Founders Spotlight: Navigating life and career
Gosh! Don’t you just wish there was an answer key to navigating life and career? Imagine how much time, energy, and even money it would save us. When we begin our journey we don’t know what we don’t know. For some of us it is only through many years of experience that we eventually gain enough knowledge and practical know-how to successfully navigate our life and careers. Today I am living my dream career managing a successful leadership and professional development consulting company. I travel all over partnering with organizations to train, speak, and consult – using my talents to elevate individual and organizational success. I have experienced more fulfillment and growth than at any given point in my career. I am navigating my life and career confidently and competently with greater control over my outcomes; accelerating forward, faster. Everyday I wake up doing what I love, but it wasn’t always this way…
I am the same woman that less than 7 years ago just could not seem to figure out career success. This young brown girl in my 20’s living life unfulfilled everyday struggling to navigate, succeed, and advance in corporate organizations. I faced barriers to my success that in many cases I didn’t know existed. I was all over the place in my decision making and clearly didn’t possess a number of “real-world” workplace skills to excel – like how to effectively communicate in ways to advance my career, navigate workplace politics, build winning relationships, or manage and influence up… just to name a few. As a result, I was not advancing as anticipated. I was just drifting in my career. To top it off, I learned early on that I didn’t even really like my profession but just stayed in it hoping for the best.
So after many years of living the same story everyday, while driving into a new marketing job I found myself on the shoulder of the expressway having an emotional breakdown just chanting…”this can’t be my life… What am I doing? How did I get here?” It was so clear that I hadn’t been intentional about navigating my career and I didn’t have the “real-world” skills to do it well. I had enough of being on this dead end. After pulling myself together I made it into work, put in my two weeks notice, and made the choice to drive and not drift any longer.
I started to seek and use resources that changed my trajectory. By the end of that year, I was in the driver’s seat. I identified what was important to me, transitioned to the career I love, and begin gaining competence in areas that benefited me and my organization. After gaining competence and excelling in my new career for a number of years, I started my business and never looked back!
As a result of my life lessons and failures struggling to navigate career I am committed to equipping diverse emerging leaders and young professionals with practical know-how and “real-world” skills to:
- accelerate personal leadership and advance in their careers
- increase individual and organizational effectiveness
- navigate life and career, confidently and competently
- navigate with intentional for greater purpose, impact, and fulfillment
My goal is to shorten the learning curve of emerging leaders helping them navigate and thrive – smarter. farther. faster.
