Join a community of students who are owning their journey
Purposeful PhD, LLC was founded in 2016 by Dr. Renã AS Robinson and formally established in 2018. We are an educational consulting firm that is working to change the status quo about graduate education in order for graduate students to have a fulfilling and energizing journey along their graduate path. We offer training workshops and transformational speaking to graduate students across disciplines, and also to graduate advisors and departmental program directors. All too often, graduate students suffer emotionally, mentally, and physically through their graduate training towards doctoral degrees which leads to poor mental health, fatigue, anxiety, doubt, lack of self-confidence, imposter syndrome, a sense of failure, and other negative feelings and behaviors. While many students finish their programs despite these issues, as professionals they can carry many of these same sentiments with them on their journey. And unfortunately, especially for careers in STEM, graduate students leave their doctoral programs or do not commit to the STEM workforce upon completion of their degree. Purposeful PhD is here to turn this situation around and help graduate students take ownership of their graduate journey and truly enjoy their lives during what is systematically designed to be a challenging journey.
Meet Renã
Renã AS Robinson is a world-class researcher, chemist, scientist, professor, STEM advocate, and entrepreneur.
Renã has spoken to more than 100 audiences of undergraduate and graduate, postdoctoral and staff scientists, and professors about her scientific research and on topics of diversity in STEM. She has mentored more than 50 students in her own laboratory including undergraduate, graduate students, postdoctoral associates, research and visiting assistant professors and high school students. She has published more than 50 scientific articles, five book chapters, and is the author of “Pursuing your PhD on Purpose”.
While extremely successful in her career Renã vividly remembers the rollercoaster ride of her graduate journey. She experienced many highs in her program that included new experiences she could not have imagined including travel out of the country, presenting her work at conferences, and becoming an expert in training in analytical chemistry and mass spectrometry. However, her highs were often met with many lows that arose from feelings of not belonging, lack of confidence, struggling with the difficulties of research and failures, isolation, being the “only one”, managing real-life issues all while pushing her research agenda forward. Renã began to realize that there was a better way to operate during graduate school near the end of her graduate journey but kept that insight stored away.
Renã has actively mentored undergraduate and graduate students for the past 16years and knows all too well that the same issues she and her peers faced during their graduate journey are shared with many graduate students today. Instead of allowing this unhealthy cycle of graduate distress on the way to a doctoral degree to persist in higher education, Renã is committed to changing the status quo about graduate education and helping graduate students to better navigate a successful graduate journey. Renã is the founder of Purposeful PhD, LLC which is an educational consulting firm that seeks to equip graduate students with the skills necessary to better navigate their graduate journey, transform the graduate experience, and empower graduate students.
Renã has developed workshops for both graduate students and graduate advisors to help towards this goal using the life experiences she and her colleagues have gathered over the last 18 years. Renã has many meritorious awards in her field and was recognized as one of the “brightest minds in chemistry “by Chemical and Engineering News in 2016. She is one of the 2016 Talented Class of 12, received the Pittcon Analytical Chemistry Achievement Award in 2016, the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) Lloyd Ferguson Award and 2018 Presidential Award, and is one of Indiana University’s Top 40 under 40 in 2018, and the Margaret Cunningham Women’s Center Mentoring Award in 2019.
She is a wife and proud mother of two young children and lives in the Nashville, TN area. She is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Vanderbilt University. RASR Laboratory is her research team develop cutting edge proteomics techniques and apply them to understand health disparities in Alzheimer’s disease and conditions affecting the aged, such as sepsis.
She serves as a Board at Large member on NOBCChE’s National Board and is a co-founder and co-advisor to the inaugural Nashville NOBCChE Student and Professional chapter. She serves on the editorial board for several journals in her field, reviews grants with agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, and peer-reviews for many journals in her disciplinary fields.
