The Career Butterfly

Amy Marie Hann's early career was in corporate America where she found her niche as an executive assistant. She stayed in that job until her oldest son was two years old and she decided to stay home. While she was thankful for the opportunity, as a self-proclaimed "Doer," she found the transition to be messy as well. It was challenging for her to give up the traditional sense of accomplishment that came from the job.

At home, she became interested in starting a business, but didn't feel she had the resources or childcare to invest in starting something from scratch. She also was dealing with the uncertainty that comes from infertility and not knowing when, or if, she would be able to grow her family. She found the right part-time job opportunity in direct sales for the skin care company, Rodan+Fields.

While she thrived in this business - and still works in it today - it wasn't her passion. Along the way, her family had journeyed down the path of foster parenting and adoption and had grown to include two more children.

Her passion today is all about lightening the mental load of motherhood and she loves to share the wisdom she's gained form working part-time while raising three kids. If you're interested in learning more, join her free Creating Capacity Facebook Group.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, she also has a Holiday Thriving Guide which is all about defining your priorities, getting organized, and avoiding mom guilt.

Career reinvention is nothing new to Bettina Chaiken. She reinvented herself several times over two continents - from hairdresser to teacher to IT manager to travel agent - before she had children!

When she was pregnant with her first child in America, all she knew was the German way where moms would be paid to stay home for a year and then their job would be waiting for them when they returned. To stay home in the U.S. meant leaving the workforce entirely, but she also couldn't imagine paying someone else to watch her child so she embraced her role as a stay-at-home-mom. One child turned into two and a year turned into a decade or two.

Along the way, she volunteered at her children's school, and even overcame impostor syndrome to serve 6 years on the Board, including her final year as President. Even though she didn't feel qualified in the beginning, she accepted the fact that the people who had asked her to serve must have seen something in her that she didn't.

She listened to that instinct again when a friend suggested real estate to her as a new career. After all, she was the one that would scour online listings and attend open houses just for fun! She enrolled in a program and now two years later, she's building her career with the premier real estate firm in the region.

She loves the strategic nature and ever-changing dynamics of real estate, as well as her daily interaction with both clients and fellow agents.

To know more about Bettina's services, visit her website.

We pick up right where we left off this week in a 2-part interview with author Sarah Jane Marsh and the draft of her debut book, Thomas Paine and the Dangerous Word.

In this episode, Sarah shares the rest of what would become a six year journey to publication. A rebel herself - just like Thomas Paine - Sarah managed to find an agent who embraced her manuscript in its unconventionally long format. Together, they found a home with Disney Hyperion for what would become an 80-page, 2500 word picture book.

After the sale of her first book, Sarah got busy writing again which is why she has another book, Most Wanted: The Revolutionary Partnership of John Hancock and Samuel Adams, coming out next year. The publishing world might move slowly, but our evolving view of history has been shifting dramatically these past few years. Sarah doesn't shy away from addressing some of the more controversial topics her revolutionary history books might raise including the direct line from slavery to the Black Lives Matter movement and the fact that the celebrated colonization of America was really the invasion of an indigenous population.

Sarah also shares candidly why its rare for a writer to make a living from their craft. Writing will always be her passion, but she's also found a way to transition from PTA-mom-with-an-idea to working in a paid position for a local non-profit that focuses on the critical poverty and mental health needs of her community.

Sarah Marsh had two passions when she was a child: reading and animals. We all had childhood passions, but few have kept them as guideposts throughout their careers as she has. Sarah started as a zoo volunteer when she was still a teen and went on to study wildlife conservation in college. Her hard work paid off and she landed many exciting jobs: dolphin trainer, zookeeper and firefighter.

In today's episode, the first of two parts, Sarah shares her early career, a business detour that earned her an MBA and some valuable startup experience, and her transition into motherhood. As a new mom of twins, one with significant health concerns, Sarah found herself overwhelmed with even basic tasks like getting both babies in and out of the car. It was a friend who helped her find her way to a doctor and an anxiety disorder that was helped with medication. She also found that returning to her love of zookeeping, in a volunteer capacity, helped anchor her to her old identity. As her family grew, she added reading and writing as creative outlets.

Her journey eventually led to writing her first book, Thomas Paine and the Dangerous Word, a picture book biography published by Disney Hyperion in 2018. We'll conclude the interview next week with a deeper dive into her road to publication, her next book, and what's keeping her busy these days beyond her writing.

When I was on my own journey back from my career pause, one of the voices in my ear was Kristy Wallace, CEO of Ellevate Network and host of the Ellevate podcast. That's why I'm so excited to have her as a guest this week on Ready Pause Go!

In this episode, you'll hear:

• What Ellevate Network is and why it might be right for you
• About their in-person networking events
• About their online networking events including2x/weekly webinars and Squads which provide dedicated 12 week networking groups for women in similar career stages
• How Kristy managed the two career pauses she took over the course of having 3 children
• How Kristy went back to work after scheduling a "listening tour" with her network
• All the different ways that Ellevate Network is working towards gender equity through individuals, companies, and public policy.
• Why now is the best time to return from a career pause - from changing company structures to advancing technology
• Kristy's advice on handling your own career pause: Stay curious, stay intellectually engaged, own your decision, let go of the guilt, be intentional.

If you're local to Seattle, check out the next event, Launching your Career Reinvention, a panel that I'm moderating on Tuesday, November 12th at 6:00.

This is the second in a 2-part series with last week being all about saying YES. This week we tackle the concept of making space in your life for those opportunities to find you. And that all starts with NO.

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Do you allow yourself to say YES to the opportunities that come your way? This week we're talking about the offers that come your way that move you closer to your goals. What if it terrifies you? What if you think you don't have the right skills?

My advice: Just say YES. This is the first in a 2-part series on when to say YES and when to say NO.

Ready Pause Go

In her previous corporate job, Sara was responsible for building systems to recruit and retain women and minorities. What she discovered was that the well intentioned efforts of most companies were actually what she now calls the Trifecta of Equality Doom – 1) recruit women, 2) ask them to lean in and 3) give everyone diversity training. Everyone seemed to be doing the same thing even though it wasn't producing results.

With a background in systems, she was frustrated that this business critical problem wasn't being measured, tracked, and improved with data like every other business problem. She wondered why there wasn't a certification that would simply tell people that a particular business was gender equity certified. Why didn't that exist? Who should build it?

It turns out she and her network of colleagues were the perfect ones to tackle this problem and Gender Equity Now was born. Two and a half years later, they've launched the first standardized certification for gender equity – something along the lines of LEED or EnergyStar in other industries – and they have their first certified companies.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why gender equity needs to be treated like any other business critical problem
• Examples of unintentional, but implicit bias
• When in a career the gender pay gap actually compounds
• Why pay decisions shouldn't be based on an employee's self-evaluation
• How to shift the onus of this problem from the employee to the company
• How gender equity financially benefits companies
• Why the percentage of highly educated women in the workforce is decreasing (research shows that only 6% left for family reasons)
• How GEN is helping companies reduce the stigma around women returning to work
• How the "caretaker" identity subconsciously assigned to women at work impacts their work and potential for promotion
• The best way for women to currently find gender equity information on a particular company
• 3 good questions you can ask about networking, mentorship, and success stories during the interview process that won't hurt your chances of getting the job
• How new state laws banning salary questions have the potential to improve gender pay gap
• The importance of paid leave and minimum wage policies on this issue

TEDx talk: Improving gender parity through corporate accountability

Georgene Huang never thought much about her gender and how it related to the workplace until she was fired when she was 2 months pregnant. While the firing was unrelated to the pregnancy – it was a management shakeup – it definitely made her take a look at the world differently.

Rather than go back to work for another company, she launched her own with the social mission to improve the lives and workplace for women through transparency. Today, she's turned that little startup into the largest online career community for women. Fairygodboss has raised $14 million in venture capital funding and has 4.5 million women visiting the Fairygodboss website each month for the company reviews, job postings, and community feed where they can chat and get advice.

Enjoy her story and come join my very own Ready Pause Go group on Fairygodboss.

When Lara was in college, she had a very specific vision of her future. She dreamed of a nice, simple life where she and her husband were teachers in the same small town and they'd raise a family together. All was on track until her husband decided he wanted to go to medical school.

Lara originally thought the idea was kind of cool and romantic, but didn't fully recognize how many years and moves it might take for them to realize that new dream. Along the way, she earned her Masters degree in teaching and taught classes ranging from SexEd to History and English.

They also started a family and had five sons. With her passion for teaching, Lara tried her best to keep her foot in the door of the classroom, but the challenges of moving every few years and some specific issues with her children eventually made her realize it was logistically impossible.

Even though she gave up the classroom, she still had a desire to teach and needed a creative outlet. That drive and desire led her to creating a podcast that serves a population close to her heart - spouses of doctors. Today she hosts the Married to Doctors podcast and coaches clients on related issues.