Irene Padavic is an Associate Professor at Florida State University. Before becoming a professor, she worked in a variety of service-sector jobs: candy seller at a movie theater, waitperson, telephone solicitor, door-to-door promoter of real estate, paralegal, and marketing researcher. Her dissertation project provided experience in the industrial sector, where she worked as a coal-handler in a power plant. Her research has been in the areas of gender and work, race differences in campus peer culture, economic restructuring, and changes in childcare arrangements.