323: Pivoting into a Professorship with Alex Budak

Have you ever considered teaching for a university? Even if you don’t take the path of Ph.D. student pursuing a tenure-track position, you can land adjunct roles after reaching a certain point in your professional career.

Today’s guest Alex Budak—who happens to be someone I went to high school and college with (and someone who gave me hope that I could succeed in the earliest days of self-employment!)—is taking us behind-the-scenes of pivoting into a professorship.

Alex shares how he got his foot in the door at UC Berkeley; going from googling “how to write a syllabus” to improving and curating his curriculum; how much time teaching requires; his process for revising materials after class based on how they land among students; and most of all, the “magic alchemy” rewards of teaching in a university setting even when the pay is lower than other opportunities.

More About Alex: Alex Budak is a UC Berkeley faculty member, social entrepreneur, author, and speaker. At UC Berkeley, Alex teaches his wildly-popular course “Becoming a Changemaker,” directs the Berkeley Haas Global Access Program, and teaches in Berkeley Executive Education programs. Alex co-founded StartSomeGood in 2011, which has helped over 1,200 changemakers in over 50 countries raise millions of dollars to launch and scale new change initiatives. His book, Becoming a Changemaker: An Actionable, Inclusive Guide to Leading Positive Change at Any Level, has been endorsed by Nobel Prize winners, Olympic athletes, and most meaningful of all—his students. He is a graduate of UCLA and Georgetown University.