Services Offered
Coaching • Mentoring • Consulting
Coaching
Coaching is a partnership that integrates active listening, reflection, and gentle provocation to bring out your innate resources, creativity, and solutions. I'll work with you to identify a meaningful, attainable goal for your work-life. Drawing on your native creativity and resources, we'll bring that goal into reality, using an approach that works for you. If you've never experienced a coaching relationship, you'll be amazed at how empowering (and fun) it can be.
Mentoring
Is a specific skill gap holding you back? I offer one-on-one training to help you develop the R&D career skills you need: building a professional network, putting together a team, pitching an idea, planning a project, writing engaging proposals (or reports, or research articles), giving a compelling presentation.
Consulting
I've got over 30 years of experience in qualitative organizational research. I work collaboratively with clients to generate research designs that provide leaders with impartial, reliable, and well-sourced information about what's really going on in the workforce.
Laura McNamara, PhD
About Laura McNamara
I'm a PhD anthropologist who spent 28 incredibly rewarding (if sometimes exhausting) years at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.
Over my career I've done it all: graduate student, postdoc, new hire, team member, principal investigator, R&D team leader, project manager, R&D line manager, research investment leader. I've worked with sponsors at the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and several agencies in the Intelligence Community. I partnered with industry on high-visibility deliveries for federal sponsors. I served on national-level committees, from the American Anthropological Association to the National Academy of Engineering.
I know what it takes to keep a research career going. I spent nights and weekends developing proposals, putting together presentations, writing reports, conference papers, journal publications, reviewing proposals, even editing books. I supervised student interns, mentored postdocs, sat on doctoral committees. And somehow I managed to care for family members while doing all of this!
No matter what you're grappling with, I've probably been there myself. Maybe you're running into a workplace conflict, encountering a roadblock, or you're burned out. Or perhaps everything is going swimmingly and you're thinking of aiming for bigger, more impactful roles.
I bring empathy, perspective, and insight because I've walked in the very same shoes. Sign up for a 20-minute Information Call. Tell me what's up. Let's see what I can do for you.
My Coaching Philosophy
I am a humanistic, future-oriented, outcomes-focused coach who believes that each of us has the resources, knowledge, and ability to determine how our lives unfold.
How does my philosophy shape my coaching?
I'm intensely interested in who you are, what you do, how you do it, and who you are becoming. As a coach, I listen to your experience, I ask clarifying questions, and I provide nonjudgmental accountability to help you move forward.
You'll find me to be a kind, empathetic, and nonjudgmental colleague who helps you uncover your unique strengths, so you can grow into a confident, secure, productive and happy researcher.
Curious? Book a 20-minute Information Call!
If we're a good fit, I'll give you a 55-minute Discovery Session, free of charge.
Schedule Now