Author: Valerie Brophy

I’ve always been interested in people—specifically what they do and why they do it. My family jokes that I was “born a psychologist, but not the therapy kind of psychologist.” So, when college came around, psychology seemed a natural fit. But so did business. I said that I would decide between the two before graduation. Then graduation was looming nearer, and I was no closer to choosing between my interests. A chance comment from a professor helped me realize I didn’t need to choose. And that’s how I became an industrial-organizational psychologist. Throughout graduate school, the question that kept me going was, “How can I make work better for the people doing it?” That led me to my first internship studying employee engagement. Then, it led me to consulting, were I interact with and affect actual people every day. That question is still what energizes me daily and fuels the passion I bring to my clients.