A reflective exploration of career transitions as rerouting rather than starting over, showing how each professional experience builds skills and wisdom that shape future paths forward.
Her Story
About Deb
Deb Van Dyne brings more than 13 years of experience in training and professional development to her current work within the facilities association industry. While her career has taken her through corporate training, higher education, the classroom, and professional development, she sees one common thread connecting every chapter: education and helping others grow.
Her career began in training after she was recruited to Exult, later acquired by Aon Hewitt, where an influential mentor helped shape both her career and her confidence. His advice was simple but transformative: look in the mirror and believe in yourself. That lesson gave Deb the confidence to step into leadership opportunities and became a philosophy she has carried throughout her career.
After working in college financial aid, Deb followed another calling and became an English teacher, spending seven years in the classroom. When health circumstances unexpectedly required her to leave teaching, she faced one of the most difficult pivots of her professional life. Rather than allowing the change to define what she could no longer do, she focused on what she could do next. She redirected her education toward business and ultimately joined IFMA, where she has spent the past eight years combining her background as an educator with learning technology, professional development, and learning operations.
That experience reinforced something Deb now encourages other women to remember: a change in the path does not have to mean giving up on the destination.
Her leadership style is still very much that of a teacher. She believes in setting clear expectations, showing people what success looks like, providing the tools and support they need, and then giving them the freedom to determine how they will get there. For Deb, leadership begins with respect, trust, and the understanding that there is often more than one right way to accomplish a goal.
She encourages women to envision what they want, find mentors who will challenge and champion them, take opportunities even when they feel like a stretch, and trust themselves enough to make difficult decisions. Careers rarely unfold exactly as planned, and Deb believes some of the most meaningful growth happens in the pivots.
Above all, her message is the same one that changed the trajectory of her own career years ago: Believe in yourself. Take the risk. And never be afraid to reroute the journey when you still believe in the destination.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Deb
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute much of my success to being willing to take risks, embrace change, and step into opportunities even when I didn’t feel completely ready for them. Some of the most important moments in my career began with saying yes to something that stretched me beyond what I already knew.
I’ve also never been afraid to learn. I believe you don’t have to walk into every opportunity knowing everything—you have to be willing to ask questions, find the resources you need, work hard, and figure it out. That mindset has allowed me to reinvent myself more than once throughout my career and to turn unexpected changes into new opportunities.
Mentorship has also played an incredibly important role in my success. Early in my career, a mentor told me to look in the mirror and believe in myself. At the time, I don’t think I fully understood how powerful that advice would become. Over the years, I learned that believing in yourself doesn’t mean never having doubts; it means refusing to let those doubts make your decisions for you.
Finally, I attribute my success to intentionality. Whatever role I am in, I want to give it my best. I want to leave things better than I found them, continue learning, and help the people around me succeed as well.
Success, for me, has never been about having a perfectly planned career. It has been about trusting myself enough to take the next step—even when I couldn’t see the entire staircase.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I ever received came from a mentor who saw something in me before I fully saw it in myself.
When he promoted me into a leadership role, I questioned whether I was ready. He told me to look in the mirror and believe in the person looking back at me. His message was simple: if he saw enough potential in me to trust me with the opportunity, then that ability was obviously already there. I needed to stop questioning whether I belonged and start believing in myself.
That advice has stayed with me throughout my entire career.
There will always be moments when we question whether we are qualified enough, experienced enough, or ready enough for the next opportunity. Sometimes we need a mentor who can see beyond our self-doubt and remind us of what we are capable of. But eventually, we have to learn to see it for ourselves.
Today, when I face a new challenge or opportunity, I still carry his words with me. And it is advice I now pass on to other women: Look in the mirror. Believe in her. She may already be capable of far more than she realizes.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Picture where you want to go, and then start intentionally developing yourself to get there. You may not know every step it will take—and that’s okay. Learn the skills you’ll need, seek out experiences that challenge you, and find a mentor who will encourage you while also pushing you beyond what you think you’re capable of.
Most importantly, understand that a career path does not have to be a straight line to be successful. Mine certainly wasn’t. Sometimes the detours, pivots, and unexpected opportunities teach you things you never could have learned on the path you originally planned.
Never be afraid to pivot when something no longer fits where you are going. Your career belongs to you, and you get to decide what success looks like.
Listen to advice. Learn from people you respect. Find mentors who see your potential. But ultimately, trust yourself enough to make your own decisions about the life and career you are building.
You don’t need to have the entire journey mapped out. You just need to know where you want to go—and have enough faith in yourself to take the next step.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges—and opportunities—in professional development right now is artificial intelligence and the incredible speed at which it's being introduced.
It seems like everything has an AI feature now, and there are so many vendors eager to show organizations what their newest tool can do. I love technology, and I'm excited about the possibilities AI creates, but I think we have to be careful not to let the technology itself become the focus.
The question shouldn't simply be, “How quickly can we get this out?” or “What can this tool do?” We should be asking, “How is the learner going to engage with this, and does it actually improve their experience?”
That's where I see the real opportunity. AI can help us create more personalized, accessible, and engaging learning experiences, but we have to implement it intentionally.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
One value that transcends both my professional and personal life is intentionality. Whatever I'm doing, I want to be fully present and give it my best.
That could mean building the latest course in our LMS or teaching my grandkids how to bake cookies using cake mix. They may seem worlds apart, but I approach them the same way: I'm engaged, I'm intentional, and I care about the end result.
I've lived my life with one goal—to always do my best. That doesn't mean I always succeed. I fail. I make mistakes. Things don't always turn out the way I planned. But if I know I gave something everything I had, I can be at peace with the outcome, learn from it, and move forward.
And one value I think we sometimes forget about is joy. Life is too short to take everything so seriously that we forget to have fun along the way.
I love spending time with my family, crafting, shopping, playing bingo—and I play a mean game of Uno. Around our house, apparently being intentional also means knowing exactly when to play the Draw Four.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Deb
Your Career Isn't a Straight Line
Career changes aren't about starting over—they're about rerouting with everything you've already learned.
We often describe career changes as “starting over,” but we rarely start from zero. Every role leaves us with skills, relationships, confidence, and lessons that travel with us. Sometimes we aren't starting over at all; we're simply rerouting.
Think back to that moment when you were entering the workforce for the first time. You probably had stars in your eyes, thinking about all the money you'd be making because, let's face it, if you started working at 16, that was the goal, right?
But let's look at your first “big girl” job. You may have entered the workforce with a set plan in place, ready to conquer the world. Then there are those who enter the workforce by necessity, and their careers find them rather than the other way around. What sets them apart? Sometimes, it's simply the route they took to get where they are.
Looking back at my own journey, I remember being a little girl and driving through downtown Houston, Texas. I would look up at those amazing skyscrapers and tell my mom, “I'm going to work in one of those buildings someday.” As I grew older, I kept that dream. I wasn't sure what I would do there; I just knew I wanted to be part of that fascinating world.
My personal life took a different path when I decided to get married right out of high school rather than pursue my dreams and go to college. Five short years later, I was a single mom, wondering what I would do with my life and how I would support my children.
Thanks to a workforce training program, I was offered the opportunity to take some college courses and earn an office certification that would allow me to enter the workforce as a secretary. I jumped at the opportunity. Not only did I excel, but I also achieved the dream I'd had as a little girl: I began working in one of those high-rise buildings in one of the biggest cities in the United States.
That first job as a secretary for a commercial real estate firm was not my forever dream, but it was a step toward figuring out what that dream really was. That journey of discovery would take me down several different paths over the years. You see, while I had achieved my dream of working in downtown Houston, that job opened an entirely new world of discovery for me and challenged me in ways I could never have imagined.
Within two years, I had moved from secretary to assistant commercial property manager. That wasn't part of the plan. Honestly, at that point in my life, I don't think I even knew enough about commercial real estate to know it could be part of the plan. Someone gave me an opportunity, I learned, I grew, and suddenly the road in front of me looked different.
That became a pattern throughout my career.
More than a decade later, life circumstances took me away from commercial real estate and eventually landed me in a position as an actuarial assistant. If you're wondering how someone goes from commercial property management to actuarial work, you're beginning to understand my point. Careers don't always make sense while we're living them.
But that position led to another opportunity. I was recruited by a startup to help build its training department, and something clicked. I discovered that I loved helping people learn. I loved taking something complicated, figuring it out, and then helping someone else understand it. Eventually, I moved into leadership and began managing a team.
I didn't know it at the time, but another piece of my future career had just fallen into place.
My path shifted again when I moved into higher education and spent several years working in financial aid leadership. Eventually, I stepped away from the workforce for a time so I could focus on finishing my degree. While I was working toward that goal, someone asked me a question that would change the direction of my career yet again.
“If you could have your dream career, what would it be?”
“Teaching,” I answered.
“Then why don't you do that?”
It was such a simple question, but it stopped me in my tracks. Why didn't I? I had spent years learning how to adapt, how to lead, and how to teach others in the workplace. Maybe the dream wasn't as far away as I thought.
So I took the challenge. I earned an alternative teaching certification and, in the fall of 2013, walked into my first high school English classroom. I had rerouted again, and this time I thought I had finally arrived at my forever career.
Then life changed the route for me.
Years later, when my doctor looked at me and said, “You may need to rethink your career choice,” I was devastated. This time, I wasn't changing careers because another opportunity had come along. I wasn't chasing a promotion or wondering what else might be out there. This reroute wasn't my choice.
Teaching was having a serious impact on my health, and as much as I didn't want to hear what my doctor was telling me, I had to listen. Leaving the classroom was heartbreaking because teaching wasn't simply another job I had tried. It was my passion.
So I did what I'd unknowingly been practicing my entire career.
I rerouted. Or, in my best Ross Gellar voice, I had to “PIVOT!”
I was already working toward another master's degree, so I shifted its focus toward business and began thinking about what came next. Instead of asking myself what job I could start over in, I began looking at everything I already knew. I knew how to manage. I knew how to teach. I understood operations. I knew how to learn new systems, solve problems, communicate, and help other people understand complicated information.
Eventually, that pivot led me to professional development and learning technology. And somewhere along the way, I realized something important: I hadn't actually left education behind.
My classroom had simply changed.
Today, I still get to help people learn. I work with learning technologies, professional development, digital courses, systems, processes, and emerging tools like artificial intelligence. I manage a learning platform that allows others to better their careers and pursue their dreams. I learn new technology and then turn around and help others understand how to use it. The setting is different from my high school English classroom, but the part of teaching I loved most—helping someone understand something they didn't understand before—is still very much a part of who I am.
Looking backward, I can see that none of those earlier stops in my career path were wasted time. Commercial real estate taught me operations, customer service, and problem-solving. Corporate training taught me how to develop people. Leadership taught me how to guide a team. Higher education strengthened my understanding of service and education. Teaching made me a better communicator and showed me how differently people learn.
Every version of my career gave the next version something she needed.
Maybe you're reading this because you're considering a career change. Maybe the change wasn't your idea at all. Maybe a layoff, a health issue, a family responsibility, a relocation, or simply the realization that you want something different has put a roadblock in front of the path you thought you were supposed to follow.
Don't look at everything behind you as wasted time.
Take inventory.
What did you learn? What are you good at now that you weren't five years ago? What relationships did you build? What problems did you learn to solve? What did you discover about yourself?
Pack those things. They're coming with you.
Your next chapter doesn't require you to erase the chapters that came before it.
I'm no longer the secretary looking out the window of a Houston skyscraper. I'm no longer the commercial property manager, the actuarial assistant, the training manager, the financial aid manager, or the high school English teacher.
And yet, in some ways, I'm still every one of them.
Each version of me taught the next one something she needed to know.
So, if you're standing at a crossroads wondering whether it's too late to start over, maybe you're asking yourself the wrong question.
You don't have to start over. You may simply need to reroute.
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