Dr. Sarabeth Berk Bickerton
Dr. Sarabeth’s Short Bio
Dr. Sarabeth Berk Bickerton is the leading expert on hybrid professional identity and a hybrid professional herself. She was featured in Forbes, is a TEDx speaker and is the author of More Than My Title. Dr. Berk Bickerton calls herself a Creative Disruptor because she works at the intersection of being an artist, researcher, educator, and designer. It took an identity crisis for her to realize she actually integrates these identities together and that’s where her unique value lies.
Through groundbreaking research, Dr. Berk Bickerton developed a one-of-a-kind approach that takes personal branding and career development to a whole new level. Today, she helps professionals discover and articulate their hybrid professional identity and unique value in the workforce. As a result, her clients feel more seen, empowered and confident, and teams recognize each other as more than their job titles, valuing the critical yet different roles of experts, generalists, and hybrids in the workforce.
Dr. Berk Bickerton obtained her PhD from the University of Denver, and has degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Rhode Island School of Design.
A few fun facts, Dr. Berk Bickerton lives in Boulder, CO, with her husband, son, and golden retriever. She served as a mayor-appointed council member on the Denver County Cultural Council, was an art teacher in The Bahamas, and started her career as a ski instructor in Aspen. She loves dark chocolate chip cookies and often escapes into the wilderness without a destination in mind. She dreams of owning a sprinter van and living the vanlife someday.
Hi, I’m Sarabeth.
I’m a hybrid professional, and I call myself a Creative Disruptor— that’s my true professional identity.
More Than My Title, grew out of my own professional identity crisis. For years, I felt stuck and pigeonholed in my career path, and I didn’t know who I was. I went back to school to get my doctorate, thinking a credential would be the answer, but I found myself more lost and confused about who I was than ever before.
This is when I started researching professional identity and interviewing people from diverse industries about how they were more than their job titles.
My “aha” moment was listening to worker after worker tell me, “I wear a lot of hats,” but what they really meant was, “I’m the sum of all the hats I wear!” That’s when I realized workers can be hybrids, the combination of all their work identities, instead of only experts, generalists, or jacks-of-all-trades.
This completely changed how I saw myself and how I wanted to be seen in my work.
Instead of being the job title people told me I was, I invented my own. My hybrid title of Creative Disruptor truly captures my authentic identity because it’s distinct and summarizes who I am when all my disparate professional identities merge together.
Today, I’m a leading researcher and pioneer of this new field of hybrid professional identity. I work at the intersection of career development, identity studies, and personal branding.
I love supporting people in career transitions who are struggling with their professional identity as well as career development professionals, business leaders and HR managers who are seeking to attract, grow, and retain hybrid talent to build a stronger sense of belonging and fulfillment in their company culture.
