What is Your Worthy Career?

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode. I was on a Zoom call with someone recently who was telling me how much she loved my Cheetah wallpaper. It’s this bold, teal and green and navy background with orange Cheetahs all over it. It is bold and eye-catching. I was telling her that it is a symbol of my business, that it’s more than just a print. It represents women in the industry who are trailblazers or aspiring trailblazers who are doing the hard things, navigating the work environment and deciding not to settle for a good enough career. And it got me thinking that I should do an episode talking about what it really means to have a worthy career because it’s so much more than a better job or building your career skills. A worthy career is one that aligns with your values, your talents, your aspirations, and your zone of genius, even if you don’t know what that is, while making a meaningful impact in your field. It’s not just about climbing the corporate ladder getting fancy titles or making all the money. Although, let’s just be real that those perks are nice and a part of it, too. A worthy career goes so much deeper. It’s about feeling fulfilled in the work that you do, having a purpose, and knowing that your contributions matter.

For women in pharma and biotech, this could mean working on groundbreaking drug development, driving innovative healthcare solutions, or leading teams in highly regulated environments where your leadership truly makes a difference in people’s lives. It’s about using your skills, whether they’re in clinical research, regulatory affairs, biosats, to really push something bigger than yourself. You’re not just a cog in the machine. You’re drawn to this industry for a reason. You’re a force for positive change in science and patient care. It’s also about owning your worth, knowing that you deserve to be at the table, making decisions, and getting the recognition and pay that you’ve earned. A worthy career includes balance too, because what’s the point if you’re bringing yourself out, right? So we are not sacrificing the love and life that you have outside of work. It’s about your confidence and belief in yourself that you’re good enough and worthy to have the career and life that you want. It’s going beyond what people tell you. It’s going beyond the desire to want something more but not doing it because you feel like you have to wait your turn and that you can’t be a mom and have a successful career at the same time.

It’s really about defining your own success and rules and not playing by outdated norms that keep us small. Now, we’re going to get a little personal here with this episode and break down how this all came to be. So let’s go back to the Cheetahs. What is up with the Cheetahs, really? How does this all connect? Now, before the Cheetah wallpaper, I was living in agreeable gray, literally and metaphorically. Even after I started my business, I found myself unintentionally still living by the norms, the patriarchal society, telling me to be palatable, professional, pantsuit style. Here I was in my office that I created for myself where I had all of the autonomy. In the business I built on my own, feeling like a corporate out, worried about the same things, choosing agreeable gray as my literal office paint color. And this reminds me of if you look at scientific studies, which is like animals and mice, or if you look at birds in a cage. If you condition someone, an animal, a person, to an environment, to a way of living for long enough, even when they have the freedom, they don’t leave. They don’t make different choices.

They stay in their routine, and that is what I was doing. I had all this freedom. I could literally do whatever I wanted, and I didn’t even know that I was still living in a box. I left pharma because although I had a great job and was able to even create coaching programs and facilitate really cool leadership development programs and team interventions, I was still in that box. I wasn’t making the impact that I wanted to. I had that nagging feeling that there was something more for me. And I remember sitting in my large corner windowless cubicle that I had convinced myself was a top-tier office and thinking, Is this really all there is? It was this nagging feeling like I was settling. I have a deep, deep desire to make a difference in this world. Could I make a connection from my work to making a difference? Yes, I absolutely could. But I still wanted something bigger, something different, more meaningful. It’s almost like I felt like I was wearing someone else’s clothes. I didn’t feel like I truly belonged in my role. There was just something more for me, something different. I wanted to be challenged.

I wanted to do things my way. And you can probably relate, it’s the way that I knew to be right. You have those ideas, too, where you know your way is the right way sometimes. And stop letting our bottom line or leaders, without my expertise, drive the decisions. And I know this might not be what you expect to hear from a career coach, but this is my story. The problem is that, like I said, I had a good job. I had a really good job. I had earned a master’s in organizational psychology and I had an impressive track record for results. So I was able to influence my leadership to create a new role for me with a promotion at one of the best and biggest global pharma companies in the world. So why the heck couldn’t I just be happy? Why couldn’t I just be grateful and just settle? Have you ever had all of the right things on paper so you felt guilty for wanting something different? Because that was me. Even though my company was great and allowed me to make my role my own, I couldn’t be in 100% service to my clients because the company wanted employees to stay with the company.

Hr and management had to know if any red flags came up in coaching. My conscience just wouldn’t allow me to settle with this. It almost felt like I was out of alignment with my integrity because I was not aligned with my values. And so it seemed like a betrayal. And I know that sounds dramatic, but I can be dramatic sometimes, and that’s how it felt. I cared more about doing right by the person that I was coaching than the company I was working for. And you might say that maybe I went rogal sometimes to help people find and get into their best role, even if it wasn’t with the company. But that can be our little secret. Don’t tell anyone. And what made it worse is I didn’t know what I wanted to be different, right? So you might be listening and being like, oh, my gosh, it’s this breakthrough moment. No, the most frustrating part is I knew this. I felt this way, but I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what it meant for another role. I didn’t know that it meant that I should have my own company or my own business.

I didn’t know. I just felt like there was this gap That there’s a void. And it’s not like I could go out on a rooftop and scream, I want to make a bigger difference. And like magic, a new job, one that I had been scrolling on LinkedIn to find, just hoping it would find me because I didn’t know what I wanted. And so I wanted LinkedIn to do that work for me. It would suddenly appear with, oh, my gosh, here is your perfect offer letter. No, that is not how it works. You know that’s not how it works. Instead, I took the long way to find out what my best role was that would allow me to have the impact that I wanted. But I did it. Spoiler alert. I started taking coaching clients at night, and even when I was tired, it lit me up. It allowed me to truly help people. And seeing their results, and seeing how coaching changed their life was so motivating. And I discovered this is my superpower. This is what I meant to do. And honestly, this is something I work with my clients on because you have a superpower too.

But because it’s your superpower, you don’t necessarily see it. Because it’s natural to you. It’s normal for you. And so this was something that I had to learn was not normal for everyone else. In the end, I needed to leave my successful corporate career and industry to build my own business and help people in a way that I felt was 100 % in service to them. Which is why it’s amazing I don’t work for your company. You know that I am as invested in your career and your success as you are. Anyway, when I started my business, even though I’m a big advocate for others, especially underrepresented communities, and I’m all about authenticity and resisting the patriarchy, I found myself in the suit jacket with agreeable gray paved on the walls. Are you serious? This is seriously what I did. Like I said, I didn’t know that I was doing this. I’m still living in box. So I changed my role. I was doing the work I wanted to do, but I still had that box I was living in, and something just didn’t feel right in my space. I looked professional, but just like when I worked in corporate with maybe some fresh flowers put in, maybe a little bit of some signage or some pictures on the wall that you wouldn’t hang up at work.

I felt like I was being a little bit of a rebel. So what I did is, actually, I have a very problem solution mindset mindset. I see things as a problem to solve. It’s what prevented me from staying in a role I wasn’t happy with, always growing, always going on and taking on new roles, and new responsibilities, never giving up, hiring my own coach to help me leave corporate. All of these things are just coming from the belief I have that everything is a problem to solve. And it’s something that I really help my clients take on as their own belief, too, because it really changes the way you see yourself, the way you see your career, the way you live in general. You just have to solve the problems that are in your way. So I got to work to dissect what was going on. Why is it that my face doesn’t feel like me? That I was doing the work that I wanted to do. And I wanted my business to be a certain way. And how can I let go of who I should be, who I believe I should be versus who I really am?

How can I do that when I don’t know the answer? It’s just like when you’re figuring out your ideal role and you don’t know what that role is. I have a process for that. That’s proven. We create your career protocol so you can know for sure what you’re meant to be doing. You don’t have to take the long way like I did. So even if you’ve been struggling with it for a long time, we can get that answer for you in just a few weeks. Anyway, so do you know what happened when I did this work? I stumbled upon animal archetypes and symbolism like an intervention from the universe, if you believe in that thing. And there was the Cheetah. And the Cheetah symbolizes passion, resilience, strength, elegance, assertiveness, purpose, progress, empathy, persistence, independence, grace, ambition. It sounds a lot like us, right? And so the Cheetah became a symbol of my business. It’s why I have a bold Cheetah wallpaper in my office. Your worthy career is all about enabling women in the industry to have a career worthy of them, but also a career that they feel worthy of. Because we all struggle with some self-doubts and lack of confidence sometimes.

Our symbol is the cheetah. Occasionally, you might hear me refer to you as a Cheetah on this podcast or in my emails, and it’s with the most love and adoration. It’s me seeing you and seeing what is possible for you. You aren’t meant to be caged in a box, settling for good enough. Now, I help other women in pharma and biotech advance their career and build their confidence as leaders so that they can have the career that they want to. They don’t have to walk into their windowless cubicle, log on from their laptop at home after hustling to get their kids food in their bellies, or begrudgingly stepping into their actual office with windows and wonder, is this it? I hope you get the answer to what you want because if you’re questioning it, if you’re questioning if in the right role, there is more for you. Listen to that. Whether it’s a promotion or a whole new role together, there is something more for you. You don’t have to settle. I hope you have the career that you only dream about and wonder if it’s even realistic to have. After working in pharma and biotech for almost 12 years and subsequently serving women in this industry and partnering with life sciences companies for almost five years now, I can tell you without a doubt, it’s funny I said that because See how that doubt is gone?

It’s a full-circle moment. That as a woman in pharma and biotech, you can have more. You can have so much more. I have seen it happen time and time again with the women that I work with. Confidence, certainty, advancement, a career you actually love going to. And you can have it all without the doubt, overthinking, and feeling like you’re settling. You can be the standout leader you want to be, even when there are louder voices in the room. You can be the leader everyone wants to report to. Even in a male-dominated world, an industry where men take your ideas, talk over you, or completely shut you down, and sometimes other women do that too. You can still build the skills to be effective and feel good doing it. Your worthy career is all about you. You having a career worthy of your talent, which all starts with knowing what those are and leveraging them to get into the right role. It’s about you growing your belief in yourself and letting go of the doubt and negative self-taught that tells you to play small and that you should just be grateful. It’s really a revolution.

It’s a movement. We aren’t fitting into the industry. We are disrupting it. We aren’t fighting for a seat at the table. We are leading the conversation. And not by being the loudest, but by embracing our authentic voice. I am sharing the insider strategies with you, helping you build the skills you need that you can’t learn from a book or what your work training doesn’t offer you. I know what it’s like in the industry, and I know what it takes to succeed. I am your ally, your advocate, and your coach. Listen, your worthy career, this is yours as much as it is mine. We are in this together. I am here to help you break through beyond the ceiling, beyond the norms, beyond what you even think is possible for yourself, so that you can live up to your potential and make a difference. The industry needs you, the world needs you. You can have a successful and impactful career and be the partner, mother, sister, caretaker, or friend that you want to be. It’s not one or the other. Your time is now. All right. Thank you for tuning in today. I am so happy you’re here, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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