In fall 2022, Careers for Social Impact launched its first group program focused on career clarity, the Impact Leaders Career Collaborative (now called Take Ownership of Your Career). 

This small group program brought together mid-career women in the social impact space who were all at similar life stages and asking the same question: what’s next for me?

Participating in this program gave us a valuable framework that helped us think about and talk through that question with like-minded people. 

It also gave us something we didn’t expect: a tight-knit accountability group that’s continued meeting regularly for over three years.

The three of us meet for 30 minutes a month, and this small yet consistent habit has been so powerful.

It’s incredible how deep we go in such a short time. While our calls started as career conversations, over time they've become more focused on how work fits into our lives rather than the other way around. 

We've created something really special together, and we’ve supported each other through so much over the past few years: growing kids, aging parents, grief and loss, and career shifts that needed to fit with our bigger priorities.

We’ve even made the effort to meet in person, though we all live in different cities on opposite sides of the country. 

We grapple with big questions in our conversations: What is meaningful work to us? When does our work need to be more focused on meeting our needs for income and security, rather than being our primary source of fulfillment? How can we disentangle our careers from being our primary source of identity?  

Through this process, we’ve realized that meaningful work isn’t always the thing you get paid for. It can also look like caregiving, or volunteering, or so many other ways of making a contribution in the world. 

We’ve also realized that careers in the social sector are inherently non-linear, and that career clarity is an ongoing practice that takes time, and that we need to keep coming back to. 

Susannah still has her notebook from our first group session in October 2022. Looking back through it, she can see that the organizations she was excited about then are the same ones she's circling back to now, but in a different capacity. 

After the program, she took on a new full-time role and she’s also pursued her professional interests through consulting and pro-bono work, creating a true portfolio career that continues to evolve, while centering the themes and interests she identified years ago. 

As she shares, "Life makes so much more sense looking in the rearview mirror. It’s easier to see the through lines when you’re looking back, but so much harder to see clearly when you're looking ahead." 

If we could share one piece of advice with others who are trying to answer the big career and life questions, it’s to find other people who are in the same place you are.

People who get it, who will support you and lift you up, and who will still be showing up three years later.

That’s what we do for each other, and the foundation was built in the vulnerable conversations we had when we were first getting to know each other in our group program.