 everyone. Welcome to the Linguistics Career Launch panel session called Linguists in Nonprofit Organizations. My name is Alex Johnston. I'm the director of the Master's in Language and Communication program at Georgetown University in the Department of Linguistics. Today we have a panel of three linguists who all have experience working in nonprofit organizations. Our panel will be supported by Marcus Robinson, our program assistant. So I'm just going to take a quick minute to let you know who's with us today so that you can pin their video if you care to. We have with us Dr. Marisa Fond from Georgetown University. Dr. Fond is a sociolinguist who's worked in nonprofits, for-profits, independent consulting, the federal government, the Census Bureau, and now she's back in higher education as an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. So I like to say she's a quadruple threat. She's done, it all has had many comparative experiences in different types of organizations. I'm also happy to welcome Dr. Meg Monti. She is director of performance-based language assessment at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC. Dr. Monti leads test development, assessment research, and test validation projects, and she's particularly interested in technology-based speaking assessment. Dr. Monti holds a dual position at the Center for Applied Linguistics and now at Georgetown University where she's Associate Research Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Director of the Assessment and Evaluation Language Resource Center. And we have Minnie Cordy who is the Senior Director Impact and Innovation at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington, DC, and Minnie is also completing her dissertation in Sociolinguistics at Georgetown University's Department of Linguistics. Writing her dissertation as we speak it's going to be amazing. It is. So I'm so happy to have these three linguists here who'll let us know about what it's like to work at a nonprofit organization and I'd like to just go back to you one by one and ask you to just flesh out your introduction a bit more with some information about the nonprofit where you worked and a bit more about your background in linguistics and your training and what led you to work in that nonprofit organization. So I'll start with Merissa Font and then I'll go to Meg Monti and again to Minnie Cordy. So Merissa, do you mind letting us know just a bit more about your training in linguistics and what your role was in the nonprofit where you worked? Sure, thanks Alex and hello everyone. It's really great to see you today. So my training in linguistics is I have a bachelor's in linguistics in Spanish from Smith College and a master's in PhD in linguistics from Georgetown University and I was able to work in different positions using my linguistics training after earning my bachelor's after earning my master's and after earning my PhD. So really you know there are opportunities no matter what degree you may hold. In terms of nonprofit, the nonprofit where I worked for a number of years was the Frameworks Institute in Washington DC. Frameworks is a social science research nonprofit that aims to do descriptive and then prescriptive research message development and testing to try to shift people's understanding about certain scientific concepts or social issues and at the Frameworks Institute I was a senior researcher and the assistant director of research but in addition to that in my independent consulting I've also worked with other clients who are nonprofits but also for-profit companies as well so as Alex very kindly mentioned I'm able to kind of speak to some of the similarities and contrasts so again great to be with you today. Thank you so much Marissa. Meg I'd like to turn to you please. Yeah hi everyone. Just to echo the how glad I am to be here with you all and as Alex said in my introduction I work at the Center for Applied Linguistics so I'll focus on that aspect of my kind of career story and how that relates to my background in training and I think maybe I'm a little bit different in my kind of trajectory in that I really only ever worked at the Center for Applied Linguistics. I started there as an intern in 2004 and realized that I loved doing this kind of work so I'm an applied linguist and my specialization is in assessment and testing and I started there as an intern when I was a Georgetown master's student not really knowing much about testing and assessment as an area of research and being a little bit skeptical about that but came to really love and enjoy that work and so I ended up getting a doctorate from Georgia State and applied linguistics but really was doing that mostly while working or consulting at Cal so I was getting that training in order to facilitate the work that I wanted to do in the nonprofit sector and just to give you a little bit of background about the Center for Applied Linguistics we're a private not-for-profit research institution located in Washington DC. We've been around for over 60 years and we do work related to promoting linguistic and cultural diversity and what that means just in a really practical sense is that we do grant funded work although that money is a little bit harder to get but we do some US government grants from US Department of Education. We have some defense money because they tend to fund language initiatives and so we do quite a bit of assessment work right if you're familiar with sort of K through 12 education right now right assessment is a really big part of that so we work on assessment of languages English and also world languages for K through 12 and adults. We also do a lot of professional development so we have sort of contracts with states or school districts and we provide professional development but as an organization we're really focused on taking linguistic theory and research and making that practical for people so translating it into assessment tools into classroom practices that are related to our mission. So that's kind of what we do and a little bit about where our funding comes from so in some ways we're a little bit unique I think in the the field like you're not going to go out there and find other centers that employ a lot of linguists right in the same way that we do I don't think but you know there are sort of sectors that we're connected to so if you're sort of interested in this kind of work there's nonprofit and research institutes that would be more in the sort of general education area like American Institute for Research here in DC so there's that kind of spot and they often have linguists there or have folks focusing on language learning as part of their work also sort of the government side of things so Department of Ed Department of Defense NSA those areas and then maybe sort of some like policy type thing tanks would be sort of loosely in our orbit of of organization so just to kind of help you place me and and Cal into into the world of working linguists. Thank you that's a great way to situate yourself in that space and by the way could you remind me about how many employees Cal has is it about 60? We're currently at about 60 yeah we fluctuate anywhere from like a hundred plus down to like you know 50 just really depending on funding over the year so we'll kind of grow a lot if there's a boom in a particular area and then as things shift our staff might get a little smaller so we're we're about 60 right now. Great thank you and Minnie I would love to hear from you about your background in linguistics and what brought you to the Boys and Girls clubs of Greater Washington. Yeah good afternoon good morning good evening depending on where you are I'm about to say good day it's so good to see some familiar faces and some familiar names for those of you who aren't on camera my name is Minnie Porte-Ann and hopefully soon to be doctor so I can join the ranks of Marissa and Meg and Alex and the other doctors on the and hey Nancy I'm so glad you turned your camera on so clearly I've been around the block for a while I actually this is my soon-to-be third degree from Georgetown I came to Georgetown 20 years ago to study politics and government and I did my first government class I was like this is the like the worst thing ever who's going to do this for years and so the next semester I was like oh I'll take a linguistics class I didn't know what a linguistics was right and but it didn't meet on Fridays and it was right next door to my I think it was my English class or my philosophy class I can't remember which one and unbeknownst to me I walked into Ralph Fassel's intro to language class and for the first time as a black woman an African-American language speaker from the south I felt linguistically I felt linguistic pride and I was like wow this you know six foot old white guy and that's and that's how he described himself he's like I'm a tall white guy right and for him to say that to me but also give me this sense of like your linguistic your your linguistic variety is valid you are valid like it really in this space where being being black wasn't you know it was Georgetown's if you know anything about Georgetown it's very not black and so to have that and then also that my southern drawl wasn't broken that my English wasn't bad I really was like I dig this linguistics thing and so then I got my undergrad degree in it and then I got a master's at Georgetown and then I went to teach at Georgetown so I actually left Georgetown and went to Michigan State because I was like oh you know Georgetown's not going to hire him if I stay there so let me leave and I got to work with Geneva Smitherman which was probably one of the best decisions I I'm so glad that I went to Michigan State before she retired and and we've developed a lifelong friendship but then life happened I had a had a daughter who was very very sick and so I actually walked away from academia all together and and so I actually got this job one of my best friends used to be on the board at Boys and Girls Club and he called me he's like I know you're trying to put your I moved back in with my mom he's like I know you're trying to put your life back together and start something new he's like why don't you apply for this job in DC now my job in a small town in Georgia and I was like okay um and I hadn't really worked a full-time job at that point so the money was attractive um being back you know back in the in the city that I you know love while I was in college was attractive so I applied I ended up not getting the original job I applied for but I ended up a couple months later actually getting the supervisor of the job I applied for so uh it kind of worked out and I think a lot of that dealt with my skill set right that I learned in the classroom and learned during my master's program and this kind of ability to do research and this ability to kind of think critically and write and so actually um it wasn't I didn't need to be in the the the space of actually running the the facility I actually started to manage I managed six clubs at that point instead of just managing one and really thinking about the strategic vision of those six sites um and then so that was in 2012 I started working here so I've been in the non-office space um for nearly nine years November will be nine years um and then I was like I gotta go finish this PhD and so I applied uh to Georgetown a year and a half later and I got in um and so now I am finishing uh hopefully very soon a dissertation on uh African Americans in Washington DC looking at language change but also how people talk about change as the city is shifting drastically um and uh and I'll say this last little piece before I turn it back over to Alex but the other thing that's really really interesting about being a linguist in in this space is I didn't come into this space as a linguist I came I'm now bringing linguistics into this space and it's a little different right so in some cases people are hired as linguists for their job I was hired in my job and now I use linguistics in my job um and so I do a lot of framing and positioning and I work with our fundraiser our fundraising department to really talk to and speak to stakeholders um I make sure that uh our management in the organization always has a story that's really that it's relevant to whomever they're speaking to right whether it's so if you're an artist I have a story about arts if you're someone who's really big into technology helping you give me the same story right and we reframe that story to make sure that the funder feels connected to the mission and the work that we do and so I've been doing um that work for about nine years and uh recently I was promoted so now I not only manage data which is what I was doing initially um I manage as well STEM arts um our virtual club uh clubhouse at your house as well as our team services and and how we're really trying to reach out to teams especially through social media um and through uh leadership opportunities so Alex I'll turn it back over to you thank you many and you've brought up so many important points you know first of all the fact that although you weren't brought in and and hired in your first job with the boys and girls club because you were a linguist it really did hinge upon your your communication skillset and how you communicate clearly orally and through writing and that's something that we work on you know in our linguistics training and we kind of normalize or naturalize that as something that oh yeah well just all of us do that but that's something that you can really leverage when you are interviewing and applying for jobs because that is one of the number one things that employers want is is clear and effective communication and then also many like what you say about you know you weren't brought in as a linguist but now you're using linguistics to show and create value for your organization you're sort of making that space where your linguistics skill set shines um that's a really interesting thing that can happen when you're maybe the only linguist in an organization so I'd love to build on that later in our discussion so keep that that theme in mind as we keep talking and that brings me to what I want to ask Marissa and Meg is you know it I think in your organizations your linguistic skill set is what was sought for the organizations you were working in is that right you know how did they make use of your skill set as a linguist could I go to Marissa first and then to Meg that's all right sure so the frameworks institute as well as some of the other research nonprofits I've worked for as an independent consultant um have tended to look for social scientists kind of flexible social scientists so for example at the frameworks institute our research team uh always included people with phd's in sociology anthropology linguistics um political science public health lots of different uh disciplines and we it was really important for us to play off of each other so what disciplinary assumptions would we bring to the questions that we were asking um and how could we each of us kind of grow as researchers through um you know learning from our colleagues so um you know when I think about using my linguistics background in all of the roles that I've had I think that it's important to both bring your uh your knowledge your assumptions your skills and then also be very ready to be flexible and how you um apply them so I've certainly learned new skills in each role that I've had um in addition to building on the on the training that that I've had um through my academic experience so I think that that's something that's really important so was my experience as a linguist sought yes in a sense um but more broadly um my background in kind of social science and my ability to be flexible I think was really important yeah and that's a great way to label yourself or an identity that you can claim for yourself is social scientist because that will be understood by many different audiences so often in job announcements for these types of research based positions that are seeking you know social scientists who are in sociology anthropology or other sometimes we are the other so although it doesn't say linguist in that job announcement and in the description we can jump in there because we can be social scientists we are trained in in methods of social science qualitative and quantitative methods and and that's how we can kind of get an in and you know claim that identity of social science and what we can offer that organization so remember that as a way to find yourself in job announcements that don't specifically mention linguists in many cases please thanks Alex and can I can I just add you know in when I did my um bachelors in linguistics I did cycle linguistics child language acquisition more experimental methods for my graduate work um I focused on discourse analysis and socio linguistics so um I should emphasize that you know the particular area of linguistics in which you have expertise would would be relevant here so if you're a phenologist there might be other types of keywords that you're looking for and the types of jobs that you are attracted to might be different so I just wanted to add that little bit about my particular background as an applied socio linguist thanks so much Meg I'd love to hear more about your career journey with Cal and how you know Cal Center for applied linguistics is an organization that advertises for linguists um and attracts a lot of applied linguists but what's so interesting is that you got your start as an intern which is a common way to start out with the nonprofit organization and then you also kind of developed your expertise in applied linguistics and in assessment as you went through so can you talk more about your your journey with Cal? Sure um I'll talk maybe just a little bit about my own history in terms of gaining more um you know sort of degrees and my sort of professional credentials that ended up being helpful for me and then I can also talk a little bit you know I do a lot of hiring so I can talk about like what are the kinds of things we look for either people who are explicitly from linguistics or maybe just trying to you know frame their own background and think about what skills are helpful and so um you know my work is kind of a combination now I'm a director of a program area so I do content work and I work with content experts but it's just a really good mix of technical skills and work as an applied linguist and also a ton of management work budget funding people management right so I think when I when I think about this question of what do what do I bring as a linguist um you know roles are always really complex and there's a lot of great things that I I've gotten from my linguistic training and then a whole host of other things that I really had to learn on the job or from other sources about um working in a nonprofit working outside of academia um that were very new to me so as I said earlier my story is sort of of being at Cal right and so I've had one really just kind of one organization that's been a part of my story and I ended up going to get a PhD um with the goal of coming back and continuing to work in this sector um continuing to work in K through 12 education and in my specialty of language testing so um doing test development and research about that so I knew that I needed some technical skills and training um that a doctorate would provide and also just um the ability to get grants and to lead as a um a principal investigator and a project director um having that credential of a PhD would help me meet those professional goals and so that is um what I went into my doctorate program wanting out of that um which you know I know is maybe a little bit more rare um for folks but for me that that was the case and I really came to that conclusion because of the experience that I had working um as an intern and then as a research assistant before I went into my doctorate so for me having just a little bit of time and space to work um in a practical setting and to figure out what I liked and to just say yes to things um was really helpful um as I kind of built up where my interests were directed and also I learned um a lot from that experience of what kinds of jobs were possible and um just I tend to talk a lot about funding and money because in my career that's just been really important in terms of what's possible right is who's paying for it um how are they paying for it and what are their priorities so I think that's just one reality of nonprofit work of industry work is you always kind of have to be asking where the money is coming from and that's what I tell people to ask a lot when they're interviewing is um what are your funding sources so um let me just pick up the thread here yes so that that's my background in training and then I'll just talk a little bit about like specific skills that I look for when I'm working with linguists content experts and hiring um I think as an applied linguist the real training that I got that's so useful is in systematic thinking um and just proceduralizing things right and data analysis um the ability to kind of work out those plans and to apply that to problems um and to set up systems that are going to be sustainable and so that's the way that I train people to work on my team and I think what um having a background in testing in particular um really gave me because we're really big on logical frameworks um theoretical models that we then work out in practice and apply in real world situations um and so you know when I'm trying to talk to people about what my skills mean outside of um linguistics I'll talk a lot about those kinds of um like a systematicity structures um that I'm able to put in place in a workplace setting um but just totally agree um with Marissa's point about flexibility um I think that is just an absolute keyword when you're thinking about like transferring these skills as something I look for when I'm hiring is just someone who has that mental flexibility um to take those skills apply them in new ways and work on a team so um I know there's a lot of information I'm happy to follow up on any of that but um that that's my kind of feeling from a hiring perspective I so appreciate that you brought up the list of skills that you're looking for and name them in terms in terms of systematic thinking flexibility data analysis proceduralizing and I think you know making processes explicit and generalizable um like those are all very important things to remember kind of latch on to these are some keywords that you can you can use in an interview with examples of results that you've achieved through those skills and also thanks for for mentioning how you know your work experience helped to guide how you shaped your doctoral program I think that's something important to remember is that sometimes having that experience in the workplace will give you that that focus uh to for your your doctoral research and for your dissertation if you choose to continue um and and give you that sense of what can I do coming out of a doctoral program which is uh something that that mini is going through right now and and mini I know that you know you were mentioning earlier about how you've used your linguistic skill set to I think I think that played a role in your promotion didn't it uh when you were up for your promotion could you tell that story please sure so can you guys hear me think my headphones okay perfect my headphones are going in and out um I think a couple of things I'm gonna back up a little bit before I talk about the promotion um one of the things that like I said I didn't come into this role as a linguist I wasn't hired as a linguist but I think one of the things that has helped is um it's giving me entrant to the community so if you know anything about DC you DC and maybe in other places as well um to be in these spaces you need to be invited into those spaces so um DC is chocolate city um that's shifting but even in these neighborhoods in these communities um you you don't just get access to people um and being here at the Boys and Girls Club gave me access to a lot of people kids and their parents and then staff members who live and work and are natives of DC um and so that has been really really helpful and the one thing I will say about nonprofits and I can't speak to for profits because I've never worked at one but one of the things about nonprofits is the sense of community um and the sense of that you belong to something you're moving the mission forward as opposed to maybe the bottom line and I'm not saying that that's a one way is better than the other they're just different so corporations and for profits really are for profit and not for profits that's not say they don't make money but their focus is really whatever that mission is it's moving the mission so our mission is to you know develop young people and give them you know beyond high school what do they have a plan making sure they're healthy and making sure that they are good people they're just good citizens they you know they vote they don't litter I mean little things like that that we can teach six year olds that we do teach our six year olds um and so I think that the nonprofit space has given me that access to community and um so recently when COVID hit uh um I'll even back let me back up one more time I've also because I didn't come in as a linguist and I came in I was still a student I was doing my doctoral program uh Boys and Girls Clubs became my area of research so when I was in my ethnography class with Dr. Trester um and many of you know her um she was teaching a class on ethnography I actually did an ethnographic observation ethnographic study semester long of my office and looked at women in leadership specifically women of color in leadership and I was able to to do that um and it was it was really interesting to kind of think about this base from the research lens as opposed to just from the actual being an employee lens um and then I was able um my dissertation and my research focuses on stories from African-Americans uh DC natives and um I had access to so many so my colleagues then became my my colleagues then became my interviews right and so moving from me being as the subject matter expert in the data world I came to them and asked them about life and they became the subject matter expert and it created a different level of connectivity and connectedness in our office I think for those who were involved in the research project and the reason that all of that's important is because when COVID hit we had to kind of pit it and we had to think about um our young people are at home they're not connected to us one of the things about Boys and Girls Clubs is that you're in a space you're connected you're building this community and one of the things that we did was create a online presence and how did we so we took our what we do in the club every day um right behind me if you could see there's a gym full of kids running and I think they're doing tug of war right now socially distanced tug of war and it's actually a really cute site um to see but one of the things that we did was because our kids couldn't be in our space we brought we brought them that zoom we brought them the club the club building to zoom and um and I know that sounds really silly but what we did we sent out packages we said hey for this week have these materials and then we let activities we did games we offered tutoring we did STEM experiments um and we really tried to bring that space but because people knew that I had ability to do research because people felt like I was generally technologically savvy um with uh conducting interviews and being able to be in spaces with people and use technology um but also to critically think and and visualize beyond just the moment um and a lot of that is just your research skills that you learn in the classroom um I think what we did is um they're like you know many will be a great candidate to now leave this department this department that's kind of made up of all of these various strands of the organization so not only do I you know in some places you leave one specific thing so you may lead the technology department or you may lead the STEM programming or you may lead you know data so now putting all of these things underneath my umbrella really was because I was able to do qualitative and quantitative uh work um in my in my research um getting you know writing my dissertation and doing my phd program and so those things became under my will house I was able to really help with strategic and um and even tactical thinking because you have to kind of plan when you're when you're researching and and you are um like Meg talks about uh really using these um like really logically thinking and using evaluation um kind of that's how she got into her role you have to do the same thing and because I was in school and people knew that I was being successful there and I had gotten into um that really helped when they were looking for candidates for this role I was I became one of the the front runners for the role because of the work I had already done not only the work I had done at the organization but the work that I was doing on the hilltop at Georgetown um in my doctoral program so just continue to do what you're doing and not necessarily so when you're if you're looking for a job specifically designed for linguists that's great find your keywords in your department your field but also don't limit yourself if you if you know how to do research if you know how to take data interpret it and then spit it out for others in a way that's palatable and manageable and legible for others that's a skill if you understand how to frame something in a way that makes sense for one group of people versus another group of people if you understand how to position a company how to position an idea how to position um um a certain group of people right those things are really really important and I'll give you one last um piece of uh one last piece of the story that I was telling Alex about the other day so one of the things that we're moving away from is this idea that we have to um I can't even think of the word right now but we have to have these sob stories that's what we call them right it's everything has to be a sob story everything has to be a sob story we always want to pull up the heart strings you know that's get people right to write checks and open their pocket books but instead of simply saying you know at-risk youth right because that puts the onus on so this is what I mean by positioning and this is what I mean by framing instead of saying at-risk youth right because that makes it like the young person did something that gives agents it puts the agency and um on the wrong on the wrong element it's it's young people or it's youth with adverse childhood experiences because it's no it's not their fault that they were in this situation but because um as a linguist I was able to kind of come in and help my company think about how we talk about these things how do we how do we um how do we make sure that we are setting our youth up not to be victims but to be empowered and language does that and um and so that's really that's really kind of what prompted my promotion um and it was a very and I'm glad that you know my research and and my ability to make these connections for people are really what gave me the um what really propelled me thank you mini you've you've brought up so many important points that I I want to keep talking about including this distinction between mission driven and profit driven and also your your final example of how you shifted the framing of the messaging to donors to potential donors in the development work that your organization does is is really important that's the place where linguists sociolinguists in particular perhaps can can find a way to add value to an organization is to rethink the metaphors that are being used in the messaging to different audiences and um I I know that uh Marissa has done some work in that area as far as looking at the words that are used in differentiated messaging so if you if you have other examples of that uh Marissa and some of the work that you've done please feel free to to bring that up um because that's that's very important when you're communicating with all of the different stakeholders and potential donor groups yeah I think I would just say that um boys and girls clubs are the organization is really lucky to have many because a lot of organizations will work with an organization like the frameworks institute to do exactly that kind of work so framing messages whether to donors to community members to um uh policymakers is something um that frameworks will do because a lot of organizations don't have that expertise on staff um so yes exactly that's um that's the kind of work that um we would do on our research team so trying to figure out okay well when people hear at-risk youth versus um another um name or descriptor what what do people think about or what does that mean to them what ideologies does that queue for them um and so um you know I think that um as more organizations start to realize the value of this kind of work perhaps more organizations will have that expertise on staff as they do um with many in leadership um and uh you know instead of only um you know working with an outside organization in order to do that work for them uh so I think that that's you know a really important point yeah many is the the in-house uh leader who can provide that uh type of type of work for the organization and I I know we have a question coming in from chat and as we go through please feel free to put all of your questions in the chat I'd like to get back to talking about skills and and what hiring committees and hiring managers are looking for so several presenters are explaining to us that we have relevant skills it's the question in the chat which I think many of us understand I wonder however if they could provide any insight on how hiring managers or committees might be convinced of our value to their organizations and and then many I think may have responses to this question sure I I can kick us off um because I do a good amount of hiring at all different levels um so I think the way that you might think about this is probably really different if you're coming in you know at a sort of what we would call research assistant sort of out of undergraduate versus masters versus doctorate right where you have different levels of technical training um but I think if if you have sort of um maybe if you're looking at the more entry level right um kind of role I think what I look for there even more than particular skill sets are again going back to that idea of flexibility right so it's that idea of making connections between the things that you've done um and the things that I'm looking for which are always you know at a good organization right that knows what they want they're going to have a pretty good job ad um that should lay out the kinds of skills um and role uh role functions that they want this position to fill and so that our ability to make those connections for me is always really important um so that I can see that someone is able to transfer skills um so I look for that um I would say at all levels um I really look for people who are interested and willing to learn right because we all come in with a certain way of doing things and training that's very useful um but at any organization you're going to need to learn a lot and so that kind of um orientation towards learning um and the ability to learn well is something that I think can come out in a good interview um and is important to me personally and then I'll say this one thing that I often find is hard because I do a lot of hiring out of academic context um is that in an academic context you're often trained to work very independently you do your assignment you get a grade um and it kind of ends there and I find that bridging the collaborative work in a nonprofit context can be difficult if you're sort of in that independent mindset at least for the work that I do and so um people who can talk about experiences working collaboratively um and also sort of um what they might bring to a collaborative process how they take feedback um those kinds of things which you can get those experiences academically but I think you're not always sort of like honed in on them or they don't always jump out because they're not valued in the same way in academic context in my own experience um so that sort of sense of how you're going to fit into a team work with others and take feedback from other types of experts or people who have different perspectives um is one of my my very top things great thank you and I think many you were going to jump in on this too and your position is higher and hiring people yeah so unlike mech I don't hire for the most part like no one from academia right like that's not who we're looking for um generally most of our positions are community members there are some like more research focused positions but one of the things that I will tell you as a tip more generally is just use your research skills to research what you're going after so if you're going after a position that um you're going to be focused on I'll talk about the one we just hired for uh two uh a month ago um about teen advocacy understand what that means understand the landscape of the space that you're trying to enter so one of the young ladies she was from Newark and we asked her about DC and she couldn't really tell us about DC I think it's really really important to understand where you're trying to go whether that be geographically whether that be the type of organization or the type of corporation understand where you're like mech said that teen you're trying to fit into but understand not only your job but kind of how that job fits into the organization how that job fits into the city or if it's in a virtual remote space how that job interacts with others because it when people and it comes out very clearly and this sounds really simple but it's not um when people come in and they don't understand what they're applying for and and I don't mean like yeah they know they apply for job 37 52 b right but then understanding what is 37 52 b what is the director of teen programming and advocacy what does that mean what are you going to be doing in what space are you you're in you're in the nation's capital so what does that mean as versus us being in Iowa um and then the other thing is is writing and one of the things is all of us in the academic space we write so one of the things that I would suggest you doing um is most jobs will not require that's not true depending on where you are applying and what level you're applying there will be a writing sample for me I do I do live writing samples so I want people to I don't want you to submit something because I could ask Alex to write it for me or I could ask Marissa to heavily edit this and I don't get a sense of what you've written for me um so one of the things that I asked people to do is come on and I'll give them a prompt and they have to write in they have 60 minutes to write toward this prompt the reason that you want to do that is because then you start to see skills so what I'm going to challenge you is when you apply for a job and you really want that job take give yourself about an hour and look at one of the bullets in the job ad and say hey let me look at bullet three um let me write a prompt that will be something that's relevant to bullet three or bullet four because if you can write about the job then that shows that you understand it and if you if you feel overwhelmed in that process in that 60 minutes then maybe you need to do some more research and so these are very practical things that you can use and I and I know we're not you know because I'm not telling you to use your it's important to use your whatever you learn in your applied class whatever you learn in your social linguistics class whatever you learn in your computational as far as the subject matter but how you come off as a candidate for a position how you relate to how you how you sell yourself in that interview or in that application process a lot of that is beyond it's not simply about understanding you know natural language processing or understanding sociolinguistic theory it's really about understanding how and what hiring managers are looking for that's what I found in my experience so some of these skills that you do every day you're writing every day you're researching make sure you do those things and prepare for the interview just like you wouldn't go into your phonology test without preparing or you wouldn't go into your oral exam without preparing prepare for the job interview the same kind of way and I promise you'll have more success than if you did not have some of that preparation thank you mini and you're doing a brilliant job of foreshadowing some of our other offerings coming later in the linguistics career launch where we will talk about how to prepare for your job interview and make use of exactly these types of strategies that many is telling you about so for example taking those bullet points from the job announcement if you can write a star story about those bullet points that will really help you to answer questions within your interview and again the star story we've covered in resumes we'll talk about it again in interviews it's the situation task action result framework which gives you a really short effective way to present some results and show that you know what the job entails because you're trying to match what you have already accomplished with what the job wants and is asking for yes and how you as many saying in chat how you add value I would love to get into kind of the impetus for putting this panel together and some of my thinking behind you know why we needed to have a linguist and nonprofit organizations panel part of the reason that I wanted you to come today is to talk about some of the pros and cons about working in nonprofit organizations and and let us know about how the structure of those organizations affect your your roles and how the nonprofit functions in the world you know mag is already hinted at look at the funding structure look at where the money comes from and this panel is important because many students who are looking for careers beyond academia and often tell me I want to work with a nonprofit organization because they do have this idea that nonprofit organizations are mission focused will align with their values are ways that students you know and later as as job holders can advance social justice issues so I'd like to get at the differences between the not-for-profit and the for-profit organizational structures and how meaningful that is so I wonder if Marissa if you might have some some thoughts about this sure Alex that's a big question and I'll do my best but folks if you have questions put them in the chat please so you know I think it is so important if you're considering working for an organization be it a nonprofit or for government or for a for-profit organization to look at what the organization is as an individual organization because boys and girls clubs Cal and frameworks institute are very different nonprofits and so again you want to look at the mission statement of the organization but also you might want to look at as has been mentioned this is I agree so important the funding so where does the money come from does it come from individual donations does it come from large philanthropies does it come from government local federal you also might want to look at the organizations 990 which will tell you details about the highest compensated employees at that organization as well as how they're spending their money so for nonprofits that's a resource that's available to you you also might want to look at a resource that might be of interest to you is non-profit quarterly which is a publication that kind of publishes voices in non-profit space and issues that the sector is grappling with and the reason that I think it's so important to look at the organization specifically is that you know having worked for all different types of organizations you know I can tell you that a lot of times it really depends on the size of the organization the management structure the types of partners or clients that the organization might have so I've worked for organizations that are technically for profit that do really interesting and important social research that you might associate more with the mission of a non-profit and I've also worked for nonprofits where you know we employees might have questions about whether or not a particular project actually does further the mission of the organization or whether a funder you know is the type of partner that we'd want to have so again I think that you know as you're looking at organizations I would look at them as individuals using all of these resources as guides because you might find that you don't want to limit yourself you might find that you you know might actually want to work for a private for profit organization because the work that they do really speaks to your your values and your skills and you might find that that's not always true with every non-profit that you encounter and then from there I would say that you will notice some cultural differences in terms of you know how an organization thinks about money and particular you know financial concerns how they're able to hire people how nimble they are in terms of you know the work that they do you know who are they beholden to is really important so again I think that there are important differences you might perceive between non-profits and for profits government on a large scale but in your search I would definitely look at the at each organization and each role as kind of a unique opportunity that you should consider considering. Thank you so much Marissa there is such diversity among structure funding source and mission among non-profits as for for profit organizations and you know as I was telling Marissa earlier remember that she knows remember that the National Rifle Association is a non-profit organization actually they were classified as a 501c4 organization meaning it was a social welfare organization right so that's a tax status you want to look beyond the tax status of whether an organization is is non-profit social welfare or for profit and really get at what where's the money coming from how are they using it how they're organized and many more factors to see if it's a really good fit for you or not both values wise and mission wise Meg I think you might have something to add here about funding and money and organization um sure I think I'll just talk a little bit about just in my experience um how working at a non-profit in terms of um how we get money has shaped my role um and what I like about that um just you know this this may be of interest because I think I do feel really fortunate to be a working linguist um and to have that be an explicit part of my job and I would say the percentage of my day where I'm doing linguistics is often pretty small right um just this could depend on how your own career shapes up but um I discovered from working more on the research side of things that I loved management um and I loved working with people and I also loved the development side of things and this really is not for everyone but you know working in soft money where you have to bring in grants and contracts um in order to facilitate your mission right um so we we're mission driven at Cal and that everything we do is focused on developing linguistic and cultural diversity in the US and the world which is kind of a pretty big mission but our particular projects are um except in a very few cases really um externally funded or um our sort of solid sources of revenue that are sustainable so we are very careful about what we can do um and it shifts right as politics change as priorities change within the US over time the areas that we work in um can change quite a bit um and so for me I find that um the process of going after grants of working with clients and translating what we do into things that might meet their needs solve their problems and issues um I just find that really exciting um but I would say um you know there's some um again depending on a lot of factors right your organization at size right it's um you know there's some sort of lack of security there right in that type of work where um my job next year is depending on how good I'm doing this year on these development aspects um and for other folks at my organization you know this is not a part of their work in the same way that it is for mine um that's just been kind of part of preference and the way that my career has it has evolved but I just personally find that as a really um exciting part of work is writing grant proposals talking with clients and so I think if you have interests along those lines um there are lots of jobs where that's very relevant and can be a big part of nonprofit work um and and I think for everyone what I tell my team is that everything we do is development right because of the quality of our deliverables of our client work is always ensuring our future work um so just just sharing a little bit of sort of the mindset that we have um and how you kind of balance mission and this um you know sort of funding and money aspect of of nonprofit for me great thank you and I I do have a question that came in from the chat and less many you would like to add in something about funding and then I'll go ahead with our our chat I can just briefly so I I agree I think every person um although you have a a formal resource development team right so we have a chief development officer we have you know people who focus on individual giving grants etc etc I think every role is a a development role in the sense of every person you know when I go out and I talk about the data um I'm helping to to establish the need for funds you know everybody has their different role and different roles will be funded differently so some of them are you know based on grants that you receive um some of them are based on individual donors who specifically at that sort of things we're dealing with right now who specifically name the things that they want their money to go to and and if you don't deliver then they can pull their funds right or they don't renew their funds and so these are things that are very much a reality of the nonprofit world not in the same way that you see in for profit right um understanding funding however if you're in a very stable organization generally you won't see well we had to you know let go of 57 people because this contract ran out generally most contracts if you're if you're hiring this substantial amount like that it's very uh it's usually a long term contract it's usually a long term relationship now sometimes things do happen COVID happen life happens you know the the funder dies um and and the people who then deal with the money and deal with their estate and deal you know they decide that they want to go a different direction um if there was an explicit instruction so those things happen but for the most part um make sure that you do understand if if you um if you are in these positions are they funded by a specific time source so we have to like sort of some positions we have we have a a temporary position then you have to state that this is a this is a term of a term funded source so at the end of three years or at the end of two years or contingent upon results in year one so people will be aware so just always look out for those things and then once you are you know in the negotiation stages I wouldn't say asking your first day of your first interview but if you get offered or you're getting further along in the interview process you can ask about the funding for that specific position or for that project because it's it's really it's really important um because you you want to know that if I'm leaving a great job that I know I have security but I want to do something else but in six months there's not going to be this new something else that I'm applying for that may not be the step you want to take um so just you you can't ask those questions um tactfully don't be like hey give me some uh tell me what's the 401 one on this contract that may not be the way to go but there's always ways to talk about money and in ways that your employer or your future potential employer won't feel alarmed that you know all this person's you know gonna come in try to bug the system thanks so much me I have a question that I'm gonna direct first to Meg Monti since you have to hop off at about 10 minutes past the hour we have until about 15 minutes past the hour this is a great question that applies to all of us here uh myself included many of the panelists have transitioned from academia to nonprofit back to academia which is counter to what I've heard about entering academia later which is that it's difficult to re-enter academia after you've left do you think it's easier to make that transition back to academia in DC versus in other cities Meg how would you how are how are you responding to this one yeah well it's it's funny I'm in the middle of a somewhat similar transition um in that you know as I've said from my story my purpose was really always to work in assessment and nonprofit work um and not in an academic context but um just this past month have taken a dual role where I'm um part-time at Cal and part-time at Georgetown as an associate research professor and um would have said you know that transition you know in the past um it doesn't really often go the other way right from industry or nonprofit back to academia um so this was a surprise to me um and very happy one I'm very glad to work at Georgetown um but in my role I am running a grant funded department of ed center within the linguistics department um and I have a non-tenure line one-year contract you know just to just to share the personal details which I don't mind doing so it's not that I have transitioned from a nonprofit into a tenure line position um and I'm not sure really how possible it would be for me to do that um if if I wanted to just given the choices I've made in my career so um I think that um as the academy changes and I'm sure those people here can talk even more about that um in knowledgeable ways but you know some of those boundaries are porous but I think um the particular roles that might be available you know probably are look really different um and I do say just I know this was a DC specific question um I always just think DC is a great place to be a working linguist um it's it's a wonderful city for opportunities and there's lots of roles um particularly government side um for people so I yeah I do think here um we're just really lucky to have a lot of great higher ed institutions and nonprofits government agencies and there's a lot of relationships between those that I think um make for a lot of opportunity just in my own experience so thanks so much Meg and if you need to hop off and prepare for your next meeting it was such a pleasure to have you really grateful to you for sharing your expertise with us today thanks everyone take care thanks so much and you know Marissa I'd like to direct that same question to you because you've done so much transition among different types of organizations and I'd love to hear from you how you manage that and you know was it just that opportunities presented themselves did you seek these how did you figure out your next step and that you know led you to working in a different type of organizational structure sure I mean um I can certainly um empathize with this question uh you know one of the reasons that I decided to do graduate work at Georgetown um and and not at other institutions um it was a tough decision at that time the number of years ago now but one of the reasons that I decided to come to Georgetown was that the Georgetown linguistics department not only has a lot of people in its orbit that do work in a lot of different sectors but the department is friendly to that kind of uh goal that one might have I think for the most part and so I was always keeping an eye on opportunities that would exist outside of academia um and in terms of transitioning back to academia I'll echo what Meg said in that um you know my position at Georgetown is also non-tenure line um I have no intention um you know if I leave Georgetown I have no intention of um going on the academic job market um I would much prefer to continue doing the work that I've been doing all of this time that's why I also um continue to do independent consulting to kind of um keep those muscles strong so to speak um because again I'll go back to that point about flexibility in terms of you know thinking about um you know making connections among all the different types of work that you do so in my classes I often bring in examples from work that I've done outside of academia um I talk about how we can use the skills that we're learning in context outside of the assignments um that I've planned for the class and I've seen my students do this um I can tell you um a class that I taught this spring a student who was working for a non-profit actually as an intern um developed a way to frame onboarding materials differently so the class was metaphor and social change we were talking about how you frame um you know um aspects of what an organization does very much like what Minnie was talking about um in much more detail um and she presented that to the executive director who decided to incorporate it into the onboarding materials and so I think that there are a lot of connections to be made among all these different types of work and if you look for those connections you can only make yourself stronger as a candidate um and so you know I think that would I with with my experience find it difficult to um to go on the job market looking for a tenure track role in linguistics I would find that difficult because a lot of the writing that I've done has been proprietary or my name isn't attached to it you know that is uh one of the features of uh of a lot of this type of work um and that is very different from what academia expects and so yeah I don't want to say that there aren't options there it really just depends on what your goals are and how you want to you know live an academic life um and potentially uh an industry or nonprofit life as well thanks so much Marissa and you know funnily enough uh I came to this position non-tenure line contract based position at Georgetown directly from a non-profit role as a director of communications and chapter relations at a international education association and I I share some of Marissa's thoughts and perspectives here that you know that's a that's the type of position that I well I prefer that position within academia within my current context in a department that is friendly to preparing students for these types of roles and that has existing connections with industry and and connections I'm shaping between the department and industry so you really have to consider what role within academia will support what you want to do and I know that we have just about uh four minutes left for some final words from our remaining panelists if you and for any last questions from the audience feel free to put up your digital hand or write a question in the chat and I do recommend I want to second the suggestion in the chat that if you are interested in certain organizations whether they're nonprofit or for-profit subscribing to their newsletters their email blasts is a great way to learn about what's going on in that organization what their their voice is what their their position is in the space that they occupy that's a great way to learn more and to be able to position yourself well if you ever choose to apply to a position with that organization it's a great way to keep tabs on different organizations that might be of use to you later so thanks marcus for putting our feedback survey in the chat the short name for this session is nonprofits we really appreciate your feedback we always read it as soon as the results come in and I would just like to give many and Marissa like final words of advice for people listening about working with nonprofits finding those jobs interviewing for those jobs anything you'd like to leave us with I think my piece of advice would be um and this is something that I'm dealing with is don't underestimate the power of the skills that you have right you may not have written and published 17 articles and and written seven books and all of that but you have a lot of skills and and really start to list out the things that you've done and and one of the things that I do even in this professional development that I'm working with one of my um I'm kind of informally her mentor I tell her to take your current resume take whatever job you're looking for and create a spreadsheet and if you like okay I have you know I worked at Target I was the customer service manager great now you're looking for a position in which you're going to be dealing with I don't know let's say you're going to be dealing with um an organization and you're going to be focused on you're going to be a director how has dealing with those customer service issues prepared you to be a director and really in your spreadsheet like line up those things and say here's here's thing one that I've already done and here's how it lines to those that I have that that the job is asking for and then what you do is you find out the spaces where you have the gaps and you go back in your experiences to say okay I know this is not on my resume but have I done anything where I have to you know um interpret data and write a report probably probably you've done that right in your stats class or um when you were in your sociolinguistic variation class whatever the space may be so find those spaces and find those opportunities that you can line up what was already on your resume what's on the job ad that you're looking for and then where the gaps are um because you'll be surprised you actually probably have more of those skills than you than you think you do and and that will be my one piece of advice and then or my and my second one is don't pin yourself in a don't pin yourself in a box so just because it doesn't say linguist or it doesn't say you know uh analyst or it doesn't say storyteller there may be other ways that you can incorporate those skills so really try to diversify and expand your reach and and kind of your your magnet like your magnifying glass of positions that you're focused on because you may find something that wasn't necessarily what you were looking for but it has everything that you can do and everything that you're already doing so really make sure not to limit yourself in in the types of jobs that you're interested in you can limit your mission if you're specifically focused on young people or rifles or turtles or whatever it may be right so but look into those positions and then start to look at different opportunities within that within those types of missions thank you many for providing some really concrete strategies that you can use to to align your experiences paid or unpaid with the bullet points in a job announcement that was that was excellent thank you so much and you're you're giving us all hope about you know not not boxing ourselves in Marissa do you have any last words of advice to leave us with please uh certainly all of my advice really echoes minis um both um the advice you just gave now but also earlier in our time together today um I I want to strongly agree with how important it is when you're interested in an organization or looking to apply to a job to do your research on the job in the organization um so for example um I also before I launch into my example I also want to um say how this connects with that question about how do you um you know make your skills relevant to a potential employer the question was in the chat earlier um so for example the frameworks institute makes available um the vast majority of their reports so uh you can go on the website and read reports uh in an issue area of interest to you and so if you read a report and really absorb it make notes on it think about um questions that you might have for an interviewer potentially that demonstrates so if if I'm interviewing you that demonstrates to me that you've said okay I care about what this organization is doing and how they're doing it I am centering them rather than me and so if you read a report you could say something like um oh you know I read that you uh conducted a survey with with this many people at this time um what platforms do you use um I conducted a survey using mechanical Turk that allowed us to have a turnaround time that was um you know particularly fast and allowed us to do a lot of iterative um testing of this uh concept that we were interested in or something like that forgive me I'm making up this example on the fly um but uh you know that that allows you to say something about your own skills but making it relevant to what the organization is already doing so if I just randomly tell you about my dissertation that's not super interesting uh to an organization that's more about you um not about them but there are these ways that you can practice um trying to suss out what the organization uh needs what the position requires and plugging in little concrete examples about things that you've done things that you've tried um knowledge that you have whether about um you know uh particular types of analysis or um tools that you know how to use or experiences that you've had um interpersonally um that could be really really um relevant uh for the person who is um you know evaluating you as a particular you know team member so I would really encourage you to um to kind of make use of the resources that are already available in an organization and that includes following them on linkedin so that if they put out something new you're on it um sometimes you might need to plan ahead because a lot of for-profit organizations um might require that you kind of submit your email to get the report that you want to read so just be aware of that kind of thing um and really as many uh said do that research because um it will make you so much more attractive to the organization no matter your field of linguistics that you've studied so yeah um there is a lot that you can do to really position yourself um as best as you can on those inspiring notes from both Marissa Fawn and Minnie Cordy I just want to thank you so much for joining us in this panel linguists in non-profit organizations thank you