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Pivot #58: How Reinvention Happens: Turning a Career Gap Into a Calling

How sharing what you learned the hard way can become your most powerful work

Author

Maria Keckler, Ph.D.
March 12, 2026 • Reading Time: 3 minutes

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Dear friend, welcome back!

Have you ever felt completely unprepared for something you thought you’d spent years training for?

You earned the degrees and credentials, put in the time, checked all the boxes only to discover that the most important skills for success were never even on the syllabus.

If so, today’s story is for you.

Meet Dr. Gertrude Nonterah

Dr. Gertrude Nonterah is the type of human I love to bump into on LinkedIn. Originally from Ghana, she writes with a clarity, authority, empathy, and generosity that stop you mid‑scroll.

With a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from Lewis Katz Temple University School of Medicine, she leads The Bold PhD Consulting and hosts The Bold PhD Podcast, guiding PhDs through the realities of career pivots and reinvention. Her book, Navigating the P.I.V.O.T., was selected as one of the “Nine Books to Shape Your Science Career” by Nature Magazine.

In her story, you’ll find three universal messages that may bring clarity to your own:

The knowledge you earned the hard way is exactly what someone else needs. Sharing it freely might be your next pivot.

The most valuable skills aren’t always on the syllabus. Learning to translate your worth, build relationships, and advocate for yourself changes everything.

Your voice matters more than your platform. You don’t need permission or perfection to start serving others.

Gertrude’s story didn’t start with confidence and clarity. It started with a layoff, a stack of rejection emails, and a realization that what she needed most is what traditional education didn’t teach her.

The Pivot Point

In 2018, Gertrude was a postdoc at UCSD. When funding ran out, she and her colleagues were laid off. She assumed finding another position would happen quickly. It didn’t.

“Looking for another academic job just proved too difficult. All my applications came back with rejection emails. I just couldn't find another academic job.”

She started looking outside academia, but that wasn’t easy either.

❝

"Very few PhDs actually talked about their career journeys online. So I started to talk about mine, and that decision has blossomed into The Bold PhD."

Gertrude Nonterah, PhD

She had the credentials, the intelligence, and the drive. The problem was that she’d never learned how to communicate her value in a language employers outside academia could understand.

“Figuring out how to communicate my value, how to write a different type of résumé, how to even present myself during interviews… nobody had showed me that all through my educational experience.”

For 18 months, she searched. She freelanced as a science writer. She taught at a community college. And slowly, through trial and error, she began to figure it out.

The breakthrough came when she transformed her academic CV into an industry résumé. That single change opened doors, and in 2020, she landed her first science writing role.

And then came a pivotal question that would become the foundation of The Bold PhD:

“Why don't more people talk about this?”

The Shift

Here’s what she realized: very few PhDs were talking publicly about their struggles with the academic-to-industry transition.

“At the time, I couldn't afford a career coach. And I figured there might be people just like me who were trying to figure things out on their own. So I decided to share everything I learned freely to help as many people as possible.”

She started posting online about her unemployment experience. She talked about what worked and what didn’t. She shared résumé templates, interview strategies, and the “soft skills”—or the structural skills, as I call them—that no one ever taught her.

The response was overwhelming. PhDs who felt isolated and unprepared suddenly had someone speaking their language, someone who understood, someone who was generous with her knowledge.

The Uncommon Move

Gertrude’s pivot was not just about finding another job, but about using her voice differently, and using it to serve others.

Today, she works at BPS Bioscience in San Diego while sharing her insights with others through speaking at universities and sharing resources and insights via her podcast and newsletter.

Gertrude’s story highlights that the uncommon move boils down to lifting others even while you’re still climbing.

In the process, she’s filling a gap, changing the conversation, showing that PhDs don’t need to suffer in silence, and that career transitions don’t have to be lonely.

Your Move

What knowledge are you sitting on that could help someone else?

What would it look like to share that freely and generously, without waiting for permission or perfection?

Who needs to hear that you struggled too, and that you made it through?

Gertrude’s story reminds us that our struggles don’t have to be wasted.

The gap you see, and the thing you wish someone had told you, might just be your calling and most powerful work.

Connect with Gertrude and learn more about her work:

Until next week,

Maria

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