Role Pivoters: Continuity of Expertise, New Arenas

Role Pivoters keep the core of what they know and can do, and change how that expertise is expressed or delivered—moving between practitioner and consultant or vendor, solo entrepreneur or industry analyst to employee, or across industries. They are self-aware and confident in their skills, but feel limited by the container they’re in and intentionally choose a new container–a new role.

This synthesis draws on eight stories: Melissa Arronte, Lisa Atkins, Elzet Blaauw, Richard Rosenow, Paul Rubenstein, Lars Schmidt, John Sumser, and Adam Treitler.  

What Sparks a Role Pivot?

Across these eight, catalysts that drive a redirection cluster into four patterns:

1. A drive to be closer to business impact.

   • Paul Rubenstein: “The closer to revenue impact, the better I feel about myself.” His path consistently sought the line from work to outcome.

   • Lars Schmidt wanted to scale his influence beyond a solo practice and help build at global scope.

2. Curiosity and the search for “green space.”

   • Adam Treitler deliberately chose an under-tooled, non-tech retail setting precisely because it offered room to build.

   • Richard Rosenow makes deliberate, roughly five-year cycles toward the next intellectual challenge.

3. Contextual shocks and industry shifts.

   • Elzet Blaauw navigated the tech recession/GenAI disruption in content marketing; coaching expanded her aperture from freelance to senior leadership.

   • John Sumser moved from independent analyst to employee amid pandemic-era volatility, reframing his craft inside a hierarchy.

4. Stagnation in the current container.

   • Lisa Atkins left a "nano manager" and a stifling environment and divorce at 50 clarified priorities.

   • Melissa Arronte hit the ceiling of repetition. "How Many flight-risk models is enough?"

The pivot transition: from credibility to contribution

Role Pivoters translate their value for a new audience and then prove it through contribution:

• Reframing expertise.

  • Melissa Arronte translated people-analytics methods to customer analytics, learned NPS and emotion-coded churn modeling, and demonstrated how employee and customer data connect.

  • Adam Treitler reframed “media/tech analytics” into “retail systems architecture,” centering clarity of problems and cross-functional process design.

  • Richard Rosenow moved from in-house people analytics to product evangelism—still synthesizing complexity, now for a market that benefits from clarity.

• A beginner’s mindset paired with structured learning.

  • Lisa Atkins recertifies annually and learned to ask for help without hesitation as she changed from internal practitioner to consultant;

  • Melissa Arronte took targeted online courses in customer frameworks;

  • Lars Schmidt entered an unfamiliar sector with curiosity, building systems attuned to the business rather than importing a prefabricated playbook.

• Identity and power shifts.

  • John Sumser names the gravitational change of moving from solo authority to a company hierarchy. He rebuilt process and voice (e.g., readability standards, distributed team leadership) to deliver impact within organizational constraints.

  • Lars Schmidt accepted trade-offs (less schedule autonomy, more structure) to gain scale and outcome visibility.

Obstacles for these role shifts

• Credibility gaps when crossing domains. Entrepreneur-to-employee (Lars Schmidt) or industry switchers (Adam Treitler and Melissa Arronte) had to meet different proof standards. The answer wasn’t talking louder—it was delivering early, relevant wins that read as business value.

• Emotional resets and confidence rebuilds. Lisa Atkins moved from hesitancy (a legacy of a toxic boss) to confidently owning expertise; Paul Rubenstein acknowledges the rosy period that clouds early job changes and the inevitability of surprises and setbacks; John Sumser embraced the humbling required to thrive inside a larger system.

• Financial trade-offs and runway. Paul Rubenstein took a pay cut at first; Richard Rosenow is explicit about thrift and retirement-minded planning as enablers of choice; Melissa Arronte learned to negotiate and advocate for herself in a new domain.

What success looks like after the jump

• Closer line of sight from effort to outcome. Paul Rubenstein moved into Customer Service leadership to sit next to revenue; Lars Schmidt scaled hiring by 20% in months while laying system foundations; Adam Treitler built modern HR tech in retail where small wins unlock large operational value.

• Craft as service—making complexity usable. Richard Rosenow simplifies the people analytics market for others; John Sumser codifies accessible content (10th-grade readability) to meet people where they are.

• New energy from new questions. Melissa Arronte: Larger budgets, faster feedback loops, sharper executive questions—more oxygen for analytic craft; Elzet Blaauw: Leadership seat as a live lab for collaborative thought leadership.

  
  

Throughline: these are not escapist moves. They’re toward moves—toward conditions that allow their existing strengths to matter again.

Variations by Gender

Women 

Starting point: constraint and under-recognition.

• Lisa Atkins confronted micro-control and a confidence dent; consulting gave her room to own the architect role and double income.

• Elzet Blaauw faced market contraction and the destabilizing effect of GenAI on her craft; coaching surfaced a more expansive leadership path.

• Melissa Arronte was boxed by the “study treadmill” of people analytics; moving to customer analytics created the scope—and budget—to test bolder ideas.

Strategies that show up repeatedly:

• External scaffolding for confidence and clarity. Coaching (Elzet Blaauw), community/faith (Lisa Atkins), targeted coursework (Melissa Arronte). These aren’t add-ons; they are structural supports for identity shifts.

• Permission to redefine success. From perfectionism to progress (Lisa Atkins), from individual expertise to collaborative thought leadership (Elzet Blaauw), from “employee outcomes” to integrated customer-employee value (Melissa Arronte).

• Boundary-setting as a performance tool. Lisa Atkins learned to reject road-warrior norms and pace delivery; that restraint increased, not decreased, sustainable contribution.

Distinctive challenges:

• Legibility gaps or being seen in new domains were often compounded by prior environments that eroded confidence; rebuilding confidence was part of the work, not pre-work.

• Economic and identity navigation ran in parallel; each woman designed a support system to hold both.

  
  

Net effect: Their pivots are assertions of agency: creating conditions where their expertise could finally breathe—and be rewarded accordingly.

Men 

Starting point: curiosity, velocity, and outcome hunger.

• Richard Rosenow reorients every ~5 years to stay on the edge of the field;

• Paul Rubenstein optimizes for proximity to revenue and real-world consequences;

• John Sumser relocates his craft inside a company to test his ideas under operating constraints;

• Lars Schmidt trades autonomy for scale;

• Adam Treitler chooses unglamorous terrain to maximize building opportunity.

Strategies that show up repeatedly:

• Make it simpler, then ship. Translating complexity into action is the product (Richard Rosenow, John Sumser).

• Treat support as infrastructure, not therapy only. Therapy and personal development (Paul Rubenstein), “board of advisors” (John Sumser), networks and mentors (Lars Schmidt, Adam Treitler) are normalized, not stigmatized.

• Own the trade-offs. Less control over time (John Sumser, Lars Schmidt), initial pay dips (Paul Rubenstein), steep industry learning curves (Adam Treitler)—all accepted in service of greater impact.

Distinctive challenges:

• Assumption resets. The analyst’s microphone doesn’t transfer into corporate consensus (John Sumser); entrepreneurial breadth may be misread inside corporate filters (Lars Schmidt).

• Identity tension between designer/builder and operator/manager is common; success hinges on choosing where to stand in this moment and aligning behavior to that choice.

Net effect: Their pivots are experiments in leverage: where does my craft pull the most weight right now?

Variations by Age Cohort

30s – Exploratory leverage

• Pattern: diversify context while sharpening signature strengths.

  • Richard Rosenow evolves from practitioner to product evangelist—same analytic DNA, broader market leverage.

  • Elzet Blaauw moves from the fragility of a disrupted niche into the sturdier scaffolding of senior leadership, turning individual expertise into collaborative influence.

  • Adam Treitler deliberately picks a low-infrastructure environment (retail) to design systems learning end-to-end, not just polish analytics inside an already-optimized tech stack.

• What unlocks movement: coaching (Elzet Blaauw), networks built through service and curiosity (Adam Treitler), public writing and community curation (Richard Rosenow).

• Risks: over-generalization, credibility tests, and the temptation to chase novelty instead of purpose. The winners channel curiosity into business-relevant problems.

40s – Integration and scale 

• Pattern: return in-house to convert hard-won solo strengths into enterprise outcomes.

  • Lars Schmidt joins a global company, builds a function from near-zero, adds disciplined commercial focus to his storytelling/network superpowers.

• Trade-offs: less calendar control; more hierarchy.

• Edge: humility + curiosity + “avoid shiny objects”—a practical antidote to the experienced operator’s overconfidence.

50s+ – Transformational redesign 

• Pattern: reclaim agency and refresh meaning.

  • Paul Rubenstein orients roles by revenue adjacency and personal meaning;

  • Lisa Atkins (60 cohort) turns a toxic past into a platform for confident consulting;

  • Melissa Arronte crosses into customer analytics to expand scope, budget, and impact.

• Tools: therapy and assessments (Paul Rubenstein), community/faith (Lisa Atkins), formal learning and executive access (Melissa Arronte).

• Edge: the confidence to ask for what they want—and the patience to unlearn what no longer serves.

60s – Stability with learning curve 

• Pattern: reposition craft inside structure to keep learning while taming volatility.

  • John Sumser re-anchors as an employee, codifies clear writing standards, leads globally distributed teams, and channels the analyst’s distillation gift into a company narrative.

• Trade-off: loss of unilateral autonomy offset by the satisfaction of scaled, durable impact.

The Role Pivoter Playbook (Advice from across stories)

1) Make your value legible in the new room. Translate, then demonstrate.

• Lead with business outcomes and first proofs: early hires and systems (Lars Schmidt), operational fixes with visible ROI (Adam Treitler), executive-relevant insights (Melissa Arronte).

• Simplify complexity so others can act (Richard Rosenow, John Sumser).

2) Borrow confidence until your new identity holds. Use scaffolds.

• Coaching and values-aligned reflection (Elzet Blaauw).

• Community and faith to rebuild assurance (Lisa Atkins).

• Therapy/assessments for self-knowledge and behavior design (Paul Rubenstein).

• A “board of advisors” for reality checks (John Sumser).

3) Learn on purpose. Invest in the language of the new domain.

• Recertify (Lisa Atkins);

• Take domain-specific courses (Melissa Arronte);

• Study operating reality, not just abstract frameworks (Lars Schmidt, Adam Treitler).

• Build readability standards for influence at scale (John Sumser).

4) Set boundaries that increase performance. Energy management is strategy.

• Reject unsustainable norms (don’t embrace the road-warrior default—Lisa Atkins).

• Avoid “shiny objects”—tie efforts to commercial outcomes (Lars Schmidt).

• Design your calendar to protect deep work and delivery (all).

5) Fund your freedom. Financial readiness expands choice.

• Accept temporary pay dips for strategic positioning (Paul Rubenstein).

• Use thrift and forward planning to create a runway (Richard Rosenow).

• Negotiate—ask for what you want (Melissa Arronte).

6) Expect friction—and plan for it.

• The microphone doesn’t transfer: influence must be re-earned in new systems (John Sumser).

• Entrepreneurial breadth may be misread; curate the story and pick the right leaders to value it (Lars Schmidt).

• Toxic pasts leave residue; confidence rebuilding is part of the pivot (Lisa Atkins).

7) Keep purpose in the driver’s seat.

• Choose the context that lets your strengths breathe (Adam Treitler).

• Anchor on why impact matters to you—revenue adjacency, community value, clarity for others (respectively Paul Rubenstein, Elzet Blaauw, Richard Rosenow, John Sumser).

Threading the Eight Together

Melissa Arronte bridges two data worlds and, in doing so, expands scope, budget, and executive access. She shows how method transfer works: you learn the new language (NPS, churn drivers), keep the analytic rigor, and point it at questions with faster, clearer feedback loops.

Lisa Atkins demonstrates how a confidence dent from a toxic environment can be rewired into professional sovereignty. Her pivot to consulting required learning to ask, recertify, and set time boundaries—and it paid off in both income and agency. The lesson isn’t just “leave toxicity”; it’s re-author your craft.

Elzet Blaauw reframes thought leadership as a community practice rather than a lone-expert broadcast. Coaching unlocked a leadership path that lets her test her ideas in real operations. She models a 30s-age cohort pivot that prioritizes learning ecosystems over job labels.

Richard Rosenow shows the clearest arc of “same expertise, new expression.” From practitioner to market evangelist, he is a translator—the person who helps others feel comfortable with complexity. His cycles are not restlessness; they’re developmental—each loop broadens his aperture and the audience his craft serves.

Paul Rubenstein turns gut-level intuition into a practical north star: get closer to outcomes that matter. The shift from consulting to CHRO to Head of Customer Service reads like a long-form experiment in leverage: where does he move the needle most—and feel it?

Lars Schmidt chooses a larger canvas. He converts a decade of community-building into the discipline of enterprise value creation, resisting shiny objects and orienting to measurable outcomes. “Curious + humble” becomes an operating system for impact at scale.

John Sumser makes the invisible visible: how the laws of organizational gravity differ from the physics of independence. He keeps the heart of his craft—making difficult things readable and useful—while building new muscle in distributed leadership, standards, and process.

Adam Treitler is a case study in purposeful context selection. He seeks the green space where under-investment lets his systems lens shine. The pivot is less “away from tech” than “toward a place where building is the work.”

Across these arcs, the Role Pivoter refuses to accept the false choice between loyalty to a field and freedom to grow. They pick both: keep the field, change the role.

The New Container

Role Pivoters are not escaping jobs; they’re engineering better fit. They hold tight to their strengths—analysis and clarity (Richard Rosenow, John Sumser), outcome hunger (Paul Rubenstein), architecting and boundary-setting (Lisa Atkins), collaborative leadership (Elzet Blaauw), scalable build-outs (Lars Schmidt), systems thinking in new terrain (Adam Treitler), and cross-domain translation (Melissa Arronte). Then they redesign the context so those strengths can breathe, compound, and serve.

If there’s a single sentence that captures them, it’s this:

Continuity of expertise, new arenas of expression.

They felt limited in one container, so they built or chose another—one that lets their craft do the work it was meant to do.