If you are a member of The Pub Club, then this name should be familiar to you.  In one of our first posts on “Digital Identity,” Can You See Me Now?, we reference a great post written on the subject. Looking a little deeper we discovered the author, Katy Meyers, was a Grad student and fellow scientist right here at MSU. In this post, Manage Your Digital Identity, Katy says “…there is one problem I see repeatedly: grad students don’t understand why they should be doing it.” As a Grad student, Katy discovered not only the need to have a Digital Identity, but that a properly managed one could be quite beneficial.  Katy was an original co-creator and co-editor for  “GradHacker,” a blog site that was picked up by InsideHigherEd and still exists today.  Katy also started her own website, “BonesDontLie,” to highlight and track her work as a developing scientist. The time Katy took “away from The Bench” during her Grad school years paid off; for the past five years, she has been a digital consultant, teaching individuals how to leverage online tools to improve their digital presence, develop websites, create web maps, and more. On top of that she is now the Manager of Digital Identity at the George Eastman Museum in NY. To read more about Katy, check out her personal website here.

Katy has agreed to return to MSU (via Skype) to talk with TPC members about her experiences in the Digital World and how we as Grad Students, Postdocs and professional Scientists can benefit from a little time building our “Digital Identities.”

“Our goal will be to open discussion about digital and professional identities, and some of the tools you can use to do this. We’ll discuss some basic principles, strategies for creating an identity that will help in the job market, and how to create an identity that is flexible enough to allow different job paths.” ~ Katy

Diverse Skills targeted: communication, creative thinking, strategic career management and digital identity management skills