AI and Career Reinvention
Reinterpretation and experimentation can help individuals move from anxiety to liberation in this era of tech disruption.
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News
Build Your Personal Board of Directors: The Key to Smarter Career Decisions
A conversation with Cor Dubois, Executive and Non-Executive Director, Board Companions Netherlands, Guest Lecturer, Executive Coach.
Why Adventure Matters in Long Working Lives
Embracing adventure is not a diversion from a serious career. It is what allows a work life to be capable…
Career stories
Brandon
United Kingdom
Stepping Down for Happiness
Brandon
United Kingdom
From hospitality and spirits businessman
to bar owner and documentary maker
Brandon’s odyssey begins in the coal-mining valleys of Wales, eventually leading him from the corporate world of hotels and whisky marketing to a profound life shift. Embracing the dynamic realms of television, he discovers a passion for storytelling. A chance encounter in Barcelona redirects his path, propelling him to BBC representative during the 1992 Olympics. Brandon’s pivot to documentaries and opening the Casablanca Bar in Sitges reflects a fulfilled life—a tapestry woven with diverse experiences, rich connections, and the pursuit of true happiness.
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Arup
India
Second Acts
Arup
India
Entrepreneur & CEO, Textile Business
Co-Founder, Tomorrowʼs Foundation
Arup comes from a family of philanthropists, his uncle having worked alongside Mahatma Gandhi, so it was no surprise to find him volunteering with Mother Teresa as a high school student in his native Calcutta. While he worked with “Mother”, as he calls her, his strength of character and resolve emerged, as he raised the idea of schooling children, in addition to feeding them. She actually resisted quite strongly before agreeing to let Arup set up a system to get children considered “low-caste” into local public schools, despite their “untouchable” status in India. From this initiative the Tomorrow’s Foundation emerged, an NGO committed to improving children’s welfare, and exists to this day, though at the outset Arup’s role was chiefly that of instigator and financier.
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Dondi
Philippines
Profit to Purpose
Dondi
Philippines
Director & CEO, Philpacific Insurance Brokers
Chairman, Metro Cebu Development and Coordinating Board
Five years ago, Dondi – whose background in traditional business in the Philippines – decided “it was time to tackle the causes of poverty, as opposed to band-aid solutions”. He abhors corruption and poor governance, which contribute directly to the poverty of the Philippines. The decision to weigh in was not at all difficult, although he knew that he would be putting himself at odds with politicians and “pseudo-leaders”. It took about a year to settle into his new “calling” but almost five years to learn to “engage for change” rather than to “just battle away”.
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Derek
South Africa
Non-Profit to Big Business
Derek
South Africa
A Doctor’s Journey from Global Health
to the Dark Side
Explore Derek‘s extraordinary odyssey from a South African doctor challenging apartheid’s impact on health to his pivotal role in global health policies. Derek’s journey unfolds through academia, WHO initiatives, collaboration with corporate giants, and a controversial stint at PepsiCo. Accused of straying to the « dark side, » Derek advocates for harm reduction in tobacco, facing global bans and criticism. His controversial path, from incentivizing healthy lifestyles to collaborating with Philip Morris, sparks debates on public health. Derek’s story is a gripping exploration of ethics, conviction, and the complex dance between profit and progress in the pursuit of saving millions of lives.
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The book
Disrupt Your Career:
How to Navigate
Uncharted Career
Transitions and Thrive
By Antoine Tirard and Claire Harbour
Paperback, 310 pages
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
Professionals face many critical crossroads in their careers, sometimes unpredictable, sometimes more expected, but for which they were often not truly prepared.
This book discusses many such career transitions – from leaving a corporation to joining a non-profit, evolving from athlete to executive, or returning to a former employer.
Using the stories of 50 leaders interviewed all over the world, the authors describe what provokes the change, the challenges it creates, how the individual is surviving the transition, and what effective leaders do to navigate and grow from it.
The book offers a simple, easy-to-use framework to help make the most of any uncharted transition.
To thrive, you have to follow a four-stage process of Exploring, Experimenting,
Engaging and Expanding. Drawing on examples of a wide range of companies, Disrupt Your Career also provides recommendations to help organizations better acquire, develop and retain talent.
With both compelling stories and rigorous research, Disrupt Your Career serves as a call to exploit novel ways to approach careers and presents practical advice to help both individuals and organizations better prepare, manage, and make the most of career changes – ultimately leading to more fulfilling careers.
What people are saying
This book brings a fresh approach – based on the stories of a diverse and colorful range of career changers – that will inspire many to explore similar moves. It also provides excellent thinking for organizations, where there is still an enormous need for improved approaches to career management.
Herminia Ibarra
Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School
How often have you wondered if those that leave your organization are doing so for the right reasons? What would you give to know more, and lose less? Disrupt Your Career holds one of the keys to this increasing challenge for leaders, and outlines a series of insights and processes that can lead to better career comfort for individuals and enhanced, more effective career management for organizations. Tirard and Harbour-Lyell tell the stories that illustrate the career transitions with simplicity and empathy, and make it obvious that we can all learn from them.
Åsa Landén Ericsson
CEO of Cygate, Board Member of Grant Thornton Sweden, Formpipe and Rhenman & Partners
For a leader in any substantial organization, one major preoccupation beyond attracting the very best people is also keeping them stimulated, challenged and fulfilled. This book provides invaluable insight, research and strategies for improvement in both talent strategy and career management. The stories are inspiring and authentic, indicating new paths to follow, and innovative approaches to managing career paths for both companies and individuals.
Jean-Claude Le Grand
Senior VP Talent Development and Chief Diversity Officer, L’Oréal
An essential, soul-saving guide for anyone navigating a non-traditional career path, including most women. And for the companies smart enough to attract them – and creative enough to benefit from their adaptive skills.
Avivah Wittenberg-Cox
CEO of 20-first and author of Seven Steps to Leading a Gender-Balanced Business
Disrupt Your Career makes a significant contribution towards the career challenge, by illustrating various uncharted transitions with compelling and insightful stories. The frameworks are strikingly simple, and the book provides invaluable options and strategies for organizations and individuals alike.
Gianpiero Petriglieri
Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD
Career disruption will happen to everyone – and most of us are ill prepared. This captivating book shows how to understand career transitions and gives fascinating and practical ideas about how best to navigate. A must read for anyone embarking on a life change.
Lynda Gratton
Professor of Management Practice at London Business School
Whether you are an individual pondering a big change, or forced into transition by yet another downsizing, or you are leading an organization and hoping to stem the early attrition of your people, there is something here for you. The stories are compelling, and the frameworks for action simple and solid.
Per Heggenes
CEO, The IKEA Foundation
…combines insights drawn from stories of successful career changers with rigorous research and practical ideas that can be put to immediate use. The book beautifully demonstrates that career reinvention is not only possible, but should be embraced in today’s VUCA world.
Kevin Cashman
Senior Partner, CEO & Executive Development, Korn Ferry and bestselling author
About
Antoine Tirard is a talent management advisor and the founder of NexTalent. He is the former head of talent management of Novartis and LVMH.
Claire Harbour is a coach and global talent expert, the founder of Culture Pearl and a speaker, consultant and writer about all things to do with optimizing talent across borders.
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