Episode 77: From Teacher to Data Scientist with Julie Packett of Goldendelicious

Julie Packett is a former K-12 teacher who navigated the journey from the classroom to a flourishing career in data science. Recognizing the hurdles educators face when transitioning out of teaching, Julie was inspired to pave a smoother path for others by leveraging her expertise in data science. She is the visionary behind Goldendelicious, an innovative platform designed to connect teachers directly with employers eager to harness the unique skill sets of former educators. Through Goldendelicious Julie seeks to empower teachers exploring new career horizons, bridging the gap between traditional education and diverse professional opportunities.

We talked about her career journey and the hurdles she had to overcome transitioning out of teaching. We also discuss what she passes on to teachers who want to enter the field of data science.

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Topics Discussed:

  • Dealing with imposter syndrome

  • Staying connected to teaching after leaving the education world

  • How trying new jobs increases confidence

Resources mentioned:

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Read the transcript for this episode:

Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.

Julie Packett is a former K through 12 teacher who navigated the journey from the classroom to a flourishing career in data science. Recognising the hurdles educators face when transitioning out of teaching, Julie was inspired to pave a smoother path for others by leveraging her expertise in data science. She is the visionary behind Goldendelicious, an innovative platform designed to connect teachers directly with employers eager to harness the unique skill sets of former educators. Through Goldendelicious Julie seeks to empower teachers exploring new career horizons, bridging the gap between traditional education and diverse professional opportunities. 



Lily: Welcome, Julie, so glad to have you here with us.


Julie: Thank you so much for having me. It's really exciting for me, because last time I saw you, we were in a coaching session. Yes,


Lily: I know, I was so excited to be like, oh truly has made so much progress. So I'm excited to hear what you've been up to. And we'd love for you to start by just telling us in whatever way shape or form you'd like to go about your experience as an educator and kind of from Classroom Teacher till now. Yeah, yeah. So


Julie: I started out k-12. I was a high school English teacher. And I taught for four years, I was really burnt out by the third year, but that stat about teachers leaving after three years, I was too defiant to let myself get sick. So I was like, Okay, I'm gonna keep going well, after four years, I was really ready to go. And I didn't know what to do next, I ended up going to do doctoral studies, because in education, so I doubled down on even more education stuff, even though I was kind of like, burnt out on the Ed space. But yeah, I went and did the doctorate there. And then was teaching at the college level for a number of years. And so that's, that's my teaching experience. In a nutshell. It's about 10 years.


Lily: Yeah. Interesting. And then what did you teach at the college level?


Julie: I was teaching writing and linguistics. So I had a philosophy class or two. Yeah, a lot of writing freshman comp. There. The 13th grade is how I kind of thought about it. Like this is the writing that I would see from my seniors. 


Lily: Yes. My dad was a college writing professor. So I know with all the papers, and oh, yeah,  And I would grade the tests as a child.


Julie: That's what happened. School from an early age. Exactly.


Lily: Exactly. Awesome. So then after that, what did you do? 


Julie: Yeah, so I didn't know what to do. After that I was looking at academic jobs. And I had a couple job offers, but really didn't, you know, have one that resonated with me, you know how it is in the academic space, it's kind of geographically tied. So wherever you get a job, you got to move there. And so while I was going through those interviews, I was also competing for a fellowship. And the fellowship was to get people with advanced degrees into the federal government. And so you could work at pretty much all of the federal agencies, but I had my sights set on the Department of Education. So I got the fellowship, moved to DC. And then I was working as an education research analyst for the Department of Ed, which was a lot of fun. Getting to see what the other side looked like to be the person that I always complained about my classroom. No, but you know, you really do start to understand why some of those things that you complain about, happen, and yeah, it was very interesting to see from that level.


Lily: Yeah, absolutely. And what type of work did you do as an education research analyst?


Julie: There's a lot of looking up research to back up, you know, speeches, writing talking points. We did write a bit of policy, when there are, you know, federal regulations that come out at the time that I was there, there was a teacher prep regulation that was coming out, and it was, you know, to standardize how we do teacher prep, which I thought was a horrible idea, but you need to know what's in front of you that that rule ended up it's it didn't happen it in that can happen in government, too, which was so interesting to see. But yeah,it was pretty well rounded in terms of what we got to do. And I really did enjoy it. You know, you do get to see the Secretary of Education and often accompany them when they're on events and things like that, which I really loved. 


Lily: That's so interesting. And did you feel like going from being a teacher to that role? Did it feel like a big jump, or did you feel like it was kind of in line with things that you've done before? 


Julie: It felt like a huge jump and the imposter syndrome was strong with me. And I often talk about this, I would say that I felt like a teacher on an extended field trip. And I was learning how the sausage was made. And really, it's like, no, you're, you're working at this level, you're not a teacher anymore. Kind of like, own where you are now. But it's scary. It is scary to go from the only type of work you've known. Teaching seemed to come so naturally to me, even at the college level, and all of the activities you know, involved with, with preparing and everything that we do. And this was brand new, the language was confounding I'm hearing in the government, it's a lot of acronyms. So I'm hearing all these acronyms. I'm like, this is a different language. But once you really start to get acclimated, I did feel like oh, I can do this, this is not foreign. To me, these, these are the same types of activities that I did, but they just look a little bit different. And what I've really found to be interesting is that my teacher skills were the ones that were really valued at that job at the Department of Ed. And you know, beyond that, but I would be really praised for public speaking, you know, they would always have me go out and do some of the, you know, research talk. Because we had a lot of folks that didn't want to do that, you know, they like to be behind the scenes statisticians and stuff like that. But yeah, I, once I realized that and kind of started to own it. I was like, this is actually really, really cool. And having practical experience and knowledge of what this looks like, from the teacher's perspective is incredibly valuable in this kind of work and lots of kinds of work. 


Lily: Absolutely, and I appreciate you unpacking I mean, I think like, everybody has impostor syndrome, or most people do at some point or another. And so just recognizing that, you know, it's always gonna be there for many of us in some way, shape, or form. And then pushing past it. I always tell stories, like, I always hear all these famous people talking about imposter syndrome, like Michelle Obama, or like Maya Angelou being like, everything I wrote, I thought was gonna flop it was like, Oh, my gosh, what if you never run anything? That would be horrible. Right?


Julie: Right. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting when I worked after the Department of Ed on the Hill for a while working as an education legislative assistant. And I was so fascinated by all the people that were working in the education space on Capitol Hill. And so can you have coffee with me? Let's talk I want to know all about your career, and thus far, and all the things that you've done. Most of the people were they had no experience in the education space, it was sort of, you know, this is your issue area that's kind of dumped on them. Okay, well, that's, I guess that's what I'm doing. And they had two or three issues, you know, you might be doing Native American issues, and you might have transportation in your portfolio and education. And I started to really see like, everybody's kind of an imposter. We're all, you know, not even, you know, that's even the right word. But we're all learning things in our own way. And transitioning and moving around in your career is a great thing.


Lily: Yes, I think so too. And I think like for teachers, it can feel really unknown, like how to even transition in my career, if you don't want to be a principal. Or you don't want to work within a district. It's like, what can you do? Oh, I remember feeling like that, too. And I think just hearing like, there are so many things that you could do, right, using your skills and using your expertise, which then leads us a little bit to your latest venture Golden Delicious, which I'd love for you to tell us about and kind of how that came about. 


Julie: I have always wanted to keep one foot in the education space. I had done so much there. But I'm working now as a data scientist, I made a complete pivot. You know, I was an English teacher. So this is really foreign territory for me. But in pivoting over as a data scientist, I did miss having one foot in the education space. And so I had met with you because I wanted to find out I really wanted to think through how can I do something that's productive in the education space that's useful. I'm really mission driven like a lot of teachers are right we were that's a calling. And so there does seem to feel like this lock if you move all the way out of it, at least that's that's how I felt. I really missed that piece of of life. And so I had met with you to talk through Well, what For some business ideas that could be interesting and useful. And I had been informally mentoring teachers for a number of years, I would get folks reaching out to me saying, How did you move from teaching into this field? Can you have coffee with me? Yeah. And I just found I was having the same conversation over and over again, which is fine. But you realize that you can scale things in this day and age, and you can be more impactful. So yeah, we had talked you and I about the coaching business, helping teachers transition out of education. And so I did launch that business, and had been doing that for a couple of years. And I noticed I'm getting the same types of questions over and over again, is there a better way than just imparting this information verbally? Teachers were that I was working with trying to transition out of out of education, or out of the classroom, maybe staying in the education space, like a lot of your listeners, they had the same questions over and over, how do I translate my skills, I don't understand how they transfer, I don't understand what language I should be using in my resume. There's no other word for differentiation, you know, translate. And there's a lot of education happening in terms of how skills transfer, which is totally fair, there are so many skills within teaching, it's hard to even put your finger on it, until you really start to unpack it. So I was getting a lot of requests about you know, how to translate my skills. And then the other major question was, what else can I even do? I don't even know what teachers can do. And I think I'm stuck in the education space, because that's all I've done. And so it's a lot of well, you know, there's a whole landscape of available careers, if you want to stay in the education space and do curriculum development, or do corporate training or something like that. Yeah, that's awesome. But do know that there are a variety of different roles that you may not be aware of. That's the thing to me is that teachers were in the classroom, a lot of us don't have resumes, we maybe had one resume, we got our teaching job. And we're not really keeping it up to date, we're not going on multiple interviews. And so folks that are outside of the teaching space, are getting all that cultural capital, of understanding how to interview well, understanding how to write a resume, understanding how to talk about your skills. But all that's to say, I wanted to then leverage data science, and speak, you know, some of the skills from my day job to build this platform where teachers could log on, and understand immediately what else they could do. And the platform would translate their skill set. So that's how Golden Delicious was born. And that's my current venture.


Lily: Yeah, that's so cool. I mean, I totally relate to having coffee over and over again, and be like, Oh, wait, I could do something that's more scalable. Like, that's definitely not what I did my first courses to where I was like, Okay, I have all these teacher friends asking me the same questions like, let me turn it into a course, where I can really reach more people. And so I think I hear you say that it's such good advice for everybody if like, what do people keep coming to you for? You know, and like, pay attention to that and seeing how you might be able to package that differently. And then thinking about Golden Delicious, how to get so interesting thinking about like, the translation of skills. And I'm wondering how you can share a little bit more about like, if a teacher uses golden, delicious, like, how does it work? Do they upload their resume? Like, what does that process look like? 


Julie: There are a couple of different data sources that I pull from, you know, the first is you log in with your LinkedIn profile. So it pulls all of that data. And then there are also a number of different opportunities to input data in the form of taking quizzes, fun stuff. So you have it imports a lot of your data, automatically, you get to take quizzes, the more that you take, the more are accurate our matching algorithm is going to be for you. But that's it, generally you go on and you input your data, and it starts to give you matches almost like a dating app or some capital might have like a, you know, percentage match with a particular career. And we're onboarding employers right now to so we can match folks with employers directly. So we're doing a bit of education with employers around what teachers bring, and really the rich skill set that they could tap into.


Lily: Yes, so interesting. And I'm curious if you from talking to employers have any insight of like, what do you see people getting that teachers can do and what do you see people as maybe not getting and I'm saying this as like I talked to edtech companies a lot. And there are some things that are very obvious like Teach your skills transfer, and then other things where I feel like, it's hard to know what it's like being a teacher unless you've been a teacher. And so some things can be need to be a little bit more impact.


Julie: Yeah, I think that's spot on, you know, you get a lot of well, I was a student. So I know what teachers do. And it's know using said miniscule slice of what teachers do. Yeah, I've seen that they understand, I think, the key skills, right, like communication, people skills, empathy, and being able to break down concepts to teach concepts. It's really useful in so many industries, to be able to take technical information, some for something highly specialized and break it down for a lay person. That's something that I did in on Capitol Hill, right? Like that's, that's everywhere, and really valued. I think those are the skills that employers sort of assume are there. And then there are more that are maybe a bit more hidden. And that's what I talked about with golden delicious, too, is we're making invisible skills visible both for the teachers that don't maybe know how to talk about the skills, but also for employers. I was talking to somebody in ed tech recently does hiring an ed tech. And he said, Well, we're building technology. And so we need people that have empathy, because it's all about user interaction with this, you know, piece of Ed Tech, we need to know, how does it land with teachers. And, you know, even more so than that teachers have so much empathy that they can understand better how to design these tools, which I thought was completely fascinating. 


Lily: interesting. And I think it's true, like, it's so helpful. Having somebody else say, like, Oh, these may be your skills, then it is like trying to come up with those on your own sometimes. And I think, especially if you've been a classroom teacher, for a long time and around teachers for a long time, you start don't almost take your skills for granted. And it can be hard to articulate them as something that is unique, you know, and can be applied in many different areas. So I think just getting that like output of oh, these are my skills, and these are places where they could be used is so helpful. Right?


Julie: I mean, think about going on LinkedIn, and as a transitioning teacher, and you don't know what to type into the search bar, what what careers Am I even looking for? So, you know, it renders it almost useless to you, you might type in the keyword education and get a bunch of related careers. But I think that's where it kind of stops for people. And so that's where I really wanted Golden Delicious to add value is suggesting job titles.


Lily: Yeah, I love it. That's awesome. And what do you see as your long term goals with Golden Delicious?


Julie: We're hoping to onboard really like my vision is to have, we have this skills gap in the US, right? There's, there are so many unfilled jobs. And employers in these really high demand areas like healthcare administration, manufacturing, there are a bunch of jobs that are in careers and fields that we might not even think of as having anything to do with teaching or attractive at all, that may have roles that are really appealing and that you'd be really successful at as a transitioned teacher. So I want to marry the two, I want to bring these high demand jobs into the platform so that teachers are able to find them. And we can kind of close the skills gap and the opportunity gap at the same time. So that's the vision. Right now we're able to match teachers with job descriptions, and the employers that we've on boarded, but in the future, I want it just to be like all employers ready to hire and simplify everything, you know, you may not even need to have a translated resume and apply. You just have a conversation. So


Lily: That's great. I love that. And I love thinking about both of the sides of it to have like helping teachers translate their skills, but also that employer education part. And that just like you're saying, if it becomes such a dynamic place, then it's like, almost can be a direct connection there.


Julie: 100%.


Lily: Awesome. So thinking about your journey from being a teacher to where you are now, what have you learned about yourself working beyond the classroom?


Julie: Yeah, I've learned so much. I think one thing is that I have so much more power to move around in my career than I thought I did. I really thought someone's going to need to pluck me out of the abyss and take a chance on me because I'm just a teacher. And that was such a limiting mindset and that manifested into limitations, career wise, it wasn't until I looked at what I could actually do and learn how to talk about it that I could really be free, so to speak, I had been working at the Department of Ed and we were doing something that I was really interested in, but that I had no skill in, it was building a data platform. And I said, please let me on this project, and the guy that was leading the project was leaving, and so I got to lead the project. And it was, like I said, something I hadn't had any experience with, but ended up being really good at. And I say that because you never know what you're gonna really yes, you're good at and what you'll vibe with. And from there, I was able to say, Okay, I am actually flexible, nimble, agile as a as an employee. And I also started to think about myself as a commodity. And that sounds kind of depressing, but you are a commodity, that someone's hiring to do something. And so you need to be able to talk about how you can solve the problems in whatever space you're going into. So really thinking about what does this employer need me to do? What problem am I there to solve? And that helped me in interviews, and in, you know, job opportunities after that, to really be able to move around, like I said, it really did increase my confidence about my portability.


Lily: That's so powerful. I mean, I think both parts of that of even thinking about the mindset that you described at the beginning of like, Oh, I'm just a teacher, you know, which I think many of us have. And I definitely, you know, how people come to me feeling like that, like, I'm just a teacher, like, I'll just have to have this chance being taken on me or like, maybe somebody will find me like, if only they just give me a chance. And really, we have so much more agency and power than that. And it really does start with believing that which is a process, you know, we could sit here and be like, you know, believe it, but it's like it is a process of really uncovering all those things that we've done, and really owning that. And also that second part that you said, of having the project come up that you're interested in, but you've never done something with before. And so being able to take that chance, and learn through doing it, I think is really so empowering to you don't have to know everything, but is having that mindset of being like I can figure it out. And then I'm going to learn through the process. 


Julie: I think that the way that teachers think about education is so linear. And I think it translates over into how we think about our careers. It's like, we have to be able to do this, we have to have studied this before we can do it. And it's just not true. And people outside of the education space, don't think about their careers that way. They're willing to take on something new and trust that they're going to learn it. And another lightbulb moment I had, I was talking to a mentor. And she said to me, if you feel like you know what you're doing, it's time to leave. And that might be kind of radical for some people. But I started to think about myself in terms of, you know, your job in your job, you get compensated, because you get money, and you get benefits, but you're also learning skills, and they're really valuable, and you take those with you. And they enrich you as an applicant and as a worker. And so you want to be getting all those skills. So once I once I really figured that out and realized, well, nobody really knows what they're doing. They're figuring it out on the go, Well, why won't I Why can't I do that, too? I think it really was that mindset of like, well, you got to do a to get dizzy, and no, blow it all up. 


Lily: Yes, absolutely, and I think that really is telling, you know, like as you start to unpack the layers of like, the ways that we are part of a system with teachers, where it's like, everybody's telling us that we can just be teachers, you know that we have a very limited career pathways. And we start to internalize so much so much of this, but really going out there and being like, Hey, I could do all these things. And like you're saying, like, other people are out there figuring it out, as they go along. I think some of it to like, as you were talking reminded me just of like professional development and how we're told, like, oh, this was our focus for the year and this was the thing that you're going to be learning. It really does kind of strip that agency away often. And when you go out beyond the classroom, it's like you can create your own professional development. You can create your own path of like, Hey, I'm gonna take on this job to learn this skill. And then I'm gonna go and do this other thing. And that you get to really decide what you're going to learn and what you're going to do, and how you're going to get from point A to point B.


Julie: I think that's incredibly useful. I hope that the listeners will think about their career that way. And, yeah, really understand there's so many resources around us if we just want to grab onto them. 


Lily: Yes. And do it while feeling scared. Yeah, I think that often we're like, oh, but it just feels so scary, and it feels unknown. And all the imposter syndrome, like all the things like, those are likely gonna be there. And so just normalizing those feelings to have like, you're doing something now, it's probably gonna feel uncomfortable, but it's also going to feel really exciting. As you figure things out. Yeah.


Julie: And what's really funny is that I didn't get a lot of positive feedback as a teacher. If I do say, so myself, I was a good teacher, I was a national board certified teacher, and I wasn't getting a lot of positive feedback, it was always like, you need to do more, you're not doing enough, you need to stay later, you know, just all of these messages without ever being able to do enough. And then outside of that space, the demands being so much lower, blew my mind. And I've had like quite a few different roles since teaching. And I found it was the same in all of them. I was allowed to go home at the end of the day, and I didn't have to take anything with me. And absolutely, yeah, me too. Were reasonable. And that was really eye opening. Because I did have so much fear initially about whether or not I was going to fail it was I going to look stupid, was I just going to feel like a fish out of water all day, every day. Was I going to feel like a fraud all day, every day. That is just getting there. And yeah, like you said, feeling the fear and doing it anyway. And keeping your eyes open. Because you know, you'll have a supervisor that will offer a certain amount of mentorship hopefully, you know, typically, you have job aids at work, a lot of times you have colleagues to lean on. And there's an A lot of times now jobs have on the job training. So there's there's a lot there that can help you out if you won't be usually on your own.


Lily: Yes, and it reminds me just as you were talking to you, I mean, I have a similar experience. And everything I've done outside of the classroom has been nowhere near as hard as being a kindergarten teacher.


Julie: The paradox for me is like “we can't do anything. I'm just a teacher.” Yeah, that's such a weird phrase to me. And I said it myself. Yeah. Because it's the most demanding job. And it's so complex. Yes. I mean, that's why we wanted to study, you know, having an advanced study and education because there's so much to unpack there. Yeah, it's like layer after layer after layer of the complexity of what teachers do. I mean, it's, it's actually insane. But then we're gonna say, I'm just a teacher.


Lily: But it's like this whole toxic system, right? Like that makes us feel like we're just teachers or puts all these unreasonable demands on this. And I think that's what's so honestly tragic, sometimes to me, like seeing teachers internalize so much of that as feeling like it's their fault. Yeah. And thinking like, Oh, I just can't do anything else. I can't even do this. It's too much like it must be me. No, it's not teachers faults. Like it's this whole system that really like, does make teaching such an impossible job when like you're saying, there's so much amazing complexity that goes into it and so much support that really can be brought to the field. 


Julie: Yeah, yeah, I believe that.


Lily: So thinking about advice for teachers who may be ready to move beyond the classroom, what advice would you give them?


Julie: Yeah, my main piece of advice is to go out and have coffee with folks do informal meetings with as many people as you can, in as many different roles as you can. When I first got to DC, I was like a kid in a candy store. Because I was like, there's so many, there's so many people that I could sit down and have coffee with that have done amazing things in the education space. And I would meet up with somebody that I thought was like, just amazing that I put on a pedestal, and it's just a normal person. And maybe they didn't have like super credentials and Edie are super experienced in the ad space. And they're still like a superstar in that space that was really fortifying. And I think it's really valuable. Sometimes it's called informational interviewing. But what I would do is type in keywords for things I was interested in into LinkedIn, find people that were doing things that I was interested in, maybe things I didn't even know what they were, what they entailed. And that was many coffees, you could do it over zoom, right, just like Get an informal message to someone, hey, I'm a transitioning teacher, I am really interested in what you've done in your career, people love to talk about themselves. So, you know, reach out, don't be afraid to do so. And you're not just going to get information about, like maybe a particular role that you're interested in that you don't really know what all goes into it. But you'll also start to learn some of the language. And that was incredibly useful for me in learning how to do this work of translation is, you know, every field seems to have their own lexicon, their own secret language, but you start to learn some of the terms and learn how to talk about what you do when you get outside of the education space and start talking about what you do. And then also, you can make mentors, you can find people who then are your advocate, there are folks that I had coffee with that I still will email from time to time, and you know, keep them abreast of what I'm doing, ask questions, get advice, it's been incredibly valuable. And I think it's so easy to do such a low barrier to entry to do that, that that's, that'd be my number one piece of advice.


Lily: That's great. That's great advice. It's that I think it's really authentically building your network of people who can both support you, but also show you those possibilities. And like you've said, throughout this interview, you know, just being able to see, there are people doing things that I could do, or that I'd be interested in, maybe I don't know how to do it yet. But just seeing those possibilities and making those connections is such a good first step. And then building those relationships over time to like that really is such a powerful strategy. 


Julie: And I like that you said, building your network, because I'll often hear like, I'm scared to network. I don't know how to do networking. And people keep telling me to network, and I don't know how to do it. What do I do? Do I just like, email someone or talk to someone and ask them if they'll give me a job? They don't really, you know, totally understand that networking can be just as easy and informal as having coffee with someone or just reaching out and having a quick conversation.


Lily: Yes, absolutely. And I think that through those conversations, you really get to see your skills in different ways. And you get to see evidence of like, oh, people are doing these things out there in the world. And it reminds me of what you were saying about mindset, that you could go on an informational interview or out to coffee with somebody. And you can have the mindset of like, oh, well, I don't know how to do these things. Or even have the mindset of like, oh, how does my experience connect to what they're saying? And think about it that way. And I think that that's so powerful, like, everything is a learning opportunity, and a chance for you to see your experience in different way. And of course, they're gonna sometimes be things that we need to learn and like you were saying, what advice that you got like, that is what makes things exciting to always have things to learn. And so I think through those interviews is a chance to practice that mindset shift to


Julie: that's so true. Yeah. Instead of being in fear, being in curiosity. I really love that. 


Lily:  Awesome. Well, Julie was so nice to connect with you. I would love for you to share where people can connect with you and learn more about Golden Delicious.


Julie: Yeah, so we're at Golden delicious.ai. And if you'd like to reach out to me, I'm happy to always have coffee chats with folks, and it's just jewels at Golden delicious.ai. We really hope to see a lot of folks coming onto the platform soon. So please check us out.


Lily: Wonderful, and we'll put the links in the show notes as well. Thank you. Yeah, thanks again. It was so nice to talk with you.


Julie: Yeah. Likewise.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Lily Jones