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Tom Miller* grew up Catholic, careful, and certain that college wasn't for him. After losing his mother to leukemia at 18, and spending that summer as her primary caregiver, he drifted into a 24-year career in commercial printing, doing skilled work that paid well and meant nothing to him.

At 40, on a vacation to Savannah, Georgia, he told his wife: I can't do this anymore. What followed was a return to college, a bachelor's in education, six years teaching in high-poverty schools in Dallas, a master's degree earned at night while teaching by day, and eventually a full-time practice as a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC).

In this conversation, Tom reflects on what it cost him to stay too long in the wrong career, what it felt like to finally work in alignment with his values, and what he'd tell his 18-year-old self about belief, mentorship, and vocation.

He also shares the story of his son, a student with a 4.37 GPA who left college 12 credits short of graduation to become a chef, and why buying him a set of knives was one of his proudest parenting moments.

*Tom Miller is a pseudonym. Because of his work as a therapist, he did not want to use his real name. The picture for this episode is AI-generated.

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William Combs always assumed he'd run his own business. He just didn't know it would be a Subway franchise in Orange County. In this conversation, William traces his path from a kid who scraped by as a B student, through Cal Poly Pomona's hotel and restaurant management program, into management roles at Islands and Jamba Juice, and eventually into a multi-year stint as a Subway business consultant that flipped a switch: "I can do this... I wish I was sitting on that other side of the table."

William talks candidly about the rocky first year of ownership (he was naive about the avalanche of costs that come with running a store), the slow grind toward profitability, and the deliberate choice not to let the business consume his life. He also opens up about his regrets, like skipping college job fairs, staying closed-minded about other paths, and what he'd tell a 20-year-old trying to figure it all out. Now semi-retired and working as a youth and high school sports official, William reflects on confidence, balance, and the value of not rushing big decisions.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

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Five guests. Five very different lives. One thing in common: every one of them dropped out, failed out, got kicked out, or walked away, and built something meaningful anyway. In this compilation, a deputy attorney general, a congressional staffer, an Amazon AI policy leader, a med-school admissions director, and a serial entrepreneur share how their worst setback became the start of their real path.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

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What do investment banking, a Jewish farming fellowship, and New York City's trash have in common? For Anna Sacks, known to hundreds of thousands of followers as The Trash Walker, they're all stops on the winding road to her life's work.

 In this episode, Anna shares the honest story of her career search: the years of trying art galleries, finance, and rotations through a confusing resume before she discovered what she calls "inherently meaningful work" - waste reduction, composting advocacy, and corporate accountability.

 We talk about what it looks like to build credibility without a cohesive resume, how going through trash led to legislative wins worth millions of dollars to New York City's composting infrastructure, and why she believes the most powerful thing ordinary people can do right now happens at the local level and not the federal one.

 Anna is thoughtful, funny, and deeply honest about the ways her path worked out and the ways it didn't. This is a conversation about non-linear careers, the cost of meaningful work, and what it means to stay in a fight even when you're not sure it's working.

 Follow Anna on Instagram: @thetrashwalker

Watch the documentary: Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy streaming on Netflix.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

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Six guests. Two truths.  There is no single right path. And you cannot do this alone.  In this special compilation episode of Path Found, I weave together conversations with David Camarena, Coach Christian, Michael Harley, Taylor Rabe, John Sayers, and Sierra Emrick — six people who took wildly different roads and arrived somewhere they never expected.  What they all share: the plan fell apart. The detour turned out to be the training. And someone showed up at exactly the right moment.  

If you've ever felt behind, uncertain, or worried that you've made the wrong choice, this episode is for you. Because the people who seem like they have it all figured out often spent years feeling completely lost.

And sometimes the detours become the destination.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

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Justin Rufa grew up in a small Rust Belt town on the St. Lawrence River with one clear thought: I'm leaving. What followed was nearly 24 years in the Air Force — aeronautical engineering, a master's, a PhD from Michigan, teaching calculus at the Air Force Academy, space launch operations in El Segundo — and then retirement at 42 with no clear next step. Two months in Kansas. A year teaching high school math. A three-month solo stint in Colorado, walking a creek every morning, trying to figure out what comes next when structure is no longer handed to you.

What Justin eventually landed on wasn't a job title. It was a question: What does it mean to be a good human being? In this episode, he talks about the tension between prestige and passion, what the military gives you and what it doesn't, and why he thinks the younger you can reach a student, the better. He's now tutoring, academic coaching, and moving toward middle school teaching in the Boulder area, and for the first time, it feels like the right fit.

This one is for anyone who has ever taken the long road back to what they actually care about.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

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Eleanore Guthrie didn't set out to disrupt the fashion industry. She set out to find a pair of shorts that looked good on a bike. What followed was more than a decade of building Knorts, a brand built entirely on knit denim - from weekend photo shoots in her parents' driveway to Revolve partnerships, a Lady Gaga placement, a Kendall Jenner moment, a collaboration with Urban Outfitters, and a Vogue write-up. 

In this episode, Eleanore shares the unfiltered version of what it actually looks like to build something genuinely new: the years of not making money, the burnout of doing everything alone, the painful lessons of growing too fast, and the identity crisis that comes when bigger brands start copying your signature textile.

She also talks about her newest pivot — moving from selling clothes to selling textiles and launching Big L's Gym, a media project aimed at getting the denim and activewear industries to finally see what she's known for years: knit denim is the future.

This one is for anyone who has ever been told their idea is weird, wondered if they should just quit, or tried to do too many things at once because there was no other choice. Eleanore's path is proof that stubbornness, when pointed in the right direction, is a superpower.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

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Steven Kerns grew up in Long Beach, California, dropped out of high school at seventeen, and eventually made his way through the Army Infantry, Long Beach City College, Cal State Long Beach, Harvard Law School, and on to the California Department of Justice. Today, he works as a deputy attorney general, representing land-use and energy regulatory agencies, including California's oil and gas regulator. He also teaches environmental law at CSULB.

In this episode, Steven traces the surprisingly coherent through-line of a path that, from the outside, looked like a series of sharp right turns. We talk about what the military instills that classrooms can't, what it felt like to arrive at Harvard and wonder if he'd made a grave mistake, and how a polite follow-up email to a rejection changed the arc of his career.

We also get into the big picture — his "earn tomorrow" life mantra, how imposter syndrome functions as a signal rather than a warning, and what he tells students trying to figure out what to do in a world reshaped by AI.

Steven brings a lot of hard-earned wisdom to this conversation. He's also just genuinely funny and kind.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

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Alex Mitchell didn’t have a plan when he graduated from high school. No one in his family had gone to college, and he didn’t apply to a single university. He started at community college, changed his major five times, and it wasn’t until a political science professor connected history to present-day policymaking that something finally clicked.

Then the pandemic hit. Alex decided virtual learning wasn’t for him, so he packed up and moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he spent a year cooking in his godfather's restaurant kitchen. He learned kitchen Spanish, fell in love with the craft of feeding people, and had one of the best experiences of his life.

When in-person school returned, so did Alex’s sense of purpose. He completed his political science degree and landed an internship in the office of a California Assembly member. He never planned to stay, but ended up staying three years as a legislative aide, staffing committees on transportation, criminal justice reform, and more issues than he ever anticipated caring about.

Now he’s back in Southern California doing government relations for the Port of Long Beach, building on the policy and transportation expertise he developed in Sacramento, and surfing again.

In this conversation, Alex talks about what it means to be the first in your family to go to college, why he’s glad he took the long route, and why grace - for yourself and your process - might be the most important thing he’d tell his younger self.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

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Get Involved:
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Virginia Ross has one of those careers that sounds impossible until she explains exactly how each step led to the next — and even then, it barely seems planned. Because it wasn't.

After getting kicked out of college twice, pivoting from government consulting to culinary school to a startup acquired by a Utah telecom company, Virginia landed at Amazon's Ring, and accidentally became one of the rare voices inside Big Tech asking hard questions about what their products were doing to the world outside the app.

Today, Virginia leads Amazon's state and local AI policy portfolio. She analyzes proposed legislation, engages civil society and advocacy organizations, and translates between the engineers building the technology and the lawmakers trying to regulate it. She loves it more than any job she's ever had.

In this conversation, Virginia talks about growing up as one of only three Asian kids in a Northern Virginia suburb, what it really means to build a career through relationships, why she's still convinced that curiosity and a willingness to pick up the phone matter more than credentials, and what she'd tell her daughters about the future of work.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

👉 Subscribe & Listen: https://www.youtube.com/@PathFoundPodcast

★ Follow, rate, and share if you’ve ever taken the scenic route.

Get Involved:
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