I started my career in corporate HR because I was fascinated by a simple question: why do some talented people rise while other talented people stall? Ten years at NBCUniversal, Stitch Fix, and Tinder gave me the answer, and it had very little to do with working harder. I hired early-career talent, built development programs for high-potential leaders, and sat in the calibration meetings where careers actually get decided. The people who rose weren't the most qualified. They were the ones who understood how the system works.
In 2020 I left to test whether I could teach that understanding at scale. The answer was Pivot with Purpose, a group program that generated over $200,000 in revenue entirely through word of mouth, and hundreds of clients who landed jobs at their top-choice companies, negotiated 30% salary increases, and pivoted into industries they'd been told were out of reach.
Along the way I noticed something bigger than any one client's job search. An entire generation did everything right, and the career system still broke its promise to us. The degree didn't guarantee the job. The job didn't guarantee the ladder. The ladder didn't guarantee arrival.
So I stopped waiting for the old path to work and started building a flexible, multifaceted, rewarding career instead. I'm a few steps ahead, not a finished product, and I share the playbook as I go: how to cash in your corporate miles, become the obvious choice for the opportunities you want, and network without it feeling gross. That's what I write about every week in Going Places, what we talk through in person at Future Self Night, and what my book in progress is about.