3,2,1 iRelaunch

Hang Tran returned to work as a market research and consumer insights professional in 2016 after staying at home full time to care for her children for seven years. She told us “My story has many twists and turns. When I started telling my friends that I wanted to go back to work, they often assumed that because I have an Oxford MBA and good experience, things should be easy for me. I had a very challenging time when I tried to find jobs in Miami, Florida. Spanish is widely spoken, and as someone whose Spanish was basic, I didn't even pass the first screening for many marketing jobs. So I started by volunteering 30 hours per week for six months at a local start-up and at a hospital, helping them with marketing and research. It helped give me more recent work-related stories to tell hiring managers, and boosted my confidence.” Hang tells us how learning Google Analytics and joining Toastmasters were important steps in her relaunch, and how she went from “feeling like a dinosaur” and not knowing what she wanted to do, to where she is today. She also moved across the country in the process!

Military spouse Karen Golden walks us through her career path in detail as she moved her family 12 times. She is currently living in her 17th house! Karen discusses her failed attempt to get licensed as a social worker, and how she pivoted to relaunch as Deputy Director, Government relations, for the Military Officers Association of America. In this role, Karen covered military family issues in an advocacy and training role for military spouses, after years of volunteering in similar roles. Hear about her surprise phone call that she calls the most important call of her professional life, in the Walmart parking lot of a famous city around minute 18. Karen tells us how her advocacy and training skills and passion for the cause led her to her current role at the Alzheimer's Association.

Ashley-Bria Leo is a relauncher who spent four years in military intelligence for the US Air Force followed by an entrepreneurial venture. While on career break she moved to a new city, completed an accelerated, executive MBA program and discovered the brand new Wells Fargo Glide-Relaunch program. She applied and was one of the few accepted to this competitive return to work internship program. We speak with Ashley-Bria at a milestone moment- she is starting Glide-Relaunch the following week. Ashley also attended our virtual iRelaunch Return to Work Conference and reported on LinkedIn how valuable she found it. We will talk to Ashley-Bria about her career path, her relaunch and what she is thinking at this moment before she starts her return to work program.

From Stanford Medicine News Center: “Anandi Krishnan, PhD, was on the fast track to a promising academic research career. A research fellow at Duke University, she had earned a PhD in bioengineering from Penn State in less than four years and was the lead author of 11 scientific papers. But a complicated pregnancy, an illness in her family and time off to care for her newborn child led to a career break in 2011. While she feared that the extended leave might end her research career, she was awarded a National Institutes of Health career re-entry grant in 2016 that enabled her to move from a staff position at Stanford back into research.”

In this episode, Anandi discusses the NIH Career Reentry grant, exactly what was involved in being awarded one, and how it enabled her to relaunch her career in scientific research and led to the important work she is doing today.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/10/stanford-staffer-jumps-back-into-research-with-help-of-nih-grant.html

https://orwh.od.nih.gov/career-development-education/re-entry-biomedical-research-careers

Military spouse Sue Hoppin is a nationally recognized expert on military spouse and family issues. Sue tells us about her own relaunch at the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) 15 years ago in an admin role that led to her becoming MOAA's first deputy director for spouse outreach. While moving every few years nationally and internationally while her husband was an active duty service member, Sue discusses her "strategic volunteering," and the role it has played in her relaunch and beyond. Sue is the co-author of “A Family’s Guide to the Military” for the popular Dummies series and the founder of the National Military Spouse Network (NMSN), a membership organization supporting the professional goals of military spouses. Sue comments on how the Covid threat has popularized virtual work environments and portable jobs, both of which favor the military spouse.

If you have wondered about how people with non-technical backgrounds can survive coding bootcamps and then thrive in a technical role, this podcast is for you. Becca Rosenthal is not a relauncher and she graduated from college in 2015, so she is much younger and much earlier in her career than the typical guests we have on our podcast. We asked her to join us today because of the unlikely route she took to what is now a highly technical career. After leaving her non-profit work and a period of exploration, she enrolled in a full stack immersive training bootcamp at Hackbright Academy. Becca is now a software engineer at Reddit, where she has been for almost three years. Listen to find out how she did it, what bootcamp was like, and what her work has been like since. "Hello my name is 'potential'", "Be shameless", and "Referrals are your friend" are just the tip of the iceberg of the excellent advice and commentary from Becca that is relevant for relaunchers making this kind of career transition.

Concluding our series on the nuts and bolts of the recruiting process, Guest Podcast Host, Cheryl McGee Wallace speaks with Miranda Kalinowski, Global Head of Recruiting at Facebook to discuss their re-entry program. With more than 30 years of recruiting experience, Miranda shares practical advice for relaunchers on the importance of a “crisp” message, mapping skills to requirements throughout the recruiting process.

This episode is a rebroadcast from a podcast interview Carol did in 2017 with Mac Prichard, the Founder and Publisher of Mac’s List, where he writes regularly about job hunting, leads classes on job search skills, and hosts the "Find Your Dream Job" podcast. Mac also owns and operates Prichard Communications, a public relations agency that serves non-profits, public agencies, and foundations across the United States. In this episode, Carol discusses the various challenges that relaunchers face when returning to the workplace and strategies to address these challenges. Her interview is followed by a discussion with the Mac’s List team, where they share their thoughts about her conversation with Mac. Get more information about the "Find Your Dream Job" podcast on the macslist.org website, and listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts!

Currently the Vice President at The National Math and Science Initiative, Diane Keane has one of the best LinkedIn profiles we’ve ever seen. Here’s her summary: “Rather than resting comfortably in the middle, I gravitate to the edges … the most challenging situations, stickiest business problems, and organizations where I can change things for the better. In my career, that meant transitioning from Wall Street deal-making to a startup operations to internal finance.” After a 15 year career break, Diane relaunched as Vice President, Finance at TNTP - The New Teacher Project - a non-profit in the education arena. She subsequently moved to her current role at The National Math and Science Initiative. Diane talks about her thought process of figuring out exactly what she wanted to do in her relaunch, by focusing in part on what she was NOT willing to do. She also discusses how long it took her to be back in the role before she had the “I can still do this” moment. Tune in for an engaging and instructive conversation.

This episode is the second in our mini-series on relaunch success after extra-long career breaks. 3D printing application engineer Pam Waterman describes herself having “the enthusiasm of an intern and the insight of an industry veteran in the field of additive manufacturing.” What is most unique about Pam’s career history is that she took a 31 year career break for childcare and eldercare reasons, which is a record breaking long career break. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in astrophysics and microwave engineering, she worked in technical and engineering roles and then went into technical writing, which she used to keep connected professionally on and off during her career break. Find out exactly how she got her current engineering role after such a long career break in this wide-ranging conversation.