Building an Applied Anthropology Career in Business and Industry

There is not one recipe for success as an anthropologist. Rather, careers in anthropology are built and shaped by a complex array of decisions and opportunities. I chose to follow a career in applied anthropology because it allowed me to see the world through the eyes of others and develop an understanding of how social life is organized and culturally patterned. I learned these skills and others primarily through experiential learning and projects outside of the classroom. In this article, I discuss what I have learned from my experiences in non-academic settings and how they have helped me to build my career in business. My goal is to paint a picture of what a career path might look like in the domain of business and industry by examining projects I developed in graduate school and the jobs I obtained as a result when I transitioned from academia to real-world employment.