Career You Own

Careers don’t come with a manual.

In this opening episode, Tatiana “Tajči” Cameron and Marela Klepo introduce The Career You Own and explore a question that will run throughout the series: How do we build meaningful careers without allowing our careers to become our entire identity?

Marela shares the shock of being laid off in her twenties while she was a high-performing sales leader. She walked into a meeting expecting a promotion and walked out without a job. Marela talks about discovering that hard work and performance alone don’t guarantee a predictable career, and how mentorship later helped her navigate decisions, build a network, move from Vancouver to New York, and grow into senior leadership.

Tajči shares a very different version of reinvention: achieving enormous success as a young pop artist in Croatia and then deliberately walking away from that established identity to start again in New York. She reflects on the question her father asked when she was afraid she might never have a music career again: What does being a musician actually mean to you?

Together, they explore mentorship, coaching, resilience, rest, nervous-system regulation, emotional intelligence, career change, and the importance of knowing who you are underneath your professional roles.

The episode closes with rapid-fire questions about career advice they ignored, skills they wish they had learned in school, first jobs, influential books, and... Luka Modrić.

In this episode

• Why a career is rarely a straight ladder
• What happens when your job becomes your identity
• Marela’s experience of unexpectedly losing a successful job
• Tajči’s decision to leave fame behind and start over
• Why being uncomfortable can be necessary for growth
• When not to make a major life or career leap
• The difference between mentorship and simply giving advice
• Why networks matter—but self-knowledge comes first
• Rest, burnout, emotional intelligence, and sustainable performance
• Navigating constant change, including AI
• Trusting intuition and learning to see more than one possible path
• How mentors help us see possibilities we can’t see ourselves

Key takeaway
Own your career. Don’t let your career own you.

Make space to reflect, know who you are beyond your professional roles, and surround yourself with people who can help you see possibilities beyond the path directly in front of you.

About the podcast

The Career You Own features real conversations about work, purpose, growth, and mentorship. Through personal stories and conversations with professionals from different fields, the series explores how people navigate challenges, make decisions, reinvent themselves, and take ownership of their careers.

Post Audio Mixer: Tony Marx LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonysmarx/
Video Editing: Cameron Productions
NYC Location and Tech Support: Croatians Online https://croatiansonline.com/

Produced by Cameron Productions for the ACAP Career Hub