Written by: Roshni Singh, Career Stories team
Creating Her Own Path: The Right Time, The Right Place
When Jill Jividen, PhD, defended her dissertation just before the Great Recession, she never imagined that her career would lead her to the world of RD. Like many in RD, Jill didn’t plan her RD career but started as a research administrator, where she seized the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of grant solicitation, submissions, and compliance. Her strong background in writing and communication helped her advance quickly, opening doors to opportunities that would shape her career.
Jill Jividen is the Assistant Vice President for Research Development at the University of Michigan (U-M). Jill holds degrees in journalism, English, and American Literature from Michigan State University (BA), New York University (MA), and the University of South Carolina (PhD).
Jill joined U-M in 2010 as a research administrator in the U-M Medical School. Despite being ranked in the top five nationally, U-M largely lacked knowledge of or strategies for Research Development, including long-term planning for sustaining its high ranking, faculty skill-building to increase competitiveness, or cross-campus efforts to activate interdisciplinary collaboration. In 2014, when RD was still “thin on the ground” at U-M, Jill landed her first RD position in a small institute. Connecting with a handful of U-M peers working in RD, Jill says, “turbocharged my interest in the field and helped me develop a vision for what RD could look like at U-M.” This was Jill’s “right time and right place” to build interest in RD, and she successfully lobbied to establish a central office in OVPR in 2019. Her early challenges, however, were convincing faculty across 19 schools and colleges to use central RD services and educating them on the value that RD could bring to their funding efforts. What began as a “solo show” in 2019 has since grown into a team of 15, where Jill oversees proposal development and editing services, the Bold Challenges program for large-scale interdisciplinary science, a new strategic intelligence team, and a new Faculty Honorifics Office. To directly support faculty members, the U-M Office of Research Development pairs funding with project management, logistics support, and research development expertise, as well as offers critical skill-building and training to build research capacity. In her leadership role, Jill’s mission is to help faculty achieve research success and support institutional research strategy, while continually identifying and addressing service gaps.
Jill credits a hospitality background outside of academia for shaping her customer service-driven leadership style. Before graduate school, she worked in fine dining in New York City, in restaurants where staff consistently provided an outstanding experience for customers and took pride in the caliber of their service. She brings that same philosophy to research development: “We need to present ourselves as helping faculty, anticipating their needs, and providing seamless service.”
Her leadership has also been strengthened by NORDP involvement; Jill served on the NORDP board from 2018-2023, including as an executive officer, and she was recognized in 2023 with the Holly Falk-Krzesinski Service Award, the highest honor NORDP bestows on members for outstanding service to the organization, profession, and peers. Currently co-chairing the NORDP Training & Education Working Group, Jill remains active with the organization and is the recipient of the 2025 NORDP Leadership Award. According to Jill, her involvement in NORDP by “learning to be more diplomatic and helping people reach consensus, has really helped me transition to a more effective leadership role at my own university.”
Jill is happy to answer any questions you have for her, so please feel free to contact her at jjgoff@umich.edu.
To listen to her full interview by the career stories/kindling team, please click on this link (you must log in as a NORDP member to access): https://nordp.org/store/viewproduct.aspx?id=24459276; Chapter 50: Jill Jividen
NORDP News 