Transitioning to a new industry often seems like a daunting prospect if you feel like you have to start from scratch, but that's not necessarily the case. There are numerous strategies you can employ to navigate career changes, including translating existing achievements into relevant terms, finding unique opportunity gaps, and leveraging transferable skills in meaningful ways. Take it from professionals who have personally experienced this transition (or have helped others through it): you can build forward from experience rather than starting over.
Ask any Latina growing up in the 1990s, and she'll know the variety show "Sábado Gigante." For me, the show was life-changing. I won the competition when I was only 6 years old. Not long after that, I performed for a room full of Sony Executives in Key West and signed with the label. I started my singing career as "La Chiquita Divina," singing traditional Mariachi music. I was born in LA, but learned these songs from my mother, who is Mexican.
I remember back in middle school and high school, I was the girl's friend like, Yeah, you tell him!' Snow says, pantomiming an exaggerated go-girl line reading from her New York hotel. I was never the main girl. I never wanted to be. [Now] I think it's OK to be both. After an early breakout role at 16 in NBC's throwback primetime soap American Dreams, Snow rose to fame in earnest as a go-to supporting player in one teen popcorn movie after another.
When I packed up my New York apartment for the last time, it wasn't just a physical move. I was going through a profound emotional shift, a decision to rethink what success meant to me. A year prior, I had moved from Dallas to chase a dream editorial role, believing that life in the city would be the ultimate marker of success. But after a sudden layoff, the skyline that once inspired me started to feel like a cage.
Knowing she would be undergoing treatments and needed the help, I quit my job to become a manager at one of her four centers. We had previously discussed my future involvement in the company and eventual takeover as director, so while her diagnosis hastened this plan, I felt like I was making the right decision at the time. With this plan, I could help her out while also transitioning into a leadership role.
Juana Molina answers our video call from a hospital bed, reclining in a green T-shirt with two cannulas in her hand. She has done her back in while also playing Whack-a-Mole with hernias, two last year, and two new ones now. Do you know those toys, made of little pieces of wood, and you press the bottom and it goes she makes herself floppy, mimicking a push puppet that's exactly how I was yesterday. But now, says the 64-year-old Argentinian musician, I have so many painkillers, that I She wobbles her eyelids, gurns and gives me two thumbs up.
Last year, building my career and staying focused on my profession mattered the most to me. I didn't have time for really anything else. I'm used to powering through things. I'm a military spouse and I'm raising kids, but over the course of several months, I noticed my health was declining in ways that didn't feel like typical burnout. I found out I was suffering from the effects of two undiagnosed autoimmune conditions: rheumatoid arthritis and Hashimoto's disease.
"I had Brooklyn. I moved to Manchester, which is where David was living and playing for Manchester United. And by this point, he is on the first team; he's a big star," Beckham told podcast host Alex Cooper. "And it was quite the transition for me because I was so happy to be with David, to have a baby. I felt so blessed, but I felt a bit lost as well."
When I first moved to New York in 2017, I drank the Kool-Aid: work hard, play hard. I had just finished university and another journalism internship in Vienna, and flew across the Atlantic with one suitcase and my résumé in hand. It felt like a scene from a movie. For eight years, I lived a Sex and the City lifestyle on a budget: strutting down the streets in high heels, heading to my first corporate job with fire and hope in my heart.
But that advice was followed during a different time and for workplaces that were designed to keep you in line, not further your career. In today's fast-moving workforce, clinging to outdated relationships, toxic workplaces, or unfair structures isn't loyalty. It's self-sabotaging. It's time to rethink what was once considered the norm. Sometimes burning a bridge isn't reckless. It's strategic. It's the first step toward building something better in your career.
I was always interested in the medical field. Unfortunately, I didn't get into medical school, so I thought traditional Chinese medicine was the best alternative. It offered me a chance to practice as a clinician, but in a different role and setting. During my studies, we had a biostatistics computational module. That's where I realized that programming and computational work can be quite interesting.
Within three months, this capable professional was questioning their entire career, and the isolation bled into relationships with their partner, family, and friends. Then came the turning point: seeking help through their Employee Assistance Program, working with their GP, and finding the language to name what was happening. Today, they report stronger team bonds, restored creativity, and clarity of thought.
I got rejected from every single internship I applied to last summer - consulting, finance, tech, and entertainment. At the very end, I settled for a role at a startup called RecruitU as a social media intern. I grew their Instagram from 0 to 100,000 and my own account from 0 to 50,000. I also grew the company's user base by 400%. I was pretty much their only distributor.
I'm an attorney from Atlanta and have practiced for three decades - 25 years as a prosecutor and five in defense - but I've always had a creative side. I was always baking and entertaining, and my friends would even pay me to bake for them. Eventually, I realized I could turn it into a business - Delights by Dawn - and it blossomed. My niche became alcohol-infused cakes and cupcakes, which drew a lot of attention.
She wrote her first script in 2022, sold it to Imagine Entertainment in January 2023, saw director Luca Guadagnino sign on to direct just three months later, followed by the addition of major cast members like Julia Roberts, and the project went into production by June 2023. In August 2025, it premiered at Venice. In September, it opened the New York Film Festival.
He says, 'Hold on for a second. You mean to tell me you're leaving this company for some tiny, little internet bookstore that nobody's ever heard of ... that has got to be the stupidest decision I've ever heard anyone made,' Risher recalled.
"When I was living in London, [I] must have been about 19, 20-ish, I would go around with a notebook and write bits of advice that I heard, or some random musings from the local drunk, or anything that I would come across,"
"There's this misconception that because I'm the first to do this thing-and still no one else has done it-that I'm booked all year long for speaking engagements," she told CNBC Make It. "I get things here or there, but I can't make a living from it."
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dana Schoolsky, a 24-year-old working in monetization strategy and operations at TikTok in New York City. It's been edited for length and clarity. When I worked in investment banking as an analyst, everything felt urgent, as if a fire alarm was going off at all times. I felt on edge even after leaving the office, never knowing when I might be called to action to do more work, which took a toll on me.
I grew up in a family where music was at the heart of everything. From an early age I studied piano, solfège, and voice, and my parents encouraged me every step of the way. Even though my father was a mathematician and physicist, he believed in exposing me to the arts-he sent me to folk dance, ballet, and later I graduated from the Conservatory in Budapest with a major in classical singing.
With three world records and two Olympic gold medals under his belt in swimming, Ryan Held's new challenge isn't in the pool. It's at 200 West as an analyst in cyber risk at the elite investment bank Goldman Sachs. He's raced alongside teammates like Michael Phelps and Caeleb Dressel, yet when he started his new job this year, he admits he felt a bit like an underdog.
For my first two years as a content creator, I saw it as a fun side hustle to do while in university. I posted TikTok and Instagram videos about video editing and fashion, and later transitioned to beauty when I found it to be the most lucrative. But when I went full-time with content creation after graduating from my university in 2024, I realized it was only the "dream" life on paper.
I was super happy when I received the news. It was so unexpected because I knew that so many people were applying since it was the first M.S. in Climate Finance in the U.S. It was good news, not only for me, but also for the nonprofit sector. We don't have these two topics together in many universities. I'm working for an NGO that does worldwide conservation.
