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 bench and social science as well as arts & humanities. She worked directly with 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. To support this work, she has trained in executive and team coaching, including the complete set of courses for CTI's Co-Active Coaching and for CRR Global's Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching. In 2021, she was accepted into the Conscious Leadership Guild and in 2024 she finally finished CTI’s Co-Active Leadership program after interruptions by the pandemic and a broken leg. She established the LEADin3 team, developing and delivering in-depth leadership training tailored for the academy. Dr. AtKisson is a highly acclaimed public speaker with a track record of helping faculty improve their competitiveness for funding and develop their leadership skills.