Trusting Your Instincts: Melissa Wiley's Insights on Navigating Career Pivots
“As I’ve advanced through my career, I’ve found myself in situations where I wasn’t 100% comfortable or knowledgeable and there were some major red flags. I didn’t listen to my gut and ended up kicking myself for not heeding that intuition weeks or months later. I would tell anyone at any point in their career to have the confidence to trust your gut instincts, especially women.”
I had the incredible opportunity to photograph T-Mobile VP of Strategy & Operations Melissa Wiley during our Washington D.C. Road Show. I asked her to share a little bit of her journey:
“For the first 20+ years of my career, I was in the media/journalism/entertainment space. After college, I worked for US News and World Report back when they had a physical magazine. Somehow I found myself in my early-mid 20s helping shift the publication from analog to digital, learning to publish a magazine weekly, and making operational changes on the fly.”
“Until a few years ago, the rest of my career really spanned the whole spectrum of media, journalism, entertainment, and technology. It really evolved into bringing the best digital-first experiences from front to back.”
“Then my career took a sharp turn and I switched industries completely – from media to government consulting. I wanted to learn and diversify my skill set. It was really interesting to find those skills that transferred industries and I had to get really comfortable with saying ‘I don’t know’ or asking questions.”
“Now, I’m in telecom. While I switched this industry 2 years ago, I tell people I’ve been on this career journey for the last 5 years. There were several times my intuition raised some red flags going into these roles, but I didn’t know the world of these new jobs and felt insecure to speak up.”
“The last headshot I had was taken during my time at National Geographic. Now I look at them and I feel like I look a lot different. I used to straighten my hair a lot back then and I no longer felt these images reflected who I was. I saw a friend’s headshots by Alissa and had to jump on the chance when she came to D.C. on the Road Show. What a difference an amazing headshot makes! I had such a great time with Alissa and I love my photos.”
Thanks, Melissa, for sharing your story with us.