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PODCAST

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01

For women faculty, transitioning from a Career Development (K) Award to your first NIH R01 is about more than just writing a fundable grant.Host and expert NIH Grant Consultant Sarah Dobson guides early career researchers through the roadmap for overcoming the hurdles of being a woman in academia and avoiding the K cliff. She’s ready to see passionate and tenacious women K Award recipients level up to R01 funding and build impactful, thriving, and fulfilling research careers.Visit

education careers

All Episodes

1:01

Introducing a Special Series: Uncharted Academia

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/10/30

This is a quick preview of my new six-part series, Uncharted Academia — about navigating research careers in a time of transformation. Over six episodes, we’ll talk about clarity, boundaries, leadership, and redefining success in a system that’s changing for good. Interested in joining the next cohort of K to R Essentials? Join the waitlist at https://sarahdobson.co/k2r

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47:46

Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Kalisha Bonds...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/09/11

Navigating the leap from K Award to R01 funding demands more than scientific expertise—it requires discovering your authentic research voice and purpose. In this revealing conversation with Dr. Kalisha Bonds Johnson, we explore how finding your North Star can transform your research journey, especially during uncertain times. Dr. Johnson, who studies African-American adult daughters supporting parents with dementia, shares her powerful story of claiming her brilliance in spaces that often un...

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29:18

Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Haixia Zheng, PhD

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/08/07

Transitioning from K to R grant funding demands more than just technical knowledge—it requires a fundamental shift in scientific identity and leadership. K to R Essentials graduate Haixia Zheng, PhD shares her journey from K Award success to preparing for her R grant submission. In our conversation we discuss: • Comparing grant writing to "playing chess without knowing the rules" • Developing "inner mentorship" skills to evaluate advice critically • Learning to decline mentor suggestions tha...

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30:51

Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Caitlin Rancher PhD

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/07/24

K to R Essentials graduate Caitlin Rancher, PhD shares her journey navigating the K99-R00 transition while developing essential skills for independent faculty success. She discusses how applying a scientific mindset to career challenges transformed uncertainty into opportunity. In this conversation we discuss: • The challenge of "going off the written map" when transitioning from structured training to independent faculty • Creating and protecting boundaries around time commitments, especia...

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17:04

Reclaiming Control Over Your Academic Career

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/07/10

When your grant funding suddenly vanishes, panic isn't just common—it's expected. But how you respond to that panic could determine whether your research vision survives or gets sacrificed in the scramble. Drawing from recent conversations with early-career researchers facing grant terminations, this episode delves into a crucial dilemma: the instinct to immediately "fix" your funding situation by attaching yourself to others' grants may eliminate space for your own research. When we b...

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26:26

Tempted to Use AI to Write Your Grant? Here's What To...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/06/26

The ever-expanding presence of artificial intelligence in our professional lives has reached the sacred territory of research grant writing, raising profound questions about scientific integrity and the nature of academic work. As someone who's spent a fair amount of time exploring these tools firsthand, I'm sharing my perspective on how researchers can navigate the use of these tools without compromising what makes their work valuable. Grant writing isn't just an administrative task standing...

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12:26

Introspection as a Career Strategy: Wayfinding...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/06/12

This episode gets a bit personal! Rediscovering a 12-year-old journal unexpectedly transformed my understanding of the work I do now. For weeks, I found myself immersed in the pages of my younger self's thoughts, witnessing my struggles to define personal and professional goals while questioning if I even deserved to have them. What struck me most was seeing the ongoing dialogue I maintained with myself—a practice of brutal honesty and introspection that ultimately helped me bridge the gap be...

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40:48

Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Amy LeClair, PhD

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/05/29

In this episode, I sit down with Amy LeClair, PhD — a medical sociologist and recent K to R Essentials graduate — for a powerful conversation about moving from being a perpetual collaborator to pursuing independent research, describing how she found support through structured mentorship and community during a pivotal career phase. She discusses the challenges of balancing her research on healthcare equity with personal life changes, including welcoming twins while pursuing her professional go...

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12:26

You Can't Do It Alone: Finding Your People During the...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/05/15

Have you ever tried to navigate a major life change completely on your own? As someone who once proudly wore the "I'll figure it out myself" badge, I've learned through experience that community isn't just helpful during transitions—it's absolutely essential. This episode explores the transformative power of finding your people during the K to R transition. Drawing from my personal journey as a business owner who reluctantly discovered the value of community, I share how a small group of wom...

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14:25

When It Feels Like You Can't Catch A Break

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/04/24

If you’ve been feeling like you just can’t catch a break, this episode is for you. In the last five years, early-career researchers have had to navigate two major crises—first the pandemic, and now a new wave of funding instability and institutional upheaval. There’s no playbook for how to move through something like this. And yet, you’re still here. Still committed to your work. Still showing up. In this episode, I want to remind you of something that’s easy to forget when you’re in the midd...

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32:14

Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Brienne Miner,...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/04/10

In this episode, I sit down with Brienne Miner, MD MHS—a physician, researcher, and recent K to R Essentials graduate—for a powerful conversation about what it really looks like to step into your role as a PI with clarity and purpose. Brienne shares how her clinical work with older adults and their care partners shaped her research questions—and how she learned to own her expertise through the K to R transition. We talk about the internal work of recognizing your intellectual contribution, the

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14:54

A Strategic Reset When You’re Feeling Powerless

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/03/27

When the funding landscape feels chaotic, it’s easy to spiral into overwhelm or freeze in place. But one of the most powerful things you can do right now is come back to the work that grounds you. In this episode, I’m sharing a moment from inside K to R Essentials that reminded all of us—myself included—how much clarity and confidence can come from reconnecting with our research. Whether it’s grant writing, making progress on a peer-reviewed paper, or simply thinking deeply about your next project,

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14:46

Short-Term Panic vs. Long-Term Strategy: How to Make...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/03/20

When the decisions you make are often short-term, reactionary, and misaligned with where you actually want to go. In this episode, we’re talking about the difference between making decisions from a place of fear versus a place of clarity—and why it matters. If you’ve ever felt pressure to just do something without a clear plan, or rushed into commitments that didn’t truly serve you, this conversation will help you take a step back, reassess, and move forward with intention. In this episode: Why

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15:41

Overcommitted and Off-Track? How to Reclaim Your Time...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/03/13

Defining your North Star—the long-term vision for your research—is one thing. Actually aligning your daily work with it? That’s where things get tricky. Most researchers don’t realize just how misaligned their time and commitments are until they take a hard look at where their energy is going. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. In this episode, we’re digging into the next step after defining your North Star: assessing your commitments, making strategic choices about where to focus, and

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17:10

Navigating Institutional Chaos Without Losing Sight...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/03/06

With so much uncertainty in higher education, research funding, and institutional policies, it’s easy to feel like the ground is constantly shifting beneath you. But instead of reacting to institutional panic or the latest funding changes, you need a way to stay grounded in what actually matters—your research and the impact you want to have. That’s why your North Star is more important than ever. It’s the navigational tool that helps you filter out distractions, stay focused on your long-term

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17:17

K to R Essentials Behind the Scenes: The Proposal...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/02/27

This episode wraps up our K to R Essentials Behind the Scenes mini-series with a look inside the final month of the program—Planning. If you’ve been following along, you know that we start with the big-picture vision for your career, then build the leadership and strategy skills you need to make that vision a reality. In this final stage, we take everything you’ve worked on and map it out into an actionable proposal development plan for your next grant submission. This is where researchers often get

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12:26

K to R Essentials Behind the Scenes: How to...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/02/20

In this episode of K to R Essentials Behind the Scenes, we’re diving into strategy—the third month of the program and where we shift from big-picture vision work into pragmatic, strategic decision-making. One of the most important exercises we do in this phase is connecting your North Star to the next research idea you’ll pursue and the grant application that will fund it. But for many researchers, this is where they get stuck—not because they lack ideas, but because they have too many and feel

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11:14

K to R Essentials Behind the Scenes: Cultivating...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/02/13

This episode continues our special miniseries, K to R Essentials Behind the Scenes, offering an inside look at our coaching calls. K to R Essentials is structured around four key themes—Vision, Leadership, Strategy, and Planning—and this series explores each one. In this episode, we dive into the second theme: Leadership. One of the foundational principles we emphasize in K to R Essentials is that leadership starts with you. Before you can effectively lead others, you need to build confidence in

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11:22

K to R Essentials Behind the Scenes: How We Clarify...

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/02/06

This episode kicks off a special miniseries, K to R Essentials Behind the Scenes, offering an inside look at our coaching calls. K to R Essentials is structured around four key themes—Vision, Leadership, Strategy, and Planning—and this series explores each one. The focus of this episode is vision—the foundation of a successful research career. One of the biggest challenges researchers face is articulating what they truly want, beyond external expectations or institutional pressures. In our coaching

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09:37

How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others (Revisited)

Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01 ·

2025/01/23

In the high-stakes world of academia, competition is everywhere—from landing a faculty position to securing grant funding. It's easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others, but instead of success, this can lead to self-sabotage. In this episode, we explore how comparison, competition, and critique—although vital in academia—often work against you. I'll share strategies on how to shift your focus away from others and keep your eyes on your own paper. By challenging yourself to grow and

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