“Why?” When I first announced last year that I had made a full-time transition into the finance industry, this one-word question was the most prominent response I received. Before any of the people who knew me as a professor asked what my new role entailed, they wanted to know why I decided to pursue a career in an industry that—at first glance—seems far afield from my training as a sociologist, has historically been hostile to communities like the one I grew up in, and doesn’t require a graduate degree to qualify for the position I now hold. The answer: As someone for whom social stratification and social mobility matter deeply—both in my personal story and as my research specializations—I welcomed a new opportunity to marry sociological perspectives that I had gained over the course of my academic career with new tools that could directly influence the outcomes I care about.
As was the case for many people in the United States, 2020 was a year of major change for me. As the new year dawned, I was already contemplating new directions in which to take my career. The previous month, I had received an inquiry from an insurance company about interviewing for multiple roles with their company. This was the first time that I became aware of how skills I had honed as an academic were valued outside of higher education, which felt both validating and somewhat unnerving at the same time. I wondered if the recruiter was misunderstanding my professional background or if, conversely, it was I who had been long underselling different ways I could apply my skill set.
The recruiter was correct in noting that this ask was out of line with the path that I had been on thus far, and I certainly thought of higher ed as the place I belonged. I wasn’t ready to test her belief that I could bring a different perspective to their company, so I declined the interview request. After mentioning it to my financial advisor during a year-end review a few weeks later, he concurred with the idea that I could find success by expanding my boundaries a bit. Furthermore, he asserted that I could benefit not only myself, but also a client base in Black communities that had long gone underserved by the finance industry. The latter point—that stepping outside of my comfort zone could still help me serve a greater mission, just in a different way—resonated strongly with me, and that was when I first started to take seriously the possibility of working in a capacity that was neither academic nor higher ed-adjacent.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic finally moved me to take the leap. The pandemic set off widespread suffering in the experiences of my friends and family. Existing research, —such as a 2019 report Vulnerability in the Face of Economic Uncertainty from Prosperity Now—, had claimed millions of U.S. households would face economic hardship if they missed a single paycheck, and public health-related shutdowns forced a stress test of that assertion that turned out to be devastatingly accurate—long lines of cars waiting for hours to claim food assistance packages, fear of evictions, families losing breadwinners prematurely in large numbers with no end in sight, and more. As I watched the GoFundMe campaigns pile up on my social media, my financial advisor called me to provide calming insight into the crashing stock market and present options for preparing my family to weather the coming storm; I responded by telling him it was time for me to fully commit to the idea of stepping into the finance world to do for others what he was doing for me.
How Does Being a Sociologist Help with Financial Planning?
My sociological training lives in the work I do every day in several ways. For example:
- Comprehensive financial planning is a real-world life course project that benefits from understanding how what occurs at one life stage can inform opportunities and outcomes during subsequent stages for various members of a household.
- Cultural competence is a benefit when working with all clients—but particularly with clients who hold marginalized identities—as is understanding of the historical abuses of some communities by the finance industry that have given rise to skepticism, which I must navigate when inviting prospects to meet with me for the first time or while building relationships.
- Awareness of positionality helps me to take a step back and recognize biases that I bring to evaluation of each situation, a benefit of being trained in qualitative research methods.
- The notion of testing the null hypothesis as a sound approach to evaluating one’s own assumptions—a hallmark of quantitative research—works well for examining alternative ways to meet my clients’ stated goals. Introducing this thinking to them has proven to be an effective way to help some come to agreement with new recommendations.
- My training in demography has been useful for understanding underwriter decisions well enough to explain them to clients or, on occasion, to revisit with the underwriter an adverse decision in hopes they will reconsider a declined insurance applicant.
- Understanding the roles of both strong and weak ties within personal social networks is useful when prospecting with clients as I aim to expand the reach of service that—like sociological knowledge—is highly beneficial for most people yet suffers from a combination of demand-side self-selection bias in who prioritizes access and a supply-side bias in who is pursued as a preferable audience.
- My approach to work is mission-based and is informed by an awareness of how socioeconomic inequality matters for life chances, both of its own accord and in interaction with other personal attributes—as is evidenced, for example, in Alexander, Entwisle, and Olson’s The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood (Russell Sage Foundation 2014)—as well as an awareness of how opportunities to translate income into wealth play a role in exacerbating said inequality—as discussed in Oliver and Shapiro’s Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (Routledge 1995).
What Can One Do with a Sociology Degree?
The blessing and the curse of majoring in sociology is that the credential prepares the holder for a wide range of career opportunities, yet uniquely qualifies a candidate for very few. Indeed, there are likely no job descriptions outside of academia for which lacking a degree in sociology would be disqualifying for an applicant. However, our discipline is uniquely positioned to equip those who are well-versed in its theoretical frames and knowledgeable about relevant findings to translate that expertise into favorable outcomes for organizations, institutions, and the groups they serve. Thus, practically the entire employment sector is an appropriate home for us.
Sociological imagination provides a lens through which to understand the social world scientifically; the role of the individual sociologist is to then direct that lens toward areas of interest. Every research specialization is categorized as the “sociology of __________.” Whatever follows that “of” is likely where our passion lies, and wherever that passion meets decision-making capacity or ability to influence the outcomes we observe, sociologists belong in that space. Indeed, not only can many relevant organizations and institutions benefit from our presence and theoretical perspectives, but they are arguably harmed by our absence. While our training does not enable exclusive access to most of these positions, it gives us research skills and cognitive tools with which to perform these roles well, sometimes better than they otherwise would be performed.
Different Ways to Make a Difference
As I have met with sociologists and other academics as prospective clients over the last year, one question that has repeatedly been posed to me is whether working in an applied setting is preferable to being a faculty member at a research-intensive institution. My perspective is that neither capacity is superior or worse than the other, just a different way to make important contributions. For the prosperity of our discipline, the professorial contributions of research and teaching must thrive side by side with those of applied sociologists, coequal and both highly critical to the relevance of sociology for the society we live in. Academics are well-positioned to offer a bird’s-eye view of what is going on in society, while sociologists in applied settings get a better line of sight on the “how” through immersion. Society benefits from understanding both perspectives.
As a professor, I aimed to produce scholarship that could inform practical, everyday decision-making, such as collaborative work with Melanie Jones Gast and Derrick Brooms (2019), “‘Diversity’ Goals and Faculty Pedagogy: Supporting Racial Inclusion and Awareness in General-Education Courses” in Intersectionality and Higher Education: Identity and Inequality on College Campuses, on the role of faculty of color in bringing diversity goals to life on college campuses. In my current role on a financial planning team, I benefit daily from the empirically based knowledge with which I was equipped when I came to this career, leaning on sociological findings to help clients make informed decisions about their financial lives—such as evidence that people who are most likely to benefit from college are those who are least likely to enroll.
My unique perspective as a career-changer enables me to appreciate that rigorous social science deserves a landing spot that allows it to touch the public realm if it can be relevant to practice and/or policy. Likewise, any occupation that puts someone in position to meaningfully impact the lives of others deserves the advantage that access to quality social research can offer. I am better at financial planning because of sociological understanding, and my sociological understanding has been enhanced by my experiences in financial planning.
For the Purpose of Service
The work that sociologists do as educators and as researchers is important, and its relevance continues to grow as our families, communities, home nations, and global society undergo dynamic changes that will shape the world of the future for better or for worse. How people who gain expertise in our discipline apply the knowledge and skills that are required to earn our degrees may take several forms, each playing a vital role in enabling the sociology community to connect with a world that needs us more than many will acknowledge. For me, the contribution is through personal financial planning, working to bring my clients financial stability and peace of mind so that they may be their best selves in their own personal and professional lives and, hopefully, empower others in their networks to do the same.
If we acknowledge our Alpha Kappa Delta international sociology honor society’s charge—“to investigate humanity for the purpose of service”—then we must recognize the essential nature of every capacity in which sociologists work and be vigilant in continuing to invite and enable access to future generations of sociologists. In practice, this means validating and amplifying the teaching missions at higher ed institutions of all types. It means supporting sociological research that aims to objectively observe the social world and report the goings-on, and it also means unapologetically supporting work that casts a critical lens on the world we live in. It means leaning into policy relevance when appropriate so that our silence does not leave a void of expert perspective that is eagerly filled by misinformation, all the while being careful to let sound research lead us where it will. Importantly, it means validating rising scholars in our graduate programs to pursue a path that best suits them and enabling them with concrete resources and network access. Lastly, it means stepping into arenas both familiar and, at first glance, unique, so that we can help bring the relevance of scientific understanding of our social world to life in the everyday lives of the groups, organizations, and institutions we study.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the author and not the American Sociological Association.
