TPS Talks — Lauren Grimshaw, COO
Lauren Grimshaw has truly been part of The Paradigm Switch since the beginning — in fact, she was involved before this organization even had a name. When TPS was still just an idea and a vision, Lauren worked with Founder and President Justine Evirs on critical elements like our first logo, our first website, and even our 501(c)(3) paperwork! Right from the start she felt a strong pull to be part of the organization and to make an impact on it.
“It’s been amazing to watch this organization take shape, and I was really blessed to get to actually play a role in that firsthand,” she says. “I couldn’t keep my hand out of the cookie jar! I tried really hard to just stay on the board but I got sucked in and officially became the COO in March 2018, staying with the organization until May 2019.”
Lauren’s operations background and ability to take a vision and execute on it during a sprint are remarkable, and so many of the systems and processes in TPS history bear her mark. From the Get Switched course that was the predecessor to our Switch programming to our scholarship application process to the metrics and data we used to track successes, Lauren built and documented dozens of core processes that served as the bedrock to our operational machine. Out of all of these achievements, Lauren is most proud of her contributions to the lives or our scholarship recipients.
“It was so fun seeing people apply and being able to reward them with a well-deserved amazing opportunity to take the next steps in their lives,” she said. “When I look back on The Paradigm Switch, one of the things I’m most proud of is the change that happened for our scholarship recipients. It just makes my heart swell every time.”
Throughout the 14 months that she spent with The Paradigm Switch, Lauren impacted many lives in the community and on the leadership team. When asked for her biggest takeaways from this time of mentorship and influence, she identified two key ideas that have guided her post-TPS life: the importance of being brave and of being authentic.
“The first takeaway is just being brave,” she said. “I don’t think I’d ever been as brave before in a professional capacity as I had to be in order to step up as the COO of The Paradigm Switch. There was so, so much growth for all of us as individuals and professionals, and every day the constant pushing of the boundaries made a big impact on me. When writing the Get Switched material, I had never put a lot of my thoughts and expressions out there into the public eye before. I felt very vulnerable doing all that.”
“The second takeaway is really around authenticity. For the first time I felt like the work I was doing actually aligned with my life and the two could blend together into one vision and role of who I am and what I bring to the table. Before I’d always felt like there were two different worlds that were very distinct, and with The Paradigm Switch I had the amazing opportunity to start to merge those two and actually be able to come with my full self to work.”
Working with The Paradigm Switch helped Lauren embrace her military spouse identity in a way she had never been able to do before. One of the things that stuck out to her about the TPS experience was that it was a women-led, women-centric organization solving problems that the predominantly female military spouse population faces every single day.
“I was in the military — I was massively outnumbered as a woman,” she said. “After that I went to work in tech — I was one of about five women in my whole company. The Paradigm Switch team was almost all women. For me that was a really different experience and something that I so enjoyed. We built what we needed, what we hadn’t been able to find. I needed TPS. This was the first time I ever really truly identified as a military spouse on every level. Before I’d always self-identified more as a veteran, but now I had such an incredible opportunity to actually do something about the military spouse employment issues I faced when I PCS’d to Italy and could no longer operate my business because of SOFA regulations. It’s empowering to be working to fix the problem, and it feels a lot better than being a victim.”
In May 2019 Lauren again felt the pull to fly solo and pursue her own business. The successful company she brought with her to Italy underwent a rebrand, and Lauren now channels her passion for personal and professional growth into business coaching and consulting. 2020 will be a year of building, testing, and iterating, and we would expect nothing less from an operational mastermind like her.
The Paradigm Switch wishes to thank Lauren for her willingness to get her hands dirty, her radical candor, and her tireless passion for and commitment to our organization. We are cheering her on and are so excited to watch her continue to grow personally and professionally as she helps others do the same.
She IS The Paradigm Switch.
