Jayne London

Having worked for ten years at the University of Michigan ‘s Graduate School with hundreds of graduate students from a wide variety of disciplines who are seeking assistance, advice, and support in successfully completing their masters and doctoral degrees, Jayne has a wealth of knowledge to share. She has also coached graduate students from other universities across the country to completion.

Jayne has put together a comprehensive series of workshops at Michigan for graduate students on such topics as overcoming procrastination, optimizing the student-advisor relationship, developing a research topic, managing a dissertation, and working with a committee. She is the main author of several UM publications including “How to Get the Mentoring You Want: A Guide for Graduate Students” and “How to Mentor Graduate Students: A Guide for Faculty Members.”

Jayne has helped many Academic Ladder clients complete their dissertations, grants or publications. She has run a number of our coaching groups, such as our Grad Students with ADD, Long-Distance Dissertators, Social Science and Science, Humanities, and ABD Moms coaching groups.

Here’s what others have to say about Jayne:

"I completely attribute the turnaround in my productivity to Jayne’s strengths as a coach. Jayne has enabled me to eradicate old, ineffective ways of working and develop new empowering habits.
I have never felt as motivated to complete my dissertation as I have since I started the sessions with Jayne."

A.C., doctoral candidate

"When I became a PhD candidate I lost my zest for the entire process and had been procrastinating on getting started writing. Jayne has encouraged me to finish by finding a way to just do a little writing each day."

D.B, doctoral candidate

"The suggestions you made earlier... made my work come together perfectly. It probably saved me three to five days or more of wheel spinning and over-planning."

D. M, doctoral candidate

"Jayne has earned the confidence and respect of countless graduate students as a sincerely caring and compassionate advisor who could demystify the complexities and cloudy messages each step of the way in the graduate student experience, and restore momentum, achievement and hope."

Sarah Ely, former counselor, Center for the Education of Women, University of Michigan.

"Jayne understands differing academic cultures and the expectations for students in various academic departments. Rather than suggesting to students that they should contact Jayne, I have often found myself asking if the students would mind if I went over with them to talk to her. These sessions with Jayne and the students have been enormously rich learning experiences."

Robert Holmes, University of Michigan Ombudsman

Contact Jayne about individual or group coaching

Mary Leonard

Mary is a counseling psychologist with a private psychological and coaching practice. As former associate professor and staff psychologist. she worked for 16 years at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. Mary always loved advising graduate students, and is proud of the fact that ninety-five percent of her masters and doctoral advisees graduated. She has continued that passion by working with talented people, whether graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, or professor, in challenging situations in the context of higher education.