Your Advisers: Graduate Students & Postdocs

Dr. Joseph Barber is the Director of Graduate Career Initiatives serving graduate students and postdocs.  He has a Ph.D. in animal behaviour from University of Oxford (UK), has previously worked as a Research Fellow at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and currently also teaches graduate students as an Adjunct Professor at Hunter College (CUNY).  Joseph enjoys thinking creatively to help people find and explore different career paths, and is always interested in hearing students and postdocs talk enthusiastically about their research.

Since 2015, Dianne has been a part of the Career Services team which advises graduate students and postdocs.  In addition to her advising responsibilities with students, Dianne coordinates the partnership between Career Services and Penn Carey Law’s Master in Law program.  Prior to joining the Career Services team, she worked in a variety of student advising roles as a part of the Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program at Bryn Mawr College, as well as in the Career Development Center at Saint Joseph’s University.  Dianne holds a graduate degree from Penn’s Graduate School of Education and an undergraduate degree from Lehigh University.  In her free time, she enjoys traveling with her family and cooking.

Marianne joined the Career Services team in fall 2015 providing career and internship guidance to undergraduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences and now advises graduate students and postdocs.  She has worked at Penn since 2004, starting at the Wharton School where she was an academic advisor to undergraduate students and more recently, in their alumni relations office.  She graduated from Bowdoin College with a double major in Romance Languages and History, and earned her master’s degree in Higher Education Management from the Graduate School of Education at Penn.  She is an avid skier and enjoys traveling.

Pronouns: she/they

Lisa joined Career Services as an Administrative Coordinator in January 2022. She earned a B.A. in Geography & Urban Studies from Temple University and was a GIS Analyst before coming to Career Services, where she supports the graduate/postdoc team and nursing/education/social policy team. As an undergraduate, they had internships in a variety of nonprofits including education programs and refugee resettlement services. She hopes to use these experiences to help support Penn students in exploring their future professions. In their free time they enjoy reading, eating their way through Philly, and bothering their cat.