Tomeka Hill has spent her career helping organizations make better workforce decisions through data, analytics, and strategy. Her latest pivot isn't simply about choosing to become an entrepreneur. It's about creating the opportunity to lead the work she’s been building toward throughout her career.

What drove her pivot?

Tomeka’s latest pivot began with a layoff.

Although she was getting interviews, she also wasn’t landing a new role which was frustrating. Throughout much of her career, opportunities had come to her. She had rarely needed to interview or market herself.

During a networking conversation, someone offered a different perspective. After hearing about her background and experiences, he suggested that she might thrive more fully outside the constraints she had encountered in corporate environments. Had she considered going out on her own? The question lingered.

At the same time, consulting opportunities were finding her almost unexpectedly. Lightcast brought her in as a contractor and discussed a permanent role, but that possibility disappeared after a leadership change. Other people also approached her about potential projects, even though she wasn’t actively presenting herself as an independent consultant.

Throughout her career, Tomeka often developed the analysis, wrote the research, and generated ideas that shaped important decisions, but others presented the results. Her latest pivot is about stepping into the executive adviser role where she can help leaders decide what to do with those insights herself.

Transition process

Tomeka didn’t rush directly from job search to business launch. She invested several months in understanding what she wanted to build and how she wanted to be seen.

She hired a business adviser and worked with a branding team that challenged her to answer difficult questions:

• What kind of work did she most want to do?

• How did she want clients to experience working with her?

• What did she want them to think after their first meeting?

• Which capabilities should define her business?

Initially, Tomeka listed the many types of work she could perform. Her advisers helped her recognize that presenting everything she could do made her business appear unfocused. She needed to identify the areas where her experience, interests, and potential impact came together most powerfully.

The process became what I call cocooning. She stepped back, examined what she wanted from her work and environment, and clarified the professional identity she wanted to carry forward.

She created a website, case studies, a logo, and a defined consulting proposition. The investment strengthened her confidence because the business no longer felt like an improvised response to unemployment. It felt intentional.

Tomeka also recognized that she didn’t need to master every part of entrepreneurship herself. Business development and sales don’t come naturally to her. In previous consulting roles, client managers and established relationships helped generate opportunities.

Her partnership with VAI Consulting is intended to provide some of that missing infrastructure. She retains her own company and brand while gaining access to business development support and larger potential clients. VAI has also invited her to participate in an AI certification program, strengthening the expertise central to her direction.

Current direction

Today, Tomeka is building a workforce strategy and advisory firm focused on workforce strategy, workforce intelligence, and workforce AI transformation. She helps executives combine workforce intelligence, organizational design, analytics, and AI to make better business decisions.

A partnership with VAI Consulting allows her to retain her own brand while gaining business development support that will help her scale.

Her dream project is helping organizations adopt technology in ways that strengthen rather than diminish the human workforce. Rather than asking only how AI can automate work, she wants leaders to understand how hiring, retention, career development, and organizational design must evolve alongside technology. For Tomeka, transformation must always be human first.

Advice for Others

• Keep evolving. Your next chapter may require new skills and a different way of presenting yourself.

• Understand what makes you happy. Think about the work, flexibility, ownership, and environment that allow you to thrive.

• Decide how you want to be seen. Build your professional brand around where you're going, not just where you've been.

• Focus your value. Be known for a few things exceptionally well.

• Look for support. Coaches, advisers, mentors, and partners can help you see possibilities you might miss alone.

• Don't assume a forced transition is only a setback. It may become the opportunity to build work that fits you more fully.

Rather than waiting for another organization to define her contribution, she is creating the opportunity to define it for herself. Whether through entrepreneurship or another path, that clarity of direction may prove to be the most important outcome of her latest pivot.