“strtgsts in progress: a tasting menu for your next chapter” Recap
Even before COVID but especially since then, we’ve been hearing our community ask about different career paths in strategy and how to create a more meaningful, intentional path for growth. So last week, in our biggest event to date, we gathered 20 strtgsts, who have zig zagged throughout their strategy careers and found or made something that works for them, to inspire the community and provide tactical advice for making the next move. And y’all, It. Was. Delightful.
We sent out a survey in late 2020 to gather insights into the different flavors of strategy that the community was most craving and designed “strtgsts in progress: a tasting menu for your next chapter” to satiate that hunger. And yes, if this happened IRL, you KNOW it would have come complete with a tasting menu food pairing 🥂
A HUGE thank you to all of our speakers and performers —
Appetizer: Asmirh Davis for delivering an impactful, inspiring keynote and Nicole Cruz for leading us through an inner mentor meditation to help us visualize the future we want to create for ourselves.
Intermezzo: Strategist-by-day and DJ-by-night Hailin Liu for playing some sweet, sweet tunes during our solo reflection time.
Main course lightning talks: Neha Bhatia (Innovation), Myra El-Bayoumi (Brand Side), Fern Diaz (Freelance), Megan Weisenberger (Research), Mauricio Aguayo (Non Profit), and Jennifer Ekeleme (DEI) for sharing their career journeys and imparting us with their learned lessons along the way.
Dessert breakout groups: Neha Bhatia, Nagela Dales, Rachel Mercer (Innovation); Myra El-Bayoumi, Farah Sheikh, Krystie Yen, Marc Phillips (Brand Side); Fern Diaz, Lauren Wong, Lexie Perez (Freelance); Megan Weisenberger, Georgia Patera, Nicole Swedberg (Research); Jennifer Ekeleme, Darien LaBeach, Linda Xiao, and Nick Susi (Making a Role that Works for You) for participating in our intimate roundtables, designed for the community to indulge in small group discussions and receive tactical answers to their burning questions about the specific industry/field at hand.
Keep scrolling for the best bites from the event and more 😋
Best bites
- “I realized I needed to reframe how I thought about the work. The story I had been telling myself about selling people shit they don’t need is actually the thing that was hindering me from seeing the possibilities in my career. It wasn’t the output of the work I needed to focus on. It was the process that I connected with the most. That would be the thing that would allow me to identify the transferable skills I’d need to get into another field.” As strtgsts, one of the many parts of our job is helping our clients or brands reframe — their questions, their positioning, their stories. Yet how often do we do the same for ourselves? Asmirh shared that by pivoting the way she thought about her work, she was able to see who she was and the dream she had for herself in a different light. It’s not that she’d been on the wrong path or in the wrong career this whole time. It was that she’d been characterizing it wrong.
- “My career is a vehicle for self-discovery, rather than a destination itself. All these small leaps and turns are opportunities to learn about myself. It’s not a big deal if I veer off, as long as I’m curious about why I did it.” Neha busted the myths that we often fall into when shifting into a new and different career. From fashion to advertising to brand strategy and now to innovation, she’s created space in her professional journey to explore the fields she’s interested in and shared some of the lessons she wish she knew while she was transitioning.
- “The career strategist had her strategy: to work for the leader I wanted to be and to be the leader I wanted to work for. And that is how I ended up on client side, in tech, all things I would never have said for myself. And all without ever strategizing about going client side.” Myra revealed that going client side wasn’t something she necessarily ever saw for herself. But when she took a few steps back to think about what she wanted the hallmark of her career to be, she knew mentorship and leadership were massively important, and using that strategy, she stepped into her current role as the Senior Director of Global Brand Strategy at Microsoft.
- “I consider myself quite successful even though I don’t have a fancy title or office. I think success means knowing what you can offer.” Along with her reframes for “strategy” and “sales,” Fern shared her definition of success. It matters less about the money and title, and moreso the self-realization and awareness of how much you can give and how much you’re capable of achieving.
- “The thing I do to evaluate if I’m happy or not is to think about who I’m jealous of and why.” While sitting in her corporate office writing briefs for her advertising firm, Megan thought about why she wasn’t out there talking to people like the freelance researchers her agency was hiring. She quickly applied to a research role in NYC after realizing that’s what she was missing in her life — not for research to just be the cherry on top of her day-to-day strategy work, but to be the work itself.
- “Be brave enough to leave things behind when they feel wrong for you. Be a problem-solver, find challenges, create solutions or be part of them. And the future is what you make of it. Nothing is set in stone.” Mauricio had several career pivots: studying biology in college but not wanting to go into medicine, finishing graduate school in public health, spending four years in advertising, and now working in Partnerships & Fundraising at UNICEF. He doesn’t know where he’ll be 5 years from now, but he does know that these three takeaways have helped and will continue to help guide him in his journey.
- “When you’re feeling stuck, turn your skillset on yourself and figure out what you really like. Don’t judge yourself about it. If you like this one piece of your job, what can you turn it into?” Early on, someone told Jennifer that she moved around too much. But she thought about why she was switching companies and industries and realized it was due to her curiosity and desire to constantly create better solutions to help people. She encouraged us to take inventory on ourselves to understand why we do what we do, what we love in our current jobs. Then, to take a leap to create a new role that encompasses that.
Go deeper
If this all resonated with you, here are a few resources that have helped our community and our speakers center themselves in what they want out of their careers to pave a path that works for them:
- Find your Ikigai, your reason for being
- Gain more self-awareness with the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs
- Flip through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron or Find Your Why by Simon Sinek to dig deeper with your inner self
- Challenge the status quo with Brain Surfing by Heather Lefevre or A Soft Manifesto by Cortney Cassidy
If you want to dream up a 5-year plan, take Juan Carlos’ 3-week “Dream Boarding” course to create and refine viable futures with an intimate cohort.
If you know you’re ready for a pivot, take this workshop with Zeit, a company helping people with career shifts, on how to identify and articulate your transferable skills.
Run With It
If you don’t know where to begin, why not take a trip to your inner mentor (aka you 5 years from now)? Start by getting comfortable in your seat and envisioning a light that lifts you up into the atmosphere. Once you’re staring back down at the earth, feel another light — one 5 years into the future — rise up beside you, and hop onto it as it brings you back down to earth in front of the home of your future self. As they open the door, notice where they’re living. What they look like. What their home feels like. Then, ask your inner mentor what you need advice on at this moment. Some starter questions for inspiration:
- What is the favorite part of your career?
- What has been most important for you these past 5 years?
- What wisdom do you want me to know right now?
And remember, whatever you see in that moment is what you’re meant to see. There is no right or wrong.
We are SO SO SO SO thankful for all y’all who spent 3 hours with us (!!) last week. From our speakers to our attendees, we’re so grateful to be a part of a community that is as thoughtful, passionate, and uplifting as y’all. We hope that with these tools you’re able to run towards your dream career with intention, instead of running away from your current career out of exhaustion.
With love and solidarity,
Team strtgst
the gst /gist/ is a publication of strtgst.co
