About

Um – is this the career for which I signed up?

If you signed away the better part of a decade to train to be a knowledge creator, then the chances are good that the mounting demands of your job leave little to no time for you to pursue your career.

Academic and cultural institutions are undergoing such accelerated changes that the careers of scholars, researchers, and creatives are becoming very different from what most of us expected as we sought our graduate and professional training.

Resources have dwindled while administrative and clerical responsibilities are more numerous. Professional mentoring is not as robust as it used to be, and the benchmarks for “success” have become more complex and harder to see.

You may have lost your connection to the source of wonderment and meaning that inspired you to push your talents to their limits and do whatever it took to find answers to the questions that mattered. Maybe you stopped dreaming about your future as a passionate practitioner of your discipline because you internalized a questionable belief that the life of the mind is a thing of the past.

I need to make the best of this until retirement – Don’t I?

Resignation, resentment, and withdrawal are ways that people respond to their career frustrations, but you have many other responses from which to choose.

You can’t change the institutional structure of your workplace or the extent to which society values what you do. But you absolutely can reconnect to the passion and purpose that ignites your talents and fuels your work.

Regaining that passion and purpose takes hard work and creative thinking. You’re good at that. And it takes a skilled and steadfast ally who knows the terrain and how to travel it.

Do you know who will be a great ally? I WILL!

Who would you even talk to about your career concerns?

You have many supporters, to be sure. Family and friends who root for your happiness may not understand the particulars of your career ecosystem.

You probably have colleagues who understand every nuance of your shared environment. Exchanging frustrations, while mutually validating, also can become mutually overwhelming. In the world of highly specialized professions, it is all too easy to share your vulnerabilities with a colleague.

Unfortunately, that same colleague may later serve on a committee responsible for evaluating whether you receive research funding, your work is published or shown, or you receive advancement to tenure or promotion.

Having nowhere to turn can feel isolating. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Coaching is an alliance. Coaches have the knowledge and tools that let you see, explore, discover, envision, and achieve more in less time than locking your door after office hours and asking yourself, “how did I get here?” is likely to do.

I know what it’s like to feel stuck.

But you’re probably not as stuck as you think you are – and you are not alone.

How do I “know what it’s like?” From my experiences from my graduate student days in the 1990s through my promotion to Professor of History. When clients talk to me, it is a conversation with a trusted colleague and a highly skilled coach interested in who they are, what they are experiencing, and what they want.

There are so many excellent coaches. Still, I have over 25 years of experience in the worlds of academe and cultural institutions. I have developed a reputation as a savvy, compassionate guide to people at every career stage. And I am trained in the theories and methods of positive psychology; cognitive-behavioral techniques; appreciative inquiry; and other evidence-based, results-oriented modalities.

Coaching conversations provide space for you to debrief, process, and explore. They also move you into clarity, decision-making, and right-sized action steps toward your goals.

My work as a scholar and a coach is centered on recognizing the uniqueness of each individual’s story and supporting them in “authoring” the following chapters of their lives in their language, on their terms, based on their context and their concerns – not mine.

Some clients have small goals. Others want to transform their working and personal lives, or both. No goal is too big or too small – it is all up to the client.

Diminished fulfillment leads to stagnation.

I have so much gratitude for my academic career. I enjoyed many successes as an endowed professor, teacher, documentary filmmaker, exhibition planner, journal editor, and academic administrator, so I know a lot about bringing good things into one’s career.

I also know that achievements do not necessarily translate to fulfillment and that unfulfilled knowledge creators and visionaries cannot do their best work.

I have seen too many highly motivated, productive colleagues who are respected in their fields fall into a grind that diminished their sense of fulfillment, narrowed their future vision for their career, stifled their motivation and creativity, slowed their productivity, and in some cases delayed promotion of their work or promotion to a higher rank and salary level.

Stagnated earnings exacerbate feelings of frustration, being undervalued, and of an overall “stuckness.”

Finding fulfillment is a major concern for academics.

Feeling unfulfilled in one’s academic career is a topic for conversation that transcends all disciplines, career stages, universities, museums, and cultural institutions of all sizes and types.

In every region of the United States, faculty and academic professionals, graduate students, department chairs, deans, and directors tell different stories with similar themes and emotional overtones. Those stories have significant variations among historically marginalized communities whose experiences are complex and have multiple burdens.

Those feelings of confusion, frustration, and resignation permeate what should have been hotbeds of creativity and innovation. The world cannot afford to squander the potential discoveries, insights, and perspectives of our knowledge creators and visionaries.

As a coach, my mission is to collaborate with clients to create conditions in their lives and institutions so their ideas and talents can thrive. Together, we can rekindle the sparks, restore the joy, and bring the best of what we all have to offer to a world in need of solid information, fresh paradigms, and discoveries that open new horizons of possibility.

You have a mission – So do I. Let’s do this!

Being coached by Heather Fryer is like going on a journey of self-discovery with a trusted guide who is an expert on “discovery” helping you re-connect to your inner “expert” on YOU! A historian at her core, Heather stands on the shoulders of past travelers while reaching for the stars to help illuminate your unique path forward.

With Heather as my coach, I found a devoted listener who knew just the right “how” and “when” to probe deeper, enabling me to expand my awareness of more possibilities than I could have ever imagined on my own. Her abiding trust in my ability to live a life in greater alignment with my values and desires gave me the confidence to stay the course, knowing that I will eventually find my way home.

– Jeannie C.