How to launch and grow a consulting practice.

Consulting looks like a great idea to many academics, but women are not getting their fair share of consulting business, according to two women who offered tips on how to change the situation.

Diane Dean, executive administrator for finance and administration at Teachers College, Columbia University NY and Dr. Cynthia Secor, director of HERS, spoke to the women's caucus of the American Association for Higher Education at the annual conference in March 2002 in Chicago.

Many women in academe who have the expertise either don't know how to become consultants or are uncomfortable with the business aspects of operating a consultant practice.

People choose to go into consulting for many reasons, including a flexible work schedule, being one's own boss, using and being rewarded for one's special expertise, and the intrinsic rewards of service. Secor suggested women have an added imperative to launch consulting practices: Many need to increase their income to help their retirement portfolios catch up with decades of underpayment compared with their male peers.

They covered four steps to help women become consultants, either in addition to or instead of their campus jobs.

1. Learn the nature of consulting

Consulting is a professional service in which the assets are the brains of the consultant, who serves clients through contracts and projects. Three basic parts of consulting work are client relations, project management and performing the details, which Dean called "finding the work, minding the work, and grinding the work."