Redirecting.work

The Catalysts for Change

Shannon began her career in academia. When tenure-track roles proved scarce and unattractive, she leapt into professional services at Deloitte. There, she thrived serving internal and external clients across global talent management, mobility, and development.  

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A decade later, Shannon joined Google, drawn by the promise of innovation and impact at scale. She led global enterprise onboarding, welcoming up to 1,000 new hires each week and helping them transition from “Noogler” to “Googler.” 

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As the tech industry shifted, she saw investments in people increasingly become costs to contain rather than levers of growth, with budgets cut and work stopped in waves of churn. Though still a very high performer, the mismatch with her values left her disillusioned. “It was no longer fulfilling the need to do creative and meaningful work,” she explained. At 50, with success and stability, but still needing to earn, she made a bold decision to chart a new course. 

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A New Direction

Shannon’s pivot was a long-envisioned redirection. While at Google, she completed Hudson’s Life Forward program, a week-long renewal experience, and later enrolled in Hudson’s year-long Coach Certification program. Coaching appealed not as a fallback but as a natural extension of her career: helping others navigate change and find clarity. Anchored in a new vision, Shannon left Google midway through the Hudson program. 

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Alongside coaching, she began consulting and facilitating while exploring interests. A new niche emerged, with a focus on human skills: helping technical experts and domain specialists develop communication and connection skills to strengthen client relationships and drive greater growth and revenue. 

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Shannon also treated the first year as a laboratory, testing whether she might return to corporate life. She applied for jobs and saw how dramatically hiring had changed: “All conversations I had came through a personal introduction,” she noted. “Referrals through the system don’t even work anymore.” That reinforced her belief that relationships - not resumes - open doors. She ultimately passed on some opportunities and doubled down on her business.

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Navigating the Journey

Shannon describes herself as an “emergent” person, staying open, creating space, and seeing what unfolds. Inspired by Hudson co-founder Pam McClean, Shannon calls this “holding it lightly,” saying yes often and treating each experience as an experiment.  

Financially deliberate, she set a goal to replace her corporate salary within two years and is on track. She also designed her business to allow at least a month abroad every summer, with time in Scandinavia the first summer, northern Europe last summer, and Southeast Asia this summer.

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Shannon is shaping a portfolio career combining coaching, consulting, and facilitation -  modalities that let her work at the intersection of individual growth and organizational transformation while drawing on her academic and business background. She laughingly calls this her “perfect retirement plan” - not retirement at all, but a path she can scale up or down.

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Collaboration is a key theme. She is building community outside traditional organizational boundaries and working with peers like Heidi Spirgi on joint projects. For Shannon, the pivot is about designing a life where creativity, autonomy, adventure, impact, and joy align.  

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Advice for Others 

Shannon reminds others that good intentions and high hopes aren’t enough. Her advice especially for those considering coaching:

• Assess your finances and be prepared to bridge the gap: “It can be two or three years before you make any real money - and even then, many new coaches barely pass the poverty line.” 

• Evaluate your network for breadth, depth, and trust: “Without strong, trusted professional relationships, it’s difficult to build a coaching practice beyond low-paying volume platforms.”

• Say yes, and hold it lightly: “Treat experiences as experiments. Use shorter-term commitments to discover what energizes you, ideally before leaving your corporate gig.” 

 

Shannon’s story is still unfolding. Driven by choice rather than circumstance and pursuing her path with curiosity and openness, she is crafting a pivot that’s less about leaving something behind and more about actively creating the life she wants to live. 

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