Hi! Thank you for being here.

I’m Gabriela Daly, a PhD scholar, academic ambassador, and entrepreneur.

I’ve travelled the world and I’ve seen the beautiful and ugly side of academia. I’ve discovered a vocation in helping researchers overcome obstacles and shine in harsh environments. I care deeply because I was once YOU.
This is why I created the Academic Branding Academy.

Want to hear my story?

Academic successes while eating problems for breakfast

I began working with academic branding after having spent years enthusiastically advising students and peers strategies to make them stand out. In fact, most of my colleagues are top researchers and top students in their fields and yet they struggled to showcase how amazing they were. This broke my heart.

Getting my PhD was a difficult ride, as it is for most. But if there was one thing that I consistently got right was how to prepare myself and open the doors I needed. And this, despite many unforeseen academic, personal, and health setbacks. I proudly secured a funded and prestigious position before I defended my PhD – having applied for my dream post-doc only once. My work later received an international accolade as well; a work I completed under extreme conditions to say the least. From surgery, personal losses, and unbelievable institutional mess-ups to harassment in and out academia. You name it.

I managed to defend on time and the end-result was great. I was starting a promising position and was over the moon. What could go wrong? Well, midway my post-doc I suffered a work injury that left me with reduced mobility for almost a year. I took a leave of absence from my university position. My research and my life were suddenly interrupted. I kept thinking – is there a purpose to all these challenges?

The beautiful and ugly side of academia

To back this up a bit my love for research dates back to when I was 14. At that time, I had just become a cellist at the National Youth Orchestra in my country, a time-demanding passion, but I soon realized my true calling was to become an academic researcher. In my thirties, research and academia were the two things I knew “for sure” for more than half of my life. I would spend long hours completely absorbed in my passion for research and I loved the learning environment, critical thinking, and discussions that academia brought me.

But because of my injury, I was out of the game and in pain. So I had time to do some soul searching again. I revisited my mission in this world and was finally able to look at academia in a more objective way and my relationship to it. I did not like what I saw. Sure, so many of the challenges I encountered during my PhD and post-doc were particular to me but certainly not most problems. I saw structural problems passing as something “normal” that were simply draining the life and mental health away of my most brilliant peers. Worst, I had internalized these issues too.

I realized that academia breeds talents working at the frontier of human knowledge, who are overworked, underappreciated, underpaid and more likely to suffer from poor mental health. What’s more, academia had turned into an even harsher environment with the pandemic, especially for early career. As I finally started to recover, I felt I did not want to go back to the old style of doing things, although I definitely could. I ventured into business instead.

The path from scientist to entrepreneur

Business. A field widely known for horror stories of employees having their lives eaten away, right? This was different though. I was lucky to start in a small family business. As much as it was hard for me to pause my multidisciplinary research, my passion, I needed to get the feel of what life was like outside academia… what innovation looked like outside the university doors. I joined my father, an orchestra musician, in his startup “Double Bass Creative Solutions.” This experience was all brand new for me because we are a family of artists with no previous business track.

In this role I have overseen all operations – from creating products to marketing, with the additional responsibility of selling to more than 10 countries. At first, I designed a training and learning program for myself, always making use of my academic and scientific mind to fast-track results. But more than anything, the hands-on business experience (and mistakes) guided my way and eventually helped me have a breakthrough. By understanding and breathing the fundamentals of business I was able to map the commonalities and differences between academic research and entrepreneurship and identify productive points of contact.

Working as an ambassador for industry engagement & building a business

International vocation is also a crucial part of this story. While I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro (yes, Brazil!), my background is multicultural with part of my family being from the US. I spent most of my adult life studying and doing research in several countries (9 so far, 5 continents). My international story made me aware of the commonality and specificities of academic systems worldwide and helped me understand the experiences and struggles of researchers that want to stay in academia. As I was highly motivated to help others carve a successful professional path, I was certified and awarded the position of Academic Ambassador for Industry Engagement by SULSA on behalf of the University of St Andrews (Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance). And with a fresh perspective from my entrepreneurial ventures, I could connect with those researchers who want to work outside academia or in partnership with businesses.

In the end, I discovered that I had been helping people with academic “branding” all along (a term that was foreign to me as a scientist). And because of the many personal and academic challenges that my peers and I faced; “branding” acquired a deeper, more holistic meaning to me. I could finally give a greater purpose to my struggles and successes by helping researchers realize their potential, be seen, and heard. I connected all the pieces of my personal and academic life together as well as my educational background and hands-on experience to create a blueprint for academic branding “from the inside out.” At first, I started working with mentees to validate my method and then finally founded the Academic Branding Academy. While I do love my research and do not have plans to quit it, through academic branding I empower academics worldwide.