Biography

Lauren Ortosky completed her PhD in 2022 and is now a Senior Quantitative Researcher at Brooks Running in Seattle, leading large scale exploratory consumer insights projects to unearth latent needs of runners that can support business strategy, marketing, and product development for years to come. Lauren received her BA with Honors in International Studies from the University of Chicago and before returning to graduate school spent several years as a consultant specializing in leadership development and executive career transition. After falling in love with trail running in Santa Barbara, Lauren continues to orient much of her free time around roaming local mountain trails, training for ultramarathons, and traveling to beautiful places just to run through them. However, her proudest grad school legacy will always be co-founding and growing the Access Grads mentorship program to support under-represented and first-generation undergraduates who want to build a career in science.

Research Area

Lauren Ortosky's academic research spanned a number of areas informed by her diverse interests and background, often integrating ideas from other social sciences, but always investigating the various influences of norms and identity. Lauren's dissertation leveraged her experience in political science to explore the impact of passive exposure to changing political ideologies on individual attitudes and beliefs. She was also heavily involved in projects leaning on her career coaching experience, in one case focusing on entrenched veteran under-employment and in another examining the ways grad school experiences can influence career choice for STEM graduate students from under-represented backgrounds with the goal of increasing diversity in faculty positions in those fields.

• Fiona & Michael Goodchild Graduate Mentoring Award (2020)