Multidisciplinary Career Paths

Linear careers are breaking. Here's how to build something stronger: By 2027, AI automation will erode the value of more than 60% of specialized skills. Specialization used to mean security. Now, it’s a significant risk. In an increasingly complex world, intentionally broadening your skill base is the only defense. Starting as an entrepreneur, I was forced into discomfort: → Sales felt awkward → Design felt foreign → Management felt forced → Writing felt painful → Investing felt risky I wasn't an expert at any. In this credibility valley, most quit - because being average feels terrible. But, like compound interest, the longer you persist and intentionally add skills, something powerful emerges: Each new skill multiplies the others’ value. Eventually, these skills took me from starting a single business to running multiple companies and operating a fund. Here's the deeper truth I've learned: Specialists master depth. But risk tunnel vision. Generalists see patterns. But risk superficial understanding. The timing paradox: → Generalists thrive in chaos → Specialists dominate stability Linear paths may feel safer, but today they're more vulnerable than ever. The best defense isn't just adding skills, it's adding them intentionally. A simple compound skill advantage playbook: → Select adjacent skills before they’re obviously valuable → View discomfort as critical feedback, not as failure → Prioritize skill integration over isolated mastery → Constantly practice unlearning to adapt faster The uncomfortable truth: you'll never be the best at any single skill. You'll become irreplaceable through their combination. Your choice: Stay specialized and fragile, or become multidisciplinary and antifragile. What skill combination are you building? Share in the comments below.

My career looks like a scatter plot. That's the point. Nuclear energy. Retail. Oil & gas. Big Tech. Vaping. Fintech. Now AI and crypto. Comms. Consulting. Talent Management. M&A. Internal Comms. HR. Coaching. I've spent 15 years building a pattern database that specialists can't touch. David Epstein's research in Range explains why this matters: in "wicked" environments – where rules are unclear, feedback is delayed, and patterns are messy – generalists consistently outperform specialists. We are living in an era of wicked environments. And for all the job-seekers out there, your cross-industry or cross-functional experience isn't a quirk. It's a competitive advantage. Because I worked in high-regulation energy, I can navigate compliance-heavy fintech without breaking a sweat. Because I managed crisis comms in one industry, I could handle over a dozen executive departures in another. Because I've seen how five different sectors approach the same people problems, I can spot what's universal versus what's just "how we've always done it." That's not a scattered career. That's cross-pollination. And it's exactly what complex leadership challenges require. If your trajectory looks more like a scatter plot than a ladder, you're not unfocused. You're building a dataset linear thinkers can't replicate. Own the range. Own your story. #NeurodivergentLeadership #ExecutiveCoaching #CognitiveDiversity

👋 Hey PhDs … let’s talk about changing fields in science. One of the biggest misconceptions I see in academia is the belief that once you choose a field… that’s it. You’re locked in forever. Molecular Biology forever. Or Neuroscience forever. Or Computer Science forever. But science is inherently interdisciplinary. It’s fluid. It’s connected. It’s full of bridges waiting to be built. 🌉 And you can absolutely move across them! Let me tell you a bit about my own path: 🧫 I started as a Microbiologist. My PhD was in bacterial pathogenesis, studying how pathogens interact with tissues. That was my whole world for years - tissue microbiology. 🔬 For my first postdoc, I stayed in that field, but expanded my toolkit. I dove into microscopy, learning multiple imaging modalities and quickly becoming the “resident imaging expert” in my lab. It wasn't the original plan, but evolved as my interests shifted. 💻 Then I made a big leap: I did a second postdoc focused entirely on computational image analysis. No bench work. Just coding, algorithms, and computational workflows. And that shift changed everything. It rounded out my skills: biology → imaging → computation. And it continues to serve me every single day in my career, communicating clearly across disciplines. It also taught me something important: 👉 You can use your research training and postdoc years very strategically to build new capabilities, learn new languages, and grow across disciplines. And honestly? Being able to “speak science” across fields is one of the most powerful skills you can build. It strengthens your collaborations, deepens your impact, and opens doors you never imagined. For those staying in academia, especially future PIs: ✨ Interdisciplinary fluency is essential. It sets you up to lead diverse teams, build collaborative research programs, and stay adaptable as science continues to evolve. So if you’re feeling curious about another field… If you’re drawn to a new technique or a different way of thinking… If you want to stretch your skills in a completely new direction… Follow that path. Build the bridge. Your future self, and your future science, will thank you. #HeyPhDs #CareerDevelopment #InterdisciplinaryScience #ResearchSkills #STEMCareers #PhDLife #PostdocLife #ScientificGrowth #AcademicCareers

From the fireground and turnout gear to the front office and doctoral hood. My path over the last 21 years wasn’t linear. Volunteer firefighter. EMT. Code enforcement officer. Paramedic. Career firefighter. Now, organizational psychologist and public sector executive. The shift happened for me naturally as I kept wanting to know why and the more I experienced and learned the more I realized there were better questions still to ask. For a long time, I assumed this shift required explanation. Now I see it differently. Research on adaptive expertise shows that leaders with varied, cross-domain experience are often better at solving novel, complex problems than those who advance through a single narrow track. Studies in leadership and executive development also show that breadth of experience, not just depth, predicts strategic thinking and long-term performance in senior roles. In other words: Exposure to different systems builds cognitive flexibility. And cognitive flexibility is what complex organizations require. When you’ve: • Operated in life or death situations • Led under pressure • Worked inside government systems • Studied organizational behavior at the doctoral level You don’t just manage operations anymore. You understand culture. You understand risk. You understand accountability. You understand systems change. Organizations say they want innovation. But many still screen for “linear” careers. Especially in public safety and the public sector in general. Linear resumes are predictable. Non-linear careers are adaptive. And adaptive leaders are what modern fire departments and cities need. A non-linear path can still lead to impact. In fact, it may be what prepares someone to lead at scale. For others out there taking the winding road, don't get discouraged. The right organization looking for the right things will find you one day and it will change everything for both you and them. I feel like it's definitely the road less traveled and I'd be lying if I said it didn't have its difficulties and struggles. I want to go places with my career and it's hard every step, but it's that much more fulfilling. #nonlinearcareer #leadership #careerbuilding #iopsych

You want multiple careers. But worry you'll just feel scattered. Here's the tension: 77% of workers want more career flexibility (Randstad Workmonitor 2023). Americans navigate multiple careers (often 5-7 distinct fields) over a lifetime. Not job changes. Careers. Most people approach this wrong. Raj Khetarpal got it right. HR consultant. Leadership coach. Corporate advisor. His secret isn't splitting yourself in half. It's building from what you already know. 4 moves that work: 1. Build From Problems You Live With Daily Raj spent years in HR. Watched culture break down. Saw leadership fail. Noticed communication gaps everywhere. His coaching practice grew from that exposure. He didn't pick coaching because it sounded interesting. He built it to solve problems he lived with daily. Your next career gets stronger when it comes from real experience. Not imagination. Quick win: List 3 problems you see repeatedly at work. 2. Transfer Skills, Don't Start Over HR taught Raj how people learn. How teams work. How leaders develop. Coaching uses those same muscles. Different context. The average job sees one-third of its skills change in 3 years (Lightcast research). But core competencies transfer. You're not learning 10 new things. You're applying what you know in new ways. Quick win: Write down your 5 strongest skills. How do they apply elsewhere? 3. Protect Both Paths With Boundaries Multi-career life needs structure. Raj's words: "You have to be intentional about how you divide your time so you can serve people well in both spaces." He chooses clients carefully. He says no to commitments that drain high-impact work. That discipline keeps both careers healthy. Quick win: Define 3 non-negotiables before you start. 4. Test Small Before You Jump Big Don't quit to start. Build alongside first. Use career one to fund career two. Portfolio careers aren't about immediate 50/50 splits. They're about smart expansion. Quick win: Set a 6-12 month test window. The result: Raj proves two careers aren't competing identities. They're two ways to express the same purpose. Build from what you know. The result is clarity, not confusion. ♻️ Share this with someone exploring their next career move 🔔 Follow Kabir Sehgal for more insights

I’ve always liked working across disciplines. As a student, I was a mathematician doing research in manufacturing—surrounded by engineers. It was messy, creative, and incredibly rewarding. Which is why the “10,000-hour rule” never fully sat right with me. You know the story: pick one thing, start early, and grind. We have successful examples Tiger Woods, the Polgar sisters. Case closed. Except… that’s not how most excellence actually happens. Studies tracking elite athletes show that future champions tend to have a sampling period—a few years spent exploring different sports before focusing. (Côté & Erickson, 2015) Another meta-analysis found that deliberate practice explains only about 1% of performance differences at elite levels. (Macnamara et al., 2016) Even top musicians show the same pattern—they specialize late, often after experimenting with multiple instruments. (Güllich, 2017) Psychologist Robin Hogarth called golf and chess “kind learning environments”: the rules are clear, feedback is immediate, and cause and effect are obvious. Most of life is the opposite—wicked environments—where the rules shift, feedback is delayed or misleading, and expertise doesn’t transfer cleanly. In wicked worlds, narrow specialists can get trapped by their own experience. And this pattern scales up. A 2024 study of patent data showed that the most innovative teams were those mixing knowledge from multiple domains. (Wang et al., 2024) My favorite example? Gunpei Yokoi. He struggled with his engineering exam and became a maintenance worker at a Kyoto playing-card company. But he experimented and combined tech from calculators and credit cards to create handheld games. That company became Nintendo, and his side project became the Game Boy. The moral: depth matters—but range multiplies it. In a wicked world, the people who connect dots across disciplines don’t fall behind. They build entirely new games to play.

Straight lines are nice in geometry class. But rarely in career journeys. The traditional career ladder has transformed into a complex web of opportunities. Today's professionals are climbing, breaking, exploring, pivoting, and evolving. That's making career transition harder to navigate for clients and the coaches who support their change efforts. Let's chat about what non-linear careers look like: 📌Zigs and zags are the new norm ↳ 72% of Gen Zers and 66% of millennials are considering a career change in the next 12 months. ↳ This signals an era of linear career path disruption. 📌Study one thing; pursue another ↳ About 79% of graduates choose or end up in roles unrelated to their majors. ↳ Learning is lifelong, multi-disciplinary, and mobile. 📌Portfolio careers are the future ↳ Nearly half of working Americans hold a side job or multiple roles. ↳ Flexible, multi-stranded careers are becoming more mainstream and future-proof. 📌Changing jobs is more common than ever ↳ People hold over 10 jobs between the ages of 18 and 38 on average. ↳ This is roughly one new role every two years. That's a lot of pivoting, stretching, and reinventing! Here are 5 unconventional strategies the best coaches employ to help clients navigate everchanging landscapes: 1/ Become a skills collector • Take temporary gigs just to learn specific tools. • Volunteer for "nobody wants to do it" projects. • Master one wildcard skill (like data visualization or public speaking). 2/ Create your own job title (my favorite) • Package your unique skill combinations into a role that doesn't exist yet. • Example: "Digital Empathy Consultant" = UX/Psychology/Writing. • Pitch it to companies as a solution to their blind spots. 3/ Build an opportunity network • Join hobby groups outside your industry. • Follow company founders on social before they get big. • Create and publish content about your career experiments. 4/ Embrace productive discomfort • Take roles you're only 60% qualified for. • Switch industries every 2-3 years (on purpose). • Find a trusted mentor to give brutally honest feedback about your blind spots. 5/ Design career experiments • Start side projects that could become exit strategies. • Create a minimum viable career to test a new direction. • Find short-term project work in fields you're curious about. Every pivot is a step toward better alignment with your evolving goals. And that's fantastic because the most fulfilling careers often follow unexpected paths. 📌 If you're having trouble arriving, seek support from a knowledgeable career coach. Your career journey is uniquely yours. Grab hold of it and run!🩵 Which line represents your career path? ⬇️ *** 💡 Follow Dr. Heather Maietta - Coach for Career Coaches for expert career transition strategies 🔄 Share to help others embrace their non-linear career paths Sources: (BLS, 2023; LinkedIn Workforce Report, 2023)

Do you have a non-linear career path? A skill stack that’s layered, complex, and cross-functional… but doesn’t fit neatly into ATS boxes or traditional job ladders? Same. Not everyone’s career looks like: Coordinator → Manager → Director → VP. Some of us build: Community + operations Storytelling + systems Strategy + relationships Creativity + execution Vision + logistics If your work history feels hard to translate on paper but powerful in real life, you’re not broken… you’re just not linear. This is exactly where career coaching and strategic positioning matter: not to change who you are, but to help translate your value into language the system understands. Non-linear isn’t unqualified. It’s multidimensional. And the world is slowly catching up.

Choosing a public health career path when you have multiple interests: How one framework guided my unconventional Global Health career choices Having multiple interests and passions is often seen as an advantage, people say it makes you adaptable and multifunctional. As a multipotentialite, I believed this too until it came time to choose a career path in global health after moving from clinical medicine. My goal was clear: to strengthen health systems such that everyone everywhere has access to quality health care at the time they need it with the minimal constraints. But the routes to get there? Countless. I was interested in multiple areas in global health, from disease-specific and life cycle themes like maternal/child health and malaria, to skill-based tracks like biostatistics and health management. To navigate this, I began searching for a way to structure my thinking and bring clarity to my options. I used the data value chain to guide my choices. See the picture below (not exhaustive of the career choices and skills but you catch the drift 😃). Public health has always been rooted in data, from surveillance and monitoring to planning and implementation. Different roles in this chain contribute to health system strengthening in different ways. The data value chain maps how data moves through systems: from collection, to storage, analysis, decision-making, and finally, implementation. Each stage demands a different set of skills and to an extent, different personality traits. - Data collection often suits those who are detail-oriented and thrive in fieldwork. - Analysis calls for critical thinking, comfort with numbers and complexity. - Strategic decision-making requires systems thinking, strong communication, and the ability to synthesize insights into action. Conducting a SWOT analysis at each stage helped me assess where I had a competitive edge, where my passions aligned, and what knowledge gaps I needed to fill for growth.Through this process, I found myself drawn to the middle-to-end of the chain, where analytic output turns to strategy, policy and impact. That clarity helped me shape my career intentionally. At McKinsey, I honed the skill of turning complex data into strategy and action plans. Now, at the World Bank, I apply data insights to developing projects that can be financed, to strengthen health systems at scale. More than anything, this framework helped me evaluate job opportunities not just by title or prestige or asking, “Is this a good job?” but by asking: “Does this align with the part of the chain where I can make the most impact?” It’s important to emphasize that this framework isn’t to box yourself into one part of the chain because some skills and personality traits may be cross-cutting, but to use it as a tool for assessment and alignment with your strengths, interests, and long-term vision. I hope this helps. Remember careers are not entirely linear so, explore! Was this helpful? #publichealth

🏢 Architects: The world is changing, and so are we. It's time to embrace the portfolio career - a diverse career path that allows you to pursue multiple passions and roles. We've been taught to limit ourselves to a single job title or career trajectory. But in today's dynamic landscape, we can leverage our multifaceted skills and interests to thrive in various domains. Your career can be a rich tapestry of pursuits that fulfill you in different ways. Side gigs, freelance work, and passion projects don't have to mirror your day-to-day role directly. I've written for blogs, contributed to publications, advised startups, taught workshops, and actively participated in my professional association. These diverse experiences have expanded my horizons and allowed me to grow in ways that a traditional career may not have. For example, writing for industry blogs has honed my communication skills and allowed me to share my expertise. Advising early-stage companies has challenged me to think strategically and provide creative solutions. Teaching workshops have enabled me to share my knowledge while continuously learning from others. Each of these endeavors taps into a different aspect of my identity as an architect. They allow me to explore complementary interests, build new skills, and create a more dynamic, meaningful career. Let's redefine what a fulfilling career looks like. 🌱 What complementary skills, interests, or projects are you eager to explore beyond your primary job? Embracing a portfolio approach can unlock new dimensions of growth and meaning. By diversifying your pursuits, you can unlock new avenues for impact, innovation, and personal fulfillment. A portfolio career empowers you to be more than just one role—it enables you to be the multidimensional, adaptable professional that today's world demands. _____________________ Hi, 👋🏻 I'm Evelyn Lee, FAIA | NOMA I've been on the client side for over a decade and have spent the last five years in tech, helping create exceptional employee experiences while growing the business. Now, I help architects: ⇒ Think Differently ⇒ Redefine Processes ⇒ Create Opportunities