Claire Elling, MA'16 and PhD'23, Psychology
Project Manager, Center for School Behavioral Health, Massachusetts General Hospital
October 1, 2025
Can you describe your career path and how it has led to your current work?
This path has been rather winding! I started undergrad thinking that I absolutely wanted to be a clinical psychologist who both saw clients and conducted research. My coursework was heavy with the expected classes and I split my time between two labs, tutoring, TAing, and my retail job. I then completed an internship on a psychiatric unit in a hospital setting and decided that direct patient/client care was ultimately not for me. I recalibrated and set my sights on academia—this seemed like the perfect marriage of my love of psychology and research. While earning my MA and PhD at Brandeis, I continued to gain experience teaching and learned so much about conducting rigorous research and data analysis. However, by the end of my time in the program, I determined that academia wasn’t the right fit, either. I defended my dissertation still not knowing exactly what I wanted to do. While I was certain that I would bring my research skills to whatever position I ended up in, I didn’t anticipate working in research, at least in the way I had been. I knew that whatever I did end up doing, I ultimately wanted to be contributing to good in the world.
It wasn’t until I saw the posting for my current position that my path became clear. I was really excited about the project: It seemed to encapsulate many of the aspects of research that I really enjoyed, such as operating various simultaneous, complex moving parts and orchestrating the actual running of the study. The project also has the potential to help people on both an individual level and at a larger-scale, which made this extremely appealing to me. I really love that this role involves what initially drew me to psychology, which was helping people. Now I’m able to do this in a way that aligns with my interests and skill set, which is better than I could have hoped for!
What does a typical day/week look like for you in this position?
One of the things about my current job that I love is how no two days are exactly the same. I do school-based research, so a lot of these activities depend on ebb and flow of the academic calendar. I interface with many different teams that work to support this project (for instance, school partners, our direct-service community partners, funders, our team of programmers, our data collection team). I think that being the thread that ties this all together helps keep my days and tasks varied, which I really love. In any given week, I might be meeting with our school partners, attending a faculty meeting, planning study logistics at a school site, coordinating edits to our data collection instruments, or working to simplify and improve our internal processes. Other times I’ll be prepping materials, sending emails to our many school partners, or writing progress reports for our funders. The core of what I do is wrangling all these pieces that span many different categories and making sure that things are happening and are doing so on time and as intended. I really love having this type of variety in my daily responsibilities. The interpersonal connection component of this role has also been really rewarding in and of itself.
What skills from your Brandeis degree have you found most valuable in your current work?
Everything I learned in terms of the mechanics of running a study (particularly a longitudinal one) has been massively helpful in this role. Similarly, having a background in data analysis means I can keep the project running smoothly with the integrity of the data in mind. The deep, critical thinking inherent to completing a PhD supports my process of formulating creative solutions to challenges and identifying ways that we can improve our processes (which might be one of my favorite parts of this job!) Finally, my experience in mentoring and supervising research assistants gave me a great foundation for my current supervisorial activities.
What advice do you have for current students as they embark on their career exploration or job search?
- Don’t underestimate the value of knowing what you don’t want to do and why. That’s still valuable in guiding your path even if you don’t yet know what you do want to do!
- Be open to a range of roles and see what’s out there.
- Utilize the Center for Career and Professional Development! They are so wonderful and helpful!!