interview Archives - Being Lazy and Slowing Down

“I am learning to normalize uncertainty”: An interview with Dr. Fatimah Williams on her career and entrepreneurship journey

December 10, 2019October 27, 2020Kimine Mayuzumiacademic life & challenges, productivity & meaning

By Kimine Mayuzumi Fatimah Williams, Ph.D. is the CEO & Founder of Beyond the Tenure Track, a professional development and career-planning firm that prepares graduate students, faculty, and PhDs for leadership roles and high-quality careers. Her professional development guidance has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, Scientific American, and University Affairs. She has been an invited speaker at leading conferences such as the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools and the…

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A Woman of Color Navigating the Academic Culture from Grad School to Faculty Experiences: An Interview with Dr. Cleopatra Abdou – Part II

September 5, 2018December 3, 2025Kimine Mayuzumiacademic life & challenges, productivity & meaning

By Kimine Mayuzumi In Part I, Dr. Cleopatra Abdou described how she practices harmonizing her life as a scholar, a professional, a partner, and a mother. Here, in Part II, she discusses her greatest challenge in harmonizing her life–adjusting to the cultural context of academia from graduate school through the role of faculty member. Kimine: You said (in Part I), while being happy with your harmonized life, the academic culture has been one of the…

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Harmonizing Her Life in Academic Motherhood : An Interview with Dr. Cleopatra Abdou – Part I

August 21, 2018December 3, 2025Kimine Mayuzumiacademic life & challenges, family & parenting, productivity & meaning

By Kimine Mayuzumi Dr. Cleopatra Abdou is an assistant professor of Social Work, Psychology, and Gerontology at University of Southern California. She specializes in the intersection of reproductive health, human flourishing, and how health is transmitted from one generation to the next. Through her website, she communicates with the non-academic world about her passion for women’s health and wellness and provides fertility, pregnancy, and Mommy Lifecycle consulting and programs to women and families nationally…

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Developing your own academic “index”: An interview with Dr. Beronda Montgomery

November 28, 2017December 8, 2025Kimine Mayuzumiacademic life & challenges, productivity & meaning, writing & planning

By Kimine Mayuzumi Dr. Beronda Montgomery is Michigan State University Foundation Professor in the Department of Energy Plant Research Laboratory. Her research focuses on understanding how individuals perceive, respond to, and are impacted by the environments in which they exist. Beronda also pursues the research theme in the context of effective mentoring and leading in research environments. She often shares mentoring and faculty development issues on Twitter. My partner, Riyad, and I, met Beronda last…

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Why slow down even before tenure?: An interview with Dr. Soko Starobin

April 29, 2016December 1, 2025Kimine Mayuzumiacademic life & challenges, self-care & body, slow down & healing

By Kimine Mayuzumi Dr. Soko Starobin is an Associate Professor at Iowa State University. She identifies herself as a woman of color (a native Japanese and thus, non-native English speaker), a mother of two, married to a Russian man, and Jewish. She recently added another layer of identity as a cancer survivor. She finished her last radiation treatment last month and is currently on medical leave. After an inspiring conversation between me and my…

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