Stories from Beyond Academia #8: Pavlina Naydenova
PhD in Pharmacognosy
This substack exists because we’ve both moved into roles beyond academia since finishing our PhDs. Since then, we’ve each changed jobs a few times too. And at every one of these decision points, we’ve wondered whether the grass is really greener on the other side.
Of course, you can’t know what awaits you on the other side - you just make the decision and hope for the best. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it becomes the catalyst for the next change.
In this story from beyond academia, we introduce Dr Pavlina Naydenova. Pavlina has a PhD in Pharmacognosy (we confess, we had to look up the spelling), and a Diploma in Leadership in Management. She has primarily worked in research-adjacent roles since completing her PhD, interfacing between industry and academia. She now works in a project role within the Connectivity Innovation Network, which brings together expertise from academia, industry and government to tackle the challenge of effective and efficient communication between first-responders in emergency situations.
Having made a few job changes herself, Pavlina reflects on the valuable lessons her PhD taught her in working with and through such changes: making the next decision based on the data at hand, how facts and logic can prevail, and how this is particularly the case when woven into a compelling narrative!
(And we’ll add just a pinch of foreshadowing here: Wait for the big reveal in this one, there’s a plot twist ahead!)
Jonathan McGuire: Hi Pavlina, welcome and thanks - we really appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us! We’re hoping we can start with you telling us a bit about your PhD - what field were you in? What were you studying? And what were your findings?
Pavlina Naydenova: Hi Jonathan, it's lovely to meet you as well! I was awarded a PhD in 2015. it was in a very interesting field called pharmacognosy - a lot of people struggle with the name, but in reality it’s one of the oldest branches of science really; it studies drugs from natural origin. I was working with plants and looking into secondary metabolites they actually have a lot of interesting functions in pollination, defence, giving plants scent, colour. I was working with anti-cancer metabolites and I was looking for one particular metabolite that's already been produced into a medicine. But the trouble is, that to make this crude extract plants are harvested from the wild, and these plants are now endangered due to overharvesting. So the question was can we grow the plant (biotechnologically) in little jars, in suspension cultures. We literally dissect this plant, and with the help of special medium, it produces rapidly proliferating cells that can be made into a suspension culture and then grown into large bioreactors. Hopefully by doing this, we produce a lot of what you want.
Now in the course of my research, I noticed these plants were doing something really strange: the production of the metabolite I was after wasn't really stable. And I started looking into the literature for why this might be. And it appears it could be related to epigenetic changes (epigenetics became a hot topic a couple of decades mostly around humans but it happens in plants as well) and we hypothesised that maybe epigenetic changes have something to do with what we’re seeing. And if we understand what happens then maybe we'll be able to get a more predictable amount of this metabolite in the long term, because if we don't know how much you’re going to get, we can't scale it economically and we don't know what the viability and the business case for all that is.
So I did a one year fellowship in Switzerland. It was a beautiful time. I didn't quite finish what I wanted to finish – time is never enough – and when I got back to Bulgaria, I wanted to continue with more work but the Deputy Rector called me and said, “Listen, you've already had four years so time for you to finish, we'll give extra three months for you to wrap this up and then you've got to defend”. I was a bit upset, I think I wanted to carry on for another year. But I did have to just wrap it up.
JM: Many years ago, I briefly worked on a big genetic study in schizophrenia. And around that time, everyone was talking about epigenetics. And I remember thinking “as if the human genome isn't complicated enough, now we've got epigenetics on top of that”. So I can only imagine how complex that must have become in your research.
PN: Yes, and that's when you look at isolated parts. Because what happens in biology research, and the way it’s been for decades, is to pull things apart into the components and study the components. And now we’re kind of trying to do the opposite, and study everything as a system. But I would argue that you do really need to understand the constituents to be able to make sense of the whole. You know, as long as you don't forget that studying just one stretch of DNA won’t necessarily give you the information you need to understand the whole organism!
JM: You got a fairly unceremonious sense of ‘clock's ticking’ at the end of your PhD. Was your plan to stay in academia after that, or did you envision something else?
PN: I don't know exactly when the idea that I may not continue with research after my PhD started sneaking in, but when I was doing my fellowship in Switzerland, there were a lot of people - postdocs, and PhDs – having a lot of conversations around the table. One particular postdoc would come up with a different idea every week - “maybe I can do this after my postdoc” or “maybe I can do something else”. And I didn't know anyone could come up with so many different ideas of what you could possibly do after a postdoc. And at this point of time, I think I started thinking about what I would want to do. I did enrol in a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) about emotional intelligence in leadership. What drew me in was the leadership, leadership sounded interesting, and I felt I could definitely do that. at this point of time, I didn't realise that emotional intelligence and leadership skills are quite tightly connected. I thought leaders just, somehow magically, I don't know, do their thing – they just wake up one day and become amazing leaders.
After my PhD, I came to Australia and I did one year of diploma in leadership and management. And although there were quite a lot of topics around HR and budgeting and work, health and safety, and all other things, the emotional intelligence side of it was there too, it wasn't like a snap decision - I think it was just growing, and I was naturally curious to see what's going to happen, what other skills I could possibly gain outside my PhD. I didn't want to pigeonhole myself, I wanted to develop a broader skill set, and I just didn't know how to do that if I stayed in academia.
…I was naturally curious to see what's going to happen, what other skills I could possibly gain outside my PhD. I didn't want to pigeonhole myself, I wanted to develop a broader skill set, and I just didn't know how to do that if I stayed in academia.
JM: That’s fascinating to hear because I also did a MOOC when I was planning to move out of academia, but I went the other end of the spectrum and devoted some time to developing some very specific technical skills in data analytics. I went looking to develop some additional ‘hard’ skills, whereas you went down the leadership path.
PN: I gained a lot of technical skills from my PhD. But most of the time in my PhD, I just did what I did. My PhD was my own, it was my own topic, I wasn’t part of a large group, we didn’t work on a large project together, it was just my own stuff. I liked collaborating with other people, but that was naturally constrained because it was really my own project. And so I think I was missing a lot in developing soft skills and building that emotional intelligence and understanding.
JM: So you moved out of research, but you stayed in the university sector. Can you tell us a bit about that?
PN: It’s an interesting story, how it came about that I got out of research. When I moved to Australia and started studying, I started looking for part time jobs and one of my tutors in the college told me that one of his previous students had approached him on Facebook looking for ‘someone that can do molecular stuff’. And he sent me that message and I looked at it, I said, “Oh, I can do that. I'll send you my CV”. And I secured an interview. They were looking for a casual part time person to help in the lab, and they said they didn’t really need someone with a PhD for that, but if I was happy to do it. So that's how I entered the workforce in Australia.
After probably six months or so, I started going to the director of the Institute – I told them I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue with the lab work and just asked if there was something else I could do. And I would just go there almost every week. At this point of time, they were branching out and they were starting to work with more industry partners, and I was interested in this type of work. It’s so different from the lab. I was asked to write a report about the production of agar. And I thought obviously I need to know the science, but I could definitely also use my knowledge from doing a Diploma in Business in management and leadership and just spin it differently. So it was partially business case, partially science, and kind of woven together - what's expected to happen and the economic side of it too. This approach was well received, and a few weeks later the person who was managing the project left and I think management looked around and said, “Well, you are pretty much the only one in this lab that has a degree other than science, so how about you give it a go?” And I told them I didn’t know how to do it, but I’d give it a try. And that's how that's how it happened. I guess I was just on a path, and I was trying to make things work. But it takes time to get there.
JM: It can be so hard for people to make that first step from the specific technical research questions that they're focusing on in their studies into that first job. It sounds like you stepped over into the first job on the technical side, but then very quickly leveraged that into other types of work – you got your foot in the door, and then it seemed to just snowball from there.
PN: Yeah, pretty much. But I was also lucky. You can’t downplay the role of luck: just being in the right place at the right moment and probably having the right attitude. That's probably the only thing I contributed to the situation.
JM: I'm sure you were contributing more! But yeah, I had the same thing. I'd done some research in mental health. And I'd done this online course in data analysis. And I wondered if there was anything in that, and then there was a job as a data analyst at the Mental Health Commission. Luck is a real thing!
PN: Yeah, it is. I think I stayed in the university sector, because I still feel incredibly connected to science and research. And I just could not think of being too far removed from it, frankly I thought I’d suffer if I stepped too far away from it. I just liked that intellectual challenge, doing the research, and I felt like I needed to stay in that place to keep on being soaked in that atmosphere. And I stayed, I don't think I ever left really: I was just going from one role to another still within the sector. They were all very different roles, came with their own challenges and skill sets and knowledge that I was able to gain through the years. And I think there was one job in particular that really took me so far away from the research and what was happening in university, and I did not enjoy that. In that role I was working with small-to-medium enterprises, trying to connect them with the University, and I did not feel that was the right thing for me.
JM: That's an important thing to learn as well. At one point in my career, I thought I just wanted to listen to music and write code all day. I didn't want to have all these meetings and interactions with humans. And I got a job where I could listen to music and code all day, and I was miserable! I was very quickly disabused of the notion that that was something that works for my personality. So I think doing the job and realising ‘this isn’t my jam’ is really valuable as well.
PN: Yeah, and sometimes you just can't know in advance. Sometimes things might look a bit 50/50, but even then, I think it’s worth giving it a go. We live once, right, so I think it's important to discover ourselves and where we are heading and who we are as humans, even through misery sometimes, but preferably without!
JM: That's a wonderfully stoic answer there! You mentioned you did the Diploma in management and leadership. Was there anything else you did in preparation to move into non-academic roles?
PN: Another one I did was a course of writing in the sciences from Stanford. It was a lovely course, lovely lady. And she literally said, “can you write more clearly? Why do you need three passages, if you can just say one. Remove all these little things that just do not contribute to the conversation or to the understanding of what's happening.” I took it really close to my heart. And it's been useful since in my writing, not just in research, but outside of research as well. But those are the two things I did: improve my writing and understand a bit more about leadership and management. I think leadership is something that resonates with me quite a lot, and is something I continue to be interested in.
JM: So you briefly touched on this, but you stayed in the university sector until quite recently. It's only been in the past few months that you've moved into an organisation that works as a connector between academia and industry and government. Could you tell us a bit more about that work?
PN: It's amazing, actually. I don't even know how it happened that I found the Connectivity Innovation Network. It's a UTS and Sydney Uni initiative which is supported by New South Wales Telco Authority to look into connectivity issues. It mostly came out of all the disasters that we had - bushfires and floods - and how the first responders in these situations can connect with each other to communicate effectively - the likes of the SES and RFS - and how to communicate with local people too, in these situations of emergency. Asking how can things be improved from a connectivity perspective? It's amazing work the network is doing with a small team of people. It's really fast-paced, and there is so much that needs to be done. We have a lot of industry members, we have university members, and we try to connect them around one specific topic, all about connectivity. We just announced internships for students to be placed with industry partners around challenges like these. A couple of months ago the team announced winners of scholarships on the connectivity issues, all working on challenges that have real-world applications.
JM: Such an interesting problem to tackle, but with this very real-world implication so you can actually see the impact of the work that you're doing. It's maybe a little bit easy to think “we’ve got the internet, so connectivity is a solved problem”. But it's clearly not a solved problem.
PN: No, and the funny thing is, I know nothing about these things. I’m a biologist, what do I know about telecommunications and WiFi and sensitivity and privacy and how any of that works? But it's really interesting being involved in it. Otherwise, I would not have the understanding – I’ve heard from real experts talking about what the challenges are and how they might solve these challenges. It's fascinating just being immersed in yet another completely different area of research, but it's so relevant for all of us.
JM: Absolutely! I clearly remember those terrible bushfires in 2019-2020…
PN: Yes, just before 2020. Just before that other problem.
JM: Where I live was basically surrounded by this ring of fire. So, personally, I would really love for all the first responders to be able to communicate very effectively in that context. So reflecting back, what skills or knowledge or experience do you think you picked up during your PhD that have carried over into the work you've done since?
PN: I did think hard about this to try and provide some useful insights for the audience here. First, I would say writing, just because I had to write a lot. I published 11 articles and two book chapters out of my PhD and all that came with a lot of presentations and conferences. In Switzerland, I had to present a lot on my work, like every three to four months I had to present updates. And we also had a Journal Club which meant going and researching someone else's work and trying to present it. And all of that was incredibly hard! So that together with being able to filter large amounts of data, just to be able to extract the essence of all that. I think these are incredible skills that we were trained for years to do, which I find has been incredibly useful later on. Because most of us, if we get into other different jobs, we tend to skim to really orient ourselves, even if we’re not experts in a particular area, we just build that skill to really quickly think on our feet and in a matter of days or weeks just “get” it. Even now with my job with the Connectivity Innovation Network, I don’t know much about it but you're able to pull out these important bits of information that you need to do your job. It doesn't matter what kind of job you do, that's incredibly useful.
When it comes to knowledge, because my background is in biology, that has probably a bit more relevance in areas around med tech and pharmacy. Outside this it’s difficult to transfer that knowledge into something else but it still makes for interesting conversation with people around the table. I haven't really found any actual application just because my jobs have been a little bit further away from that. I know people who do like translation of research, commercialisation; the technical knowledge definitely translates in those roles.
…I think as PhDs we are quite dedicated and we don't take no for an answer. We always try to find ways to work around the situation.
More broadly, I think as PhDs we are quite dedicated and we don't take no for an answer. We always try to find ways to work around the situation. That resourcefulness, that dedication and ability to be a self-starter, maybe part of it comes with the personality but I also think you get trained in those things. Perhaps innovation as well, because just by virtue of doing research, we innovate.
JM: Absolutely - the resilience it takes to do the PhD, partially because it's just such a long and taxing process, but also because by virtue of the demands of the degree, you have to be doing something innovative. Otherwise, it's not a PhD. You have to be on the edge of knowledge and not really know what's going to happen. And you’ve got to be resilient because that experiment might not work or the theory might be wrong, or whatever it is. So I think it does train you to roll with the punches.
PN: I had one protocol that would last for days. But you tend to learn the protocol, so you only consult your notebook for what you should be doing. But knowing the process and working on improving that process was really helpful for me in roles that had to do with operationalizing strategies. Because you know what the end result is, and the steps you need to take. So that can be really well translated. I didn't realise, but now as we're talking and reflecting back, it's probably good to draw this parallel between what the skill might look like into a different type of job that you may think is completely unrelated, but it actually has a lot of relevance.
JM: And sometimes it's just the same skill that's known by a different name in a different context, as well.
PN: Yes, I was unemployed for six months in 2021-2022, and just the sheer amount of jobs I went for. I went for anything from government to the private sector, I applied for anything under the sun. And I tried to pivot my experience and knowledge to different jobs. And you're right, these different roles talk about the same things but use different terminologies. Some people will talk about industry engagement and other people will talk about stakeholder engagement. They mean the same thing, obviously done differently in the different sectors, but the essence of it is pretty much the same. And in the end, I went back to academia. And so, here we go, the reveal of the evening: I’m going back to research! I was just awarded a postdoctoral grant.
JM: Congratulations!
PN: Thank you! I can't share a lot of details yet; the information is still not public. But it was a competitive grant application, externally funded, one of 10 nationally. And I did not think I would be competitive going back into research - I’m seven years out of research, few publications in that time: I was just wrapping up things after my PhD, so I probably had only two publications after I finished. But I think in the end, there was value in being able to tell my story in a really good way. Storytelling is incredibly important - I didn't know that as a researcher, I always thought that logic and facts prevail, but telling a good story helps a lot.
JM: I'd actually love to talk to you again in a year or two - about what from being outside of academia has been helpful going back in, because I think that's an interesting thing as well. We spoke with some others who have worked in industry and then gone into PhDs a bit later, or done really industry-focused. PhDs, and they’ve said how those transferable skills work in both directions.
PN: I think sometimes people are scared that once you leave research, there's no way to go back. But it's not the case. It's harder, but I found there was a way. I think I was sitting on the decision for a while: I did apply for some positions that were at my level research-wise, but I didn’t get them. But then one morning I woke up thinking “if this doesn’t happen now, it will never happen” and I really just put every single effort, every spare minute in my day, into writing the grant application. And it was worth it!
JM: I'd love to see, in the future, more fluidity between academia and other sectors. Because you're right, there is this narrative that it's a one-way door and once you're out, you're out. But imagine if people could move in and out of academia throughout a career in the same way that people can move between government and private sectors, for instance. I think people with other experiences would bring fresh ideas into the academic sector too.
PN: Absolutely. I think that's probably the way it should go, with room for everything. You won’t replace a long-term career in academia because for some people that's exactly what they want to do and they know that from day one. But yes, I think there should be room for people to move in and out of academia and bring that knowledge and experience to enrich the environment as well.
JM: Totally agree. So I've got one last question for you: what advice would you give to someone who's considering the switch from research into non-research roles?
PN: Do I have the right to give advice, I wonder?
JM: You’ve successfully made the transition in both directions, so I think you're perfectly qualified to give your thoughts!
PN: I would say it's all down to the attitude - willingness to just experiment and give it a go. One thing I did, and this is a lesson learned from the past, I thought that having done a PhD I would apply for jobs and people would think I was fantastic. But it turns out that just having a PhD is not enough to make a case for how fantastic I am. So I guess for anyone who’s trying to do that switch, go with an open mind to what experience you might get. Even the role I'm in now it's admin and project officer, and it’s a lower level than I was in two years ago, but I really enjoy the environment and the team I'm working with. And I'm learning a lot just by being there. My day still has a lot of decision making even in this position, and I have the full trust of my supervisor and that amazing relationship with the team. And even though it's a lower-level position, I went over there with open mind that I will learn a lot from these people and it turned out to be a fantastic thing. So I think that’s my advice in a nutshell: keep an open mind because you never know what you will learn.
JM: What a positive way to wrap the interview up! Thank you so much for sharing your story, and congrats again on the new role!
So often we’ve heard references to, or been asked about whether, the shift from within academia to beyond academia required a conscious decision to walk through a one-way door. Given the importance of a track record in academia – and we’ve talked a bit about track records before – we do think there is an element of truth to that.
But Pavlina is living proof that it’s possible to move out of academia and then move back in again!
And her comments, along with some other stories we’ve heard about the value of skills from industry when taken into a PhD, have gotten us all reflective about what a future academic sector might look like where that door might swing both ways…
If you are a PhD who has moved beyond academia (whether or not you’ve moved back again) and you are interested in sharing your story, please get in touch with us via our LinkedIn pages - Sam, Jonathan – we’d love to hear from you!
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by persons interviewed in this series are solely that of the persons interviewed and do not reflect the views, opinions, or position of Sam, Jonathan or Sequitur Consulting.