Follow Your Interests to Your Next Career with Farah Kauffman (Ep 30)
What do you do when you’re years into a career path, having invested in an advanced degree in your field, and you’re no longer happy? Making a career leap feels risky in the best of circumstances. And it can be easy to feel stuck or overwhelmed or unsure where to start when you realize that you want out of something you’ve been doing for a long time.
Today’s guest, Farah Kauffman, loves the public health field that she worked in for 15 years, but the job and where it led no longer felt aligned with her. As she approached midlife, she was also thinking about what she wanted to be doing during the later phases of her career. The COVID-19 pandemic was a real eye opener as well for her, and a lot of people, to take the leap out of an unfulfilling career and into something that feels like the right fit.
Farah shares how she transitioned careers while staying in public health, the importance of really asking yourself what it is you’re good at and what interests you, and how being in a supportive environment has made work feel fun again for her.
In this episode, you’ll learn...
About Farah’s previous career path and her realization that she wanted something different for her life [01:34]
The perspective that the pandemic gave her to take a chance [09:03]
Why Farah took the time to really think about what she wanted to do for a career and the importance of looking back at previous roles to hone in on what she enjoys [12:56]
The action steps she took once she learned the new career path she wanted [21:21]
How Farah went about searching for jobs and applying, even before she felt truly ready [27:36]
Why she decided to be fully herself in her job applications [32:14]
How her support network helped her through this transition [37:27]
What Farah’s experience has been like pivoting into a new role [44:15]
The joy and support she has found in supportive coworkers and staying within her area of expertise in a new role [47:51]
Her advice for someone considering a leap of their own [53:28]
If you’re considering your own courageous career leap, be sure to tune into this episode.
Standing at your own crossroads and ready to get clear on your direction? Apply for my Catalyst Coaching Program today!
If you are at that sort of stage where you are trying to figure out what do you want out of your next role, and you want to do some self reflection, I have something that is going to help you do that. Check out my self-paced digital course, Illuminate Your Career Path in 5 Steps. Five different modules will take you through step by step how to do some of this initial planning and thinking about what you want next for your career path.
I want you to know about my new free change planner. This planner is for you if you'd like to make a significant change in life or work, but you're feeling kind of stuck. My change planner will help you get the clarity you need to take your next steps. Inside, I'll show you how to understand what you really want and why it's important, how to face your fears constructively so they don't hold you back, and this planner also has a scenario cruncher. I hope you get all possible scenarios out of your head so you can find the right one for you!
Connect with Lisa
Connect with Farah
Farah’s Bio
Farah is a full-time copyeditor at a marketing agency that focuses only on public health issues and creates campaigns that help drive health behavior change. She joined the agency in late-2021, after a major COVID-19 pandemic career change. After 15+ years working in public health program management, planning, and partnerships on topics like suicide prevention, mental health promotion, obesity prevention, and more, Farah decided it was time to try something different and learn a new trade.
In her new role, Farah leads copyediting services, working closely with an amazing crew of content developers and creatives who care about public health as much as she does. Farah earned a master of public health degree from Boston University and a bachelor of arts degree in history from Penn State University.
Links mentioned in this episode…
Connect with Farah on LinkedIn
Download my FREE Change Planner: https://www.lisahoashi.com/change-planner
Transcript of Episode 30: Follow Your Interest to Your Next Career with Farah Kauffman
Lisa:
Welcome to Leap Like Me. If you can't shake the feeling that you're not on the right path, if you feel called to change things up but don't know how to begin, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Lisa Hoashi, and my specialty is coaching people at those crossroads moments in life when you feel called to take a new direction. Sometimes that means taking a leap. I want to share practical advice and inspiration for your leaps and how to keep going after your dreams in a challenging world. This season, we're talking all about career leaps. Come along for the conversation.
Hello, everyone, this is Lisa Hoashi and welcome to Leap Like Me. Our guest today made what she calls a major COVID-19 pandemic career change. She left a 15 year career in public health program management, planning, and partnerships to become a full time copy editor at a marketing agency. Today, we'll talk about how she made this change and what was behind it for her. A warm welcome to Farah Kauffman. Hi, Farah.
Farah:
Hi. Thank you so much for that welcome.
Lisa:
Yes. So great to have you on. So maybe we can just kind of get started by just hearing a little bit about you in your own words, where you’re located and just about you and and also about the career that you were in.
Farah:
Sure. So there's so many ways to tackle, you know, talking about yourself. And what I'll start with is that I grew up in Maryland, and that's important context for for me and how I was raised and how I grew up and influences in my life. I'm currently a transplant in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and living with my family. And I have a 12 year old and just kind of scooting along. I have a background in public health and invested in grad school, earned a master of public health years ago. And since that time had been working in, like you said, public health program management, strategic planning, partnership development, and more. And you know, I'm at midlife and the pandemic happened and so many other things happened. And I just had many aha moments, many clues along the way. But during the pandemic, I realized it was time to make a big change and try something different.
Lisa:
Yeah, you're definitely not alone. I think a lot of people… pandemic was that kind of moment. I'm curious, maybe you could share with us like what were some maybe… it sounds like maybe even before the pandemic, you had had some initial clues and inklings. Can you tell us about what was kind of coming up for you about that career path that you were on at that moment?
Farah:
Yeah, you know, it's interesting as you you invest in college and even grad school. And, you know, I was I was in my twenties, mid-to-late twenties, when when I went to grad school and found public health as a profession, as a field, I felt like I found my people and and I still feel that way. But the kind of role I got into, the kind of pathway was managing all of the operations and all of the politics and all of the logistics and all the day to day. And I and I found early on, I felt like this was really interesting. I'm learning a lot. But at some point I realized, Oh, okay, this is what this pathway is about. And if I continue on this pathway, this is the kind of role I will eventually get to.
And I really questioned whether or not I liked that idea, whether I, I had the skills for that and whether I felt like I could I could really be myself in that kind of path. And really, I was talking about like being a director of a public health department or nonprofit. And I just I started to feel like I didn't fit with that pathway, you know, early on, right after you invest in college or any kind of educational programing and get new skills and it's exciting and it's new and you feel like there's a lot of hope and potential for the future.
But for some people like me, you know, you get to a point where it's not just learning a new skill that you can use on the job, it's also learning about yourself and learning what you like and what you don't like in a career. And I just couldn't see myself doing that kind of work for the rest of my life and like climbing a ladder—that did not feel appealing to me at all. And I started to really, you know, even before the pandemic, I started to think really hard. And that was not the most pleasant time because I felt very conflicted. I started to think really hard about what did I like doing? What brought me a sense of peace, what made me feel good about myself, what made me feel like I was giving back?
Because even though I no longer work in the field of public health in it, like in a traditional sense, I still believe in the principles of public health. And I care about the people who feel like they also believe in it. And so I needed to think about like, what can my role in public health be that fits me and that I, I can live with for the rest of my life. And maybe it's for the next ten years. You know, I'm. I’m at midlife, so I still have a ways to go before I stop working. But I had to completely break down the idea that you you.. at least how I was raised. You finish high school, you go to college, get a job that then you do for the rest of your life. And you don't make any big changes. You may have, you know, get married, have kids, buy a house, all that. But as far as like disrupting that pathway, you know, I was kind of taught maybe indirectly through just modeling, you don't you don't disrupt that. That's the life goal.
And when you realize you don't really fit with that or that goal, that life path doesn’t fit with you, it can be upsetting at first and very uncomfortable and but then I settled into that. This is before the pandemic. I settled into that thinking and over time just grew to accept it and then really want a change. So by the time the pandemic happened, when we had all these horrible reminders that life is so short, I took that as a as a message that it was time to make a difference, to make a difference, to make a difference for myself, to make a big change and do something different. Do the thing the only thing that I have control over which at the time was, you know, changing careers.
Lisa:
Well, and so it sounds like it went in a bit of stages for you. It was like, first, that kind of like recognition of, like, okay, I can see where this career path is going. I'm not feeling very aligned with like like I can be myself or that I'm really doing the things I want to be doing in a role if I continue on this career path. And then it sounds like it was a bit of the acknowledged like some discomfort coming up and like, okay, I'm going to have to disrupt, which is not something I've seen other people do. I get that feeling of like, you know, I haven't seen other people do it or maybe it's not an okay thing to do. And then kind of those of coming to terms with like, well, this is what I'm going to have to do.
Farah:
I feel like you summarized it so well and the that it was really a kind of a long time coming. It wasn't an overnight discovery or a sudden aha moment. It was clues over the years, just building and building and lots of time to think about it. In public health, there's a theory that's really important that helps shape how you design programs to help people. And one of the theories is called Stages of Change. And so I felt like for a long time I was at the beginning of that where I was I was not yet ready to think about it. And then I moved into the huh, I'm going to think about this. And then I moved into the next stage where you where you're thinking about it a little more and you're actually maybe starting to do something about it. And then at some point you move to a place where you're ready to adopt whatever change you're going to make and do the do the new thing. And that doesn't I mean, maybe for some people that happens very quickly. And for me, it took years.
Lisa:
So at what stage did you feel like you were at when the pandemic hit?
Farah:
I think at that stage I was really just looking for permission or validation. Some sign for the lack of a better word that making a change was the right thing to do. And I had there was no greater sign than the pandemic and all of the horrible things that were happening, upending people's lives in just these awful ways. And when tragedy happens, whether it's the loss of a loved one or the loss of a job or a breakup, whatever it might be, when loss happens, it really can reset your perspective or change your perspective. And my perspective had already been changing, but really it was just the the pandemic was like a big nudge to push me over to the to taking action and trying something different.
Lisa:
Yeah. And it's interesting where you mentioned earlier about like during the pandemic, in some ways, work kind of felt like the only thing we had power over was I think that's that's really true. I mean, so much of our lives had been reduced at that point, like in that sort of like confinement or lockdown kind of stage. Right. As we're trying to maintain our jobs, we're taking care of our families and it's just like family and it just felt like family and work. Right. Because all of our social, you know, things had kind of fallen out.
And so, yeah, I think that's an interesting thing to notice is just like, that's probably a big reason why people there's been, like, the great resignation or the, you know, so many job changes is people are like sitting there with like their work lives essentially you know, just more crystallized way.
Farah:
Exactly. Yeah. And and I'm not the only one in my in my small little world who… I know there are lots of people out there I don't know who who've made some big career changes, but people in my personal space also are on the edge of making a big change. Or they made a big change during the pandemic. And I know it's yeah, it's people I know and don't know. It's happening everywhere where there's just like, okay, this is the thing I have control over and I don't have to. I'm not happy. I don't feel good about this career path or job or whatever it might be.
This is the thing I can do. I'm going to do it no matter what happens. I might, it might not turn out well. But it's everything in life is a gamble. Everything. Every decision you make is a risk, it may not turn out. And if you have the luxury of taking a risk like that and knowing you have a safety net, if it doesn't work out like I did, I just want to acknowledge that I definitely had a safety net. Then yeah, you have to go for it.
Lisa:
As you were making your changes, what kind of safety net did you have?
Farah:
You know, I'm married and my husband has a good job, a stable, decent wage, living wage. My son is old enough where he if if I needed to take a job outside the home. I worked from home for a very long time. But if I needed to take a job where I had to go to an office, which I know no one was doing in the pandemic, but now that's starting to pick back up, that I could leave him home alone for an hour or two and he would be fine. I don't have small children. There's another salary. I can't not work for our family. I have to. I have to make an income. But we had enough of a cushion where if I had to take a big pay cut, I could do that. If I needed to take a break, a little break between the end of one job and the start of another one. I could do that for a very short period of time. So I think that's what helped. If I didn't have those things, I don't know if I would have felt good about changing careers at this time. I might have felt like I wanted to change, but I couldn't.
Lisa:
Right. Like this allowed you to be able to do it?
Farah:
Yeah yeah.
Lisa:
Yeah. I have two very small children. I'm a three year old and a five year old. So I hear you about the young children. Yeah, it makes a difference, like depending on where you are and parenthood, motherhood. Yeah. All right. So it sounds like you had all these signs that it was time to change. You had a safety net, so you had some, like, maneuvering room. So what steps or how did you kind of start your approach to like to making this happen for yourself? What did you start doing next?
Farah:
Well, you know, I really had to explore what interested me enough to make a big change. You know, I didn't want to just move to another job to get out of the one I was in. I wanted to move to something that was exciting to me, just like public health was at the beginning of my career. And I'm going to be 45 this year. So I haven't. I've been working in public health for a long time and haven't had to think about, well, what else would I be doing? What could I, what could I do instead of this?
And so I had to take time to explore and what that looked like was looking at job descriptions to see, what do I like about this? What don't I like? What, you know, is this the kind of job I could see myself doing? Are there at least pieces of it? I think, Oh, I like that. Now, if it was pieces, then I could take that and see is there a job that is just this, you know, these three things. I looked back across the career I've had at the jobs I've had and thought about, of the day to day stuff I was responsible for, what did I enjoy most? What brought me peace? What brought me joy? What wasn't boring? Where was I learning? And I realized there were a couple of themes.
One was, I really love helping people. And that's such a broad bucket that helping people can look like so many different things and I had to accept that helping people isn’t just being an operations manager and making sure a nonprofit or a program in a nonprofit is functioning so that people who are receiving the program get what they need. It's helping my colleagues and helping the company maybe help change culture in the company so that people feel more invested and more like there's community there. So I had to redefine what helping meant and what I felt like it meant to me anyway.
And I also realized my roles have been largely leadership focused or kind of externally facing in many ways where I had to work with organization executives and leadership and external partners. And that's very different than having more of a behind the scenes kind of role, where you're still helping to keep things up and running. But you're getting to do it in a very behind the scenes, quiet way. I'm a huge introvert, and I'm kind of off the charts there with with being an introvert. And I realized there wasn't… Introverts can have leadership roles and they make fantastic leaders. For me, I felt like the older I got, the more behind the scenes I wanted to get. So that was another theme that stood out to me.
So helping and being more behind the scenes, I also really enjoyed writing and helping others write and kind of coaching them through the writing process by editing. And I realized, oh, okay, the thing that kind of ties all those things together where I'm super behind the scenes, I have this quiet, meditative role, and I'm helping other people is copy editing. And I never thought about copy editing. I did a ton of copy editing and proofreading in all of my jobs, putting out reports and proposals and fact sheets and every kind of resource that you can think of.
And so I definitely had done a ton of that and I liked the writing, but I liked the editing more because it was more collaborative. It was more about helping your team tell the strongest story it can. Helping your team, whether the story is a newsletter or a proposal or a press release, whatever it could be, helping the team tell the story it wants to tell in a way that meets it meets the goals. And I just I loved that idea. And so then once I knew that, I started looking out there for copy editing roles to see, well, what does that actually look like in the day to day? The first part of that process took a really long time. That was a long step because I'm not the most decisive person in deciding to completely change, to me it took a lot of thought and time and planning.
Lisa:
Well it sounds like you really looked over your I mean, you know, when you mentioned looking over your career and trying to figure out what are the I like what you describe that it was, you know, what brought you peace, what brought you joy. Where were you learning? Where were you… I don’t know if you said interested or excited. I'm curious, like, what did you have… Were you following like any books or where did you get those ideas to kind of go back over your career looking for those signs or clues?
Farah:
I have a habit of looking for patterns and themes and things. I'm a very abstract thinker and I'm always looking to see how things connect and looking for themes that emerge from like over time or whether at work, I have to take in a bunch of different information and then create a proposal out of it or create a report out of it. And so it's the habit of pulling lots of different pieces of information, distilling it and making meaning from it. And and that's kind of a habit. So I think I was always wired to take that approach, but also where I am in my life, I think being at midlife, I've become way more introspective than I was before I was… When I was in my thirties I was focused on my child and being a new mom and buying a house and kind of those milestones.
And now I'm at this place in my life where I have aging parents. My son is 12. I'm in this weird middle and whether it's a midlife crisis or some people say midlife opportunity, I'm just thinking a lot about, I'm looking back and looking forward a lot and thinking about what everything means and why and so I think the combination of how I'm wired to look for themes and just being reflective at this point in my life made all of that process possible and made it look the way it did.
Lisa:
Because these are things that I've learned through the coaching process is, you know, being able to do that with clients to kind of pull out those themes and take yeah, take those and that like self-knowledge or what you're learning about yourself and then being able to apply it in how you design your next thing. So it sounds like you're really doing that. So you said like that process took a long time for like you to like kind of pull all those things together and then be like, I think it might be copywriting or copy editing. So what steps did you take at that point when you were kind of starting to settle in on like you kind of had your target at that point?
Farah:
Yeah. So, you know, I went through a phase where I had to look at what I knew and didn't know and be very honest that I have done a lot of copyediting, but I really don't know how to do that as a job. I've never done that as as a job. And so in the in the process of looking out there at job descriptions for proofreaders and copy editors, I took stock of what I need to, you know, what knowledge gaps I need to fill. I signed up for a copy editing certificate program, and so I've been enrolled in that for the last, I guess, a year now. I still have one more year to go, but that I felt like, okay, I invested in public health, in training, and now I need to invest in this if I really want to do it.
And it's I've taken two courses so far and it's just been so much fun. I think I missed learning something new and it just felt really energizing, even doing homework and tests and things like that. You know, it's I really liked it. Maybe that's the difference between like doing school or doing, you know, post high school work when you're 18 versus, like, 44. I really I really found joy in those classes and the idea that I could I could have a whole other career. I mean, I'm only 44 if I work till I'm 70, 75, I mean I could work longer in copyediting than in public health. And that was very exciting to me and not daunting at that point. Once I was able to make it real by signing up for a certificate program, it was no longer this abstract thinking about my future. It was real and I was taking practical steps.
The other thing I did is I just started applying to jobs, knowing that I would not get hired yet. But when you've been in the same kind of job for a really long time, it's hard to… looking for new jobs and applying is just really hard. It's hard to get over the hump, you know? It's easier to stay where you are than it is to update your resume, write a new cover letter, all that stuff. I hate it, but so I knew I didn't like it. So that's why I thought. Well. You have a job. You don't need to leave your current job. You have the luxury of time. Just start applying now, assuming you will not get hired, you will not be invited for interviews. Nothing will come from it. But at least you've started building the momentum so that when the time comes, when you really do need to change jobs or really want to change jobs, you've already done that hard early work. The work that nobody likes to do when it comes to like.
Lisa:
What part of that would you say like really brings up the like “ugh” feeling. Yeah. What, what part of it. I mean, there are many parts to choose from, I'm sure. I'm just curious for you because I know it, it blocks a lot of people. Yeah.
Farah:
It's the idea that you have this piece of paper and now I know it's all digital, but you essentially have this piece of paper where in two pages, more depending on what kind of job you're applying for, you have to convince someone that you are the person that they have been looking for and you will change their lives. And that is just not realistic. But it just the idea of that to me is that's just not how I operate in my day to day life. That's not how I interact with others. And so you have this one thing where you have to you have to sell yourself on a piece of paper with no other context. And I get you have a cover letter, but still it's all that package of things.
Somebody can then look at that and decide you're not good enough or you're not a good fit or you don't know enough or whatever it might be. And that's the idea of rejection. You know, it doesn't matter how old you are, you could be 75 being rejected by someone else, and especially someone who doesn't know anything about you, doesn't doesn't have enough context to know what you have to offer, really. That's painful. Yeah. Even the idea of it's painful, so why not just avoid it? Or if you have to do it, it's just unpleasant because you're just sitting in all of that while you're doing it.
Lisa:
Well, I love your strategy of saying like, I've got nothing to lose. Like when it's low stakes. Maybe at the moment that it's low stakes is a good time to kind of like swallow the medicine, right? And to just, like, kind of force myself to start getting fluent in doing this.
Farah:
I think that's right. And and I mean, I think about my friends and loved ones who have been in maybe the same job or the same kind of career for a really long time. They haven't had to apply for a job in a while. And I'm also part of a generation where, you know, if you went to college, you went to grad school, you probably weren't changing jobs every year. Where I know it, I know it's different today with with younger generations where it's more like, okay, I'll do this for a year, I do this for a year.
Lisa:
Or a couple years.
Farah:
Whatever it may be, yeah. Which I love, I kind of love that idea. I love the idea that you can try all these different things and you're not stuck. But yeah, when you get out of practice then this thing of applying for a new job becomes really this... It becomes bigger than it really is. So when it's lower stakes, when you know you have the luxury of being employed and and you have the safety net and you don't have to you're not applying for a job because you know you're going to leave the other one tomorrow, then I think it's easier.
Lisa:
So what kind of I don't know if you would call it a routine, but what kind of like what was your applying routine kind of looking like as you started getting into it?
Farah:
Every day, I would take some time, not at the same time every day, it was whenever I, whenever I felt in the moment I looked at different, different sources for copyediting and proofreading jobs, different combinations of words. And part of me felt like I don't want to entirely leave public health. So are there copy editing jobs or proofreading jobs in health care? In, you know, public health research or non-profits or even for-profits that are that are touching health care and public health in some way. So at least I'm connected to the content. It's a mission I believe in overall versus doing something like copyediting for a company that sells watches. Which to me, I think that there are people who who want to do that and that's that's their passion. But it wasn't mine.
I really want to just stay connected to the mission of public health overall, which is very broad. And I felt like there's potential for me to find something that's going to fit. So then, I mean, I just scoured job listings and job descriptions and applied maybe for a handful of roles. My, my plan was, I’m going to apply for a handful of roles, take a break. Apply for a handful of roles, take a break. And I definitely got rejected for sure, because that's normal when you're applying. But I got really lucky. The stars aligned. A role opened up with this marketing agency that only focuses on public health topics.
And they loved that I had a public health background and they cared less that I had never worked as a professional copy editor. I think they realized, all right, she's done enough copyediting. We have a need that has just opened up. And it would be great to have somebody come in who kind of gets the, not just the topics, but the overall tone and and mission and values that that are kind of all wrapped around public health. And it just I'm still shocked that it worked out. I'm still shocked that that I have this job now. I feel really lucky. I feel like I mean, I am lucky. I it's all kind of random. But I had a goal. And I got what I wanted. And maybe they feel like they got what they wanted to. I know nobody's perfect, but it just, it just worked out, and it wasn't easy, but it, it happened a lot faster than I ever expected.
Lisa:
How long had you been, you know, practicing sending out your resumes and looking for jobs and all of that when this happened?
Farah:
Yeah, like six months, so not really that long. You know, it was more of an exercise of practicing, applying for jobs, really, and and putting myself out there in this new profession and figuring out, okay, it didn't work here. It didn't work with this job. So what do I need to, like, tweak? And change so when the next time I put myself out there, maybe it goes a little differently. And, I mean, I think looking for a job six months is not that long. You know.
Lisa:
Could you estimate, like, how many times you had sent out a resume and cover letter at that point.
Farah:
It wasn't that much. It was like maybe 5 to 10. So I know some people go through 50, 60 or more and I think if I had really needed to find a new job at that point, I would have gone that route. I would have just pushed my resume and cover letter out there and applied to any job that I felt like had a close connection to my interests. And but because I wasn't in that position, I really, I had the luxury to be more mindful and conservative about what I would reply to versus what was like meh maybe, but maybe not, maybe not today. But I'll save that so I can look at the description later in case like I want to think again about it.
Lisa:
Yeah. Well, I'm guessing that like you said earlier, one of your skills is storytelling. And so I think that's an important part of all of this, is actually being able to tell like a compelling story about yourself, your career, your interest and where you want to go. Right, that you can capture amid so many, you know, applications that you can capture someone's attention. Right.
Farah:
Yeah. And, you know, I… A hard thing about applying for jobs is you can't really… You have to hide a part of yourself. You know, it's maybe I think when I was in my early twenties or mid twenties and applying for jobs the first time, I packaged myself a certain way. Very crisp, very proper, very like, you know, clean cut. And the way I did it this time, I, I thought, well, if I'm taking a risk anyway, I am just going to be myself in my application. And when there are extra questions, along with the standard application questions that I have to fill out, I'm going to just elaborate and give them a little bit more of myself than I would have ten years ago. And I and I think in in the interviews too, I tried to really be myself. And I think again, because I didn't have to find a new job, I took the… I could take the risk of just really putting myself out there and being authentic and being honest. And, you know, if they didn't like it, okay, it's not a good fit and I'll try something else, but I'm still going to be myself. I'm I'm too old at this point to not…
Lisa:
To not be myself.
Farah:
Yeah. I think I'm.. Being at midlife, it's confusing, it's scary, it's painful, it's wonderful, all the things. But it's, I feel like I have more confidence in myself off of my choices than I had five years ago even. I was kind of on that beginning. And now I'm somewhere I'm still in it, but I'm in a good place where I really don't mind who I am and I want… And if people, you know, a job is like a relationship, if it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. And you go your separate ways. And I just really wanted to try being myself completely in a job for the first time and just see what would that be like. And, and it worked out. I am really lucky it worked out.
Lisa:
Yeah. Well it sounds like through this process that things were starting to become really clear about what kind of, who you wanted to work for, what kind of people did you want to work with and what kind of company would it be?
Farah:
Definitely, yeah. I've worked in a lot of different kinds of settings. I worked in nonprofit settings. I worked for an academic medical center for a while in a research department. I even worked for like three months, I think it was three months in mental health treatment at the like before I went to grad school for my master of Public Health. So I had a lot of different kinds of experiences. I'd never worked as an adult professional. I never worked in a for-profit setting. So the company I work for now is a for-profit. I was nervous about that at first when applying. I, I thought, okay, this is a big risk because I don't know this environment and culture at all. And what if it's so completely different than what I've ever known? And it's not. It's not. It's the same people who care about public health. They're really creative. They're so brilliant. I love being around them. Just watching them come up with ideas is inspiring. And I wonder, oh my gosh, how do their brains work that way? It's so cool. They care about public health the way I do, and they just came to it from a different spot, you know? And it's it's really cool to see how you can be in this different kind of environment that has healthy business practices, that cares about its employees, that cares about making a difference in the world. And it's not perfect, but nothing is. And it's just it feels it feels like a really good place to be.
Lisa:
Yeah. And do you have any, like, did anything help you in being able to suss out if it was the right kind of environment for you as you went through the application and interview process?
Farah:
Yeah. I mean, I talked to a lot of friends who had had in their past worked for marketing agencies, some small agencies, some larger ones on the for-profit side. And they had done maybe health care for marketing or even public health marketing. But I felt like, they know me. They know what is important to me and my values and and what I could handle and not handle. And so I talked to them to get their thoughts on the environment. And am I going to fit in the culture or am I going to be this weird outlier that just comes in and is kind of like sandpaper? And they really calmed me. They calmed my worries. And I felt after talking with them, I felt clearer that changing the environment is as much of a risk as changing a job. So I felt like, okay, it's going to be safe enough. I'm going to do this.
Lisa:
Mm hmm. Can you talk about the other ways that you used people as support or through networking and what else kind of… who else helped you along the way?
Farah:
I mean, I feel very lucky that over the years, through work, through school, I've I've been able to form really strong connections with people who they're not all like me. They don't all have their master of public health. Some of them are communications directors. Some of them have backgrounds in counseling. And so I was able to really lean on them to get their perspectives or even just watch and see how they operate in their careers. What's hard for them, what's what feels safe for them, even just watching them and looking to them as role models helped me feel safe, I guess I don't, you know, for the lack of a better word, helped me feel safe in exploring this different path. Making different choices.
Even just the idea that in my last in my last role, there weren't many people like me who who had public health backgrounds. A lot of people had more like counseling backgrounds. But we were all we all still came to the same organization to work collaboratively to make a difference. And I felt like with my public health background going into, say, a marketing agency, I might be the only one with a public health background, but I'm not the only one coming in with, you know, the idea isn't to come in with all the same experiences. The goal and where I find the most joy is when you bring people together that have all different kinds of backgrounds and ways of thinking and ways of doing. And seeing what what you can make of that.
That's where all the creativity happens. That's where the great ideas come from. That's where you get people saying, oh, I never thought of it that way. Wow. Okay, that's awesome. Let's try that. And seeing kind of that in my in my network in past jobs and people I care about in their jobs, that that in itself is really helpful. I mean, I definitely talked to people. I vented to people. I had lots of phone calls or, you know, video chats where I would say how I was feeling, get kind of input on how I was feeling and what I should do about it. But it was it was more like about watching people in my environment and saying like, well, how are they, how do they operate in this kind of situation? And I don't know, it just helped me realize I'd be okay.
Lisa:
Would you say that you kind of already have like a core, like a pretty close knit group of kind of friends/colleagues that you were leaning on during this time?
Farah:
Absolutely. Yeah. I feel really lucky in that way. You know, with every job I've had, there's been at least one person that I felt immediately connected to who over time we've kept our connection. And so having different different sources of counsel from different parts of my life was a good gut check and a check and balance too. It wasn't just people from my last job that I leaned on. It was people from my childhood who are my best friends and people from my first job after grad school. Just I needed I needed a cross-section of perspective to help me feel like I was making the right choice.
Lisa:
And so when you got this new opportunity at the agency, did you just kind of know, like, this is going to be the right one?
Farah:
Yeah. You know, when I had my interviews. You know, when you have an interview for a job and it feels like a conversation, you're talking to a friend. That's how the interviews felt. I felt so comfortable. And that's not normally how I feel with interviews. It felt very easy. I had a lot of interview rounds for this for this role. The last round was just a quick chat with one of the executives, and I felt like I was talking to an old friend and it felt so good. They were excited about my public health background. I love public health so much. I'm a huge public health nerd. I love everything about it. And I've never been in a position where people who have not been in public health have been like, wow, that's so cool that you have a public health background. So that felt really good to me. That was that was a novelty. I felt like so many things about the company, the environment, the culture, the people. It felt like a good fit. Even before I walked in the door.
Lisa:
I got to say that your experience is really reminding me… I don't know if you know this about me, but I started my career in copy editing and editing for a magazine, and it was my first job out of university. I'd studied English, which, you're like, what am I supposed to do with that? You know? Then on the side, I had been… I went to university in New York and so on the side, during my college years, I had been like really enjoying like the art scene in New York City. And so I, you know, I was I was studying writing and literature at school. And then I was like really interested in art on my, on the side. And I applied for a position at an art magazine, and they just really liked the combination of like what I've been doing with art and you know, in terms of like my interest in art with the combination of the writing and so, so yeah, I also, I had been kind of like pulled out of a stack. It seemed miraculously like the editor in chief had like put a number one on my resume. And he told me that when I went to the interview, I was like, how did that happen? I mean, I saw the stack on his desk. I was like, I don't know how that happened, but it felt really magical. Yeah.
Farah:
I love that story. Yeah. Sometimes things line up.
Lisa:
You have the right combination of, like, these mixtures of interests and skills are just what the other person was looking for, right.
Farah:
At the right time. It's it… I don't know how often that happens, but when it happens, it's pretty special.
Lisa:
Yeah, well I can tell you, it happened to me, too. There’s at least two of us.
Farah:
That’s fantastic.
Lisa:
It felt really exciting. Yeah. So you are about just under a year in this new position, is that right?
Farah:
Yeah, about six months.
Lisa:
Oh, six months. So you are still kind of finding your way. How is it going? How is…
Farah:
It's interesting.
Lisa:
What do you want to tell people about starting a new job when you've made this kind of pivot?
Farah:
Starting a new job on a good, like when you're in the same career, has its, it can be hard, I think. Starting a new job any time is challenging because you're going into a new environment. You're learning all of the new HR policies and how things work logistically and what systems they use and you're learning… You have to meet all new people and you have a new team around you and how do they do things? So it's it's that, you know, I'm still in that, I feel like they've hired so many new people since I was hired that I'm not the only one going through that. And and so it feels less maybe isolating than starting my last job or starting a new…
Lisa:
Like a new cohort is starting and you have some people in your cohort.
Farah:
Yeah. It's kind of what it feels like and, and I think starting a new job and you know, the pandemic certainly isn't over, starting a new job in a in a time when, you know, I've worked remotely for about five years, so even before the pandemic started, but a lot of people had never worked remotely. And so companies have started to or they have learned that they have to figure it out. They have to have systems in place where you can do video conferencing meetings and different ways to check in with each other to get the work done, because you can't necessarily all be in the same place. The company I work for I think realized that before the pandemic started and had slowly been hiring people from all over the country to have a presence in different parts of the US. And so I have colleagues, a lot of my colleagues are based in Southern California, but some are in Seattle, some are in Oklahoma, some in New Mexico, Washington, D.C., all over. So. You know, that also made it easier to be new because I wasn't the only telecommuter.
I am not the only public health person there, I've learned. On my team, I am because I'm on a I'm on the creative team. So it's all the people who come up with all the ideas for for the ads and the approaches to how they're going to market something which is so much fun to be around. But there's the research team and all those people have public health background. So I, I still have people I can really relate to. So that also makes being new easier.
That being said, starting a new job is still challenging because you have to learn all of those new things that I was talking about and then start and then starting a new career where I've never done this work, you know, five days a week, 8 hours a day. It's really interesting. The cool thing is they're really flexible and really open to me creating new systems and creating new ways of doing. And I can bring that abstract thinking and that planning background that I had to use every day in public health. I can bring that to my job now. The outputs look different. I might come up with a style guide versus a public health plan, but the process is very similar. And so I'm learning that it's not, I mean, certain things are very different, but it's also still very similar. Like how I have to do things is very similar to how I had to do things before. It's surprising. I thought it would be vastly different, and it's really not.
Lisa:
Mm hmm. And what has been some important points of support, like, as you've gotten started.
Farah:
Finding an ally within the company who is not my supervisor, is not necessarily, is someone who could advocate for me, but is not obligated to because of any kind of hierarchy, like having an ally/friend who I can go to when I'm stressed out or when I'm confused, or sometimes when you're new you feel kind of dumb or you make a mistake that seems silly.
Lisa:
That steep learning curve.
Farah:
Yeah, exactly. It is very steep. And so I feel very lucky that I was able to find that, you know, in the first couple of weeks. Somebody on my team just was really kind to me. And that's, my expectations aren't that high. That's really all it took for me to feel like, okay, I can I can trust this person and be there for them and they can be there for me. And so I think that was really important. In addition to having a really good supervisor, I got very lucky. Again, my team is great. They're really interesting and creative and even, you know, the organizational leadership, everyone's been really welcoming and supportive. And I feel like there's space to to make missteps and to have these, like learning moments or mistakes or whatever you want to call it, however you want to frame it. They've given me space to just be human which I appreciate because I’m not a robot. And but you don't always get treated… Sometimes the expectations, especially when you're newer, can be a bit unrealistic.
Lisa:
Mm hmm. Yeah. You know, the piece of your story where you are kind of still using public health, but in a different type of role, one that, like, fits you personally better. Like, that story really resonated with me because I saw it happen in my in my father's career. He started out as a chemical engineer and found that just engineering wasn't really the right fit. And he later moved to a sales role that was, you know, sort of for, in the same industry for the people that he used to be…. He used to be that person and he was now like selling to them. And he just loved he loved relationships and talking with people and just like loved then using his background and everything that he knew and kind of like you, you know, he also had like a sunk cost in his education in that field, you know, and this is a way that he could use it in a role that was a better fit for him personally. Right. And so I just and then I saw him like on, you know, he was really happy in that role for many years. And did his start his own business doing that. And so was able to like, you know, keep going. So, yeah, I think it's a really smart strategy and certainly in my own personal life has been one that I saw, you know, as a really a really good fit.
Farah:
I think part of the, you know, the process of trying to figure out what was next for me definitely involved a lot of thinking about not wanting to give up everything that I invested in because I invested in it for a reason. You know, what brought me to public health was this passion for wanting to help make a difference in the world. And then I found… I knew it wasn't going to be, you know, being in a clinical, more like treatment focused role. It was it was the other part of the spectrum where you're trying to change entire systems at once. And I didn't want to give that up. I still. It was just the day to day is what I wanted to change and not the kind of umbrella I was in.
And you know, everyone's path is different and everyone's choices are informed by different influences and preferences. And for me, it was really important to be able to keep one foot in public health if I could. I didn't want to just, I didn’t want to give that up. I felt like it had I had invested a lot. I even went and did a doctoral program in public health for a bit. And I decided that, you know, during the pandemic or at the beginning of it, I realized that I don't need that. I want public health. I don't need that piece of it. And I don't even want that piece of it anymore. And being able to take public health with me has been has been really important.
Lisa:
Very cool. Well, so I just want to wrap up with the three questions I ask every guest on the show. And so I would love to hear your take. What do you wish you knew before you took your leap?
Farah:
Just to trust myself more. I think I would have made the leap years ago if I just trusted myself more. And, you know, I did not die. The world did not end when I made that leap, when I made that career change. And I. I just had a lot of fear before and didn't trust myself enough. So I wish. I can't go back in time, but that's that's what I would have told my younger self.
Lisa:
Mm hmm. And what has maybe been the most surprising thing that has come of your leap?
Farah:
I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I knew changing careers would provide some relief, but I feel lighter than I have in years.
Lisa:
Wow. That's so cool.
Farah:
Yeah, it's just, wow, so surprising.
Lisa:
And for someone who is thinking of doing something similar, what advice would you give them?
Farah:
Just know that applying for jobs and doing the job search and interviewing, it's just not going to be the most enjoyable thing in the world. But you have to do it anyway. And it's okay to be uncomfortable. It's okay to feel uncomfortable, but you'll get through it. It's worth it. It's so worth it.
Lisa:
Awesome. Thank you. Well, Farah, I really appreciate you sharing your story with us here. It's been such a great conversation.
Farah:
Thank you. This was you know, I love talking about, I love talking about this stuff. And I really appreciate the opportunity to share a bit about my experiences. And, I don't know, maybe somebody who is like on the cusp of making a change, maybe this can help nudge them. I don't know.
Lisa:
Yeah, that's my hope. Definitely. Yeah. So if people want to follow you or connect with you, how can they do that?
Farah:
I'm on LinkedIn. Farah Kauffman and they can they can connect with me there.
Lisa:
Sounds good. All right. Well, thanks again for being with us.
Farah:
Thank you so much. It was great talking with you.
Lisa:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Leap Like Me. If you're enjoying the show and getting lots of value from it, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any new episodes, and leave us a five star review. Also, do you know anyone who's considering a career change who might appreciate the ideas and inspiration from this show? Please let them know about it. We want as many people as possible to benefit from these shows. And know that if you do share it, you can always tag me @lisahoashi on Instagram or LinkedIn.
By the way, if you haven't already connected with me in those two places, I'm also sharing tons of good stuff there. Speaking of sharing, I want you to know about my new free change planner. This planner is for you if you'd like to make a significant change in life or work, but you're feeling kind of stuck. My change planner will help you get the clarity you need to take your next steps. Inside, I’ll show you how to understand what you really want and why it's important. How to face your fears constructively so they don't hold you back.
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