sNAPAshots: Elizabeth Briody

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Transcript

Interviewer 0:02
[On Screen Image NAPA Logo] Welcome to sNAPAshots conversations with practicing, professional, and applied anthropologists. Let’s meet our next guest, Elizabeth Briody.

Elizabeth Briody 0:15
Well, my name is Elizabeth Briody, and I am an anthropologist. I work in organizational settings, and I try to help the people in those settings, improve the way in which work gets done. And in terms of the work I do, depending on the context, I will typically just say I’m an anthropologist, and that’s enough. But sometimes, if pressed, I will say I’m, I’m a Business anthropologist, and then I explain that that usually means that I work in private sector, nonprofits, and in government. I don’t see enough anthropologists working inside organizations, whether as full time employees, whether as consultants, whether as researchers, particularly as researchers, and people are still going off to study a particular group of people. And I, I just wonder why. Because organizations in my mind are interesting, they’re dynamic. They’re, they’re full of people that are goal oriented, in many ways, and have tasks that have to get done. And just having the opportunity to observe them at their work and learn from them is just, it is an immensely rewarding experience in and of itself. But then to be able to weigh in on what might work better is an important component, at least in the way I think about the world of work. It’s an important component for my personal satisfaction.

Interviewer 2:10
How did you get interested in anthropology?

Elizabeth Briody 2:15
Like many families, my mother used to read to me and my sister every night. And one of the books that I absolutely loved was Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. For those who haven’t read the book, it’s about a little Swiss girl, who ends up being…living with her grandfather high up in the Alps. And at some point along the way, gets taken to a German family where she has to adjust to a different way of life. At any rate, I so want it to be Heidi’s friend, I wanted to know I wanted to be in the mountains, with the goats and the sheep, I wanted to play with her. I just couldn’t imagine anything cooler than that. And honestly, I think that was the opening for me to start thinking about the world in a different way, a way that I had not previously known. There was something just very genuine, at least in my little mind at that time about that story. And then the whole idea of how she had to adjust to a totally different family lifestyle in Germany. That that led me to think about I don’t know just what…wouldn’t it be cool if I could do something like that sometime? And actually, as it turns out, I did. I lived in France for a year just out of high school as a American Field Service student. And so I did get a chance to experience a kind of Heidi like, situation, and I’m still in touch with that family today.

Interviewer 4:20
What was the one thing about the practice of Anthropology at nobody told you as a student?

Elizabeth Briody 4:27
When I was in graduate school, the emphasis was really on the diagnosis of what was going on in the community and relating that diagnosis to theory. And while that can be very useful, I also I found that it was not very satisfying, because oftentimes, communities and organizations have issues that they have to deal with. And I was Much more oriented towards thinking about, well, what could be done to help those communities or those organizations. And so the problem solving mindset started very late in graduate school as I was doing my field work. And I have carried that through my entire career.

Interviewer 5:24
How has the anthropological perspective or training enhanced your contribution to your workplace?

Elizabeth Briody 5:29
I work in multiple workplaces depending on the consulting role that I have at that moment, but I think the first thing that anthropology provides is the concept of holism. So that you see the organization as a unit that has a history. And that also is located typically in different spaces. And so when you’re able to understand it, in that in those ways, you get a more complete or comprehensive view of, of the issues that face that organization. Organizations generally have a tendency towards something that management people refer to as siloing. In other words, there are units within organizations that tend to operate fairly independently, fairly autonomously, from other units in the same organization. And as a result, information stays oftentimes just within those different units, and doesn’t break out and get shared. And that can be a huge problem in an organization that needs technical and managerial expertise on a very large corporate problem. So then the question is, how do you help these kinds of structural barriers, diminish, or at least be made permeable so that information can get shared across units and the issues that the organization is facing can be addressed?

Interviewer 5:35
What advice would you like to pass on to future anthropologist seeking roles in professional fields?

Elizabeth Briody 7:33
I hear through my leadership role in the anthropology career readiness network, is that students need role models. They need to know about anthropologists who work in very diverse places, they want to know about the person that works for the federal government, they want to know if somebody is working in a particular kind of nonprofit, they want to know somebody who might be doing, I don’t know, consumer research or design research. And it’s very difficult often for a student to find who might be someone that they could read about. So one of the things that the network hopes to focus on over the next year or so is to make those kinds of stories more visible. And how can that happened? Well, one way NAPA is already doing it is through the sNAPAshots. Another way that can be done is just through networking and conversations. A third way it can be done is you know, creating profiles. And the individual anthropologists can create a profile, which then could be posted on a website, just so for the purpose of students reading about these people. I think if students had more role models, they would then be able to imagine themselves in that kind of a role or that type of work much better than if they had no role models at all. And then just knowing that an anthropologist is in that position, just gives, I think, a general feeling of confidence that if that person can do it, then maybe I can do it too.

Interviewer 9:38
Thank you, Elizabeth, for sharing your experience as a practicing, professional, and applied anthropologist. For more snapshots find us at PracticingAnthropology.org, LinkedIn Meha and X.

Credits 9:48
PRODUCED BY Niel Tashima Cathleen Crain Joshua Liggett
DIRECTED BY Reshama Damle Suanna Crowley
EDITED BY Whitney Margaritis
MUSIC “Fat Chillin” by Lazy Chill Day via Pixabay
CREATIVE ASSISSTANT Juana Lozano

Many Thanks to NAPA’s Governing Council for supporting sNAPAshots Conversations with Practicing, Professional, and Applied Anthropologists NAPA is a section of the American Anthropological Association NAPA is seeking volunteers to join the sNAPAshots project. We’d love to hear from YOU! Contact us at: ntashima@ ltgassociates.com

Elizabeth Briody 9:50
[Outtakes] We don’t learn or at least I never learned how to collaborate. When I was in graduate school, I never worked on a team came in anthropology. I did in demography, but not an anthropology. And again, I think that there is a lot that anthropology programs can do today by putting students together on projects, whether they are student led projects or professor led projects. It doesn’t matter but, you know, giving them that opportunity to learn how to work with others is is a critical skill because that’s how work gets done in any workplace.

Interviewer 10:37
[On Screen Image NAPA Logo] sNAPAshots

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