Hey Reader,

Welcome to issue #016 of The Next Chapter, a career planning newsletter for LGBTQ+ professionals.

This week, I'm covering:

• The latest with my coaching practice
• How to grow without climbing the ladder
• What to do when AI use feels inevitable
• How to wrangle a million different interests
• An impact-focused resume template
• Kind words from a client

Let's dive in.

ICYMI, I've been building with intention

In the last newsletter issue, I shared that I’ve made my coaching practice my primary focus.

It was a pretty powerful—and meta—decision to make my career about careers. But it spurred me to overhaul my coaching practice to improve the experience for both my clients and myself.

If you want to know the full story (and what’s changed), you can read about it here.

Growing without climbing the ladder

Several of my clients this year came to me feeling burnt out, stuck, or disengaged. These are people who have been with the same employer for multiple years (sometimes over a decade) and are hungry for evolution.

In my initial conversations, I often heard a false binary emerge in their thinking. It sounded something like:

“I feel like there's nothing I can change with my current job. I'm going to be unhappy unless I get promoted or find a new one."

This is where I like to help people think more expansively about what might come next, especially when leaving doesn't make sense.

It’s easy to envision career growth as more senior titles, more responsibility, more people to manage. But growth doesn’t need to be about more, more, more.

I always like to get to the heart of why a job no longer feels right. There may be other approaches or solutions to the problem at hand.

Here are a few ways that my clients have chosen different strategies to grow and evolve:

• Picking up new skills through side projects, volunteering, and self-paced learning
• Making the business case for a new role (I’ve done this a couple of times in my own career)
• Restructuring the weekly work schedule to create more spaciousness for wellness, family, and community

If you're feeling stuck, ask yourself: am I chasing the next rung on the ladder because I actually want it, or because it's the only kind of growth I know how to recognize?

When AI use feels inevitable

It’s official: AI has come up in conversation with nearly every client this year. 😬🤖

I actually get asked a lot for my opinion on the topic, so I thought I’d share my current thinking about it:

I’m not here to tell you “AI good” or “AI bad.” As with most things in life, there’s nuance. I feel ambivalent about it myself.

What I do think matters is being intentional about your relationship to it, especially as it reshapes so many industries and roles. I know my tech industry clients have quickly been thrust into adopting AI because of where the industry is headed.

A few questions worth sitting with:

What relationship do you want to have with AI? Are you using it as a thought partner, a first-draft generator, a research assistant? Where do you want to draw the line between AI-assisted and fully human work?

What’s the potential trajectory of your career path through the lens of AI? Some roles are being reshaped quickly, whereas others are more insulated. Understanding where your field sits can help you make informed decisions about skill development.

What are you willing (or not willing) to do? Maybe you’re comfortable using AI for brainstorming but not for client-facing writing. Maybe you want to build skills that AI can’t easily replicate. Maybe you want absolutely nothing to do with it.

You don’t need to have this all figured out right now. But try taking a step back from the tools themselves and look at the bigger picture.

Wrangling a million different interests

I work with professionals who feel pulled in different directions by their skills and interests. When career exploration is equally invigorating and overwhelming, how do you reconcile everything?

I actually don’t believe you need to box yourself into a specific focus or identity if it feels wrong or limiting for you.

Instead, look for ways to be more strategic about how you search for opportunities and how you tell your story. The more disparate your skills and interests, the more thoughtful you need to be about crafting a narrative that weaves them together.

A couple of tips that have worked well for my clients:

For storytelling, identify and name the threads that connect everything. Maybe it’s a specific type of problem-solving, a recurring theme, or a value that shows up across every role you’ve held. Use these threads to frame your goals and motivations in networking conversations, your elevator pitch, and your answer to the dreaded “tell me about yourself” question.

For the job hunt, create 2-3 resume versions aligned with core job families. Instead of trying to capture everything in one resume, build a few tailored versions that speak directly to the specific roles you’re pursuing.

👀 Speaking of resumes…

An impact-focused resume template

Your resume should make it easy for the reader to see how your accomplishments have positioned you as the best person to solve their problems.

That means leading with impact and keeping your design simple.

If you dread the thought of designing and formatting your resume, I developed a resume template with a writing guide to help you make the most of it.

The template is designed using a mock candidate profile to show you how to make your experience shine.

The writing guide includes topics like:

• Common myths about applicant tracking systems (ATS)
• Making your experience compelling and impact-focused
• Tailoring strategies to avoid starting from scratch every time
• Practical AI prompts for when you’re stuck on wording

$10.00 Resume Template and Writing Guide Save yourself time (and stress) with this ready-to-use resume template and comprehensive writing guide. You'll get a... Read more Get your copy

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Kind words from a client

I recently caught up with a former client of mine, Avril, who needed help during a transitional season to figure out where she wanted to focus her energy (and why). Here’s what she shared about our work together:

(thanks, Avril!) 💞

If you're feeling stuck, burnt out, or just ready for a change, let's talk about what working together could look like.

Tell me what’s on your mind

I want this newsletter to be community-driven. It’s meant for you, so it should be valuable to you.

If there's a topic you want me to cover, don’t be shy about hitting the ‘Reply’ button. It might just end up in the next issue.

Talk to you soon.