“Karen Kelsky is a sort of macabre ‘Ms. Mentor’ for the 21st century” ~ Matthew Pratt Guterl
Karen Kelsky is the Founder and Executive Officer of The Professor Is In, which since 2011 has provided advice and consulting services on all elements of the academic and post-academic career. Her book The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job (2nd ed. Crown/Random House 2026) is the best selling handbook on the market for academic career advice, and she speaks internationally on topics related to Ph.D. professionalization inside the academy and out.
A former tenured anthropology professor and Department Head, Karen makes it her mission to translate the unspoken cultural norms of academia into legible scripts to level the playing field for marginalized scholars and those without backgrounds of academic privilege. She aims to tell the unvarnished truth about the conditions of academic hiring and the urgency of non-academic careers, demystify academic labor, and encourage everyone to prioritize sustainable mental and financial health. She is at work on a new book, The Professor Is Out: The Essential Guide to Leaving Academia, under contract with Crown/Random House, for publication in 2028. In her free time, she plays with her two bunnies, and repairs vintage rhinestone jewelry to sell in her Ebay shop, Mad Bunny Vintage.
More on Karen…
Karen Kelsky’s Ph.D. is in Cultural Anthropology, with a focus on Japan, from the University of Hawai’i. Her B.A. is from the University of Michigan. Her first book, an academic monograph, Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams, was published in 2001 by Duke University Press.
Karen held her first Academic Job Market Workshop while still a Ph.D. student at the University of Hawai’i, after she was offered her first tenure-track job. It took her two years to land that job, and she wanted to pass on the hard-earned lessons of those years to her fellow graduate students. After leaving her tenured position, she spent two years working in the federally-funded McNair Program at the University of Oregon, where her job was to advise qualified UO undergraduate students to prepare for and succeed in Ph.D. programs. Together these experiences were the catalyst of The Professor Is In, which launched in 2010.
Karen was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city she still loves. She now lives in Eugene, Oregon with her partner Kel Weinhold; they now jointly run the business, with Kel handling the live Interview and Campus Visit Interventions and the Unstuck Productivity Coaching program. When Karen isn’t working, she’s dancing 4-5 days a week, and experimenting with skin care and makeup, and restoring and selling vintage jewelry on Ebay under the shop name Mad Bunny Vintage–her latest passion project.
Karen was the originator of the #MeTooPhD hashtag as an outcome of her Sexual Harassment in the Academy crowdsource survey that went viral in late 2017.
Learn more about Dr. Karen, Kel, the team, and ways we can help, by reading the website, listening to our Professor is In podcast, and checking out some Testimonials. And get in touch—she’s always happy to hear from you.
Contact her at: gettenure@gmail.com.