you’re always having to prove your existence and presence on campus.
Other things were connected to being the first faculty member that students looked like, and office hours then were often longer and could involve more complicated issues that come up. So I felt exhausted after doing some of the office hours in my first two years. And then with the help of my coach, I realized, “Oh, there’s a way to manage some of this by, for instance, having like an online office hour sign-up” or to be cognizant of the different resources that are on campus that you can refer students to.
Nobody tells you about this your first year on the tenure track, and if you have colleagues that don’t have your own lived experience and are not women of color faculty, then they wouldn’t be attuned to these things as additional challenges to being on the tenure track.
Leslie:
So can you think of any other sort of common strategies that you suggest for your clients that are facing these sorts of things?
Katherine:
I think one big suggestion I would have is to try and find supportive allies. on your campus or in your discipline, perhaps other women of color faculty who might understand the issues that you are dealing with.
And I think it’s also important to be able to trust these individuals because there might be times when you are venting or you need to process something. There might be some microaggression or racialized aggression that you have encountered and you feel scared to bring it up in your department, but perhaps if you have somebody else that you can speak with in that moment, it could be very helpful.
Spending the time to invest in those relationships early on can be very beneficial. So that would be one strategy is try to find a small group of other women of color faculty that you can confide in, that you can trust, and that you can kind of lean on one another during challenging moments.
Leslie:
Yeah, and I would imagine that they should also be at different levels in the hierarchy, right? So you need folks that are junior like you so you can really commiserate, but you need some senior faculty too who can advise you and go to bat for you too.
Katherine:
Absolutely. That was critical for me. So I was fortunate in that I met people who were on my campus at my first institution who were in different departments and also at higher ranks than me.
And so I could then ask questions about institutional regulations or ways of practicing things that I wasn’t getting that information in my department. So it was just helpful on that level. But yeah, for those faculty members who have risen through the ranks and become associate or full, I think they also have so many more lived experiences and can offer a friendly ear to somebody who is just embarking on the tenure track.
So yeah, that was crucial to be able to speak to people who were a little farther ahead on the tenure track.
Leslie:
Can I ask, I have some clients who are junior faculty members and they tell me that they find networking to be really exhausting, they feel very socially awkward, they don’t want to seem strategic in setting up these sorts of, like, how do you find mentors? Like, do you just email them? What do you recommend for people?
Katherine:
That’s a great question. Sometimes, it can be offered through your institution because there are mentoring programs or there can be sort of a matchmaking of mentor and mentee that an institution does develop and encourage. That can be useful.
Other times it may be just by going to conferences and connecting with people, but if you are not an extrovert, then that could be a little bit challenging. So I think that for me, it’s happened sort of organically. Maybe I met somebody initially at some kind of event at school or at a conference, and then we developed a connection based on our own interests or research profiles and then I would follow up.
So I think I’m fairly good if I’m interested in cultivating a relationship with somebody, I’m fairly good about sending emails and and following up. And now that we can connect so easily on Zoom, I think that is an added benefit that if you would like to retain a connection with somebody who is not on your campus, but maybe in your discipline that could serve as a mentor or an ally, then sending an email, follow-up email, could be really worth it to develop a longer connection.
Another way is to invite them to your campus, if possible. When I was at UC Davis, I organized the Valenti Lecture Series for my entire five years there, and I was able to then invite many scholars and many senior scholars to give their scholarly talks at UC Davis and I was able to invite scholars that I admired and scholars that I wanted to keep in touch with.
Leslie: Yeah.
Katherine:
And so there’s no better way than to connect with somebody, but than to invite them to your campus, host them, host their dinner, and really get to know them in a different way than in a conference setting. So I think that would be one piece of advice I would give.
Leslie:
Yeah, I think that’s super helpful. Another thing that I know you talk about on your podcast and you’re really open about is navigating departmental and institutional politics. And I think that this is something that grad students have no idea about. It’s very difficult to get any sort of good advice or guidance. You know, people feel really isolated and alone and targeted.
So, what’s your best advice for junior faculty members who find themselves in highly political workplaces like you were in?
Katherine:
Right. I wish there was a book to address this. You have to write it. So again, I think finding allies who are most likely not in your department but maybe on your campus could be a useful tip.
Another thing is, and this might require some deep reflection, but figure out how you want to show up in these highly charged spaces. Are you going to be the kind of person that remains neutral, you know, kind of stays the course of neutrality? Or do you want to get in there and fight and that’s kind of the way you show up and always express your opinions? Or are you going to be a little bit more careful? So I think that is also very much dependent on who you are as a person and how you want to be, how you want to show up in your department.
Clearly, when you’re in your first year on the tenure track, I think it’s probably wiser to do more observation. And as an ethnographer, I’m primed to do that. So observing how your departmental politics lie and Also, seeing how things connect to the administration. It might be good just to sit back and observe how things work because obviously you don’t really know how things tick until you get inside a department.
You can do as much interviewing or speaking with people prior to entering your department, it will really change once you’re in the department as a tenure-track faculty member. Even your additional presence there will change the dynamic of a department. So I think being more of an observer at the beginning is probably a good strategy.
I would also say don’t lose sight of your own research and focus on that, especially if things are really fraught in your department, maybe your research and your own projects are going to be a refuge for you. And it can be perhaps connected to a ticket out.
If you really cannot survive or thrive in that particular environment, then maybe, you know, you’re going to have to focusing seriously on your research, working on your manuscript is going to be valuable for you if you were to go back on the academic job search.
Leslie:
Yeah, I mean it’s always going to be helpful I guess no matter your situation, right? But especially if you’re looking to leave. You know, I was also in a highly dysfunctional, at best, department and it was hard. I think in the first couple of years, the politics took up a huge amount of headspace for me.
And it was very difficult for me not to take things personally, not to get pulled into the various grudges that senior faculty had against each other, to get involved in these ongoing debates that predate you by decades. Right. So what should people do to not allow the politics to just consume them?
Katherine:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I wish I had a better answer for this, but I think it’s connected to what I just said about making sure that you leave space for your own interests, your own projects, really carving out that space. And that might have to do with just strict boundary work. Just realizing that the departmental politics may take up this much bandwidth, but you are going to preserve your own bandwidth for your own projects and the things that are meaningful to you.
I would also say it’s probably important to figure out what support structures you may have in your university. So that could be connecting with a mentor. It could be a happy hour group that maybe exists on your campus that gives you a little bit of refuge from your own department. And sometimes people will intentionally align themselves with a different institute or department on campus that is more kind of connected to their own research, but it might be a healthier work environment.
Leslie: Yeah.
Katherine: And that could be a long-term strategy of aligning with another unit on campus that they might eventually pivot into in the future.
Leslie:
Right? Yeah, we had that happen as well, so it was a smart move. So you’re less than a year out of the academy and you know, you’ve talked a little bit about how you decided to leave and that sort of thing.
Can you describe some of your experiences now that you’re out of the academy? Any challenges you’ve been facing or anything you miss?
Katherine:
Sure. I have to say, now that I’m out of academia, I have no affiliation whatsoever. I didn’t hang on by a thread. I don’t even have library access, Leslie! But I do feel so much lighter. Lighter in terms of my stress levels, lighter in terms of my demeanor. Everything has lifted in some ways.
The stress was really overwhelming. It was coming at the cost of my physical and mental health. And yeah, I don’t regret my decision one bit whatsoever. So it’s been a really interesting experience to have made this really big decision and to transition out of academia. I think one of the challenges has been to navigate the emotional landscape of leaving academia.
I was really focused on the logistics. So for me, I needed to support my graduate students and their milestones in the last few months. I was also trying to just do the work that one needs to do to figure out how this transition is going to work. Like you have to figure out your health insurance and yeah, like just very basic things that anyone leaving a work employment has to do.
And I was trying to launch my business as well and to coordinate that right after the resignation. So I had hired Rhonda Hess of Prosperous Coach and she was wonderful. We worked together on developing a niche and developing the website for Rise With Clarity. And so that was pretty much ready to go early in 2023.
But then my father had a serious thalamic stroke, an acute stroke, and so that put things on the back burner for quite a while. And so I was only able to launch the website right after I resigned. So yeah, as I said earlier, I was really focused on the logistics of the departure and then the launch of the business.
And in the midst of that, I also became a full-time caregiver for my father. So after he was hospitalized for 45 days, then my mother and I became full-time caregivers. and we are still continuing to give him 24-hour care and observation. But that said, the stress and the fatigue that is related to being a caregiver feels so light compared to the stress that I encountered on the tenure track and also as a tenured faculty member in a difficult department.
Yeah, I know that this is the season of my life where I am giving care, helping to keep another human being alive, and this is incredibly meaningful for me to spend time with my family. I’m only able to do the business part-time, but that’s okay. Yeah, so I guess it’s been a really interesting set of transitions for me. Extreme set of transitions in one year.
Leslie: Yeah.
Katherine:
But getting back to the question of what I’ve experienced having left academia, I think the emotional landscape of leaving academia has been challenging. So I have been communicating with other people who have been in this same position who have done the transition.
And this probably relates to the point that you mentioned earlier about the Compassionate Cohort. This is a new peer support group that Dr. Jodi Mader and I created at the end of January 2024 to help create a space for connection, primarily amongst former professors who have left higher ed. And it’s a judgment-free zone.
We want it to be a space where people can connect in real-time and to share their stories, their pivot story, their challenges with the pivots, the loss of their professor identity, the loss of their academic communities. And just to start to build a new community, because it’s very hard to have invested 20 years in an academic community and then to lose it, and then to pivot into a very new industry where you don’t have community yet.
So the idea was really to just create a place for connection.
Leslie:
Yeah, and I think it’s such a needed space, and I was very lucky to attend one recently, and I felt like it was a place where people could be authentically themselves. They didn’t have to hide anything. They didn’t have to be anonymous.
Any post you see online from academics about leaving academia is always anonymous, right? So, having a judgment-free space. to openly explore and then also grieve. Yes, I think is really necessary.
And so, can you talk about how your own, how have you processed your emotions around leaving? Have you felt grief? What have you been sort of feeling about it?
Katherine:
Oh, sure. I have felt grief in many ways in relation to leaving my position. And I think the grief is related a lot to leaving my students, and that’s been the most challenging thing to deal with. I remember in our coaching sessions, Leslie, I had brought this up as a concern, that if I left my academic position, I would essentially lose all connection with my students.
And you had brought up this wonderful coaching prompt of, is that a limiting assumption, Katherine?
Leslie:
Is it true? Is it actually true?
Katherine:
Is it actually true? That was a couple years ago, right? Now, in retrospect, that was a really powerful question and prompt to give to me, because as it turns out, I am still in touch with many of my former students, but in a very different capacity.
So, I’m no longer their advisor on paper, but I still keep in touch with them. You know, since it was more of an advisor-advisee relationship, I can offer advice in that context versus being a coach, but it has been a nice surprise to be able to continue to be in touch with some of my former students and to celebrate some of their wins.
Two of my former undergraduate advisees just yesterday wrote to me saying that they were accepted into the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana. Full ride as doctoral students. They’re a set of twins. So isn’t that amazing? But I certainly grieve the loss of certain privileges that one has as a tenured faculty member, being able to travel easily to do your research and to get paid for it, or to have it paid for rather, and to also just devote time to one’s own research interests.
I miss that. And yeah, I certainly miss the communities that I once was tapped into. And now that I really don’t have a reason to go to my society’s annual conference or annual meeting, I don’t know if I will keep in touch with some of the same people that I’ve known for a very long time. I wonder if I just become somebody that they can’t relate to as somebody who has left.
And that’s an interesting space to occupy, to be that person who’s left.
Leslie:
Yeah, and I’m sure that you are serving as a role model and source of inspiration for a lot of them as well. But I fully relate to what you’re just saying about that loss of connection and community. You know, it’s interesting now that I’ve been out a couple of years, even certain relationships that I was convinced would never end.
I wouldn’t say they’ve ended, but I had assumed that we had a really, really strong foundation that went far beyond the academy, have probably just diminished a lot.
And I realized, like, the academic identity is so thick, it’s so strong, it ties you together with people in ways that I don’t think you can see 100 percent until you leave.
I think that’s right. Yeah, and that has been an interesting thing. So even though there’s many people that I wish them well, we’ve been in each other’s lives for decades now, there’s just a lot less to connect over. And that’s just part of life transformation.
Katherine:
And it’s an okay thing, but it is something that you have to acknowledge and get used to if you are the person who has left.
Leslie:
Yeah. So just to wrap up, let’s get back to advice giving because I think it’s super helpful for folks.
What advice do you have for junior scholars who are trying to create a sustainable life and career in the academy? Especially right now when it seems like everybody’s burnt out, everybody’s overworked, stretched so thin, institutions are asking more and more of them. How can they stay afloat?
Katherine:
What I would say first and foremost is learn how to create and maintain boundaries. You have a wonderful podcast episode on this, which I have referred several clients to. So I would say listen to Leslie’s podcast episode on, is it like Creating Bulletproof Boundaries? I think that’s the title of it. Learn how to say no to things, right?
I think at the very beginning, it’s really flattering when people email you out of the blue. It’s very fascinating, right? Where you’ve never interacted with this person and then they reach out to you and they ask you to do a book review or they ask you to do something and it’s so flattering because nobody’s asked you to do that before. But if that is coming at the cost of working on your own research and your own manuscript, then I think that can be a problem and can accumulate.
So then at the end, you find yourself having said yes to a lot of things that take time away from your own research that you need in order to be successful on the tenure track, right? And then you end up resenting having said yes. So for me, a meaningful metric was if I was starting to feel resentment about potentially accepting an invitation or having said yes.
So you have a great suggestion on your podcast of having a no committee. So if there’s something that you’re stumped on, whether or not you should say yes or no to, run it by your no committee and they can give you some advice on what to do.
I would also say prioritize things outside of your academic position. So this could be a hobby. It could be your family. It could be many things, but try to keep that in the mix of things because I think it can get so overwhelming and so stressful to be on the tenure track. There’s so many different demands on your time, but if you can make the time for things that are meaningful to you, give you joy, give you gratification, then that can give a little bit of balance during the semester.
And the last thing I would say is to really pay attention to your body and your health because there are so many people who are burnt out and their body is telling them that they are exhausted and that they are encountering mental health issues or physical issues. And your body will often give you those signs and signals first, before you have some kind of health crisis.
And just speaking from my own experience, I didn’t pay attention to what my body was telling me until I was in the hospital. So I experienced a health crisis at the end of 2021, and I speak about this in a podcast episode, and that was a real wake-up call for me because I had never been a really kind of sick person.
So when I was in the hospital, in the ICU, and I was still trying to do my work, I was using my iPhone to respond to work emails. And I thought, “something’s wrong here. I need to address this issue. I need to get better. And I wonder if this job is actually making my health worse.” So for me, it took that for me to then be serious about my exit strategies.
Leslie:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And I feel like a lot of folks do have multiple kinds of serious health scares and crises and wake-up calls, and then they still don’t create that objective distance between themselves and their work. Because everything feels urgent.
Everything feels like, “if I don’t do this, all these terrible things are going to happen,” and the truth is, that’s not the case.
They’re going to keep going. If you can’t teach your classes, they’re going to find someone else who can. Right? So, I think it’s always just like, what happens when you put yourself first? That’s a total game-changer for a lot of folks, and very scary for folks, many people, many academics who are very helpful, service-oriented people to consider.
And givers. But I think that barometer of, do I feel some amount of resentment? That’s always a good one. Yeah, that’s a really good one. That was super helpful. So, Katherine, thank you so much for coming on and sharing so much of your wisdom. How can listeners connect with you, especially if they want to hire you as a coach, if they want to listen to the Rise with Clarity podcast, how can they find you?
Katherine:
Well, thank you, Leslie. Thank you so much for having me on.
Anyone who’s interested in Rise With Clarity can check out my website, which is www.risewithclarity.com. And I do have a podcast that I put out roughly every two weeks, about twice a month. And so that’s also called Rise With Clarity. You can find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or iHeartRadio. I also have a LinkedIn presence. So that would be under my full name, which is Katherine Inyoung Lee.
And let’s see, I think that’s probably it, but just a little information about the program. So I primarily work with women of color faculty on the tenure track, and it’s a six-month program that helps them to reclaim time and set priorities, navigate politics and aggressions, speak up and gain recognition, and design a sustainable path forward.
And that last one is a little bit open in the sense that it could address the desires to sort of advance within one’s institution, ramp up in higher ed, or to actually pivot out of academia as well. And I have been finding that there are more and more clients who are inquiring about services related to leaving their tenured faculty positions.
So that is now another area that I am serving.
Leslie:
And then, so can you also let listeners know how they can find out more about the Compassionate Cohort?
Katherine:
Sure. So if you are on LinkedIn, then you can connect with either me or Dr. Jodi Mader on LinkedIn. We will post announcements of our meetings, which are twice a month.
We also have a private LinkedIn group and we have a contact list, which is very useful for people who might be interested in connecting with the members outside of the Zoom meetings. And it also lists what disciplines or areas people have pivoted into. So if you’re interested in doing like an informational interview with somebody in content strategy or learning development and design, then you can contact anybody who’s on the list.
That’s part of the kind of things that we offer as part of the group.
Leslie:
So so helpful! So thanks again, Katherine. People please go find her, www.risewithclarity.com or also on LinkedIn. Listeners, I hope you’ve learned a lot from this just like I have, and you’ll be hearing again from me soon. Take care.
