Career Profile: April Russell, Founder and Entrepreneur, and Creative Pathways in Astronomy Careers

The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy has compiled dozens of interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers, planetary scientists, etc. The interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals on those paths.

By Kimberly Mitchell

April Russell has navigated a unique career path in astronomy and physics. Russell graduated from MIT in 2002 with a B.S. in Astrophysics and an M.S. in Planetary Science. Once she finished her degrees, she worked in the private sector for Raytheon, but she didn’t like working in defense technology. Not certain she wanted to pursue a path in teaching, she decided to go to law school. It only took a semester for Russell to realize law wasn’t the right path, either. She took a career break and began her family.

Photo: April Russell

Educational and Teaching Opportunities

Getting back to work after a break to raise children can be challenging. Russell was able to find a pathway back to astronomy by working at a local observatory and astronomy center, where she worked in education and public outreach. She enjoyed that enough that she also did some teaching locally. Khan Academy was hiring subject matter experts to create its online courses. Russell was hired as an SME in physics. She created the coursework for Khan Academy learners, but more importantly, she made valuable connections with other SMEs as they worked to create high-quality educational content.

These connections have served Russell well. She still keeps in touch, checking in with other experts, and occasionally recommending jobs or reaching out to her network to see what might be available.
Russell enjoyed the educational aspect of these jobs and obtained a Master’s in Education. She also did contract work for the Department of Education, focusing on K-12th-grade content in the physical sciences. She also took on visiting professor positions at Vassar College and Siena College, where she taught astrophysics, astronomy, and earth science. 

Writing and Publishing

Russell’s depth and breadth of work in education, as well as her background in physics and astronomy, made her the perfect candidate to write textbooks and educational material. She is a prolific writer, contributing to textbooks published through John Wiley & Sons, 5 Ponds Press, and Pearson. Her focus remains on the physical sciences, physics, and astronomy. Russell has also published many articles on astronomy, featured in Icarus and Astronomy.

Entrepreneurship

In 2017, Russell took the experience gained from teaching, designing coursework, and writing to create Take Space Consulting. Through her business, Russell guides physical science educators and researchers through curriculum development, including planning, design, and strategy. 

In 2023, Russell also became the CEO of Astronomers Without Borders. This non-profit organization works to build and cultivate community through astronomy. Through a partnership with Celestron, she helped develop an AI telescope coach to get people comfortable with astronomy at home as they work with their new telescopes. 

On the Challenge of a Non-Traditional Career Path

Russell acknowledges her career path has been unique, cobbled together through a necessity to both work and be at-home/available for her children. Much of her work has been contract work, finding that is what allowed her the flexibility to raise children, especially when one was diagnosed with a rare disease. The family has also moved twice during the pandemic, and Russell lost her mother around the time her contract with Khan Academy ended. 

“Honestly, 2018 through 2024 are such a blur,” she says. “I needed something to do as a distraction, but it couldn’t be full-time. I was trying to take care of my own mental health by having something outside of these high-stress situations at home.”

Russell knows her situation isn’t unique. Many mid-career women face the same choices. How do they have children and keep working? Can they stay at home and still work part-time? Russell says she has found that even companies that claim they are supportive of these conflicts have proven difficult. “A lot of environments aren’t fully supportive even when they claim to be. It’s a common and disappointing aspect of the current climate.”

“I’ve learned to pay attention to my gut when I’m talking to people around me. Before, I was a pretty analytical person and took things at face value. You want to trust other people, but really, you have to trust yourself first. It’s scary to jump into the unknown. It’s been really important to me to lean on my network. Keeping in touch, seeing what they’re working on, letting them know what I’m working on or looking for. That’s how most of the work I’ve gotten has shown up.”

What’s Next and Untapped Talent At Home

Russell has recently taken a break to reset from the last seven years, which were peppered with difficult circumstances. She’s found her focus through long walks, which allow her body to move and her mind to focus on the future. She’s contemplating a deep dive into astronomy education research. “The main textbook hasn’t been rewritten since 2000,” she notes. She’s also interested in focusing those thoughts into a Substack newsletter and YouTube channel—a niche she’s well prepared to take on. 

Long walks to ponder next steps. Photos courtesy of April Russell.

Russell points out that in the K-12 educational sphere, there is currently no AP Astronomy exam, and in the Next Generation Science Standards, there are no spatial reasoning/awareness guidelines. “Spatial reasoning is one of the most basic things you need to be successful in astronomy.”

Finally, she’s pondering the depth of “untapped talent at home” that could be working on interesting and valuable projects if they had the time and financial support to do so. “There’s this group of untapped talent of women who are in the middle of their lives, unaffiliated, part-time, at home for their kids (or whatever the reason). It would be great to have some small grants to support their work. Grants don’t have to be for full-time work.” 

Russell’s wheels are turning on how to fund other women like her who have chosen non-traditional career paths and have much to offer the astronomy (and other) communities on a part-time basis. It’s a perspective likely to resonate with many, and Russell has the lived experience to understand just how important unique career paths are.

To keep up with April Russell, follow her Substack newsletter at https://aprilrussell.substack.com/ and on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/april-russell-consulting/.

Crosspost: ‘She astonishes me’: How an astrophysicist is helping the Oakland A’s fine-tune their pitches

Written By: Shayna Rubin for The Mercury News

Dr. Samantha Schultz, an astrophysicist turned pitching analyst for the Oakland Athletics, is shown here in the field with Oakland A's pitcher, Lou Trivino. Credit: Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group.

Samantha Schultz called her mom from college in the middle of a meltdown, frustrated with the complicated math she needed to master for her degree in astrophysics from St. Mary’s College.

Her post-graduate plan had been to get her Ph.D. in particle physics. That wasn’t her plan anymore. Through tears over the phone, Schultz told her mother the new one: to work in baseball.

Huh?

That her science-obsessed daughter wanted to go in another direction was shocking enough. But getting where she wanted to go in baseball was harder than math.

“You look at the front office names, and going off first names, 98 percent of women are in marketing or something similar — not baseball operations,” Schultz’s mother, Elizabeth Baldwin, said last week. “I told her, ‘You might have to start out with something boring like cricket, or hockey.’

“She said, ‘Nah, I’m gonna do baseball.’”

Now 26, Schultz is a pitching analyst for the A’s. In four years, she has gone from the Big Bang to the big leagues.

“She was confident it would be baseball and not some other sport she had minimal interest in — and she did it,” Baldwin said. “She astonishes me.”

First love

When it came to baseball, the Giants were Schultz’s first love.

While other baseball fans in the Bay Area and around the globe were engrossed by Barry Bonds’ home run chase and enigmatic stardom, Schultz was drawn to the pitching — Jason Schmidt, Robb Nen and, later, Matt Cain and Sergio Romo. But it was the undersized Tim Lincecum, with his powerful delivery and the supernatural movement on his pitches, that gave flight to her love of pitching.

“It was the dominance,” she said. “Watching him be dominant with mechanics that are not routine and something you wouldn’t teach. The beauty of his changeup. The way he used his pitches, it made me fall in love with pitching as its own art form.”

After leaving St. Mary’s with her astrophysics degree and math minor, Schultz enrolled in the sports management program at Columbia University. It was there, while working with the baseball team, that opportunity began to knock. And knock. And knock.

The woman who had worked without pay for the St. Mary’s baseball team, serving as official scorer and in any other capacity, had been recruited by Major League Baseball’s diversity fellowship program. She had an internship with the New York Mets and was juggling offers from the Tampa Bay Rays and the San Diego Padres. She had been a runner-up for a uniformed position as a traveling analyst with the Cincinnati Reds, which would have made her the first uniformed woman on an MLB coaching staff — a few years before Giants trailblazer Alyssa Nakken.

In a baseball landscape where teams are constantly looking for a unique edge and expertise, an astrophysics background was proving attractive.

Read more about Samantha Schultz's fascinating career turn from astrophysicist to pitching analyst for the Oakland A's and how her extensive math background has helped pitcher, Lou Trivino, improve his game:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/08/14/how-an-astrophysicist-is-helping-the-oakland-as-fine-tune-their-pitches/

AASWomen Newsletter for March 13, 2020

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 13, 2020
eds: JoEllen McBride, Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, and Alessandra Aloisi

Mary Golda Ross, from Item 3.
Image credit: SWE Photograph Collection,
Walter P. Reuther Library

This week's issues:

1. Two-Body Problem Series: Priorities Change

2. Nominate your colleagues for DPS Prizes!

3. Honoring the women who helped humans go to space

4. Research: To Reduce Gender Bias, Anonymize Job Applications

5. Elsevier global analysis on gender gap in research and innovation

6. An interesting Kickstarter project...

7. Astronomy's continuing harassment problem

8. These 10 National Parks Wouldn't Exist Without Women

9. Women with career gaps are being tapped for talent pool

10. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

12. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Addressing Career Breaks Head-on in CVs and Cover Letters

Emily Nicholson, an Australian ecologist, has written a fascinating 1-pager at Science Magazine about addressing career breaks head-on in your CV and cover letter when applying for jobs and grants. She writes:

My early job applications—using a standard CV that mentioned my maternity leaves only in passing... didn’t get so much as an interview... Then, with mentoring and advice from colleagues and friends, I reshaped my CV to account for the time I’d spent raising my family. I put my career breaks front and center, and I reported my productivity metrics to account for my time away from work. 

The result: My first application after I made the adjustments yielded a tenured position...Reframing my track record undoubtedly helped. Here’s how I did it. 

Her approach was to:

• Get the data
• Do the math
• Write about career interruptions up front and in a positive way