AWIS Webinar
How to Successfully Pivot from Academia to Industry
Led by: Hojeong Kim, PhD, ACC
Thursday, October 8, 2026
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET
About the Session
You’ve spent years building deep expertise in science, and now you’re ready to move into industry. But most jobs weren’t written with someone like you in mind, and it can be difficult to tell which ones are actually the right fit. You may look overqualified for one role and underqualified for another, while the value of your academic experience isn’t always immediately recognized.
Most career advice stops at polishing your resume or LinkedIn. But the real shift happens earlier: understanding where your expertise creates value and how to make that value obvious to the people making hiring decisions.
Hojeong Kim, PhD, ACC, made this exact move herself, from a physics postdoc at SLAC to a data science career in tech. She then spent more than a decade leading teams and hiring career changers like you. From both sides of the table, she developed the Inside-Out approach, a method that aligns your expertise with what hiring managers are actually looking for.
In this interactive session, she’ll show you how it works. You’ll walk away with:
- Clarity on the work you actually want, and a wider set of roles to aim for, including ones you hadn’t considered.
- Your Ideal Role Statement, written during the session, so you stop explaining your background and start having it land.
- A plan for the role that isn’t posted, because the one that fits you best often has to be created rather than found.
Who This Is For:
This session is for graduate students, postdocs, researchers, faculty, and other STEM professionals considering or actively pursuing a transition from academia to industry.
Speaker
Hojeong Kim, PhD, ACC, earned her PhD in Physics from UT Austin and did postdoctoral research at McGill University and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. She then pivoted into tech, where she spent over a dozen years building, leading, and hiring data science teams at companies including LinkedIn and Twilio. Today she is the founder of Kim Coaching Group and a certified leadership coach through the International Coaching Federation. She takes a whole-person approach, helping high-achieving professionals get clear on what they truly want and pursue greater scope and responsibility, including those changing industries or functions.
Her passion comes from seeing too many talented people stay in roles that don’t reflect their strengths, or get passed over because no one could see where they fit. She knows the feeling firsthand. She moved from academia to tech during the 2009 financial crisis, and later left a thriving leadership role to start her own business. When she’s not coaching, you’ll find her on a local trail with her dog, or attempting to keep her garden alive with more enthusiasm than skill.
Zoom captioning and a video recording will be available.
This webinar is $29 for non-members. (Not a member? Join AWIS for free webinar registration and access to other great resources!)