Emily Lammers, Author at PhD Project Stories

You Mean More

The mailings finally got to him. Danny Lanier, public accountant, had reached that point in life and career where he was starting to wonder where true fulfillment might lie. It was then that he began paying closer attention to The PhD Project mailers that seemed to be arriving a couple of times a year with…

A Moment of Clarity

Terry Esper, logistics manager for Hallmark Cards, ended one lengthy corporate conference day with the social ritual of joining a colleague for a post-session beer. He was totally unaware the relaxing moment was about to change his life. “He asked me,” Dr. Esper recalls, “what I would do if I had enough money and didn’t…

Postcard from Nowhere

Graduation Day loomed at the University of Maryland business school, but unfortunately for new MBA Pamela Carter, employment did not. With a brilliant track record in her studies, she had performed admirably in a co-op work engagement with the Federal Reserve Board, and was anticipating a permanent job offer at a respectable salary. She had…

Camel Boy

No one has traveled a longer route to a Ph.D. than Yusuf Nur, born in Somalia into a family of nomadic, impoverished goat and camel tenders. As a young boy, he was expected to grow up and take his place among the elders herding animals. Then, at age five, a difficult life turned even bleaker.…

Catalyst

As a promising doctoral student on the job market, Patricia Martinez was seeking a home at a strong, Hispanic-serving college when she visited informally at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Interviewing with the head of the doctoral program there, she found herself being whisked, to her astonishment, into introductory meetings with the business school dean…

Hard Choice, Easy Decision

Francisco Roman had just earned his Master’s degree in economics, and the future looked bright. But a tough choice loomed ahead for the young financial analyst: on one side of his desk sat two exciting job offers in trans-national companies. Spread out on the desk’s other side was a stack of Roman’s application papers for…

Never Give Up

Taking stock of his life, Frank Bryant had to admit that things could hardly look worse. Earning his MBA during the recession of the early 1990s, he returned to his economically depressed hometown, Buffalo, to a dormant job market. His brand new degree was good for nothing more than a series of low-level temporary jobs.…

Eleventh Hour Stand-in

Most people go to business networking events for the same reason: you never know what might happen. All John Warren hoped to accomplish when he attended a Chicago area networking breakfast was to hand out a few business cards. But what happened to him there turned his life upside down, propelling him from entrepreneurship to…

The Clock Told Him

Cruising down the MBA track at Howard University, Leyland Lucas was startled when a professor pulled him aside and asked if he had ever considered an academic career. “I said, ‘That’s not where I want to be.’” But a seed had been planted, and Lucas eventually found himself in an adjunct teaching spot after he…

The Soul of The PhD Project

Several factors may explain why The PhD Project succeeded despite the doubts of the supposed experts. First was the simple, in hindsight, recognition that the target audience was mid-career business professionals rather than recent graduates. Second was the decision to approach the diversity challenge as a marketing challenge needing a marketing solution. The richness and…