HOW I BUILT MY WAY HERE
Some people follow straight ladders. I prefer scaffolding.
I owe an apology in advance: if you came here for a clean career blueprint, you’ve taken a wrong turn. My career path has less in common with a five-year plan and more with the doodle map my son drew on a receipt — rivers looping nowhere, a suspicious dragon near the corner, and an arrow declaring “you are here!” like it knew more than I did.
WHERE I’VE BEEN
Life’s taken me on remarkable journeys — some planned, others appearing like unexpected detours I had to navigate before moving forward. Each has been profound in its own way.
My first real jobs were in kitchens and behind deli counters — early foundational work that taught me precision with ingredients and how to read people. I learned to anticipate the regular customer’s order and navigate the random shopper demanding the freshest turkey, sliced just so. Each interaction was practice in reading nuances and building small connections that carried real weight.
Fresh out of high school, I enrolled in a coding bootcamp. I soon realized it wasn’t for me, so I pivoted.
Next, I enrolled as a biology major at Kean University. My plan was the physician assistant track – news that made my late dad giddy at the idea of having a medical professional in the family. After a year on that track, I pivoted again.
I had interviewed for a role at a New York-based health media startup. They were looking for someone with a healthcare background and social media experience to manage their online community of patients, pharmaceutical companies, and caregivers. At the time, Twitter and Facebook were my playground, and social media management was still in its nascent stages. I got the role and ran with it – working on video production and learning Adobe Premiere, podcast audio editing, and Photoshop. It was fun! This put me at the intersection of technology, health, and communications. It was foundational to who I am today.
Next up: New Colony Partners (healtheo360) in Midtown Manhattan -translating complex health information into clear, concise messaging. These lessons reinforced structure, clarity, and a love for learning new things.
My international chapter came years later. I spent time across Southeast Asia and Africa working in community development before returning in 2021 to serve as Senior Communications Manager at Triangle Land Conservancy. It felt like reprising a familiar role — I was applying the same skills I’d developed leading communications expansion at COMACO in Zambia, just on a different continent with similar challenges of stretching limited resources into sustainable programs.
Angola deserves special mention. At the civil war’s end, no plan brought me there. I met Angelina — younger than my high school self, but she’d already navigated war before she’d navigated puberty. You don’t plan for conversations like that. They just happen, and they change how you see everything. Her quiet strength shaped my own understanding of resilience.
Today at Angel Oak Creative, my role as Client Success Executive bridges strategy and storytelling — corporate speak for “a person who inspires action, turning organizational vision into campaigns that move communities.” I support numerous nonprofits addressing global social issues and draw on the skills I’ve acquired from living across three continents — thinking outside familiar frameworks and adapting to diverse cultural contexts that shape communities in unique ways.
STILL BUILDING
“In my ‘free’ time, I’m pursuing a degree in public health education at UNCG, with a minor in international business, expanding my toolkit. I’m also deep in the editing phase of my first novel—a YA fantasy that’s been years in the making, expanding Zambian river mythology into contemporary storytelling. It turns out that living across three continents gives you interesting perspectives on how ancient wisdom translates into modern narratives. Some people collect degrees. I collect experience points from unexpected paths and life places along my journey.
I often recall a question my dad once asked: “Do you know the difference between being learned and being educated?” My response: “Learned is getting a degree. Educated is learning from the world around us.”
I’ve learned that what people call “plans” often look like outlines of their anxieties, neatly bullet-pointed. My son has an uncanny ability to rewrite my calendar with the conviction of an ancient philosopher, and I’ve come to trust his revisions more than my own drafts.
The through-line? Impermanence isn’t the enemy of planning — it’s the foundation. Essentially, when life changes unexpectedly, I don’t fight it—I figure out how to use it. Each detour became part of what got me here.
You’ve probably noticed that my career seems to weave and dip unpredictably. But in adaptive architecture, every experience becomes a load-bearing structure for challenges yet encountered. The key is trusting the process long enough to see how it connects.
Sometimes, if you squint just right, even carefully planned structures look like a kid’s doodle on a receipt: dragons and all.
