Alumni spotlight
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Emily Bishop PhD'15 (Biomedical Engineering)
From biomedical engineering to embodiment coach
Emily Bishop helps other women in STEMM “have it all”
As a postdoc in biomedical engineering at the Schulich School of Engineering, Emily Bishop (PhD ‘15) researched the effectiveness of a high-tech knee brace for people with osteoarthritis. She won a graduate program award for her “extraordinary accomplishments and outstanding contributions.” Bishop helped with the strategic planning and implementation of the university’s Biomedical Engineering Research Strategy. She worked with the private sector and taught third-year students at Mount Royal.
But after having a baby in 2020, Bishop did the mother of all pivots.
“When I went back to work after my first child, I was not proud at all of how I was showing up for my family,” she says. “It was not okay. I wanted to make a change.”
I had a conversation with my partner and said, ‘I just want to try this for two months, see if I can make a go of it.’ And of course, September rolled around, and I wasn’t seeing the success I wanted to see. But I couldn’t bear the thought of wondering what could have happened if I stuck it out longer.
Emily Bishop PhD'15 (Biomedical Engineering)
The biomedical engineer who studied how the body moves became an “embodiment coach,” helping women “get out of our mind and tap into the body and listen to what the body is trying to tell us.”
Bishop got certified and started Emily Bishop Coaching full-time in the summer of 2024 with one client. “I had a conversation with my partner and said, ‘I just want to try this for two months, see if I can make a go of it.’ And of course, September rolled around, and I wasn’t seeing the success I wanted to see. But I couldn’t bear the thought of wondering what could have happened if I stuck it out longer.”
She stuck it out. Now her client list is growing, she’s giving keynotes on embodiment, and she contributed two chapters to a collaborative book: Beyond the Pipeline: Redefining Value, Success, and the Future of Women in STEMM—Together.
“It's kind of crazy how things begin to unfold,” says Bishop. “I have several published first-author scientific papers, but sending off the final chapters on the book felt so different because there's so much more of my own voice and my own story in it, not just ‘here's the data, here's the results, here's my interpretation of them.’ I never felt as nervous putting out a scientific paper as I did for this.”
Bishop’s chapters are titled Ideal Worker vs. Ideal Parent - The High Cost of Competing Identities and Navigating Motherhood Alongside Career - Thriving—One Bold Mother at a Time.
Alongside raising her two young sons, Bishop helps other women (mostly from STEMM) figure out what is “actually important’ to them and therefore what their definition of success looks like. “When you get clear on that and you begin to make changes in alignment with what you truly value, you can absolutely ‘have it all,’” says Bishop.
She’s loving her new career, enjoying the momentum and continuing to employ her considerable research skills—just on different topics. “Even in coaching, you put your research hat on,” she says.
“As engineers, we like to see numbers, we like to quantify things. There are tools in coaching as well—a baseline assessment and an assessment at the end to be able to quantify how things have changed. But instead of forces and moments on the knee, we’re measuring things like how connected you feel to your purpose.”