Your Career Doesn’t Have to Follow a Straight Line
How Your Unrelated Experiences Are Actually Building Your Success
For a long time, I thought a successful career was supposed to make sense on paper.
You choose a field, gain experience, move up, and continue climbing the same ladder. But my career has taught me something very different: sometimes the experiences that seem unrelated are actually preparing you for opportunities you haven't encountered yet.
My own professional journey has taken me through customer service, military logistics, transportation, government accounts, public safety, and now financial services. On the surface, those may look like completely different careers. But when I look back, I see a common thread running through all of them.
I've always been in the business of helping people solve problems.
Your Skills Are Bigger Than Your Job Title
Serving in the U.S. Air Force Reserve taught me accountability, adaptability, teamwork, and the importance of understanding how your individual responsibilities contribute to a much larger mission.
Working in logistics taught me how to think quickly, manage competing priorities, and find solutions when circumstances change unexpectedly.
Supporting government and public safety customers taught me the importance of relationships, communication, follow-through, and trust—especially when you're working with people who depend on you to get things right.
Today, I bring those same lessons into financial services.
I'm still listening to people's needs. I'm still taking complicated information and making it easier to understand. I'm still building relationships based on trust. And I'm still helping people navigate decisions that matter.
The industry changed. The foundation didn't.
Stop Disqualifying Yourself
One of the most important lessons I've learned throughout my career is this: don't disqualify yourself from an opportunity before someone else has the chance to consider you.
Women, in particular, can feel pressure to meet every qualification before believing we're ready for the next opportunity. We may look at a job description and focus on the few requirements we don't have rather than recognizing everything we already bring to the table.
I've learned that you don't have to know everything before taking the next step.
- You can learn.
- You can ask questions.
- You can find mentors.
- You can walk into a new environment knowing that you still have room to grow while also recognizing that your previous experiences have value.
Confidence doesn't always come before taking the opportunity. Sometimes confidence is built because you took it.
There Is Power in Starting Again
Changing directions professionally can be intimidating because it can feel like you're starting over.
But I've stopped looking at it that way.
When you enter a new industry, you don't leave your previous experience behind. You bring it with you.
Every difficult customer taught you something about communication. Every mistake taught you something about accountability. Every challenging project strengthened your problem-solving skills. Every leadership opportunity taught you something about people. Every season that required you to adapt made you more capable of handling the next one.
You aren't starting from zero. You're starting from experience.
Success Can Look Different Than You Expected
I've also learned to redefine what success means to me.
Of course, professional accomplishments matter. But I don't want success to be measured only by titles, income, or how impressive a résumé looks.
I want it to be measured by impact.
Did I make something easier for someone to understand? Did I help someone feel more confident about a decision? Did I follow through when someone was counting on me? Did I create an opportunity for someone else? Did I leave a person, team, or organization better than I found it?
Those are the questions that matter to me.
My career may not have followed the path I once imagined, and I'm still building it. But I've come to appreciate that there is something powerful about being willing to evolve.
For any woman questioning whether she's qualified enough, experienced enough, or ready enough to pursue something new, I would offer the advice I've learned to follow myself:
- Take the chance.
- Apply for the opportunity.
- Ask the question.
- Be willing to learn.
- And don't underestimate how much the person you've already become can contribute to where you're going next.
Your career doesn't have to follow a straight line to be moving forward.
