Career Book Recommendations + Re Intro via Career Decisions

HEADLINING STATS: 

20 Years of professional work
3 Industries
5 Organizations/Companies
+50 direct reports and mentees
4 Libran bosses (I’m an Aquarian sun with Virgo rising,)

REFLECTIONS:
I subscribe to the notion that if you are happy with your life then there are no regrets. All of us who are lucky enough to have shelter over our heads and plenty to eat are privileged. 

About five years into professional work I realized that I wasn’t cut out to be a specialist. The thought of a Ph.D was stifling. My instincts were codified by the book Range (https://davidepstein.com/range/), which I highly recommend. 

If we spoke in the vicinity of 2006-9 I’d have told you that I wanted to work on conflict from as many angles as possible. I now think I enjoy learning from, working with, and getting the best out of people, ideally in a geopolitical or adjacent setting. 

I’ve gotten a fair few questions about career ‘deviations’ starting back when I was an intern with the International Rescue Committee in the North Caucasus. As things turned out, I have never done the same job twice, despite my efforts. If you are a senior Millenial and above, the career ladder was the dominant approach. If you want to climb the ladder in the non-profit/public policy space, stay with an agency you can tolerate. In tech if you get in early you’ll climb fast, otherwise it’s better to hop across companies if the economy is robust. 

If you choose the well-rounded generalist approach you’ll get great experience, miss out on titles, and need to do more explanation of your WHY. I think it’s been senior Millenials who were the first to navigate the jungle-gym approach to careers, for which I’ve found Bruce Feiler’s book, ‘The Search’ helpful. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63946905-the-search.

The advice that is common now is to understand yourself as a start. If you are midcareer, a book I’d recommend is Martha Beck’s ‘The Way of Integrity.’ https://marthabeck.com/product/the-way-of-integrity/, perhaps work with a coach or mentor to work through your IKIGAI. I saw someone post theirs, which was fascinating. I’ll get to it in the new year.

The short of WHY I’ve changed careers is as follows: 
Public Policy is sometimes more about politics than it is about improving people’s lives. 
Until peace is a priority for Great Power Politics, humanitarian aid will continue to be insufficient.
Tech will mature as an industry in so far as innovation and wealth creation are the drivers. 

I took risks, followed curiosity, chose roles to worked with specific leaders, and sometimes made decisions based on personal circumstances. 

1. PUBLIC POLICY: 
Bringing about  structured change takes years, probably at least a decade of consistent commitment. It requires depth of knowledge, a strong network, and a willingness to continually learn on the periphery of your area to ensure sustainability of approach. 

The first five years of my career were in public policy: second track diplomacy and a ground breaking news service at Search for Common Ground. I use what I learned at Search all the time, and made life-long friends. I left at the behest of a board member who was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Cheeky, young me, I said no to her once. Graciously she asked again. The time was right. 

At Search and CFR the stakes and bar for success were high. Literally Middle East Peace. We worked hard to prevent the US invasion of Iraq. We were instrumental in re-building US-Saudi relations after 9-11. To be clear, when I say ‘we’ I mean the brilliant and ahead of her time Judith Kipper. 

WHY I MOVED ON: For good reason, lots of people are enamored by the Middle East. I didn’t think I was smart enough to distinguish myself in a crowded field, I wanted to do work that more directly positively impacted people’s lives. My language skills were better at the time and I wanted to use them. 

2. HUMANITARIAN AID  WORKER
The first mainstream book on humanitarianism, David Reiff’s A Bed for the Night, came out as I was weighing next steps. He heavily featured the International Rescue Committee and it’s then VP, John Keys, who would turn into a mentor a few years down the road. 

If this is a path you are considering, and I highly encourage it, do your best to know your physical and emotional limits, how you navigate ambiguity ahead of time. They’ll be tested. Internalize that humanitarian solutions are sought in the absence of political ones. This is at the heart of why there are over 120 million people displaced from their homes globally. It’s incredibly important, satisfying, and increasingly dangerous work. You’ll learn constantly, widening your view on human resilience and fragility, how far we’ve come as a global community and how far we haven’t. 

WHY I MOVED ON: 
I had two inflection points. 

1. Leaving the field 
I served with the International Rescue Committee in Pakistan from 2009-12. I was hired following the breakdown of the peace accord between the government and the Taliban, which spurred a massive displacement from the northern parts of Khyber Pakhtunwa (FKA the North West Frontier Province). Then there were the 2010 floods, which impacted 20M people and was one of the largest displacements of its time. The Syrian civil war soon took the mantle of displacement record holder. Then there were the 2011 floods. In 2012 we recognised that, even if there was significant flooding again we were unlikely to get the same level of international support given other happenings in the world. I was co-responsible for right-sizing the program from a $36M/year operating budget to $12M/year. 

As a person I’d risen through the ranks to Deputy Director of Programs. A pin, when Osama Bin Laden was assassinated, I had 14 direct reports, mainly senior, dispersed across 5 provinces of the country. Managing dispersed teams before it was cool. 

From 2010-12 I traveled 50% within the country. I existed on 4-5 hours of sleep/night. My burn out got to the point where I physically could not read a computer screen. No one but my father said anything to me. Or I don’t remember it, I have memory loss from the time period. 

I left on account of two things. With a smaller program I didn’t think I was necessary, so I eliminated my job. I was also desperately sick. As a comparison, following a bout of amoebic dysentery in 2009 I decided as a security precaution to adapt to the water, at least in Islamabad. Which I did! In my last 6 weeks in the country I was on full spectrum antibiotics. My body collapsed, I had to go.
 

2. Leaving the sector
In my last job as an aid worker I worked on policy. Specifically, I was hired because I’d worked on one of the responses cited as why the way humanitarian aid is organized needed major reform (Pakistan floods 2010, alongside Haiti and Somalia). We made progress but it became clear that there were limits to the willingness of the UN and donors to change and relinquish power. The reform initiation stalled at implementation and then reformed itself as a new process. I didn’t have the heart to keep fighting. Change still hasn’t happened meaningfully. 

I thought I’d go back to the field with my new husband, raise a family abroad. I was desperate for change. I got it. 

3. TECH
I think I got an interview earlier this year just so someone could ask how I made the leap from InterAction, a US trade association of humanitarian and development actors, to Facebook. 

I was recruited via LinkedIn. My profile was minimal and a mess. Kudos to my recruiter for seeing me (Marissa Cochran), and Mike Gagne for taking a chance on me. I’d managed big teams, dealt with compliance and regulation, managed crises, had policy experience, moved mountains, in short. Twelve interviews later, to my shock and delight, I was in.

It was a huge culture change, quite an onboarding. I’ve never had such an intense six month period. We also moved halfway across the country for it. 

Joining tech was another worthy risk. Tons of scope to facilitate innovation. Consistently doing cutting edge work, sorting through dilemmas where there is no right answer, often with high stakes. 

For those considering this, particularly if you join from a more established, mature industry, tech is constantly re-inventing itself. It is three-D chess all the time; keeping track of industry trends, massive internal machinery, and keeping your team on the forefront.

WHY I MOVED ON:
I don’t know that I’m done with tech yet, I just needed a break.

I’d hit a wall of burnout. Between my work in Pakistan and tech, in 2022 I developed stress-induced type 1 diabetes. Don’t ignore your burnout, it can have serious consequences. I may be insulin dependent for the rest of my life. 

For a while I was looking for a way to combine my humanitarian and tech experience and did have some interesting conversations. What I realized is that the knowledge and experience is within me: if I offer my services I get to leverage all of it in service of someone else’s progress. While I am looking for a position as I build this business, going independent is my big goal. For now!

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Managing People in Distracted Times