Beyond the Tenure Track Brings Career Training to 85,000 PhDs

Beyond the Tenure Track (BTTT), a New Brunswick, NJ-based provider of career education, networking, and training services for graduate students and PhDs, has signed a national licensing agreement for its Options For Success program with Versatile PhD, a professional development community of 85,000 doctoral students across the country. Options for Success was developed by BTTT’s founder Dr. Fatimah Williams, and is designed to help graduate students and
postdoctoral scholars identify viable career paths, understand the link between their degrees and the professional world, and manage the transition from university to professional placement.

“Options for Success is uniquely focused on the career readiness challenges faced by PhDs and post-docs,” says Todd Maurer, President of Versatile PhD, which provides graduate students
with non-academic professional development. “The program’s concise learning structure, engaging video and audio content, and experiential worksheets are unmatched in the PhD marketplace.”

Dr. Williams, whose work has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, Scientific American, and University Affairs, earned a B.A. in Foreign Affairs and African American Studies from University of Virginia in 2002 and a Doctor of Philosophy and Cultural Anthropology degree from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in 2011.

She began BTTT in 2015 as the first provider in the marketplace of e-learning career development content to the graduate student and PhD demographic. Since the company was launched, BTTT has helped thousands of PhD students and recent doctoral graduates get hired by universities, nonprofits, and corporations.

“Research shows that the skills, competencies, and experience that PhDs acquire in graduate programs don’t adequately prepare them for non-academic careers,” says Dr. Williams. “BTTT aims to make these PhDs more relevant to prospective employers by giving them the tools that they need to validate their value in the marketplace.”

In 2018, Dr. Williams discovered the Entrepreneurship Pioneers Initiative (EPI), a program offering of the Rutgers University Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic
Development. Designed exclusively for first generation entrepreneurs, EPI is a nine-month program that offers a blend of business management classes, one-on-one business and financial counseling, peer coaching, mentoring, and networking opportunities to help the participating owners achieve stability and profitability.

“I joined EPI because while I am an expert in professional development and leadership training, I had to learn how to package our expertise into usable resources for graduate students, graduate schools, and the scholarly professional organizations that serve them,” says Dr. Williams, who offers BTTT’s programs directly to consumers, to universities, and to organizations such as Versatile PhD.

“When the opportunity for a collaboration with Versatile PhD came up, I turned to my EPI networks and course instructors for help with intellectual property and product licensing models, pricing strategies, and contract negotiation strategies.”

In 2019, BTTT will launch its Professional Pathways Planner, which will be a new resource for students and postdoctoral scholars. The Planner, which is the first of its kind, is a goal setting and organizational system that will help academics to focus their career plans, plan for degree completion, and improve their priority management skills as they prepare to enter the job
market