A manifesto on what it takes to build an authentic and impactful research career—especially in these tremendously difficult times

January 2002. I started my faculty career at UNC Chapel Hill with the kind of confidence that can only come from being completely naive about what I was walking into.

I had good reason to be confident. Third-generation scientist. NIH K-award funding already secured. I held joint appointments in Microbiology & Immunology and Biomedical Engineering, working at the intersection of two hot fields—bioinformatics and proteomics. I’d had multiple competing job offers to choose from.

"I'm awesome," I thought. "I got everything covered."

I was so wrong it's almost funny. Except it wasn't funny at the time.

The illusion began cracking almost immediately, though I didn't recognize it then.

They handed me the keys to a lab. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in startup funding.

Graduate students, staff, and postdocs, all looking to me for direction.

Just one example of the many unexpected hurdles I faced: space issues. Half my team wound up in an old, rundown shack that was slated for future demolition. The other half was in a leftover lab space that meant for wet lab work, but not bioinformatics work. Computers were stacked on lab benches, and carpal tunnel (from the wrong keyboard height) was in the air.

This was one of the many types of energy-draining problems I never expected to face. I didn’t have a PhD in space management and political gamesmanship.

It highlights a reality that most new PI’s face:

It was slowly dawning on me that I was expected to be the “CEO” of a small, complex research "business" with almost no true preparation for what that actually meant.

It was a daily, often infuriating grind of navigating the indefatigable maze of illusory hassles, as I tried to lead my research group inside the academic machine.

It often seemed like it was no longer “about the science,” but “about the ego trips” and “business acumen.”

That’s not what I signed up for.

Worse, I didn’t have any good templates to follow, because I was interdisciplinary at a time when almost everyone operated in silos.

I kept wondering if it was futile.

Not only because the system was showing cracks, but because despite the false confidence I was able to project, I questioned whether it would work, almost every day.

The questions I kept coming back to included:

I faced not only the systemic problems, not only my inexperience, but the collision of those two issues. This was a sort of “perfect storm” that led to many sleepless nights, self doubts, and frustrations.

Yet to call it a “perfect storm” implies it is a rare occurrence, and now, decades later, having worked with 100’s of researchers, it is rare to find people that don’t experience some of these things.

Still, at that time in my life, that early optimism hung on. I thought: "I'm smart, I can pull all nighters, I'll figure this out. How hard could it really be?”

Ha. Ha.

Armed with my overconfidence, I dove into grant writing. NSF applications. NIH proposals. Multi PI grants.

I was in a fast moving, exciting field, with lots of new funding available. I thought I had great research areas. Funding seemed sure, despite my many last-minute-rushed efforts to get proposals done and submitted before the 5pm deadline with 2 minutes to spare.

All my six major federal grant attempts failed in the first two years.

These were not "close, but no funding available" failures. None were "revise and resubmit with minor changes." They were clear and complete rejections.

Worse, my scores were going downhill. As I tried more desperately, it’s almost as if reviewers had a “desperation detector” and scored me down because of it.

What the hell was going wrong? A family member later recalled that it was like a dark cloud constantly hanging over me.

I couldn’t figure it out. This wasn't how it was supposed to work, at least not in my mind.

Being interdisciplinary, without a tribe or templates to follow, was one excuse I could use for why reviewers weren’t getting it. Yet those kind of excuses don’t pay the bills for staff, postdocs, and students.

By 2004, reality was setting in hard.

I wasn't worried about tenure anymore—I was worried about having to let go the people depending on my startup funds and K-award support.

The thought of failing them was devastating. And here I was, supposedly their leader, questioning whether I was fundamentally missing something essential.

My confidence had turned, just like adding dark ink to clear water. Had I somehow fooled everyone—including myself—into thinking I belonged here?

At the time I thought I was alone in feeling this way.

I’ve since learned that these kind of feelings are both common, and commonly hidden deeply, for fear of showing any doubt to colleagues or promotion and tenure committees.

Then I got lucky—though I didn't realize how lucky at the time.

I found a mentor who actually knew what he was doing. A protein biochemist named Marshall Edgell (now deceased) who could dig deep into what was actually wrong with my proposals, not just give surface-level feedback like "write clearer" or "add more preliminary data."

This guy was ruthless. He shredded my drafts and my ego. Made me completely rethink my entire approach to communicating science.

And it worked.

By 2005, my funding situation had turned around completely. I was getting grants funded. Building my lab. Making progress toward tenure.

Finally, some relief.

That questioning of whether I’m cut out for it all had embedded itself into me like a computer virus of the mind.

On the surface, I was much more confident.

Yet under the guise, my doubts had burrowed deeper: “They gave me all that funding? They trust me with that!? I’ll probably totally let everyone down, crashing and burning when it comes to renewals.”

On top of it, I was still drowning in all the other aspects of being a PI — the ones that nobody talks about.

How do you manage 16 people without becoming a micromanager or going completely hands-off? How do you navigate university politics over space, funding, and recognition, when you're trying to focus on science? How do you build team culture when half your group is scattered across different buildings?

The kind of deep, transformative mentorship I needed was available for only one piece of my career puzzle - proposal development.

Everything else—the leadership challenges, the team management, the bureaucratic navigation, the mindset work needed to stay sane—I was still completely on my own.

The funding success seemed to make the other problems worse. More people depending on me. Bigger lab. Higher stakes. More responsibility I wasn't trained for.

Success that doesn't feel like success is its own special kind of hell.

Ever found yourself more isolated after a win than after a loss?

I got tenure in 2007. By 2011, I had 16 people in my lab and steady funding.

By most measures, I was successful.

But I was miserable.

The bureaucracy was relentless. After the 2008 financial crisis, our medical school dean literally gave us a presentation about how the hospital was hundreds of millions in debt.

The message was clear: bring in more grant money to help pay it down.

I felt like a funding machine. Not a scientist. Not an educator. Just a revenue source for an institution that saw my grants as their problem-solver.

In 2007, I wanted a sabbatical to write a book about my creativity. The university had a fund specifically for faculty sabbaticals, but I missed the deadline by a few days.

"Any flexibility?" I asked.

Nope. Despite millions in funding I'd brought in, the answer was a flat no.

The bureaucracy mattered more than supporting the people doing the work.

But the real problem wasn't the institution. It was me.

I was drowning in leadership challenges I had zero training for. Managing 16 people when I'd never managed anyone at scale. Trying not to micromanage, so I went completely hands-off instead.

Neither approach worked.

Ever feel like you're failing at something you never learned how to do in the first place?

(Yeah, me too.)

There was no one to ask. Few of my peers had teams this size. Even fewer dealt with interdisciplinary research complexities. And if they had advice, I feared it would just be their way—which might be completely wrong for how I operate.

One of the core problems here was that I was trying to lead like someone else, instead of figuring out how to lead authentically in a way that energized me and my team, and played to my natural strengths.

Nobody had ever told me I was allowed to have my own style.

Most of academia, then and now, seems to operate on the “template” approach, where you either follow in the mentor’s footsteps or end up in a no person’s land of trial and error, uncertainty and doubt.

I was trying to copy my mentors' templates when their approach was completely wrong for how I operate.

My PhD advisor was very hands-off. I thought that was 'the right way.'

But when I tried that approach, we weren’t productive enough. Much much later, I discovered that I actually thrive when I put systems in place for communication and build cohesive lab culture, without micromanagement.

That’s just me - not you, or anyone else, necessarily. It took me years to figure that out, though.

I ultimately landed on my own authentic style. But because nobody had ever told me I was allowed to have my own, I floundered for many years, and so did my team.

And the floundering made the impostor-like feelings worsen. They’d given me (lots) of grant funding, and I knew I could and should be doing better.

If this sounds familiar—if you’ve ever wondered whether you’re missing some crucial “leadership gene,” or if you’ve been quietly piecing together your own playbook in the dark—you’re definitely not alone.

November 2011. I was sitting in my office when an email arrived that would change everything.

But the real breaking point wasn't what happened that day. It was what had been building inside my head for years.

Here's the external story: We'd been working on a database project for UNC. I hadn't led it well—I was distracted, overwhelmed, not giving it the attention it deserved. The university pulled funding with no notice, then demanded I backcharge my team's salaries to federal grants. Retroactively.

When I refused to sign (because that would be grant fraud), a departmental administrator signed for me.

That's when I snapped.

But here's what was really happening inside: I'd been carrying around this crushing belief that I wasn't enough. Not smart enough, not leader enough, not "academic" enough.

Every day I walked into that office feeling like I was pretending to be someone I wasn't. Following templates that drained me. Trying to prove I belonged while quietly believing I didn't.

The forged signature wasn't the real problem. The real problem was that I'd been forging my own identity for years.

I sent my resignation email that afternoon. Gave up tenure, six figures, my lab of 16 people. Everything I'd spent a decade building.

The immediate aftermath was, for a short time, exhilarating. Then soon, terrifying. Panic about income. Sleepless nights. The crushing weight of uncertainty. What to do about my team.

But underneath the fear was something else: relief.

For the first time in years, I wasn't pretending to be someone else.

One colleague told me later: "I really envy how brave you were to leave. If I didn't have golden handcuffs, I would probably leave too. I'm not happy here either."

That's when I realized this wasn't just my problem.

How many brilliant researchers are stuck trying to be someone else’s version of success—while wondering if it’s too risky to even admit it?

After leaving academia, I kept working with researchers through consulting and coaching. And I started to see patterns.

The challenges I'd faced weren't unique to me. They weren't even unique to interdisciplinary researchers, though we felt them more acutely.

The fundamental problem is that there's too little good mentoring, and most of what exists amounts to "do what worked for me (even when it never quite fits)."

We're trained to follow templates, to replicate what worked for our advisors, to fit into established molds. But building a research career—especially in a rapidly changing landscape—requires something completely different.

It requires developing your own authentic approach to science that works within (and despite) a broken system.

Over the years, working with hundreds of researchers struggling with the same issues, three core areas kept emerging as make-or-break factors:

The first was mindset. Not positive thinking or motivation, but the deep internal patterns that determine how you handle rejection, navigate uncertainty, and maintain your sense of purpose when everything feels chaotic.

The second was leadership. Not management techniques from business school, but authentic ways to guide teams, collaborate effectively, and influence your field that actually fit your personality and values.

The third was funding. Not just "grant writing tips," but a science-first approach that starts by clarifying and strengthening your research foundation, then builds compelling stories that connect with field needs and reviewer psychology. And it’s the flip side of all the cookie cutter ‘just add more preliminary data’ advice” or similar.

Here's what I realized: These three areas form what I call the Triangle of CARE—and they're interconnected.

When your mindset is strong, you can lead more authentically. When you're leading effectively, your science gains momentum and recognition, making funding easier to secure. When you're consistently funded, your confidence grows and your mindset strengthens.

But if any one of these breaks down, the others suffer too.

The missing piece is alignment with your authentic core. Without that central foundation—without operating in ways that genuinely fit who you are—the triangle becomes a constant struggle. You're pushing against your own nature instead of working with it.

When you find that alignment, though, everything starts to flow. The three areas reinforce each other naturally instead of competing for your energy.

And that's when research becomes sustainable, fulfilling, and impactful—instead of just survivable.

If you're a researcher who's tired of following templates that don't fit, I invite you to join us.

If you feel stuck trying to lead like your mentor when their style drains your energy, I invite you to join us.

If you're exhausted from writing grants in the dark, hoping reviewers will somehow "get it" this time, I invite you to join us.

And if you (like me) have ever felt like you're pretending to be someone else's version of a successful scientist, I invite you to join us.

The first thing you can do is watch this case study video that shows how the Triangle of CARE actually works in practice...

...without sacrificing your authenticity to get funded...

...without burning yourself out trying to lead like someone else...

...without the constant self-doubt that comes from operating against your natural strengths...

...and without giving up on the science that actually matters to you.

If this approach works for researchers across disciplines and career stages, I'm confident it can work for you too.

We also offer deeper support through our programs—from grant-focused work to comprehensive leadership development—for researchers ready to build their own authentic path in science.

But mostly, we want to create a community...

...a community of researchers who aren't afraid to admit they don't have all the answers.

...a community of scientists committed to doing better science while staying true to themselves.

...a community where authenticity is valued over conformity, and real support replaces empty advice.

..a community of boundary-crossing thinkers ready to support other researchers finding their own way.

And above all else...

..a community where you can be respected for who you are, but not left where you are.

It should be transformative.

And if you've read this far, I sincerely hope you'll join us.

Morgan Giddings, PhD, is a former tenured faculty member turned entrepreneur who helps researchers build authentic, sustainable careers through SCI•Foundry and the Grant Foundry Accelerator. After walking away from tenure in 2011, she's spent over a decade developing frameworks that help researchers succeed without sacrificing their sanity or their souls.

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