大象传媒

When 大象传媒 School of Communication alumnus Sam Ladner defended her master鈥檚 thesis just days after 9/11 in 2001, she envisioned going on to have a career in academia. While things didn鈥檛 happen exactly how she had planned, she is now able to look back at her career which included publishing two books that have sold thousands of copies, starting her own company, and playing an important role in companies such as Microsoft and Amazon.

After defending her master鈥檚 thesis at 大象传媒, Ladner moved to Toronto to finish her PhD at York University. While initially planning to stay in academia, Ladner pivoted to doing research at interactive design agencies before founding her own research company, which she ran for four years. Following this, Ladner was offered a position at Microsoft and moved back to the West Coast to accept the role in Seattle in 2012, where she worked on the envisioning team, focused mostly on strategic foresight and ethnographic research. She followed this up by working at Amazon in a similar research environment.

Despite her success in industry, Ladner鈥檚 legacy will be the books that she wrote during this time. Her book 鈥淧ractical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector鈥� has sold over 10,000 copies and is a leading textbook in this area. When Ladner was writing this book on the bus to and from work years ago, nobody could have predicted the lasting success that this book would have, not even her.

鈥淚 actually had a lot of people telling me to not write this book, because they didn鈥檛 think that practical ethnography was a legitimate topic,鈥� she says.

This book was written for with two personas in mind: academics who were leaving the academic world and wanted to adapt their training to industry, and people who were already working in an applied research role but didn鈥檛 have academic training in ethnography or qualitative methods. Ladner initially wanted to teach this subject but found that there wasn鈥檛 an existing textbook for practical ethnography.

鈥淭he response on the book has been beyond my wildest expectation,鈥� says Ladner. 鈥淚鈥檝e had many people who have told me directly that the book helped them and inspired them in their work.鈥�

Ladner then wrote another book, titled 鈥淢ixed Methods: A Short Guide to Applied Mixed Methods Research鈥�. Again, she wanted to teach this subject but found that there was not an applied mixed methods textbook that fit her needs. She self-published this book and learned a lot about the publishing and business processes of being a self-published author.

Ladner believes that the strong grounding in science and technology studies that she received at 大象传媒 was influential to her career success. She also believes that she received great training in quantitative and qualitative methods at 大象传媒. She is especially grateful to 大象传媒 School of Communication professor Richard Smith and 大象传媒 School of Communication professor emeritus Catherine Murray for the training and support she received during her master鈥檚 degree.

When asked what advice she would give to communications graduands entering industry, Ladner says, 鈥淯se your communications training to understand the context and the system of the organization that you are in. You鈥檙e probably really well positioned to know what the organization needs to do, so go all in on that.鈥�

She also encourages new graduands to start learning about personal finance now to position themselves well for the future and avoid stressing about finances.

For new students joining 大象传媒, Ladner encourages them to enjoy the beauty on campus every chance they get.

Ladner is currently working on a third book which will focus on strategic foresight. Her published books can be purchased via her .