Dr. Lisa Orbé-Austin was the first person in her immediate family to go to college. Her parents were immigrants and wanted her to become a successful doctor, lawyer, or businessperson. She liked kids so she originally thought she would be a pediatrician. She experienced some obstacles so she changed her major to English as she thought she could become a writer. In this podcast, Dr. Orbé-Austin shares her academic and professional journey including how her path changed from becoming a pediatrician to a writer, to an Assistant Professor, to becoming a licensed psychologist. She openly shares her struggles and successes as well as the self-reflection process that led her to the field of psychology including how, and why, she opened her own private practice in the greater New York City area.

Dr. Orbé-Austin is a licensed psychologist and executive coach with expertise in Imposter Syndrome, career advancement, and leadership development. She is a co-founder and partner of Dynamic Transitions Psychological Consulting, a career and executive coaching consultancy, where she works mostly with high potential managers and executives. Dr. Orbé-Austin earned her doctorate in Counseling Psychology from Columbia University. Her views about career advancement, leadership, job transitions, and diversity & inclusion are regularly sought by the media, and she has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, NBC News, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Refinery29, Business Insider, and Insight Into Diversity. She has been honored twice as a Top Voice on LinkedIn in the areas of Job Search & Careers and Mental Health. She gave a TEDx talk entitled The Imposter Syndrome Paradox: Unleashing the Power of You.

Dr. Orbé-Austin shares many stories and impactful advice during our discussion. For example, she was an RA (Resident Assistant) for two years and really loved working with students, counseling them and supporting them in their own journeys while in college. She states, “And I thought maybe I could be a counselor or a psychologist. And my father, at the time, worked at an insurance company and they happened to have an EAP (Employee Assistance Program) and he said, ‘there’s a psychologist there. Do you want to talk to her about what it takes to become a psychologist?’” The psychologist she talked with happened to be a counseling psychologist and an English major during her undergraduate career. Dr. Orbé-Austin recalls that the psychologist she talked to “was the first person who really introduced me to the idea of a counseling psychologist and gave me the entrée into then pursuing my, actually pursued my master’s degree at Boston College as well and it started my real love of psychology. And that’s where it really began.” She continues by stating, “I think what really, like really, changed the game for me was my internship my second year where I did it at Tufts University at the counseling center there working with Jonathan Slavin.”

Dr. Orbé-Austin reveals that her training and experience at Tufts was a “clinical boot camp” for getting started and her experience as a Career Counselor and eLearning Coordinator in the Starr Career Development Center at Baruch College was the “boot camp of career counseling” as “it actually taught us how to do real career counseling and it was such a profound experience…it was the most amazing experience that actually led me to having a career aspect of my practice.” She was able to diversify her practice so that they offered psychotherapy and career counseling services, and this proved to beneficial during the recession “because people were not willing to, at the time, invest in psychotherapy, but they were willing to invest in career. And so, our career practice really thrived, and it became a mainstay of what we did and what we were known for because we were one of the few people, offering in our area, offering testing.”

Dr. Lisa Orbé-Austin discusses her two co-authored books on Imposter Syndrome and ...