0:06

What becomes possible when deep expertise meets a clear need and you choose to build what's been missing? Today, I'm joined by Dr. Julia Barzyk. She's an amazing individual. Julia is a research strategist, former federal program manager, and the founder of Wise Investigator. During her decade at the US Army Research Office, she managed a high impact portfolio in geoscience and civil engineering, leading all phases of the basic research funding process, from setting strategic priorities and shaping multimillion dollar topic calls to evaluating outcomes and influencing the direction of national science investments. Now through Wise Investigator, she equips academic researchers with the strategic insight and skills they need to pursue funding successfully. Her one-on-one programs are built from the inside out, directly shaped by her experience navigating the federal system, and designed to fill a gap that many researchers don't even realize is holding them back.

Caroline: 1:17

This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal. I'm a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The longer we live out of alignment with who we are, what we do best, and why we're here, the more we miss out. And the more the world misses out on what only we can give. The Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth, and you'll hear stories from people who've navigated big career transitions themselves so you can see what it's really like to make bold changes and feel inspired to create your own version of authentic success. One that is aligned, meaningful, and truly yours.

2:21

In this episode, Julia and I talk about her unique path from geology to national research strategy. What it was like shaping scientific direction at a federal level. The moment she saw a clear gap in researcher development and chose to address it, how she built Wise Investigator with clarity, focus, and a commitment to real impact, and why understanding the system from the inside out changes everything. If you've ever seen something missing in your field and felt the nudge to do something about it, you'll appreciate this conversation.

Caroline: 2:59

Welcome, Julia, for the Your Next Success podcast. I'm super excited to have you here and to be able to share more of your story.

Julia Barzyk: 3:07

Thank you. Good to be here.

Caroline: 3:09

I'd love to start with some of your career story, career journey, and then we'll get into what we're doing now, how you help people. And maybe even some listeners on the podcast would love to be able to work with you. But when you were little, what is it that you thought you wanted to do?

Julia Barzyk: 3:26

I had no idea. I was a child who liked many different subjects, often dependent on having a really great teacher or something just catching my attention, whether it was history or math or english or wood shop. These were all things that I enjoyed at various stages of childhood, and I was not a child who had an idea in mind of what she wanted to do. So there was really nothing that was speaking to me when I was a very young person.

Caroline: 4:00

But nothing but yet everything at the same time. So it seems like you had a lot of curiosity and a lot of interest, but you didn't confine yourself. Wood shop, what did you make in wood shop?

Julia Barzyk: 4:11

I really enjoyed making the bowl as well as a cutting board. Yeah, I like hands-on activities and so that did end up playing out. Maybe we'll talk about geology and then lab work. So it was that hands-on aspect that I enjoyed, not being stuck in a chair at a desk, but moving around. I enjoyed that.

Caroline: 4:31

Nice. That's cool. Do you still have your bowl?

Julia Barzyk: 4:35

No, but we have the cutting board.

Caroline: 4:38

That's awesome. I want to see it sometime. So then as you got into high school, did the interest change or still kind of wide open? Really

Julia Barzyk: 4:48

wide open. It wasn't until I was about halfway through college and I decided on a geology major, so it was geology that spoke to me, and it wasn't even because of a love of science, which surprises a lot of people. It was because I loved being outdoors, and why would I want to sit in a classroom copying things off the blackboard or just have my head buried in books when I could be on a camping trip in upstate New York and I could be sitting in a quarry. Examining rock after rock, you know, smashing'em open to look for really cool fossils or going out to the Adirondacks to look for garnet. So that was what drew me to what I ended up pursuing for, you know, a significant amount of my education. It was the love of being outdoors and love of rocks and geology that got me going.

Caroline: 5:41

If part of your class or part of your lab work could be going and smashing open things, who wouldn't love that? So you then got your undergrad in geology and then what was it that made you want to continue on with school?

Julia Barzyk: 5:56

Yeah, so because I only found geology about halfway through college, I was really just kind of getting going with it. So for that reason, I decided to pursue the master's because I'd found something I really enjoyed. I seemed to be pretty good at it. I had encouragement from professors. So it made sense to just continue on those studies. So it was really just getting going at that stage. So I did pursue a Master's.

Caroline: 6:20

Did you know anybody beyond your teachers and professors? Did you know anybody that had a geology related career?

Julia Barzyk: 6:28

This is an interesting answer. It's yes and no. So my mother stayed home with me once I was born. She did not go back to work and she stayed home with me and then my sister for the remainder of her childhood. But my mother had a master's degree in geology.

Caroline: 6:49

That's cool.

Julia Barzyk: 6:50

so there is that connection and she did have a cool rock collection. Actually. It was a lot of fossils that I enjoyed looking at, but she wasn't working and didn't talk much about her education or career. But of course I knew she was a geologist and she had that training. So yeah, that was with me as a girl who grew up in that next generation. In a way, I feel like I was able to carry on with my education and career further than she was. Although there were people of her generation who did carry on their careers, it was more common to to stay home, and that's what she did at that time.

Caroline: 7:30

Did she take you on cool field trips?

Julia Barzyk: 7:32

Not really. I mean, we always enjoyed being in nature, but we didn't do extreme, like you see families out now doing all kinds of maybe overnight camping or, you know, hiking or that kind of stuff. Backpacking, no. Just enjoyed being in our yard. Gardening, being out with animals like dogs and other little critters we might have had. And just enjoying the outdoors, enjoying nature. But it was pretty tame. Yeah, nothing real extreme.

Caroline: 8:04

As you were getting your Master's, what was it that made you say, let me get a PhD. And did the school you got your master's, did it also have a PhD program or'cause you moved, right? Yeah. What happened

Julia Barzyk: 8:16

was I went down to University of Florida to do a master's and my field work was actually in southwest Montana. So that was really cool. A beautiful part of the country, of course. And then I was thinking about getting a job. So what happened was I started to realize that a lot of the jobs that people were getting with the master's in geology. Were not jobs that were particularly appealing to me. So I decided to do another master's in the area of environmental science and policy because I felt like that would prepare me for the workforce much better. I didn't necessarily want to be in like a lab technician type role.'cause going back to my earlier interests, I had lots of other things I was interested in and the policy aspect, I was interested in learning more about that. So I went to another school to do that at University of Chicago, and as part of that program, I had to take geology or geoscience, say coursework, which I was already very familiar with. I mean, there was still a lot more to learn, a lot courses I'd never taken before, et cetera. But, I just thought, oh, that's part of the requirement, but really what I'm doing is getting this policy education and preparing for a job in either the private sector, like environmental consulting or public sector perhaps, but no more grad school. I was thinking this was it, and I just loved the coursework and I had one really good professor there that when I was back in geoscience, I realized this is actually my home, at least for now, and decided to pursue the PhD at that point because there was just too much interesting stuff going on and too many great opportunities to engage with research there. Again, with such excellent faculty and mentorship available that it would've been crazy to not pursue that when I had that opportunity, and I really loved that.

Caroline: 10:12

And then after you got your PhD, then what?

Julia Barzyk: 10:17

Yeah, so that was a move for our family because my husband, who I met in the master's program at Chicago.

Caroline: 10:25

Tell us this, because here's the thing, folks. We have our, what we think we're going to do, and then sometime we meet this amazing person and then we have to consider others.

Julia Barzyk: 10:37

Yeah, well he and I met as grad students at Chicago. He also pursued the PhD in geoscience. He graduated, I believe, one quarter ahead of me. So he was offered a job at the US EPA down here in North Carolina. And I did not want to stay in a cold region if I didn't have to, and at that point we had our son, he was born in a, let's say my last year of grad school, or our last year of grad school. So when Tim got offered that position at EPA down here, I was encouraging him to strongly consider that'cause I liked the idea of moving to North Carolina. So we moved with a, not quite, yeah, about six month old, maybe six.

Caroline: 11:25

Wow. 6 month

Julia Barzyk: 11:25

old baby. And that's when we started our life in North Carolina. And then I was able to get a job at the EPA as well, not working with him, but that was meeting the right person and learning about an opportunity that was open and that was very fortuitous because I needed a job at that point. I had graduated and it was time to get to work. We had a child to support and a life to start. So that was some lab work and was more of an environmental type project, not a geoscience, you know, it's related, right? But it was something that I was grateful for the opportunity to pursue because it opened my experience up to a new organization, working more with chemists working in a federal agency. So all of that was a new experience for me and as we talk, you'll probably see that I am someone who's very high openness to experience, right? So when i'm presented with a new opportunity, even if I don't really understand what it's about fully, if I feel like there's something I can learn here, I see this as a quality environment. I see there could be mentorship. I'm going to generally want to pursue that or maybe, maybe I wouldn't right now at this stage. But in the past, right, for the first half of my career, I

Caroline: 12:52

Yeah. Definitely

Julia Barzyk: 12:53

jump on those opportunities. So the opportunity to do the postdoc at the EPA was like all in. Like, let's go ahead and give this a go and see what it's like because I didn't have the experience to assess it. I hadn't worked in a federal agency before, so I just had to go with it and, and see what it was all about.

Caroline: 13:11

And then so postdoc was a set amount of years of time that you committed to ahead of time, or how did that actually

Julia Barzyk: 13:17

I think it was renewing

Caroline: 13:17

work?

Julia Barzyk: 13:18

year to year, and I ended up being there for about three years, and then I saw the position open at a editing company, which at that point they were calling themselves a startup, but they had dozens of employees. So it wasn't that tiny, but they had grown quickly and it was a remote work even though it was local to the area. And that was at a time when that remote, those remote jobs were not so common. So that was another thing that I jumped on to say, Hey, I've never worked in the private sector. This is a small company. This sounds interesting and it's different than what I've done before. So why don't I give that a go? And that's how I ended up in that role, which I was only in for about 18 months, but like many things in life you learn later that even a short stint like that could provide you very valuable experience because when I, a decade plus later was thinking about starting my own business. Even that short amount of time that I worked at that company gave me very useful perspective on how you might go about starting a business that provides a service to the academic community, workflow, remote, a distributed team, all that kind of stuff. Definitely it put that in my mind, right? For all those years that I had that experience, and I know that that helped me to know, to have the confidence and understanding of how I could assemble something many years later on my own.

Caroline: 14:50

And when was your daughter born?

Julia Barzyk: 14:53

She was born when I was in the position at the EPA.

Caroline: 14:58

Then having this remote position, you didn't have two kids at home, did you?

Julia Barzyk: 15:04

Well, we,

Caroline: 15:05

Or did you?

Julia Barzyk: 15:06

My mother-in-law is

Caroline: 15:06

us that. Yeah. living

Julia Barzyk: 15:08

with us and she was providing

Caroline: 15:10

Okay.

Julia Barzyk: 15:10

a lot of childcare. So even though I was in a remote position, that job was extremely demanding and the workload was very high. So it's one of those examples where people are thinking they're wrong, right? If they're thinking, oh, you're working remotely, you know, it's all comfortable. Some remote positions are, can be the most grueling, if we want to use that word, because you could just be tied to the computer all day. It doesn't really matter that you're home.

Caroline: 15:41

How did that work then? So your mother-in-law was just amazing at keeping your kids occupied and you know, even now I have challenges of, working at home with family around, because I guess I just set myself up to be the person that you go to

Julia Barzyk: 16:00

Yeah. That was

Caroline: 16:01

yeah.

Julia Barzyk: 16:01

And they did go to preschool, so they had activities, so they weren't just home all day. They were in and out from activities, or she would take them to her church and keep them occupied that way. So they were busy. Yeah.

Caroline: 16:17

And so you were able to focus on this extremely demanding job

Julia Barzyk: 16:21

Yes.

Caroline: 16:22

So why did you leave that or tell us the story of leaving that and then what happened?

Julia Barzyk: 16:27

Yeah. Well, I decided to move on from there because I saw that the direction I would've gone in terms of growth or, you know, moving up, wasn't really the kind of position that I was interested in, and I actually found that later in my career as well, because sometimes we are doing well in a role. We have that potential to be promoted or move in some way, and we may even be encouraged to be doing that, but if you can see what those responsibilities are in that next position, and it's not aligning with what you think you want to be doing, then it's maybe not a promotion that you want to take or pursue. So I filled out an application,'cause I started looking for other opportunities just on job boards and all that, like everybody else just starting to browse around and I filled out an application for a position that was as a contractor, so it was with a private company, but it'd be working on site at the US Army Research Office. And I filled that out. I did not understand much about what the job would be, but you can always fill out a web form, upload your resume, and soon after I got a call from the hiring manager, started talking to him about what is this actual job? And it sounded really great. So I pursued that through a series of interviews and ended up in that position and that's where I really grew my career. That was a very important step for me and responsible really for where I am right now with the years I spent first as a contractor and then as a federal employee at the US Army Research Office.

Caroline: 18:13

So you got this opportunity and so what was that job though?

Julia Barzyk: 18:17

Yeah.

Caroline: 18:17

Like?'cause it seems kind of nebulous. Like there's the government, there's money, there's research and what?

Julia Barzyk: 18:23

Each of the three services, meaning Army, Navy, and Air Force, has what's called a research office, and so this is an office of people who are not doing lab work. Of course, Department of Defense has many scientists and engineers that work in labs, but the people at these research offices, including Army Research Office, manage research that's performed at universities. So the government, including Department of Defense and Army, make grants to university faculty because they're running their labs, they're teaching, and they have students and they're doing research and they have to support these students and that research by winning grant money. And these grants are a very important part of higher education overall. This is how research gets done. It's largely funded by the federal government. So I came in bringing my expertise as a geoscientist to manage a portfolio of these research projects in geoscience and that expanded into civil engineering. So I would learn what are the Army challenges related to things like, for example, ground vehicle mobility. How are vehicles moving across the terrain? And how are the environmental conditions in an urban environment affecting soldiers there or drones? Things like that. So there's many different needs that the Army would have related to geo and environmental problems. So I would go around to different sites, Army labs and learn what are their challenges, what are they working on? And then I would also travel around to universities and learn what's the cutting edge research that our faculty are working on in the university. And then I'd talk to them about the opportunities to get funding from the government. Of course, faculty are always very interested to hear about that because they're under pressure to get these funds. So I served as a bit of a matchmaker to find the challenges that Army was facing, find out where that new cutting edge research is happening, and then managing the process of talking to those researchers about their ideas, encouraging them to submit a proposal where they have to write a formal document up and propose what they want to do with the budget and all that. Then I would manage the process of getting expert reviewers on that. So we'd send that out to subject matter experts. They comment and provide their recommendation, should this be funded or not? And I would assemble all of that, synthesize all that information. Take what I knew about the Army needs and how relevant this could be to addressing those. And then I would make my recommendation, I recommend to fund this project, or I recommend not to fund the project that goes through an approval process and contracting, and those awards are made.

Caroline: 22:03

Wow. So your first exposure to the Army Research Office was working on behalf of a company that had a grant or something and then you worked at another one, and then you worked at the Army Research. So let's clarify that a tiny,

Julia Barzyk: 22:19

Okay. A tiny bit. Yeah. Many places in the federal government will have short term staffing needs, and you could almost, it's not contractually, it's not, say temp services, right? Temporary employees. If you think back to the old days, you could hear about people working as a temp, right? A temporary employee.

Caroline: 22:38

Yeah.

Julia Barzyk: 22:39

So, oh, this person is out on maternity leave, so we're gonna bring somebody in for three months and they're gonna fill that role. So this is not exactly that like that, but it could be similar in that it takes a long time for the government to hire people, or they may need people on a short term basis, don't want to commit to having a full-time employee forever. So they contract with defense contractors largely, who will provide staffing these people to serve as subject matter experts. And they oftentimes are working in the building. Like at EPA, there would be environmental consulting companies that are on site at the EPA and they have offices and they work in the lab there. And that contract may be up every five years or so. They compete that contract. So this was a similar type scenario. There were others that were working with this company in the building, and actually partway through the time I was there, the contract did change. So I was working for a different company. So I technically worked for two companies.

Caroline: 23:39

Oh

Julia Barzyk: 23:40

when I was a contractor. And this is a good thing for listeners to know because there can be kind of like back doors into opportunities because you may not be able to get a job at the big tech company, for example, that you're aspiring to, but they very well can have contractors that they work with and you can learn who are they. Is there an opportunity there? And it could serve as a step to getting a job with the bigger organization perhaps.

Caroline: 24:14

So you were at technically two different companies, but really it was one larger project that kind of continued and then how did you find out about the full-time permanent job at the Army Research Lab? How'd that work out? I was

Julia Barzyk: 24:29

what they call direct hired into the federal position. So if you meet certain criteria, perhaps it could be having an advanced degree, very specialized subject matter expertise, which I had as having a PhD in geoscience. Then they may be able to use a special mechanism to hire you. And so I went through that process and I had to be evaluated and it had to be approved at many different levels, but it was, and so I was able to be hired on as a federal employee.

Caroline: 25:06

And so then you were there for, you know, a little over technical as the full-time employee for a bit over seven and a half years. How did your career develop and continue to grow while you were there? And then what made you start thinking about other things?

Julia Barzyk: 25:24

It was a fantastic opportunity. I'm very grateful for the opportunity that I had there. I had really great mentors and I did not know much about the military at all. I had not had much exposure to the military. Some family members had served in the military, but more in the distant past. I had a lot to learn, you know, culturally and the conventions. And I had, again, excellent mentors who supported me through that. So the opportunity to become familiar and then become an expert with DOD over time. And I also, because I started there as a young woman and at that point too, not just young, but appearing, probably even younger than I was at that point, being a small person, again, looking young at that point. The fact that I had a title that was important, right? Quote unquote. It helped a lot at that stage of the career because I would travel to universities and explain what my role was and people really paid attention. Of course, there would be sometimes comments where people would say, Oh, you look too young to have this job or something like that, which I'm sure you've experienced

Caroline: 26:43

Yeah.

Julia Barzyk: 26:44

And it's weird, but I had a lot less of that I think because people understood, oh, there's money here. This person's in a position of authority. And so that made my life easier and it let me grow into that position I believe more quickly than some young women who can be qualified and you know, very well qualified, but still be kind of fighting to be seen or heard or taken seriously. Or they're 35 years old and people think they're 25. Right?

Caroline: 27:15

Yeah. Yeah.

Julia Barzyk: 27:16

That was very fortunate that I had that going for me in the position and I grew so much because I was constantly learning. Every time I talked to new faculty I would be learning about new research areas and I was the only person for a long time in environmental or geoscience in that organization. So that meant everything that came to me, whether it was on something related to ice sheets or atmospheric science or surface processes, seismology, like these are all very distinct disciplines within earth and environmental science, and no one would be expected to be an expert on all of them, but I was the point person for all those topics and more so I was just constantly learning about new science, new ideas, and that just helps anybody grow. So. I was very, again, fortunate. I can't really overstate that and the gratitude I have for having that experience now as time went on, we went through the COVID years, we were all working remotely, and that was with a workforce that didn't have a culture or established ways of working remotely. We were really all in the office five days a week or we were on travel. So that was a change that was very abrupt and everybody had to figure out how to make that happen. And I think during that time, it was because of it, but also because of other changes, reorganization, different things happening. We started to get a lot more responsibilities that were of an internal nature. So more internal reporting, more meetings that were internal with other Army people rather than what I really enjoyed, which was going to on the Army site visits and working with the faculty. So at the same time, I saw that advancement there meant moving more into internal management. I keep saying the word internal, but,

Caroline: 29:24

Right, right.

Julia Barzyk: 29:25

Going,

Caroline: 29:26

But there's themes here. There's themes of, even as a child, you loved learning about lots and lots of things. Regardless, you could get into it and get excited. And so then throughout school and in your jobs, you have this opportunity to keep learning about new and different things. Plus also with this external facing, getting to communicate, talk with people, travel outdoors as needed, all of these things help utilize your gifts and talents. So then when it started to become more internal facing, meaning not getting out, meeting new people, learning a lot of new things, having those interactions that drove you, you started questioning whether you wanted to continue. Is that fair?

Julia Barzyk: 30:14

it. And yes, I had been, again, a hands-on person that went into the field. Did that work. Then I was working with instrumentation in the lab, which, you know, is also very hands-on and then grew into, like you said, the travel, so, and the novelty. So that had been a theme that then between staying home for COVID and changes within the organization. I just didn't know that it was fitting me as well as it had in the past, and I wasn't having any problems at all. In fact, I was doing quite well. So that's where you might think about pursuing a promotion, like I said before, but if you're looking at what that new role would be because you want something new and you're saying, well, that's not really moving into the duties that I feel most aligned with. It could leave you confused or questioning well, what would be the right step? So at the same time, I had been having conversations with PI's, and by PIs I mean the faculty, the researchers. So where could they learn more about the research funding process? And I would Google for things, where can they get information? Because I could see they were struggling to know how to interact with our organization. And I realized, well, they don't have any training on how to do this, and I'm googling I'm not finding resources to point them to. And I was in a position as a federal employee where I had to spend the same amount of time with everybody. I had to be fair with everybody. So I couldn't take somebody and say, I'll meet with you for a day and we'll go over all this. I just had to point them to resources. I could answer their questions and move on to the other inquiries that I needed to address. So that's where things started moving in my mind to say, wow, maybe I'm the person who is supposed to create these resources. Go, and you're saying, well, why don't we have this? Why don't we have that?

Caroline: 32:05

Yeah. Then

Julia Barzyk: 32:06

it might hit you. Well, we don't, but maybe you could create that. So that's where I got the idea to go off on my own and, and start a business.

Caroline: 32:14

Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. So you realize there was a need. Man, I wish you know God or universe, how come you didn't have this done? And it's like, ha ha ha. Guess what? You get to be that person. How? Hard was it? Or how long did you think about leaving before you strategically planned it out? Like when, when did these thoughts first start to come? And then how long was it before acting type of deal.

Julia Barzyk: 32:44

Just about six months.

Caroline: 32:46

You're so quick.

Julia Barzyk: 32:47

Yeah.

Caroline: 32:47

You're so quick.

Julia Barzyk: 32:48

I am.

Caroline: 32:49

You don't mess around. Yeah.

Julia Barzyk: 32:50

Yeah.

Caroline: 32:51

So you decided maybe you wanted to make your own company and maybe you wanted to leave this stable at the time, government job. How did your family or friends react to that?

Julia Barzyk: 33:08

Well, my father was self-employed. He was in the area of market research. Basically not his whole career. He had started out working in ad agencies, stuff like that. But for most of my life, he had supported our family through self-employment. So he worked primarily on his own. You know, he had team of people he worked with, but not employees. So I think that must have been in my mind, that you could earn a living this way, even though it was a totally different industry. I think that that helped me have confidence that it could be done again, even

Caroline: 33:46

Yeah.

Julia Barzyk: 33:46

working in a totally different kind of role, different industry, all of that. But I know that was in my mind. My husband is very supportive and he knows I'm a very hard worker, so when I said, I believe I can do this, meaning that I'll do the work to get it going. He did understand that I really would. I was not gonna say, oh, I have this idea. I'm going to quit my job and then try to figure out if I'm really gonna do it or look for other positions. He knew I had that commitment and that I'd narrowed in on what I wanted to do. So he was extremely supportive. And of course, I want to say this here because people have given me a lot of praise for stepping out and doing this, and I understand that it's inspiring perhaps to see somebody take that risk and make it work out. But my husband has been supporting us for the last couple years you know, emotionally with me, right? And financially because he stayed in his position. So that's really important too, that support. And it may not be seen, but his support, which comes in many forms, did allow me to take this risk.

Caroline: 35:08

Yeah. Yes. When somebody wants to quit a stable job and just dive in the deep end, not even sure if there is a flotation device, having a spouse who's supportive, stable, and has that ability to be supportive in all ways really, really does make it possible. So tell us, what is your company called and what do you do? Who do you serve?

Julia Barzyk: 35:34

The business is Wise Investigator, and we chose that name, or I chose that name because we want to support investigators, meaning principal investigators, they can be called, or we could just call them faculty researchers who are at an early stage of their careers and they need to learn many soft skills as well as hard skills that are related to getting their research funded because while they do a lot of teaching and they have many responsibilities, this funding is expected of them at most schools and even at universities that may be smaller and they're more teaching focused, they're still encouraged to win these funds and we want to prepare them to have success with this by imparting this wisdom and helping holding their hands through acquiring this wisdom because they're at a stage of their careers where it's not like you want to be a good student anymore where, oh, I just need to accomplish all these things on this checklist and I'm gonna get my good grade and I'm going to move on. You have to use discernment. You have to have a perspective of a mature professional to figure out how should I invest my time? What's the best strategy here? So that's why we want to help these people become wise to the ways of winning funding. So how we do this is we bring them on, we have a fully one-on-one program where we provide coaching, we put them through a curriculum of materials to get what they need under their belts as far as acquiring those skills. And we support them in preparation and submission of a proposal. So this is a very comprehensive program. We're not just focused in on what some people call grant writing, where you just say, look, let me try to make this document as strong as it can be. Now grant writing skills are super important, but we're looking at the holistic perspective of everything from getting a LinkedIn profile optimized to learning how to contact and have meetings with the people you need to be talking to, all that stuff. So that's what we offer.

Caroline: 37:39

So kind of like that behind the scenes concierge almost of here's how you actually want to, or like a wise mentor. Let me tell you how it really works, because I imagine at universities, even if there are established professors who've had lots and lots of ability to acquire grants, they may not have the time or desire to put a new person under their wing. So you provide that missing link.

Julia Barzyk: 38:09

Yes. And there are not to get too in the weeds, but there are very talented people who work at the universities who help with these in these roles. And they can provide this mentorship, but they don't have bandwidth because there may be a staff of five of these talented, wonderful people and they're serving hundreds of faculty.

Caroline: 38:30

I see.

Julia Barzyk: 38:31

Yeah. I

Caroline: 38:31

see. So your program allows individualized attention, completely focused on them and their needs and walking them through the process. Like you see them through one or, and then what happens?

Julia Barzyk: 38:48

So they go through coursework. I have a series of videos that I've recorded that cover various topics that relate to this whole process and they do assignments with that. And concurrently that's where they're getting kind of their general education on that. But then at the same time, they're also identifying a particular opportunity they want to apply for drafting that proposal, using what they've learned from these recordings and working with a coach to get that in good shape. Then that goes off to a language editor who edits it, and that will be then submitted by their institution. But we work with them to walk them through that process once, and the institution knows that, Hey, we're getting a submission out of this because every submission that's made, that's a chance for money to come into the institution. So we're giving them that training that they need for the long haul. But we're also making sure that a submission goes in and that they can have the chance to win that funding soon.

Caroline: 39:47

How have the recent news things about changes in funding or changes in grants, how has that affected your business?

Julia Barzyk: 39:58

It's not affected it in an obvious way as far as the number of clients that we're serving and I would say that I find ourselves very fortunate right now to be independent, be a small business, because for every client that comes on, all we need to focus on for supporting them is what is going on for them right now. And many of them are applying to programs that are still open that do have money and they may not have had any grants canceled. So we can proceed with them fairly normally, even though it's not a normal situation. So we're working very granularly to say, what is the situation for this individual? How can we support them? And of course, because I'm in the industry, I listen and I'm on list serves to keep up with those, the big news and what direction things may be going in the years ahead. So I am aware of that, but that doesn't impact greatly day to day how we're supporting the client.

Caroline: 41:03

I see, I see. What advice would you have for somebody who is outwardly successful but inwardly starting to question and feel like, Hmm, maybe this isn't it.

Julia Barzyk: 41:15

I think, to be honest with themselves. So really ask themselves those questions and get yourself to answer as best as you can even if you don't know the answer exactly what you want to be doing.

Caroline: 41:32

Yeah.

Julia Barzyk: 41:33

And it's an easy question to ask, but it may not always be easy to answer, especially honestly. And I think speaking from my experience related to this question, I saw a turning point where in the past, I had often wanted to challenge myself, so I would take coursework that sounded hard and that maybe wasn't my biggest strength, but I felt like I want to master or at least become proficient if we can't master something

Caroline: 42:08

in these

Julia Barzyk: 42:09

areas because I think I can do my job better. I can do science better. If I push myself to learn things and become proficient in areas where I maybe don't have my biggest strength and up until a certain point, maybe halfway through my career, if I'm a little more than halfway through now, I think that did serve me because I didn't stay in the comfort of just, oh, there's some things I'm really good at, i'm only gonna do that. But now that I transitioned to where I am now, I really want to leverage my strengths. So that's where I can actually engage other people to help do some of that work that doesn't come as easily to me, but it is work that I know how to do, and I could do it if I needed to. So getting back to your question, when that person is feeling like something isn't quite right. I would encourage them, be honest with themselves about what they want to do that's probably going to be aligned with their strengths and think about maybe dropping some of those things that there may have been very good reason why they were doing them up until that point. So it's not a mistake, but maybe they've gotten what they needed to out of those experiences, focusing in on what feels most aligned, what they want to be doing. And then I would also say after again, being honest with themselves about where they are to go ahead and take those steps, like even the first step towards what they want and understand that from my experience, and I can only speak from that but you will have to take that first step in faith, and I do believe

Caroline: 43:57

Yeah.

Julia Barzyk: 43:57

the universe will then meet you. But from my experience, you've got to take that step and then you'll be met and then you'll take the next step. So just think about the first step that you want to take rather than waiting for the quote unquote perfect conditions, just like there's never a perfect time to have a baby. There's never a perfect time to take a new job. So that would be my advice.

Caroline: 44:26

So take the first step. So what's the future hold for you? As far out as you can plan, what is it that you'd love to have happen?

Julia Barzyk: 44:34

Well, I would love to continue growing the business to involve more team members because when we have engaged new coaches, the collective expertise that we offer has grown so much. So not only do I want to have more team members to share the workload, which of course has to happen so that I stay sane,

Caroline: 45:01

But much

Julia Barzyk: 45:02

more important than that really is the value that they bring because everybody has their own strengths. Everybody has their own experience where someone's worked in this type of organization, or they have this technical expertise, they do this thing really well. And when you can engage just more people with that kind of expertise, what we can offer, it's not just additive, right? It's just snowballing in terms of the value that we can provide to people. So I would like to continue doing that, and I don't know where that's going to go in the many years ahead, but for the next few years, I can say that growing our team to offer more to the clients we serve, that really excites me because so many times you're working with somebody new explaining a problem, they're going to address it, you know? And so you don't have to do that. And then you look at the work that they've done, and it's so much better, you know, than what I would've done. Right? So you think, wow, this is just such a win-win because we're really contributing something valuable.

Caroline: 46:11

Awesome. So how do people find you?

Julia Barzyk: 46:15

Well, I'm on LinkedIn, so that would be a great place to look for B-A-R-Z-Y-K. There's not many Barzyk's there, and I also have a YouTube channel and I have a weekly email newsletter. So the newsletter, if somebody is engaged in research at all, I would encourage them to check that out, because even though it's really geared for faculty researchers, especially any kind of students or other people that support research in any way or are involved in research are gonna find useful guidance in there for their career.

Caroline: 46:52

I'm big on success and authentic success. So authentic success to me is however you define it for what you want your life to look like, what you want your career to look like, to fuel that life. How do you define your authentic success in this moment?

Julia Barzyk: 47:07

Right now I would say that when most of my days are good days, and when I know that I'm leveraging my talents to serve others and help them grow into their best version of themselves, then I'm having a success that day, that week, that year.

Caroline: 47:30

That's amazing. Well, thank you so much, Julia, for sharing all this insight and wisdom. I wish you nothing but the best and so any researchers, please, please go take a look at Wise Investigator or look up Julia Barzyk on LinkedIn and that'll also be in the show notes. Thank you Julia, so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Thank

Julia Barzyk: 47:49

you, Caroline. It was a lot of fun.

Caroline: 47:51

Thanks.

47:52

Julia's work is a powerful example of what happens when deep expertise, clarity of vision, and a desire to contribute come together. She didn't leave her role because something was wrong. She moved forward because something important was ready to be built. That kind of decision doesn't require burnout or crisis. It comes from awareness, integrity, and purpose. You can learn more about Julia and the Wise Investigator program at Wiseinvestigator.com. All the links are in the show notes. And if you are exploring what your next success might look like, whether that's launching something new or realigning with what matters most to you, download the Free Navigating Career Transitions workbook at Nextsuccesscareers.com. Thanks for being here. Until next time, stay curious, stay intentional, and trust what you've built. Your next success might be exactly what someone else is waiting for.

Caroline: 48:53

Thanks for listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.