I lived it. Then I studied it. Then I taught it.
Before I was Dr. Keating, I was a foster youth, a teenager without a home, and a big sister raising her siblings while finishing a bachelor's degree that took eight years. Everything I teach now comes from having been on the hard side of it first. I have been a coach for more than 12 years, and since 2021 I have run my own business guiding people through their educational goals and career plans.
I'm just the foster girl who screenshotted my graduation photo because I could not afford it. It's weird to see my face on a Times Square billboard.
I have been on every side of a courtroom.
I was the child, the sibling, the one raising everybody, and eventually the legal guardian. I did not study trauma and then go looking for a subject. I lived it first, and went back for the language afterward.
Foster care. The chaos of abuse. Homeless at eighteen, and for six years after that. Raising my siblings before anyone was raising me, and their legal guardian at twenty six.
The long way, one degree at a time
Psychology, child and adolescent
Eight years, because that is what it takes when you are raising people while you are still being raised. I watched my friends graduate a year before me, and I cried, and then I finished.
Leadership and organizational studies
I worked full time in higher education as a success coach and an admissions counselor, which is where I learned what students are actually carrying.
General psychology, cognition and instruction
Finished in three and a half years while raising my youngest brother and working full time. My dissertation on what helps foster youth make it through community college was published in 2021, and my journal article from it was published in Advances in Applied Sociology in 2022.
Assistant professor and dissertation chair
From 2021 to 2025 I chaired and sat on committees for about 20 doctoral students a year, and trained staff at more than 30 institutions.
Coach and business owner
I have been coaching people for more than 12 years. In 2021 I went out on my own and started my business, and since then I have been guiding people through their educational goals and their career plans, from the dissertation to the job search.
I am a wife and a mother, and I run this business from my house.
I have two kids and a husband who has been in every part of this with me, from the night feed shifts to running his own resume through the score tool. Some days I work with my son asleep on my chest, and I do not hide that, because the whole reason I built these systems is so I can be done by five and be with them.
I lost my job in June 2020 and nobody called me back.
More than 200 applications, and the job I finally got came from a friend who opened a door. When I built the score tool, I ran my own resume through it, and it did not match me to professor jobs either. That is when I understood the problem was never the person. It was what the resume was saying.