Privacy Policy

Last Updated: March 20, 2026.

Our Commitment to Privacy

At PhD Career Academy (“Academy” or “we”), we respect your privacy and confidentiality regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites. The privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us. We are committed to keeping the personal information you share with us, whether over the Internet or on the telephone, confidential. We created this policy to demonstrate our commitment to privacy and security. This privacy policy document describes the types of personal information that is received and collected by Academy and how it is used.

This Policy is designed to comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) where applicable to individuals in the European Economic Area. We ask that you read this Privacy Policy carefully.

Your Acceptance of these Terms

By using this website, you signify your acceptance of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our website. Your continued use of the website following the posting of changes to this policy will be deemed your acceptance of those changes.

Information Collected

Non-Personally Identifiable Information

Like most website operators, we collect non-personally identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site and the date and time of each visitor request. Academy’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Academy visitors use its websites. From time to time, we may release non-personally identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of this website.

Potentially-Personally Identifying Information

We also collect potentially personally identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on Academy’s blogs/website. Academy only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally identifying information as described below, except that commenter IP addresses and email addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog/website where the comment was left.

Personal Information We Collect and How It is Used

We collect personal information for various reasons. Certain visitors to Academy websites choose to interact with Academy in ways that require us to gather personally identifying information. The amount and type of information that Academy gathers depends on the nature of the interaction.

Why We Ask for Your Personal Information

We ask you for information to establish and serve you as our client. The information we ask for depends on the products or services you request. With your consent, we may use certain information to provide you with information about Academy and its products and services. This consent is optional, and you can decide to withdraw your consent at any time.

Self-Assessment and Career Readiness Data

PhD Career Academy offers the Career Claimers Index™, a self-assessment tool that helps PhD professionals evaluate their career readiness across two dimensions: professional agency and academic attachment. Because this assessment collects and processes personal data in ways that differ from general website usage, this section describes those practices specifically.

What We Collect Through the Assessment

When you complete the Career Claimers Index™, we collect the following information: your name and email address (provided by you before beginning the assessment); your responses to 25 self-assessment questions scored on a five-point scale; two calculated scores derived from your responses (an Agency score and an Attachment score); and a career readiness classification based on those scores. We also record the date of each submission and whether you have completed the assessment more than once.

How We Use Your Assessment Data

We use your assessment data for the following purposes: to calculate and deliver your career readiness results to you by email; to assign you to a career readiness category that determines the content and guidance most relevant to your situation; to send you a follow-up email sequence tailored to your career readiness category; and to improve the assessment instrument over time through aggregate, anonymized analysis of score distributions. We do not sell, rent, or share your individual assessment responses or scores with any third party.

Consent and Lawful Basis

We process your assessment data on the basis of your explicit consent, which you provide by checking the consent checkbox before submitting the assessment. The assessment cannot be submitted without this consent. You may withdraw your consent at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email or by contacting us directly at the address provided at the end of this policy. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.

Assessment Data Storage and Retention

Your assessment data is stored within our customer relationship management system, which is hosted on our secured web server. If you complete the assessment more than once, your most recent scores and classification replace the previous values, though we retain a count of total submissions. We retain your assessment data for as long as you remain an active contact in our system. If you request deletion of your data, we will remove all assessment records associated with your email address within 30 days of your request.

Protection of Certain Personally Identifying Information

Academy discloses potentially personally identifying and personally identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that: (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Academy’s behalf or to provide services available at Academy’s websites and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country. By using Academy’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them.

We will not rent or sell potentially personally identifying and personally identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, we disclose potentially personally identifying and personally identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Academy, third parties, or the public at large.

If you are a registered user of an Academy website and have supplied your email address, we may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Academy and our products. If you send us a request (for example via email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. We take all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally identifying and personally identifying information.

Registration

We may ask visitors who sign up at our website to provide a name, username and email address in order to access various parts of our websites and services. Those who engage in transactions with Academy are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, we collect such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Academy. We do not disclose personally identifying information other than as described above. Visitors can always refuse to supply personally identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.

Private Information and Data Security

For your safety and protection, we do not store your credit card information on our servers. Our payment gateway provider keeps this information encrypted and secure on your behalf. Services and websites we sponsor have security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or data storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. While we make every effort to ensure the integrity and security of our network and systems, we cannot guarantee that our security measures will prevent third party hackers from illegally obtaining this information.

Your Rights

Right to Withdraw Consent

Wherever we have asked for your consent to collect or process your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent. If you receive email messages from us, you can use the “unsubscribe” link in each message to withdraw consent and stop the mailings. Alternatively, you can contact Don Back at don@phdcareeracademy.com with your request.

Additional Rights Under GDPR

If you are located in the European Economic Area, you have additional rights regarding your personal data, including data collected through the Career Claimers Index™ assessment. You may request a copy of the personal data we hold about you, including any assessment scores and classification (right of access). You may request that we correct any inaccurate personal data (right of rectification). You may request that we delete your personal data from our systems (right of erasure). You may request that we restrict the processing of your personal data (right to restrict processing). You may request that we provide your personal data in a structured, commonly used format (right of data portability). You may object to the processing of your personal data (right to object). To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the information provided at the end of this policy. We will respond to all data rights requests within 30 days.

Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) Compliance

All commercial electronic messages sent by PhD Career Academy, including assessment results, follow-up sequences, and promotional communications, are sent only with your express consent. Each message contains an unsubscribe mechanism that allows you to withdraw consent immediately. Our emails include the name and contact information of PhD Career Academy and its parent organization, Winnova Management Inc., as required under CASL.

Commitment to Children’s Privacy

Protecting children’s privacy is especially important to us. It is Academy’s policy to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 and all other applicable laws. Therefore, we restrict our website to persons eighteen years or older.

YOU MUST BE EIGHTEEN (18) YEARS OR OLDER TO ACCESS THIS WEBSITE. IF YOU ARE UNDER EIGHTEEN YEARS OF AGE, YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO ACCESS THIS WEBSITE FOR ANY REASON. DUE TO THE AGE RESTRICTIONS FOR USE OF THIS WEBSITE, NO INFORMATION OBTAINED BY THIS WEBSITE FALLS WITHIN THE CHILD ONLINE PRIVACY ACT (COPA) AND IS NOT MONITORED AS DOING SO.

Public Comments

You may leave comments on forum posts. Please remember that any information you may disclose in any Member Directory, or other public areas of our websites or the Internet, becomes public information. You should exercise caution when deciding to disclose personal information in these public areas. The information can be viewed by anyone online including family, friends, the media, investigators and potential employers conducting background checks.

Log Files

Like many other websites, we make use of log files. The information inside the log files includes: internet protocol (IP) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site and gather demographic information. IP addresses and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Aggregated Statistics

We may collect statistics about the behaviour of visitors to our websites. We may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, we do not disclose personally identifying information other than as described above.

Cookies

Academy uses “cookies”, a standard technology that installs information on a visitor’s computer to permit our website to recognise future visits by that computer. A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. We use cookies to help Academy identify and track visitors, their usage of Academy websites and their website access preferences. Academy visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Academy websites, with the drawback that certain features of Academy websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Ads

Ads appearing on any of our websites may be delivered to users by advertising partners, who may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement to compile information about you or others who use your computer. This information allows ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by Academy and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Academy may change its Privacy Policy from time to time and in Academy’s sole discretion. We encourage visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If you have an Academy website account, you might also receive an alert informing you of these changes. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change. Therefore, we request that you consult this privacy statement prior to every use for any changes.

Last Updated: March 20, 2026.