 Welcome everyone. Thank you for taking time out of your day on Saturday to join us. This is a special live episode of the linguistics career cast podcast. Our show features interviews with linguists as you'll hear today who have made the transition from academia to industry. And it's at all stages of careers and in a wide variety of businesses from tech to marketing to education, and a lot more. Today's show features for linguists who will share insights into their careers. Each of the panelists is going to talk briefly about their work and then we will take questions at the end of the session. For now, everybody's mic except for the panelists is muted, and you can definitely put comments into the chat if you want to. And then when we do have our question and answer session if you'd like to be unmuted you can ask or if you just want to put your question to the chat that's okay too. So to start to introduce our panelists today, we have Aubrey Amstutz who's the product policy analyst for tick tock, one of them. We have Alfonso Sanchez moya, who's a data linguist at Amazon. We have Juan Rosas, who's a language access policy coordinator for the city of Long Beach, and then me. My name is Laurel Sutton. I'm a professional neighbor, and my company's called catch word branding, and I, I name things and I'll talk about that later. When it started Aubrey, please tell us about your journey from academia to industry. Thank you so much for having me Laurel. So my journey I think has been very unique as maybe we hear from a lot of folks have very different journeys. I think I've kind of flip flop between wanting to be an academia and industry several times. But I've always just been really interested in language. I've always thought about in literature and creative writing. I think I, I've always had an interest in how choices and how to express something can change the way that something is received. And I think that that that sort of theme is is has been present in all of my work. So starting, you know, studying poetry or screenwriting something like that you have to be very precise in your word choice, as well as thinking about what you're trying to accomplish with those words. That kind of attention to detail to language is something that linguists really develop and can be relevant in so many areas. So, yeah, I started out with literature and creative writing. I took a minor in French in my bachelor's. And before diving into what I thought would be a creative writing career. I decided to go abroad and teach English and learn or get a little bit better at my French. And so once I was there, I really started to fall in love with the process of language learning and kind of the psychology behind it. But I didn't quite know what I wanted to do with that. And so I came back and I started working in technology. I worked on like project management I was communications analyst so I worked on kind of organizational change. And kind of thinking about language and how it can affect the success of a project, a really large project when you're trying to transform, you know, the day to day kind of lives of a lot of people the way that that is communicated and handled is very sensitive and can really, you know, like I said, have a big kind of effect on the success of the overall project. So that was really interesting. And following that I was also kind of following up on what it would look like to work in language learning. I was still really interested in technology. And so I was thinking about how to, you know, improve the technology that we have for language learning. And that led me to decide to go back to academia and get my masters, since I didn't have the formal language training in my bachelor's I thought I needed to kind of get a little bit more exposure there. And so, and it also helped me kind of decide where I wanted to focus. And I found that that cognitive aspect that cycle that psycholinguistics aspect was really interesting to me. And so yeah, I finished my master's and I learned a lot about I went to my master's in Italy so I decided to go abroad. The program was in English but I was obviously very interested in language learning so I wanted to kind of be be a participant in an experiment in a way myself as well and immerse myself and see how that process worked. And while I was there my my program really exposed me to a lot of kind of logical thinking I had to learn a lot of the philosophical components philosophy of mind, learned a bit of compositional semantics which is like how does meaning come together in a sentence and how can we describe that with like pre calculus and logic formal logic. And all of that seemed very theoretical and difficult, but interesting. I didn't quite understand how it might be applicable outside of academia, and I really kind of felt that I wanted to have a more like a more kind of dispersed influence if that makes sense I was really interested in how, working on one piece of technology can have such a big effect on so many people's lives versus one on one in a classroom so that's something I think everybody has to think about their kind of values and whether they want to work on a small scale in their community kind of have a larger a different sort of impact. And so yeah I kind of started to think about how that those kind of theoretical frameworks that we have like you G for thinking about how languages structure. I liked that in industry it's a little bit more about the application of those theories and how they're useful to accomplish something, rather than kind of arguing about whether or not they're correct, which is obviously has its place and is very important. I found that just knowing the structure of UG and having that kind of shared that shared knowledge to to communicate with other linguists in industry is so helpful, because especially when you're working with technology you're really trying to find a way to describe language that a computer can understand. And those that really bridges that gap it helps you to describe something in, you know, almost mathematical terms. So after I came back from a master's I started working more in AI I worked on a project for Microsoft research where we were thinking about how some of these large language models may have downstream harmful effects on folks in different ways and from different communities. And how you know marginalized communities who maybe haven't had representation in tech might be affected by some of the sort of biases that get automatically brought in when you just bring a bunch of language data since there's lots of bias in the world and in language, those get brought into the system sometimes so we need to make sure that we're, you know, measuring how those effects might play out as well as thinking about mitigation so that kind of led me to thinking about AI and NLP and language models. And then now I work at tiktok as a product policy analyst so I do still get to work a little bit on, or with folks who developed those language models. But I'm thinking a lot kind of broader about how, you know, language choices like I said that word choice right, the word choice of the UX of the small little, you know, copy that you give a user and how that affects whether or not they report a problem or whether, you know, they feel that they get the support they needed if they were running through a difficult time, rather than maybe, you know, punishing someone. Maybe they actually be redirected to some support. So some very small changes in the way that you frame something and those few words that you, you communicate with your user can really change like stigmatization and all kinds of different things and have these really big effects. So that's, so now I'm in a place where I kind of see like many of these different areas coming together and I get to like have a more holistic view of the product overall and how the language functions in it. Yeah, so that's, I think that's maybe an overview for me for now. That's so interesting. Your job is super cool. I am so glad that there's a linguist who's doing that stuff right. Yeah, and we really need them. So this is one of the areas that I think linguists are especially well suited for because as you say it's just one word, but that word can have such incredible far ranging effects and I don't think it's an area in my business anyway that I've seen engineers be good at that, even though they think they're good at it, it's just a different skill set, and one word can make such a lot of difference. So that's just, that's so cool. I agree. Okay, awesome. So let's move along to Alfonso. So can you tell us about your journey from academia and what it is that you're doing right now. Absolutely. Yeah, well, first of all, thank you Laurel, thank you Alex for, you know, taking me to this fascinating opportunity to be able to share with you my own journey. So yeah, pretty much very, I could see the parallels, you know, with Aubrey as well because in my case I was, you know, like I graduated in English, I did, I'm originally from Spain so I just did all my kind of university education there, mostly. And so I graduated in English and I'm someone who's been always very passionate about teaching so for me, I had a very strong kind of educational vocation so just for me, I was like okay, this is this is what I see myself doing for the rest of my life right. So that was my kind of 23 year old person like feeling that's what I wanted to do and I kind of, you know, I'm not far from that yet but still. So I finished my undergraduate, I just continued like doing several, you know, MAs in teaching both Spanish and English and, you know, life. I continued, I decided just to go into a PhD in linguistics, and to me was kind of like a very standard academic career, so I was kind of doing like a nice PhD program like I was, I defended my 50th in Amsterdam it was a joint PhD program very excited I very much enjoyed about pretty much everything about my own program. So I was kind of following the standard traditional linear kind of path that in many cases I think many people in academia are expected to follow right. So things changed a little bit when I decided to come to the US to Boston to do a postdoc. You know, I ended up at a department of government which is not very much you know like a traditional niche for linguists, but the project was actually very interested was was very interesting it was related to, you know, discursive construction around immigration and documented immigrants in the US so it was kind of like a nice place for discourse analyst like myself just getting involved in, because that's also very interesting as Aubrey mentioned this before. My pitch in linguistics was mostly related to critical discourse analysis social linguistics which is not necessarily the areas for you know like strong formal understanding of language which many of us do not necessarily believe in like at least fully right. So yeah, I was I was doing my postdoc and then the pandemic hit so I was I was in the US I was like okay. What should I do like I was kind of things mixing up right so I could clearly see some of the things within academia that was not very happy about like all this cycle about publications or about these power dynamics. The fact that many fellow academics I could feel they actually had to follow their academic lives and actually build the personal lives around that so for me that has never been like a priority so I've always kind of driven myself by personal choices are things that happened in life more of an emotional level, but not necessarily as a, you know, like, let's in academia kind of mold my shape regardless of whatever happens right. So, you know, like I was here in the US. I was like, oh, Boston is definitely not a place in general for discuss analysts. You know, it's not necessarily very strong place when it comes to the type of linguistics that I've been doing so far so you know I was my priority was to stay in Boston I was just, you know, I really wanted to be in this area. So, then I bumped into the first edition of the LCL and it was like, oh, let's see what's going on let's see what else we can do as linguists right. So those were like, fantastic three weeks. Alex Laurel Nancy many more people I met there, and I had the chance to get to know what we can do apart from being an academia. There was life changing experience, like as Aubrey said before, you know, this idea of recognizing patterns being able to actually contribute to the analysis of that very rigorously coming from this methodological framework that we have in academia right so I was just taking those, you know, three weeks intense three weeks of different changes of, you know, what else I can do. And I made some changes in my LinkedIn. And, you know, all of a sudden, I got a call from from Amazon just offering like oh, we've got this position is data linguist it's machine learning artificial intelligence data linguist. Would you like to give it a try. I went all in thinking I was not going to get it like I'm an academic I'm not really someone who can actually go through this immense cycle of interview so why. Why would I get it you know my experience and coding was not very vast. I had worked in online discourse but from a more of a qualitative approach. So it was it was like, oh, I don't I'm just going to try let's see what happens let's put all this into practice but I'm not going to get it. So it was out that I got it. And it was like, okay. So all this tips all this things I learned from the boot camp that we had very applicable I could actually put them to use like straight away. And yeah, I got an offer. That was December 2021. I had some teaching thing to finish my postdoc duties. So I asked them to I had to negotiate start date etc etc. And May 22 I started in my role and very briefly we can operate later if you want, but I'm basically kind of building grammars for Alexa to understand interaction between you know kind of it's NLU understanding. You know, a natural language process and understanding in Spanish which is my first language and pretty much kind of dealing with the interaction between different users and Alexa different requests or different bugs you know things that get like not really communicated across. So yeah, that's that's what I've been doing for the last 10 months in a very interesting kind of setting around the tech industry so you can imagine so one of the few people that so far escaped late for so we don't know if that's going to be continue or not but yeah that's what I've been doing for the last 10 months and I think we can wrap it up there and we can continue afterwards if you're interested. Yeah. Great. Awesome. Thanks. Thank you for going through all that. What a journey you've had. I just have to ask you before we move on to one. Do you work remotely or do you work on site? I actually part of the office is here in Boston. So our team splits Italy and Boston but I actually have the flexibility to work to be you know from the office some days also work from home some other days so yeah it's hybrid kind of thing. Okay, interesting. Okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, and now we have one. So one please tell us about your job which I think is very different in some ways than the two folks that we've heard about but also really similar in some ways to the things. Yeah, so I've been thinking of like how to begin. And for myself I think it's important to start 100 years ago. So 100 years ago my great grandpa first came to the Mexico. It first came to the US from Mexico. 1923 24 around there as a monolingual Spanish speaker. So generations later my generation is mostly English speaking. I would say I'm the only one of my generation so my big siblings and cousins that like confidently speaks and you know can hold the conversation in Spanish. And that was the thing I had to like fight for right I did not grow up speaking even though my right my parents were bilingual my grandparents were bilingual, but just a lot happened from my great grandpa stepping foot in the US. The kind of discrimination, you know that he faced, you know my grandma talks about growing up in here in LA and she went to school and in the 50s elementary school and just kids making fun of her her accent her brown skin, you know her this her that my and through my mom's time. So, you know my mom talks about the doctors prescribing to her not to speak to us my in in in Spanish so as not to confuse us which as we know is not sound linguistic advice right makes absolutely no sense. But you know so so it's really kind of looking at at all of that. And how did I even get into linguistics to begin with was, I mean I started taking Spanish in high school, I got really in just interested in language learning. In general, but there was also like an aspect of like identity. And that was, you know relevant to that is like, who am I like, you know, other people are telling me I'm not Mexican enough, or I, you know, for not speaking Spanish it was really there was a lot of internal kind of like identity issues and as you can imagine right high school So, but but it was just there was a lot kind of going on, and but I got really interested into language learning. I majored in Portuguese at UCLA with a minor in linguistics. And it was, while I was at UCLA that I found I think the one thing in linguistics that I really kind of grabbed on to was like linguistic anthropology, social linguistics right really kind of the examination of just the world that language plays in in society at large. And that to me was always really interesting because I thought, I just remember thinking like there's something here that is useful for like other people to know about, and especially after speaking with a lot of folks who had similar actually. But when college I really did meet a lot of other people who had sort of similar struggles with Spanish, and their self evaluation of like how well they spoke Spanish. And so that was really just kind of a line of inquiry for me I ended up doing my masters in linguistic anthropology here at Cal State Long Beach. And again just really getting into these connections between language identity, racial identity, social justice all of just, it was, it was a really interesting time for me. However, I was planning on doing the PhD like that was my plan the whole time was okay I'm going to do this massive program because I want to get into the PhD because that's what I want to do. Well, I met just through some of my own networks here who worked at the Office of Equity here for the city of Long Beach. And I just really interested just because I felt myself wanting to get involved in like social justice type issues and just issues of equity. And she was telling me oh yeah we do, you know we have a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, language access. And I was like language access please tell me more about that I never it was the first time I heard the word for the term. And she kind of explained to me, you know what language access was that basically that there was a whole role at the time it was somebody who was working part time, but whose job was to make sure that the city was communicating to folks who speak languages other than English that our programs and services that the city offer are available to everybody, not just those who speak English. And so this was really kind of I just want to think it was really interesting and saying like I don't know how I can help you, but I'm pretty sure I can help you I'm a student at the linguistics department. We have a bunch of really smart people there, like I'm so sure that there's something that we can do I don't know what, but that's kind of all it was I was like I want to get you all in the same room so I got my advisors at the time. And so the staff from the Office of Equity, just into the same rooms like what can we do how can we be of service and luckily my mentor was also. She was great but she was like yeah like let's me there's got to be something that we can do. And so what we ended up coming out of that was a project that we we had our students enrolled in a language and social justice class. And just they had a little rubric just examining how language accessible these spaces were they, they spoke with staff, right asked them questions like did they know that this that the city had a language access policy, what the policy was. And then the, I mean the results weren't great right we had students go all over the place and they found that staff didn't know like, and I mean people. And so it was, it was, it was just why it was a different time right there's like, I don't know I guess six years ago at this point. But it was just, there was obviously like a lack there of knowledge about about language access and and you know what people are supposed to do. And like what started off as a kind of a volunteer thing ended up turning into a job because what happened was, we had our, I think across two different classes we had 60 students come up with reports, and I'm like okay well what do we do with this. Right so they hired me to synthesize these reports into something that was the state succinct, and it was included in part of a larger dossier that was being delivered to City Council at the time, just outlining right the need for more resources to be allocated to, to, to language access and I got to go to City Hall and it was it was it was a really a moment in my brain that like clicked where I was like wow like, I'm being paid right now to do things that I thought maybe I needed a PhD to do I'm in the middle of my MA program I haven't even finished it. And, you know they've hired me to, you know, to do this report I'm doing research like I'm doing language things, and I'm being paid for it and I'm being paid pretty well for it. And so it was an interesting moment and I think I kept that in the back of my brain. But I still was going toward the PhD or that was the goal. I got to my, I applied to PhD, but I applied during the pandemic, and it was just a bad time to apply. I didn't get accepted anywhere that I had applied to. And I was really bummed about it and it took a lot for me to kind of change my, my mindset of like, it took a lot and in some ways it didn't because because I had explored some of these other things along the way. I was like I know there's something out there that I can do and I just threw it out into the universe I posted I don't know if it was on LinkedIn or my some social media was like I need a job please like I don't know what to do. And so what happened that the, the Office of Equity was looking for somebody to like another to add a full time staff and because I had done this project within there like well yeah yeah we'd love to have you. And so that's kind of how, I mean that's, that's how it happened and I think, you know, on a day to day basis, I'm, I'm applying my skill set. I was presented at the link com conference and I thought it was really interesting because I hadn't thought about it in this way but like what I do working for the city is a lot of its link com with staff like internally. I have to explain to people like why can't we plop this 100 page health notice into Google translate and call it a day. Right. Why the yes it produces a document and you have something and it looks like Spanish right. But why is that not going to be helpful to the people who are going to need to like read this in Spanish. You know, why can't translations be this 100 page document be done in less than an hour, right things like that I really find myself like explaining how language works and how language doesn't work on a day to day basis, which is another really cool part of like my job and I don't know I'm really enjoying it and I, in some ways just getting back to like this academia. I feel in some ways like I dodged a bullet, because I do see my, my, my friends who are in academia and who are doing PhDs. And honestly, I appreciate because they always they always kept it very real with me like I don't think nobody ever glamorized. I think it'd be hard to glamorize the PhD life and yeah I think my friends kept it very real with me and I think that helped me with like shifting my mindset when I came to that crossroads. And I mean I have a job I have a salary. I'm working in the community that I grew up in. I'm doing language related things I mean all of these things have just kind of aligned that in many ways. Yeah, I didn't I didn't need a PhD to do what I'm doing now and I think it's important for a lot of people, especially scholars of color to know that because I think I just I feel like I'd be miserable for so many reasons right now if I wasn't a PhD program. Yeah. Awesome. That's so cool. I'm so glad you have that job. I'm so glad you personally have that job. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm going to talk a little bit about my own journey. I'm very old so I got my masters a long time ago, and I've been doing my job for 20 plus years now. I, when I was in grad school at Berkeley, I got my masters and then I was on my way to get my PhD. I'm still a BD so I could finish it at any moment if I felt like writing my dissertation but that's never going to happen. I realized that academia was not for me because of all of the reasons that you guys have talked about already, the not being able to kind of choose your personal life, not doing things that were meaningful and also I'm not suited for teaching. And I think that's something that people need to sort out as they go through it like it takes a certain skill set and personality type to be a teacher, and I'm not that person. I fell into my current career kind of by accident because I had a friend who was in the department who worked for a naming company in Berkeley, and she knew that I was getting really burnt out on the program because I'd been in for 10 years and I still didn't have my PhD. And I, they're looking to hire somebody to be like an admin to help with projects to answer phones like do you want to do this and I thought, Well, I could have a job and make money, and do some stuff that's interesting or I could continue to suffer in the PhD program and be really really poor. So I took the job. And it turned out that it was what I wanted to do without knowing that that was what I wanted to do because I didn't know that naming was a job. That there were people who created names for products and services and companies and things like that. And it was a huge learning curve because my colleagues there went to business school one of them went to Stanford and one of them went to Harvard. Other people had degrees in things that were much more closely related from the business side of it. I was the only linguist, but it turned out that having this linguistics background was a really amazing preparation for it. So I'd studied both social linguistics with Robin Lake off, and I'd studied phonetics with John Ohala and those two things kind of came together in naming in this really amazing way. And that's what I've been doing since then, since 1998 basically has just been working on naming and I helped with my colleagues we started our own company so I'm a co founder of catch word and naming and branding generally and even just marketing generally, I think is a perfect place for linguists because it's all about language naming is so niche right it is literally about the word that you choose to name a thing. So branding and marketing, it's all about the effect that the words you choose have on your target audience, however the consumers are. So, knowing stuff about linguistics and how to communicate and how language functions in context, which is what you get from linguistics is just essential, I think. When I started there were very few linguists in naming and now there are a lot more, which I think is fantastic so I'm seeing more and more people with linguistics background do it. It uses all of my skills, I feel. So it's the phonetic stuff like breaking down individual words, you know looking at the morphology and the phonetics of it to see what the prosody is and what the stress patterns are and where the consonant clusters are. And then there's the, the selling skill, which is in some ways a lot like teaching where you have to get up in a room in front of a bunch of executives and explain to them why your names are good choices and what effect each individual name will have and what they can convey. And then there's just a lot of project management stuff which is like managing yourself when you're in graduate school you've got things that are do at different times and schedules and you have to talk to people. So there's a lot of people skills involved in what I do. I personally am not particularly creative. So I don't do a lot of name creation per se. I do some stuff. I'm much better at taxonomies and analytical things. It's just the way my mind works. So that was another skill I developed as a linguist which is like perfect for doing branding things because so much of it, what we would call a naming architecture is when you think of a company and they have 20 different products how do those names all work together. Is there a system when they do numbering systems or alphanumerics for cars or phones or whatever how does that all work to convey meaning it's not arbitrary it has to have a system to it. On the side I learned about things like trademark, which is another huge learning curve but I picked it up and again it speaks to some aspects of linguistics where you have to think, Well, is this name confusingly similar to other names and that's all about the sound and the look of it and what does the logo look like so again applying your linguistic skills there. Another large part of what I do is linguistic analysis which is checking names in languages other than English to make sure that it doesn't mean something bad. So the company isn't going to launch a name that will immediately crash and burn in, you know, India or China or places like that. So that's querying people, and then taking all that data and putting it into some kind of digestible report for people, you know, your standard chief of marketing at a company has an attention span of like two minutes. So, you know, they're busy people they got a lot to do and they don't want you to take half an hour to go through all the fun for you linguistic aspects of why this name works or doesn't. It's like, are we going to use it or not like that's the question you have to do it. But I like it and I think I've gotten pretty good at these things over time. But again it was all my linguistic skills that came into play to make this possible as a career for me. I really was digging what you guys were saying about things that led you to your choices and the parts of academia that that are just not for you. And that's a choice that everybody has to make as as they're going through it. One of the other things for me, getting back to what I was saying about not being the right personality for a teacher is that I discovered my work style is perfect for the job that I do. So some people really like to do long term projects, where you're in a job and maybe you have projects that last for a year or two years and you're kind of working on the same thing over time. I can't do that like I just cannot sustain that kind of focus. So the kind of work that I do is project based and it lasts like four to six weeks. And then I'm on to another project where I get to learn about new things and I'm dealing with new people. And I think for anybody who's looking to get a job. That's something you need to know about yourself, so that you are applying for jobs that match with your work style because if you have a mismatch in work style, it's not going to be fun. It's just something you only find out by getting a job and being like, oh, this isn't really what I want to do and that's okay. But it is a thing you need to learn about yourself and I'm glad that I figured it out early. There were a couple times where as part of my job, I had to fill in for the naming person at a company that we were working for because they were on sabbatical and they said to me, Well, would you come in and be the naming person for three months and I was like, and I hated it. I just hated it because it was having to do the same thing every day for eight hours and I was like, I can't. I just can't. So it was a good learning experience. So I would say to people who are interested in things like naming and branding and marketing. It's a great place for linguists. It really is. And as with most of our other panelists today, your job title is never going to be linguist. My job title has never been linguist. It's always either been project manager or co-founder or name or or something like that. So it's important that you not think so narrowly when you're looking for it. It's much more about the skill set and what the end product is going to be. How is language a part of what this job is? And, you know, I think Alfonso what you were saying before about thinking, oh, I'm not I'm not right for this job. I'm not going to get this job. Like, that's the academic hangover part of it where you think, if I don't meet every requirement and I'm not the perfect person, I'll never get it. Like, that's not the way it works in industry. You just have to have a, you know, a chance. I could be the right person for this job if it looks like it's a good fit. So I'm going to stop talking and I'm going to throw this back to our panelists now. I know some of you have talked a little bit about this, but I am very curious. If there was a specific experience or a point where you just said, I have to get a job that's not an academia. Like, you just knew that it was going to be one or the other and I will say, mine came as I was describing before when this job opportunity came up. It was really clear to me that I could not continue in academia for all of the reasons we've talked about that it was just too difficult. I'd been there for too long. I was burnt out. I didn't have any money. I didn't have any support. Like, I didn't have fellowships. I had financial aid and I knew I was going to be paying those student loans off forever and ever and ever. It was, it was like, you can come work for this job. And at that time, this is 1998 ish that salary from my job was $60,000 a year, which seemed like more money than I'd ever seen in my entire life, coming from a real blue collar background. And I thought, of course, like, it's so obvious I should be taking this job. And that was it. And I never really looked back from it. So I was sitting in my car parked outside after I'd had my interview and thinking, what if I get this job and it was at that moment that I knew that my path was set. So if we could go around, maybe Aubrey, we could start with you again. If there was a point or whether maybe for you it was a more gradual thing. Yeah, I would say that I don't know if I, I think I've reached that point now. But I think that there's still always this little piece of me that's like, maybe I'll go do a two year PhD in Paris. I just, I think I still have that, that kind of little, you know, itch somewhere in me, but I think that the LCL program, as Alfonso was saying, was so, so important. And so I would maybe pinpoint that as, as a time when I was really doing, you know, my soul searching after masters, just, I had also applied to PhDs during the pandemic. So I had that same experience. And, you know, they weren't, there wasn't a lot of money floating around in universities at that time because nobody had been attending. So it was a really tricky time and that so that did kind of force me to, to think about my other options and what I really, and I think the LCL program really helped me think about what I wanted to get out of it. And I had to be kind of honest with myself about whether, you know, I was attracted to this sort of prestige and maybe the glamorized, you know, idea of it, versus what I was really going to get out of it. I still love the idea of working on an in depth project and getting kind of a bit more breadth, but I feel like, for me that stems from not having done a linguistics undergrad. So I still feel like there are these areas that I never really got to explore, like social linguistics I've mainly been learning on the job. And I sometimes I feel like I don't have the foundation there. But I definitely am happy with my choice. And I, I think, based on what I've kind of read and learned about the PhD system here in the US I think it wouldn't be an option for me at this point, because I am a little bit more kind of aware of toxic work environments. And I think at this stage in my life and just my age I don't know if I would be able to accept that kind of unquestioned hierarchy. And I think also I'll recommend here another linguist. The book Coltish is really great. Amanda Montel, so she's written a couple of books and she has a podcast called Sounds Like a Culp, and there's, and they go through different aspects, different things in society so from like Starbucks to, you know, Swifties to the Supreme Court, and they have an episode on academia. And once you kind of like recognize some of that, that those aspects of the kind of Coltih behavior, it's really hard to unsee them. And I don't know if I would be able to kind of unquestioningly accept some of those expectations anymore. That makes sense. Haun, what about you? Was there a moment or was it gradual for you? So for me, I think part of that moment, it was like I think several moments, but really definitely the landing the that consultant role with the Office of Equity while I was doing my master's and at the time as a master's student, right. I don't remember exactly how much it was, but I think it was like 50 something dollars an hour and it was like 100 hours of work right. I mean, that was a lot of money from I was like what the heck like this is crazy like this is a lot of money for like something that will be so easy for me to do. The first moment and then the next moment came in the wake of having been rejected from PhD programs. I actually had somebody reach out to me. Somebody had recommended or had shared my resume with somebody and it was a language access role, but working for the state of Oregon, ultimately it didn't work out. So, but this person just was interested. I mean they reached out to me right and applied they were like oh we're looking for somebody. And the role would pay it was like upwards of $110,000 a year and again that was another one was like wow somebody thinks right now I'm worth more than $100,000 a year I was like that's what like I had. I conceived of that as a possibility right so similar to what you were saying where I just really related to that just like an amount and being like wow like I can be making a lot of money like you know, doing something that is interesting to me and fulfilling. So I think it was a it was a mixture of all of those moments I think that where I was like yeah I don't think I want to, I don't, I had been rejected from the PhD programs right but then also I was like I don't think I even want to reapply or right that I, it was just that I don't want to do a PhD anyways. Yeah. Awesome. Interesting. Yeah, the money thing is so interesting. It's something that we don't talk about enough with numbers attached to it, I think. And as I think everybody knows the situation in academia is not getting better as far as how much you get paid for it. And it still seems amazing to me that you know people are willing to pay me that much money to do things that are like you say that's fun that it's like yeah I know how to do this I don't have to study to do this I just I know it because it's in my brain. Alfonso what about you. Yeah, well, as Aubrey said before, and as I mentioned briefly to me the turning point was the LCL, like, especially when you kind of realize that there are many things that you can do regardless of your paths, the paths you want to take right. And actually, I think it's also important to share that I don't even know like Aubrey mentioned this before as well but I'm not even sure if this is where I'll do till the, you know, end of my life, you know, like I don't know but for me something very key is that getting away and breaking away from this linear kind of path that is suspected in academia once makes you realize that well this might be more cyclical like I may be doing this for I don't know how many years I may go back to academia after all. And as you said perhaps at that point my financial situation is way better and I can just not be dependent on a more precarious academic job especially early stages right. And to me, that was a key moment and also after these months working here, I've learned to create the boundaries that that's not something I had when I was, you know, fully considering myself part of academia, and I may bring that with me back if I go back to academia I've been able to say okay, I need some separation. I need to enjoy my free time without guilt, you know, like, I, this is something very new to me right like this is not something I would experience us when I was in the middle of exactly right. Like, oh, I feel guilty because I'm not producing enough. And as you said, on a basis of a system that we all very well know like okay we need to as academics. Oh, here's this manuscript. Could you just read it for me to be published at a publishing house that will not get you any money for it and it's like contributing to a system that it's not at all fair. This kind of vicious circle that sometimes you, you're part of it, it may work at a point in your life, it may not work and to me, the one of the greatest learning experiences of this state in my life is that, you know, this may not have been in the past. It may work in the future. Even if I'm in the industry for a while and then go back to change careers. It's, it's fine there is just no need to get stuck in this idea of like oh the expectation like, you know, the glamour, the glamorous idea of like doing an career. So it's, to me that has been key. And I think that's one of the most important moments that I kind of started creating when I was in these first edition that we all shared like a year ago. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. So we have some time left. If we go over a little bit, I think that's okay we don't have to cut it off just at the top of the hour. So Alex Johnston who I've neglectfully did not introduce earlier who is the director of the MLC program at Georgetown is very nicely producing for us. So Alex, are there any questions that are coming from the audience. This is the time folks, if you'd like to ask a question. I did have someone ask me something on chat so I can bring that up unless there are other folks who want to talk. I'll read aloud a question that came in from the chat if that's all right. Thank you to all panelists for sharing your personal experiences. I'm wondering about your thoughts on why, when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, language based bias and discrimination seems to get less engagement than for example gender or race related issues. I think that's interesting. I think so, I'll say like as somebody who's working in an office of equity, we are doing, I think we're doing a good job and we could be doing better. But I think just by having like language access there and thinking about, I make it a point right again I really see myself as a linguistic anthropologist working in government. So in our trainings and things of that nature, I'm always referring back to, you know, things that I've learned about linguistic discrimination from a linguistic anthropological sort of standpoint so I weave that in. And I see other folks on our team weaving in also just things related to like gender and and race especially. So I'm not sure if I would say like on a grand scale if if if language related discrimination is getting less attention. But also that I may I may have my own bias there because I'm all about right language and that kind of discrimination as it relates to to language so for me it's all it's consistently part of what I'm doing and what I'm bringing to spaces, but I do see other people bringing it to spaces in different ways. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think about this a lot as well. Maybe not exactly framed in this way but I think people don't know how to quantify, or even sometimes qualify what language based discrimination is and I think that a lot of it stems from the assumption from this kind of prescriptive this assumption that there is one version of American English or that there is one version of English and that there is a correct and an incorrect way to use that version. People just don't often realize that they're, it comes from it's it's related to, you know, all of the systematic issues which is that there is this kind of one quote unquote default way to be, which is very much based on you know we know historically, kind of maybe how white males speak in business, especially all that kind of stuff technology can be kind of developed with those focus groups in mind so I think it's that people just don't even realize that they should be considering these other varieties and dialects, and that they should be kind of mindful about, like I'm always thinking about NLP right and AI systems and things and be mindful about what data and the representation in that data that that needs to happen versus like always maybe shooting for the system that can handle the correct grammatical version of English and thinking that needing to spend time on having a system that can handle other varieties is not important because it shouldn't be how people are communicating anyway everyone should show up at the table and use this version, and that we don't need to really spend time on thinking about how other folks might be engaging with the technology so I think it's just systematic and it's just how it's just how it's kind of built in for all of us that we just think of language as this kind of fixed thing, or that non linguists think of it as this fixed thing and bringing kind of some of those discussions that Juan is I think can just open that up and then it starts to trickle out and people start to realize all the different ways and they see it in their own life they see how they speak with, you know at work versus with their children etc and they start to notice, and then the awareness spreads. I want to put in a quick plug for friend of the pod Suzanne Wertheim, who does this for a living. So she's a PhD linguist, her business called worthwhile consulting and she specifically does language based DEI training for large companies, and she has told me that people don't understand what it is, right when she goes to pitch a company they they know they have a problem but they're not really sure what's going on and then she goes in and then the light bulb goes off and they're like, Oh, this is great. But it's that process with every client that she works with so there's a lot of education that has to be done to address the things like you were saying Aubrey, like people know that there's not something going on but they don't know how to address it. So she has some great stuff on LinkedIn. She also has a newsletter that talks about some of these things so I would encourage people to check out her work. And I think that kind of career is going to become more viable as time goes on for people who have expertise in that area, you know, as a consulting type of of gig. So I think she's done some really amazing work for that. You know, Laura, I do that kind of work too and rather than calling it, you know, diversity equity inclusion work when I pitch it to companies I call it leadership development and when I do the training for corporate clients I let them know that they are engaging in linguistic discrimination without realizing it but we call it communication training. So there are ways to reframe these kinds of issues that can be more palatable or marketable so that you can get clients in different sectors. There are so many questions in the chat now I'll just go to the next one. What are the challenges when switching from academia to private or public sector and vice versa, career wise. Anybody who wants to speak up, go ahead. I don't mind starting if you're okay with that. To me, the something that was very interesting and I think that's been very useful for my entire life and I'll take that with me like pretty much anywhere I go. I think when you're in academia you kind of develop this idea that oh you kind of build up your own persona, the academic persona, someone who's actually in charge of things you get into a room and regardless of the context you're in like okay you go show your conference. And that's fine because you know about what you're talking about so you just you're there and you kind of in control of the situation in many cases like regardless of the stage in academia you're in like you kind of specialize very soon in the topic that you just want to explore. So to me one of the main challenges was just kind of understanding that when you get into a corporate kind of setting you're just a little thing that especially when you arrive right like it's like oh wow there are so many people around me that know so much about so many things this is an exciting opportunity to learn a lot from all that. So this kind of idea of like reconstructing yourself and just rewiring yourself as someone who's actually part of a community part of a second and you just one little step of the entire, you know, kind of mechanism to me that has been very, very useful, especially because that takes off some responsibility, you know, away from you right like this idea like oh, you know like, we're part of a team like this is the team where people. collaborate and share it's just not on me right so that has been a challenge especially and that might be my case different to different panelists here but I kind of developed an academic career for almost 10 years like between PhD postdoc etc so. Getting rid of fat has been one of the greatest challenges and also one of the greatest opportunities learning opportunities for me. So yeah, I would actually say that was been that has been the most obvious for me. I would I would just add I think so similarly I had to rewire I think how I, how I wrote and presented information. I think that was the biggest challenge like my one of my supervisors told me like point by like one you sound like you're writing for academia, and this is for the community. And that was just a moment where I was like oh wow you're right like this is not if I'm going to be about accessibility right that has to be just something else that I'm thinking about is like how am I how am I writing, you know, I think that's just been a really a big thing just even how I speak about things and like the language of of the city of working in a local government it's just such a different language than being in academia and the things that people and there's different buzzwords I think that was kind of like that I've had to not struggle with but it was definitely there was a learning curve for sure. So I think for me that has been just an interesting part of that transition. Really changing yeah how are you communicating information strategically and I think similar to like what you said Laura it's like a lot of people who I speak to don't have they don't care about all of the interesting kind of linguistic things that I am nerding about in the background right they want the outcome what are we going to do like give me that so I think that's been kind of yeah definitely something that I've had to learn. Yeah, for me I think I would just echo what we said earlier about feeling guilty about not working in your free time I think that that's been something that even though I like I said I've kind of switched between industry and and academia and thought about switching back. That hasn't left me I think just learning that that early on to be always thinking about your project and having it be this labor of love or sorry not your project but your subject whatever you're studying and always be you could always be doing more I think I still really struggle with that. at work because, especially when you're working on like a product policy you just you know that it could always be better right like it's really hard to know when to stop. You know that you could always be more aware and have read more articles and have a more informed approach but you also have to learn your physical and mental limit, which is really tough and I think is an ongoing and ongoing battle for everyone probably just learning how to avoid burnout and to carry yourself and find other things that aren't related to language that you're interested in to develop as a separate hobby. Because when all of your hobbies are related to language, you end up thinking about work in different ways all the time, or at least speaking for myself. I have a question that relates to international education international working. Did some of you do grad school in other countries. How does that work when coming back to work in the US. I can take this so I did my master's in Italy. Well obviously as I said before I was interested in kind of immersing myself in a brand new language. I had taken some Spanish in high school and French in college so I thought it'd be really interesting to see how I couldn't how I could manage Italian. And so I was I was interested in that but I also had looked into some professors, but I would say that the main motivation for me was financial the the programs in the United States that I was looking into. I just couldn't afford. And like I said I didn't have the linguistics be a to be able to go directly into a PhD so I know I knew I needed to do a master's first. Yeah I couldn't afford any of the masters I didn't want to go into debt and going abroad. It was incredibly affordable in Europe, at least depending on where you are. As far as coming back I haven't had any issues with my master's I think everybody just, you know, especially an industry that's not like they're going to check what university it was or something I think everyone just thinks it's really interesting and diverse experience that they welcome. And people also mentioned that it doesn't it hasn't meant very surprisingly to me it hasn't meant the end of my kind of involvement with research. I worked, you know, as a contractor on a project at Microsoft Research. And that was working towards a paper that will eventually be published. And I, from that I've had several colleagues who have reached out to me and asked me to work on paper so now I've worked on two papers on the side while I've been, you know, working at on in a paper so it doesn't have to be the end of contributing to research. There's a lot of research happening in industry right now as well, especially in tech. So I just wanted to throw that out there that you don't, you also don't have to have a PhD to to participate in papers which people don't tell you. Right. I was actually going to pile on to that and say I published in papers about names, which you know it's been super fun and I love doing the research and it's, it feels so much better doing the research. You know, when I'm just doing it because I enjoy doing it and because I found an interesting topic and, you know, they're published in peer reviewed journals and everything and it's cool. So yeah, you can always do that. People shouldn't think that going into industry means you never get to do any of that stuff again. Speaking of naming Laurel there's a question for you. If you were getting your start today to go into marketing naming and branding, how would you start internships anything else. Yeah, so generally my advice to people who want to get into this is, you can't just get a job being a neighbor. No one is going to hire you if you don't have any experience and I know that that's a, you know, a tautology, but that's just the way it works. So I advise people who are interested in it to try to find a job working at a large agency there are several really large advertising branding agencies inter brand is one seagull gale is another lip and caught is another these are huge multinational agencies that have offices all over the place and a lot of remote contractors, they have a lot of contractors, and you can probably with the linguistics degree and some evidence of you being able to communicate well, writing, for example, you can get a job sort of low on the totem pole, doing copy or editing or different types of ux stuff. And once you get familiar with that, you can express an interest in doing more branding related stuff and kind of work up into that role. The only exception is if you are really really into naming and you want to hold yourself out as a freelance name or you're going to have to start doing some naming, kind of on your own. So, just coming up with names for existing products or services or companies that are out there. Maybe you start a blog maybe you start a newsletter, and then you can show that to companies to say look, I'm very creative and I can create what's necessary to do this job. It's a lot of work. And honestly, in my experience naming is a talent. You have to work at it and develop your skill but if you don't have that talent, you're not going to be able to do it. It's not enough to be a linguist it's not enough to be an English major it's not enough to be someone who writes creatively. There's just something about naming that some people have it and some people don't. And trying to do it is the way you're going to find out if you can do it. A word about what it is like to do naming. I think people still have an idea that you go and you know you have some beer or some wine and you have a little piece of paper and you're writing down your five best ideas. That's not how naming works naming now because of legal challenges and because there are so many products and everybody is global these days. If you were to work on a naming assignment, you'd have to come up with two to 300 name candidates. You have to work on a naming project and they have to be different. You can't just have 10 names that are like one letter different from each other has to be 200 really good and different names. It's a ton of work. But that is the reality of it. They do have internships at some naming companies. I would always take a paid internship. Don't do work for free. That's another lesson that I learned from academia. Fonzo was talking about that earlier. Don't do work for free. You should get paid for your work volunteering for stuff. Don't do it. Just don't you deserve to get paid all that reviewing papers for free stuff and editing for free and all the rest of it. Generally, don't unless you feel really strongly about it or it's a cause that's close to your heart or something, but people should not be asking you for free labor. You should always get paid. I have one question that was sent to me in chat, which I would like to address really quickly and Alex I would love for you to talk about this a little bit to hold on to scrolling back. If linguistics education focused as much on industry applications as it does on academic applications, which changes would you expect to see, or do you think the current system prepares students enough for both pathways. And I would say, no, it does not absolutely positively it does not. As far as the changes you would expect to see it systematic, it has to be systematic. So Alex, can you talk a little bit about what you guys do at Georgetown because I think you are pretty unique in that way and it's a good model for what other linguistics departments could be adding to their programs. I was invested in my position, a position exists in the Department of Linguistics for career management. And that's what I do I direct master's programs, which is a key educational level in preparing students for jobs outside of academia. And I also direct career management for our department and that means that I teach a full semester credit bearing class on career management and careers for linguists, and we delve into pathways we delve into how to position yourself competitively for these different jobs in business government, nonprofit tech and media. We do the work of learning about these positions through informational interviewing that's your first step through polishing your LinkedIn now as Alfonso did to attract recruiters. We practice every step of resume writing cover letters interviews, networking, and more. And in addition to that, from our amazing professional community of linguists who do work beyond academia I bring those people in to talk to our students just like we're doing now. And have them talk about their steps have taken to make that transition from classwork to career. Beyond that we also have linguistics career mixer that I host, which brings together linguists, such as these on our panel to interact with students both virtually on gather and also physically in person at Georgetown. So there are a lot of ways that we can support students learning about career pathways, it doesn't have to be a high level of investment in terms of funding a physician. It could be somebody who is just gathered some data about where alumni and honoring those different pathways, showing that there are amazing placements of graduate of students who have graduated with BA's master's and doctoral degrees in linguistics, all out there. They're in government at all levels they're in business they're in naming and branding and marketing and working in tech everywhere we're we're kind of out there, all over the place so even just keeping that data and keeping your alumni close is a way to support current students because you can tap that alumni talent and bring them back in to give talks alumni and the rest of our linguistics career community are so willing to give back because we remember how it was so difficult to pave that way for ourselves and we want to help others on that pathway. So I feel very passionately about this and and that's why at Georgetown we do a lot of outreach and we really support our students in finding whatever next steps suit them and whatever career pathways fit them. Awesome. Thank you. I think we should probably wrap it up. There was one last question which I put a reply to in the chat, which is a question always asked, do you have to have a master's or PhD, or can you just get a job with a BA and my answer is, you can get a good job with a BA. There are lots of opportunities for people with bachelor's degrees, and you can always go back later on if you want to, if you feel like it. Sometimes your employer will even pay for it. So I would like to wrap this up we went a little bit over but I think it was worth it for the questions that we had. I want to thank our panelists again for taking the time to be here with us. Thank everybody who stuck around and ask such great questions. And please stay in touch with us at the linguistics career launch you can go to the website and sign up for our mailing list. We're going to continue to have more events and more things like this where we're talking to people. So, thanks again. This was terrific. Thank you so much, everybody. What a great event. I'm so delighted. Have a great rest of your day.