Leveraging my marketing background and storytelling skills to reimagine my career has been a literal thrill ride of reinvention and self-discovery. This new path began nearly five years ago. At the beginning, my sense of worth rode the waves of the highs and lows of my career. Work defined me. Now, as I think about who I’ve become, I see that I am no longer defined by my work but rather by my ability to continue trying, even at the risk of failure. This has become my defining trait. While the ultimate result is liberation, the journey to get here has been anything but predictable.
My late-stage career pivot did not happen just with simple determination and hard work. Prior to the pandemic, I had been feeling less satisfaction with marketing and selling products purely for the sake of profit and brand building (see my 2019 blog post, “Show Me the Money”), but I had yet to fully commit to change. The grace of Covid’s reset gave me space and time to ponder: What could I do? The luck of the timing was also a key factor: Remote work suddenly became the new normal, opening up possibilities unimaginable prior to the pandemic.
My career reinvention centered on my dream to align the work that I do with my core values around equity. This reframe of values-aligned work started with nonprofit fund development. I began this journey as a Major Gifts Officer as part of a fully remote development team for a national organization serving individuals and families with disabilities. I loved learning from the people we served and seeing them as individuals, no longer viewing people with disabilities in an abstract way but seeing each person with their own story. I felt honored to engage with their families in meaningful conversations around the joys and very real challenges of having a loved one who was differently abled. My new skill set encompassed Engagement Fundraising, Moves Management, and Donor Portfolio Management.
From there, I jumped back into a more traditional marketing, sales, and development role as a Senior Director of Partnership Development for a social justice organization working to dismantle racism in education. This short but incredibly intense time was one of the hardest of the hard things I have done in my career. Read about the experience at Unapologetically Myself, published shortly after the founder and I made an abrupt but mutual decision to part ways.
Hoping to rest and recover before starting something new, a serendipitous introduction brought an unexpected new challenge. What started out as running a crowdfunding campaign quickly transitioned into building a new company from the ground up.
Buoyed by the campaign’s success, we were able to move from launching a single product into company-building mode. (See Building a Company for insights into this exciting time.) I quickly joined full-time as the Chief of Growth and Impact, responsible for building sales and marketing capabilities. The work aligned with my values of equity in education and my leadership role was incredibly energizing. It was thrilling to do the work and to see the results: My efforts directly helped to build a company infrastructure and to develop sales, marketing, product development, and customer service from the ground up.
Ultimately, though, I was unable to reconcile some of the many challenges of a co-leading partnership. The founder and I went straight from, “Hello, nice to meet you,” to co-founders and co-creators just months into working together – remotely – under the intense pressures of a bootstrapped start-up. While on the surface, our skill sets looked amazingly complementary, we did not know each other before jumping into what we endeavored to be an equal partnership. If you have enjoyed enduring, mutually beneficial, long-term relationships, you know that trust develops over time with each shared experience. Despite the best of intentions, there is no shortcut.
I had hoped to create the type of company I wanted to see in the world. One that reflected my values in the decisions we made about how to run the company and one that reflected true equity in all operational areas. For the better part of a year, I did all I could to actualize this vision: a human-centered, women-led, values-first company that was a part of creating equity in childhood education.
I owned the decision to leave – on my terms – with so much gratitude for the experience. Taking on these incredibly different roles over the last several years built my confidence immensely as I proved to myself that there were few barriers I could not overcome. As a woman of multiple, layered identities, most notably my immigrant journey as a trans-racial adoptee, overcoming internalized mental barriers is no small thing.
Given the breadth of these experiences throughout my career and having a family that is by my side, I know that regardless of the next challenge I take on, I will always be more than the work that I do.
We're Pivoting 