Mrim Butla, Ph.D

Content Creator

Dr. Mrim Boutla is a neuroplasticity PhD turned career and leadership coach. Dr. Boutla currently serves as a career coach, facilitating leadership development workshops and providing group and individual coaching services to graduate students and alumni of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, named #1 program in the world in International Relations in 2020 by Foreign Policy Rankings. Dr. Boutla also teaches social entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, and provides advisory services to startup executives through Cognaction, her private coaching and consulting practice. Previously, as a career coach at Brown University and at the Kelley School of Business (Indiana University), Mrim successfully facilitated workshops on executive presence, neuroscience and leadership, and cross-sector careers as well as coached hundreds of liberal arts graduates, MPAs, MBAs, and PhD executives secure and thrive in jobs that maximize impact and income. As a private sector social innovator, Dr. Boutla led student success and contributed to digital product development and advising service delivery optimization for Quad Learning, a PPP that has helped over 1,400 students from diverse backgrounds graduate from community college and successfully transfer to top US universities. Dr. Boutla was also a member of the first cohort of entrepreneurs at 1776, and received the 2013 AshokaU/Cordes Prize for co-founding and growing MTMCareers, a cognitive algorithm that inspired over 5,000 students and leaders get clear, get connected, and get hired for jobs in corporate social responsibility (CSR), impact investing, renewable energy, international development, humanitarian response, global education, and global health. Dr. Boutla serves as a startup mentor through I-Corps, HeraHub, NETVA, and AccelerateDC. Half-Swiss and half-Moroccan, Dr. Boutla was the first in her family to go to school beyond 9th grade. She started her journey in the US as an F-1 student and became an American citizen in 2015. Dr. Boutla earned BSc/MA in Psychology from UCLouvain (Belgium), her MA and PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Rochester, and completed her neuroplasticity postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University. Dr. Boutla’s research was published in top international journals, including Nature Neuroscience, Cerebral Cortex, and Psychological Science. Beyond work, Mrim enjoys international travel and watching NBA games with her daughter