From the Catwalk to the Commencement Stage

Dr. Felicia Clark graduated from Pepperdine University. She took graduate school courses at night while working in a full-time demanding management position during the day. She was able to keep up with her studies until a death in the family made it impossible for her to focus on her studies. Dr. Clark sought the support she needed to complete her dissertation and graduate.   Since graduation, Dr. Clark has presented her work at national conferences. She has developed curricula for mathematics, including text books and tests for teachers. Dr. Clark also led a team of math coaches who produced the highest growth in the nation's largest math reform initiative in the United States.   While in grad school, Dr. Clark also was a plus size cover model under contract with the top modeling agency in the United States. Dr. Clark now combines her two passions,  mathematics curriculum development and modeling to help women break up with body shame and express the Goddess within. She hosts a pageant like no other kind and is a frequent media guest on topics related to body shame.   Dr. Clark speaks to college students, women's groups, and counseling organizations to show data on how extreme beauty standards control a woman's sexual energy while consuming wealth, health and time. Check out her TEDx talk "The BS in Beauty Standards."     In this episode…

In this episode of An Unconventional Life, Dr. Felicia Clark speaks with Dr. Russell Strickland about life’s ups and downs and how she braved through her PhD journey despite a significant loss. She credits having a hand to hold and a shoulder to lean on as critical to getting her dissertation done. She also talks about her passion for mathematics, her modeling career, and her upcoming book on debunking women’s beauty standards, Beauty and the Beastly Standards.

Dr. Clark refused to let life’s challenges prevent her from finishing her PhD. For persistent folks, Like Dr. Clark, life has a strange way of working things out eventually. Be inspired to finish what you started by this moving story of adversity and reward.