M. S. (Peg) AtKisson
Founder/President
M. S. (Peg) AtKisson, Ph.D. earned her degree in neuroscience from Tufts University in 2001, after also working in cell biology and cancer biology. After completing her degree, she consulted for Cogniscent Inc. on nanotechnology applications of short DNA sequences as chemical sensors. She began her research development career as a contract grant writer, with clients including the Association for Computing Machines, Wake Forest University, Hunter College, and Tufts University, among others who cannot be named.
Tufts created a position for her, where she subsequently established and fully staffed one of the earliest formal research development offices. By the time she departed, she and her team had been involved in bringing in over $140,000,000 in funded grants. Funders ranged from NIH, NSF, and USAID to the W. M. Keck Foundation. Most of these successful high-value proposals supported research centers and infrastructure. She also provided training for faculty and post-doctoral fellows in grant writing.
She was invited to join Grant Writers’ Seminars and Workshops (GWSW) in 2008 and split her time between Tufts and GWSW until 2010. Dr. AtKisson was the first person the founders hired and trusted to carry out their programs. In eight years with the company, she presented an average of 30 seminars per year, customized for many different funders, covering STEM and social science as well as arts & humanities. Before leaving in 2016, she had worked directly with well over 200 individual researchers on proposals ranging from materials physics to history, coaching investigators through the grant-writing process to leave each faculty member with a new skill set to be applied to every proposal going forward.
She created ATG in 2017 to expand support for faculty research development beyond grant writing, creating leadership programs tailored to academic settings. To support this work, she has trained in executive and team coaching and in 2024 she finally finished CTI’s Co-Active Leadership program after interruptions by the pandemic and a broken leg. In 2021, she was accepted into the Conscious Leadership Guild. Dr. AtKisson is an inaugural member of InSciTS, a member of Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (ITD Alliance) and of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies. In 2024 she was named as a Fellow of the National Organization of Research Development Professionals. She also serves as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation. Dr. AtKisson is a highly acclaimed speaker and facilitator with a track record of helping faculty improve their competitiveness for funding both through their writing and their leadership skills. Since leaving Tufts, she has supported over $500,000,000 in successful awards.