Alumni Career Stories

We are proud of all of our alumni. While some go on to a PhD program in anthropology or another discipline, the majority of our graduate alumni become practitioners of anthropology. Here are a few examples of the types of jobs and careers our alumni are currently working in.


Nancy Gillis - 2012
Nancy is a research scientist at UNT conducting a needs assessment for the North Texas Food Bank Hunger Center in Dallas. Her research will help the Hunger Center better serve their clients and develop strategies that prevent food insecurity and poverty. 

Geoff Garbina - 2012
Geoff is a Research and Sales Associate for Frank N. Magid Associates (http://www.magid.com/), a research-based strategic consulting firm based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. His team utilizes qualitative and quantitative methods for consumer based research projects for clients in a number of different industries.

Jocelyn Huelsman - 2011
Jocelyn is a Senior Research Analyst for Precision Dialogue Marketing’s Research & Customer Experience team. Jocelyn primarily focuses on usability research utilizing eye tracking, in-depth interviews, and heuristic evaluation. Her other tasks include managing clients, creating quantitative research methods (surveys, card sorting, etc.), and providing design recommendations. At the end of the day, the Research & Customer Experience team’s main goal is to make websites, smartphone applications, and other technology easier and more pleasurable to use.

Megan Bannon - 2007
Megan is head of Cultura, Rapp Collins' new cultural anthropology and research group. She recently ranked 6th in DMNews "30 under 30: The young and the restless in DM " for refining a research methodology called Digital Anthropology, which qualitatively and quantitatively analyzes and organizes online consumer-generated content to inform client strategyin finding meaningful data from the conversations consumers are having online. 

Pamela O. Brown - 2005
Pamela is owner of Saida Way, LLC, a consulting firm that expands the capacity of activists and community-based organizations. She also is a writer and filmmaker. “The experience from the applied anthropology program has given me a great foundation to help transform the communities that I care about.”

Stephen Brown - 2004
Stephen works for UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and conducts community-based behavioral research related to HIV/STD’s.

Nicole Matheny - 2007
Nicole is working in San Francisco as a Human Resource Consultant and Analyst for Mercer, specializing in employee research.

Sandra Tyson - 2004
Sandra is the Program Manager for the Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness & PhD student public health at the University of Texas, Austin.