9: Using a Portfolio Approach to Navigate Academia

This chapter shares some of the ways that academics curate and manage the evidence they need to support professional development and career progress, to better articulate their achievements and impact, and to identify gaps for development. The process begins with collecting and organizing evidence and then reflecting and selecting evidence for presentation. Building such a profile is part of developing and communicating a professional identity and can be done in collaboration with colleagues. This chapter also describes how a group of women collaborated to support each other through a “portfolio approach” in a project named women @the cutting edge.