Abstract
Academia may train us best for careers in academia, but the skills we acquire in graduate school really are transferable to industry! In this talk, I'll discuss my research experiences and profile as a graduate student and postdoc focused on first language acquisition, speech perception, and bilingualism. I'll outline how that training prepared me for a job in industry, how I've made up for the ways in which my program didn't prepare me, and what you can do to position yourself for opportunities outside of academia. I'll also talk in more detail about what I do as a "learning scientist" at Duolingo, including developing new ways to teach through an app, educating the company (and the world!) about languages and language learning, and conducting research on product efficacy. I'll be framing this presentation as an informal conversation, so there will be ample time for discussion and questions!