Truly a Jungle Gym, Not a Ladder
Many paths, many possibilities
“The most common metaphor for careers is a ladder, but this concept no longer applies…ladders are limiting — people can move up or down, on or off. Jungle gyms offer more creative exploration.” ¹
Too often we’ve been told that career success lies in “climbing the corporate ladder,” in “starting from the bottom,” “earning your stripes,” “making your way up.” Not only is this way of thinking outdated, it’s limiting. In many cases, it leads people down a singular path in their careers. You start as an intern in the marketing department and perhaps make your way to becoming a Marketing executive. You start as a paralegal and make your way up to General Counsel. And on it goes…
What I’ve found in my career is something entirely different— something more akin to the jungle gym. In high school, I took the path of the sciences, studying Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Advanced Mathematics all in pursuit of a medical education (which I realized very soon after wasn’t for me!)
Pivot #1
After a semester in a pre-med program, I dropped out, and took a gap-year dabbling in different courses, reading on different subjects, and really thinking about what I wanted to do. It turns out what I’d eventually decide would present its own twists and turns too.
After reading books on the law, exploring creative writing, taking a class in photography and even considering the possibility of a degree in economics🤷♀️…I ended up pursuing a major in Graphic Design with minors in Art History and Creative Writing. And as the conventional path of a design major would dictate, I started out my career as a designer.
Though today, I’m in a very different place than I thought I would be, over the past decade, I’ve learned that sometimes it’s worth going with the flow. The conventional wisdom of a singular path doesn’t always play out in our realities — and it certainly hasn’t in mine. I’ve found myself happier in my career, more challenged and more fulfilled when I’ve kept myself open to all kinds of different routes, a jungle gym of pathways, different possibilities. When presented with the opportunity to do something different or unfamiliar, I jump into it wholeheartedly — and it’s often where I discover new skills, uncover new career possibilities, and challenge myself more deeply.
So, let’s go back to where I started — fresh outta’ art school, the latest Graphic Design graduate on the block, ready to change the world one design at a time. My ambitious dreams started at a Presentation Design agency where I was given many opportunities to work with incredible companies and clients — to tell game changing stories — and to start doing my part changing the world for what my PowerPoint designs were worth.
Pivot #2
It was the start of what I thought would be a promising career in design. But after a layoff, a short stint at an automotive tech company and a few more years in the agency world, I found myself in a one-on-one with my manager at Lyft asking me if I’d ever thought about a career in Communication. Sure, you could argue that Graphic Design is visual communication — but I’m talking about corporate communication, change management, writing speeches and coaching executives on what to say and when to say it…definitely not design.
I hadn’t ever thought of myself as a professional communicator but something inside me told me to say yes. My manager saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself, and I had to take this new unexpected route on my jungle gym. I dove head first into the opportunity, took courses on Communication online, revamped the company global all-hands program in my first 6 months, wrote (now) hundreds of communications, coached executives, combined my design and new communication skills to develop not only pretty presentations but well crafted narratives. And along the way, I dealt with my fair share of crises, and even worked on my first IPO! From design to internal and executive communication.
Over the course of 5 years, I stretched myself so much, I quickly went from a noob in communication to being the Director of Internal Communications at a prominent multinational Ad-tech company. You’d think that was end of the story — where do I go from here?
Pivot #3
Well, let’s take a quick career break. A year into my role as a Director of Internal Communications, I gave birth to my first son — my greatest accomplishment yet. And while, one wouldn’t really call that a career pivot, I knew I needed more than 3 months to fully embrace my role as a mother, bond with my son, and enjoy motherhood. So I did. I took a break and spent the first 7 months of my son’s life being a full-time mom. Baby snuggles, washing bottles, changing diapers, reading and singing, just enjoying watching my son discover the world one day at a time. But I knew (as much as I loved this time) that it couldn’t go on forever.
Pivot #4
I found myself interviewing again, looking for roles in Communication where I thought I’d finally landed, where I’d found something I was really good at, and could lead and build new teams, construct strategies from scratch, manage any multitude of crises etc. And in the process of interviewing for Communication roles, yet another person saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. While interviewing for a role leading Internal Communications at Life360, my hiring manager thought of something a little different for me. In the lines between my experiences in design and communications, she saw a new opportunity — the opportunity to work on the product team thinking about, building, and revitalizing the voice of the product — how it speaks to users, what it says, and how that influences the user experience.
And so I took yet another route on my jungle gym to lead the development of a product voice and think about what conversation design truly means and looks like. Is this the path I’ll follow for the next decade of my career? Who knows! This may be it for a very long time, or another opportunity to pivot may present itself again.
What I do know is that I no longer think of my career as a race to the top. It’s definitely not a ladder, and this jungle gym has limitless opportunities to go to many different places. Sometimes, it’s just about the courage to take an unknown path, and see where the journey takes you.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.²
(1) Sandberg, S. (2015). Lean in. W H Allen.
(2) Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” An Introduction to American Poetry, edited by Lisa Swank, Viking Press, 2015, pp. 48–49.
