Paola Cepeda, PhD

Dr. Paola Cepeda is the Director of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at Washington University in St. Louis. She is a national leader on postdoctoral affairs and professional development for early-career scientists. Dr. Cepeda has a strong record of developing and managing successful training and advising programs for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers from different fields (from STEM and Medicine to the Arts, the Humanities and the Social Sciences). She serves as the Chair of the Committee on Gender Equity in Linguistics of the Linguistic Society of America, the International Officer of the National Postdoctoral Association, and a Member at Large of the Postdoctoral Section Steering Committee of the Group on Research, Education and Training (GREAT) of the Association of American Medical Colleges. In these capacities, Dr. Cepeda advocates and works for interventions and policies to retain and engage underrepresented identities in academia (in particular, women, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ scholars) and to educate international trainees about their academic and career mobility options in the United States. Dr. Cepeda holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stony Brook University.