That’s why we’re creating this repository of passionate professionals who have made scary career pivots. We hope these conversations will inspire you to explore difficult career transitions to build a meaningful, challenging and exciting work life.

They’ll help you carve out a career you love by giving you:

Making a big pivot is scary if you don’t know anyone who’s done it. Here you will find role models who were once in your shoes.

Schools don’t prepare you to deal with the uncertainty that comes with a career pivot. Listening to stories of how your role models did it, will give you courage.

You don’t want to be surfing directionless on the Internet. These stories will give you specific things to dive into and actionable steps you can take today.

I’m Piyush.

I’m 21 years old, a recent college graduate.

Last year, I quit pursing a career in accounting that all my friends were pursuing only to find myself completely lost.

Everyone around me was either an accountant or an engineer. I didn’t know how to take the next step. I was lost.

A lot of other people in their 20s are in the same boat as I was. I want to help them.

I’m Nityesh.

I’m 24 years old, working as a Community Consultant.

3 years ago, I was trying to build a career as a programmer. It was only through a series of happy accidents that I was able to pivot into a career that makes me look forward to Mondays.

But when I look around me, I see my friends stuck in the first career they fell into.

I want to help them explore new career paths.

How Sofia started a non-profit community along with her career in venture capital

Sofia Haq is the founder and CEO at Muslim Women Professionals where she is building a community where diverse women can embrace their Muslim identity and build professional skills through mentorship, networking, and guidance.

She's also the Senior Program Manager at XRC Labs - venture capital firm and accelerator. Here she builds curriculum, spearheads community development, maintains relationships with the portfolio companies, and many other things.

How Derrick fixed the problem of a non-energizing work life by moving into community

Derrick Chiu is the community manager at Thrive TRM. He pivoted into the community industry in 2022 after 11 years of experience in the sales industry.

How following his curiosity in public helped Sharath unlock new opportunities

Sharath Kuruganty has worked with some iconic community led companies like Product Hunt, OnDeck and currently Threado, where he is the Head of Community.

A fun fact - Threado’s co-founder, Pramod Rao was guest no. 2 on this show. So this conversation has been a long time coming. What made it happen this time is Sharath's recent win where he sold his side project Shoutout to a UK based product studio. He started building this project about two years ago and reached $30k ARR with it.

Bri Leever is the founder of Ember Consulting where she helps companies as their Brand Community Strategist working to create a community out of their superfans.

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How Shre geared off the established path by building community and consulting

Shre is the fractional Head of Community for Lenny Rachitsky’s private community of 10,000+ product-minded people. It is one of the most popular paid online communities.

But that’s not it. He has pivoted away from lucrative careers in management consulting and at big companies in his pursuit for more meaningful work. Today, he is a consultant and describes himself as Dobby - a slave elf from Harry Potter world who freed himself.

Gabrielle Leith is the Community Manager at Grapevine.

She has a really interesting career path going from working in films at Toronto Film Festival to getting her first community role using a side project she started - Supper Club Cinema.

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Mac is an entrepreneur, a visionary and the originator of the community-led movement. He is the founder and CEO of Commsor and Community club - 2 names that everyone in the community industry is familiar with.

In fact, every guest that we’ve talked to has attributed getting help from the Community Club community when they were starting out in the industry.

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From construction industry to the Community industry: Erin’s story of grit and optimism

Erin O’Neill might be the first community professional who planned her transition into community management.

Almost everyone you’ll meet in the community industry, has accidentally fallen into their first community job. But not Erin.

She decided that she wanted to switch her careers, discovered community management and succeeded in moving into it! Today, she is the Head of Community at RevOps Co-op.

How Prashant raised $1.5M on just a story with 3 characters

Prashant Mahajan is the founder and CEO of Zeda.io - a startup that’s building a super app for product teams. Previously, he had been a rockstar Product Manager at multiple high growth startups where he’s built products that have touched the lives of millions of people.

What’s interesting about him is how generous he is with his time. He often spends his time writing posts on LinkedIn or Twitter, doing podcast appearances and giving webinars to talk about his journey being a founder and previously, being a PM without a traditional MBA degree.

How a non-traditional career path led Taylor to building communities at AltMBA and Groove

Taylor is the Head of Community at Groove - a support community for people who work for or by themselves. All over the world, people use Groove’s mobile app to instantly connect and conquer their to-dos alongside each other.

Taylor is an extrovert, through and through. She loves bringing people together. She loves building workshops, facilitating events, mentorship programs and more. Right out college, she started her career building powerful learning experiences with Seth Godin at AltMBA - the company that pioneered cohort based courses even before Zoom had the breakout features.

Rae is the Head of Community at Topknot - a startup that provides an online personal development club that helps millennial women and non-binary individuals move forward in their personal development and growth journey.

What I find super interesting about her is that this is not only her first official community role, but also her first role in a tech startup! She is coming to the community space after a long and varied professional background spanning non-profit management to business consulting.

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Max is the Community and Customer Support Lead at SuperHi - a startup that teaches people code, design and project management skills.

What's most interesting about Max is that if you visit his personal LinkedIn, you’ll find that the experience section is a smorgasbord of careers. He has done everything from project management, website design, business coaching, freelancing and community management.

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Pramod is the cofounder and CEO of Threado where he is building the "Command Center" for community builders. Threado gives community builders superpowers by allowing them to get actionable insights, automations and workflows to manage their communities.

Before Threado, Pramod was the VP of Marketing at Zomato - India’s largest food delivery and restaurant discovery company. He joined them as their 13th employee and went on to build and lead their Marketing team for more than 8 yrs.

And then in 2019, he quit to start his own high-growth startup.

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Kyle Hagge is the Lead Community Manager at Morning Brew - one of the world's fastest-growing business media companies that was valued recently valued at more than $75M. Kyle helped them in launching their first ever paid product: a cohort-based career and skills accelerator.

What's remarkable about Kyle's story is how he got here. Before working as at the Morning Brew community, he had been a podcast producer, an entrepreneur, a high school coach amongst other seemingly unrelated careers.

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Dwarkesh blogs about about tech, science, and the long-term. He is also the host of The Lunar Society Podcast. Recently, one of his posts went viral and has since been read by thousands including Jeff Bezos!

In this interview we talk about Why he is writing essays instead of coding, How to get high profile guests on a podcast, Going to university vs Learning on the Internet and more.

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Balaji has been a builder for the past 12 years- 3 as a product manager and 9 as a developer. Currently he is the Lead Product Manager at Grab.

Read on to find out what does a Product Manager do, the difference between building products as a developer and a PM, how to break into product management and more.

Read Balaji’s map

Kelly is a Leadership & Well-being Coach who works with individuals that want to live more confidently & intentionally, alongside guiding post-seed stage startups who wish to invest in creating a motivating & supportive Employee Experience.

Read on to find out What a Leadership and Well-being Coach does, How she became one, How to avoid getting trapped in the hustle culture and more.

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Anupam is the ‘accidental’ software developer. He has pursued careers in space science and management consulting. Now, software engineering is his third career.

Read on to find out Why did Anupam stop launching satellites for ISRO, How he became the ‘accidental’ software developer and more.

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Nityesh (23) is a solopreneur. He runs a consultancy My First Community Manager where he helps founders and creators turn their audience into a community.

Read on to find out What Nityesh works on, Why he skipped campus placements altogether in college and more.

Read Nityesh’s map