Featuring: Cara-Lyn Giovanniello

Cara-Lyn Giovanniello is a world traveller who, at least for a bit, was most at home when not at home. A global adventure in finding yourself.

Check out CLG Coaching here, and Cara-Lyn's Journey Line here.

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Hello and welcome to Journey Lines, the podcast answering the question, how did they get there? I'm your host, Kim Minnick. Each episode, I invite a guest to complete a reflective exercise plotting the ups and downs of their career against a line of neutrality. Together, we go through the highs, lows, and everything in between on their journey. My guest today, Cara Lynn Jovinello, who goes by CLG. CLG, how are you today? I'm very excited to be here. It's very exciting to be with you. It's very exciting that this is the first big thing in the new year. So everything is good. It's still early, though, so we have time to really push this off course. But for now, excellent. We can definitely make this a dumpster fire all about it. Yeah, let's just bring that energy over. No, we're starting fresh. We're starting new. Before we dive into your journey line, give us a little preview of what's going on today, personally, professionally, holistically. Ooh, okay. So let's start with personally, I just finished up two kids birthdays. So I have now a seven year old and a 10 year old. They are three days apart, January three and January six. I want you to know any parent that listens to this October 1st and through our case, like January 11th, it's like hell months. Like you're really going to war and you're making magic and experiences and everything. That's fantastic. It's exhausting. So this being the first thing that I've done after all of that, I'm hoping to bring all the energy. And I'm also hoping because it's going to be a big year for my business, which is CLG coaching and consulting. We are branching out to really become strategic partners within companies versus just doing coaching and bespoke off-sites. So I'm very excited to start to partner with companies on a larger scale. This is like a really big deal for our organization and I'm feeling really pumped. to be that strategic partner with a lot of corporations and leaders that I really admire. And I think if I were to level this off of spiritually, to really go there, I speak the universe spirit. I'm feeling really calm and I'm feeling really positive this year, which I'll be honest, I don't normally have those feelings. I tend to be like a person who loves the negativity bias and sort of lives really well in the areas of... non positivity. kind of keeps a dark humor. And so this year I feel very like ahead of the curve and quite positive. So I'm not sure what that means, but I'm going to hold it cause it's new. And we're going to see if like having a super positive, really happy-go-lucky attitude maybe changes something. I don't know what, but something. I love that so much. call myself a dark rain cloud. I'm like, I cannot be the rain cloud at the parade all the time. I have to be calm and energy amazing. energy. That's exactly right. We're the redwood tree. I've got a huge redwood tree on my background right now. What a nice call out. It's like you're here. Well, I'm so excited to dive into this very gorgeous journey line that you've created all over the world. You were like speaking to my language. Kick us off. It looks like we're starting at Pepperdine University. My grandfather went there. What's happening? Yeah. So I started Pepperdine because I feel like, you know, potentially this isn't for true for all people, but for me, you know, like consciousness, awareness of my own wants, needs and desires. I have been such a good kid my whole life. You know, people told me what to do. I did it. I did it well. Pepperdine felt like the first thing that I sort of was like, I don't want to do that. I have a problem with this decision. And So I kind of started my journey map there. And the backstory is, this is gonna come across as maybe a real first world problem, but I had really wanted to go to the University of Washington. All my friends were going there. My boyfriend at the time was going there. I was gonna move to Seattle. I was gonna go to UW. And I got into the school, but with no financial assistance. And then I got into Pepperdine and I got a full ride. And so I knew I was going to U-Dub. I told everybody I was going to U-Dub and I went out, this is senior year of high school. I went out to a party and I came home and I always crept up the stairs and whispered good night to my mom because I wanted her to know that I was home. So I came in, I just, yeah, I just came into the house and I always say, mom, I'm back. And she said, okay, honey, by the way, I enrolled you in Pepperdine. We can talk about it tomorrow. And it was like the first moment I felt, really sort of out of body that what I had wanted wasn't being supported or respected and I was going against the system, which I had never done. And that was sort of like the beginning when I go back, you know, that's what this journey map has done has been like, what are these key moments in your life? I really felt like something deviated from what I truly wanted to what somebody else truly wanted to being a perpetual people pleaser. you know, really having that vein of wanting to make everyone around me happy, do what they want me to do, make sure that everyone, you know, feels like I'm giving them the attention and the care. This is one where I felt like you're not giving it back to me. And there'll be a theme in my journey line of really feeling like this struggle against who am I versus who do you want me to be? And so this felt like really the first time that I explored what that felt like and looked like and tasted like. listen, Pepperdine was a great experience. I was there for five years. I was what they call a super senior because I found out that I could go to any of their international programs for free. So as part of my, you know, scholarship, I went to Florence, I went to England, I went to Heidelberg, I did the biblical sites trip. I think I went on five different programs. And so I was like, well, I might as well just extend this free ride as long as I can because Pepperdine has the most gorgeous campuses all over the world. and I took advantage of that. So it's like just below the line, I think more from the decision making aspect than, you know, what a good experience it was and you know, what great people I met there. But again, there's a theme here and I'm going to track back to that in a few different places. I feel like we'll get there. I love that you called out your fifth year. I called that my victory lap because I too was a five year commitment to college. Did any of your friends wind up going to Pepperdine or was this you kind of like really going out on your own? I had had a best friend in high school. We had gone to school together since about sixth grade and she had really wanted to go to Pepperdine. So I had applied to go with her. And again, like just because the majority of the people that I really wanted to sort of, you know, basically follow were gonna go to U-Dub and that was just a couple really best friends. And then of course my boyfriend at the time, which in high school you think this is it. This is the person, this is my first love. We're gonna get married. Yeah, we're gonna get married. This is my person. And so it just felt like if you imagine you're stacking dominoes and they either get knocked over and they go the positive way or they get knocked over and you go devastation. This felt like the beginning of a series of like, what is going on? Why is my life going this way? And because I've always been such a positive person and you know, really felt like up until my 18th year, you know, I just wanted everyone to be happy. wanted everything to be copacetic. This was like the first real reverberation of like, shit, I'm not doing what I want to do and no one's listening to me. And how do I be in the world when I don't want to do this thing? And so again, it's like a really tough life lesson, but you know, listen, I made a lot of really great friends. Shout out to Josie and Gerald who are still my super senior, you know, best friends today. And also it was one of those real like, I don't like this school. I don't like this city. I know Malibu, judge me all you want, but and also, you know, terrible. two of the fires. So lots of love out to all of our friends and family and Malibu. So yes, so you you complete Pepperdine and a delightful five years. You have this opportunity to travel, which I love because it looks like the next point on your journey line is very far away from Pepperdine. Where did we go? What did we do? So I was very lucky. I was raised by two parent teachers. So we always had the summers free. And what my parents did, because we were very middle class, is we would home exchange. And this is back in the days when you used to get like a phone book size book where they had little tiny snapshots of the house. So you couldn't even see it with, you know, three lines of description saying, we have a house in Portugal. It fits six people. These are the dates you want to travel. And you would hand write them a letter. And you would swap at the same time, because this is before people had vacation homes. And so every summer we spent about six to eight weeks in Europe. Usually it was Europe. And so I had been visiting England. I think the first time I went, I was nine. And I don't know if this has happened to you, but it for sure was this moment where I knew I had met my people. I have a very dark sense of humor. I work very quickly. I love a walk and talk. Shout out, Gilmore Girls. Shout out, West Wing. I love things that move very quickly and people that respond very quickly. And I love sharp wit and I love dark humor. And from nine years old, did I know that these were my people. So I had been going back and forth to England probably at least once a year from nine until, you know, I graduated college, which was 22. What I had done though is I had spent a year and a half on the international program in London and I had met my second great love in this life. And really, really did feel like this was the one I was going to marry. But England was the most fantastic experience because it was the time I really felt my most self. I knew I was with my people. I was doing a degree in war studies. I was getting a master's from King's College, which yes, it was primarily World War II, but I studied on Taunt Strategy. So I wanted to understand how leaders made decisions and how they impacted and influenced all of their soldiers primarily. But the backstory to that is when everyone asks me, are you serious? War studies? My father was in World War II and he was a fighter pilot and he was shot down over Germany and he was a prisoner of war for a year before he was liberated on D-Day. And he was one of the most fantastic human beings I've ever known hands down, like the most sweet hearted, gentle person because of his experiences. And I felt that dichotomy my whole life of how does this person go and be a pilot, a fighter pilot, and then end up with five daughters, very gentle, very soft, very sweet. know, how does that happen? And so I was always really interesting, interested in history. And then of course, I think one of the most prevalent movements, if you're not talking about religion, is war. And that's how things move across the world. And so I wanted to study war. was one of five Americans and one of three women. So that was a really interesting dynamic. And the other part that I felt was really interesting and for anybody who's ever gone to school in America and then gone to school in Europe, I had these really lovely teachers in my European program that said, look, in America, they teach kids to memorize. In Europe, we teach kids to critically think. You are not critically thinking you are regurgitating material. If you want to pass this course, you're going to need to really change basically how you know how to learn and study and grow. And again, when you're 22 years old and someone's saying you have to start back at scratch, you can either go, I'm done with this program. I'm going to go home and do what I know. I'm going to change my course, but I get very tucked in. And when there's something that I really want, which is usually, as I said before, to do good. I'm going to really dial up what I need to do. And so even though that program was a year, I basically spent it in a library. basically spent it reteaching myself how to think, how to learn. I was, you know, head to the grindstone, just totally, totally, totally going to nail this. And then on the pivot side, it was the first time I had let myself enjoy being like, youthful. And so I had friends and we would go out to drink and we would go to parties and we were doing all these things that I had never done at home. And I felt this real rebirth of who I was as a person. I knew my people, I knew my sense of humor. I knew why people liked me. I knew that I could learn a really hard thing. I was in a school that I wanted to be in. I was in a country that I wanted to be in. And I spent three years there overall. and then basically got kicked out of the country. right around the same time that my father passed away. So it was one of those where I was forced to come back to America and, you know, in the journey map, you'll see the little RIP down at the bottom. But you know what, again, my father had had me at 60. So it wasn't like I didn't know he was gonna pass away in my life. And what was a real challenge was that when a thing that you know is gonna happen finally happens, how you behave and how you respond and what you feel is so different to what you think is gonna happen. That that was this really eye opening moment for me of how well can we know ourselves? How well can we prep for the future? So it started these like little seeds in my mind garden just around how do we plan for the future when things that are unknown may affect us so dramatically. And so I was kind of in a weird place having just graduated, having been kicked out of this country that I wanted to live in. I wanted to get married and I wanted to do all this stuff. you kicked out? Was it an immigration thing? Had you overstayed your visa? Okay, okay. I go to Gatwick and the gentleman there is like looking through my passport and he goes, ma'am, I'm going to need you to step to the side. And then I was in, no, 100%. Have I had some real rough airport visits? And I think some of them are not suitable for this podcast, but I will tell you very not good immigration stories. And so in this one, spent about, I don't know, now it's a long time ago, maybe like three hours, maybe four hours with them questioning me. Obviously they were like, look, you overstayed your visa. You obviously working illegally. You have 30 days to leave the country. So in that 30 days, my father passes away. I'm like trying to ship over all my stuff. I'm trying to cut off my life. I had a boyfriend at the time. I had obviously friends. I really thought I was going to be there. And so coming home was so disorienting and so disappointing. There was nothing that felt good when I came back to America. I had left my country. I had left my people. I'd come back to my family that was in pretty bad shape. My father had passed away. My mom, they had been married for 27 years and they were together 24 hours a day. They owned a business together. They traveled together. Like the epitome of best friends in terms of a relationship. I never saw my parents fight once. So when you look at my relationships now and I go, I just thought if you loved a person, you stayed together. forever, there is work that needs to go in there. learned later in life. Yeah, but I just felt like it was a really disorienting moment in my life that I had such deep loss that I was completely untethered. And at that point I was prepared to start working on a PhD, but I had had this moment where I was flying with my mom. I think we had gone down to Mexico to try and like, you know, just have some time together as a family. And I had taken a United flight and in there's a hemispheres magazine. I don't know if anyone's ever flown United, but that's their magazine is hemispheres. And they had an article on Vietnam. And I was like, you know what? I did my thesis on Vietnam. I think I should go travel. I think I should just take a break and go travel. So you see like the sharp uptick is I spent three years travel. So you were in England for three years, came home, and then left again for three years to travel the world. my 20s I was not in America. Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's a lot of people in their 20s right now that are very envious of that statement. You know, I have a lot of best friends that I'm very lucky to say I've had for 20, 30 years. And one of the things that they always joke about is, you know, they have these really wonderful lives now. And I'm like, God, I really envy your life. You know, I like so many things. And they go, yeah, let me remind you when we were all working like the bottom wrong jobs of trying to get up through the corporate world, you were like, hi, I'm in India. I'm in Nepal. I'm in Australia. I'm on the islands. And I was like, Touche. I mean, it was a very lucky moment in my life. And it took me actually a long time to understand why I was gone for so long, which obviously had a lot to relate to family things and family challenges. At the time I didn't put two and two together. I just felt like I should take a break. I have worked really hard. I'm like 25 years old at this point. I just want to get out into the world. And so I booked a flight. I was in China, Vietnam. Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. I came home for maybe a month and said, no, this is it. I'm gonna go until I have no money or until I run out of juice. And the first place I went was Israel, which that is a whole life story on its own, really to live in a country, to visit a country. I ended up living there for quite a while. But... You know, it was this first moment of like, I'm making choices for myself and every single choice has a good or a bad, and I have to sort of iterate as I'm doing it. So I went to Israel, then I spent a year in India. And the way that I tell this story is the first three months that I lived in India were very hard and everyone goes like, okay, why did you stay when there were things that were obviously so foreign to you and very uncomfortable? You know, it's a It's a very complex dynamic country and the level of poverty is something that I don't think anybody having grown up in California, having grown up in a first world country has any concept about. It's just, it's impossible to understand that level of, you know, poverty, but also joy. There is such a unanimous feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction that people really have a life to live and to love versus what I feel like is a very American component is to work, which gives you money, which allows you to live. And the softness of India, I think changed the course of my life. Like being able to be an American where at the time a lot of people didn't like Americans. A lot of people were very surprised to find out that I was American. They said, you're so nice. you. you know, just things that Americans weren't necessarily associated with, especially travelers. And that was a really pivotal season of my life is not only traveling, but that year that I spent in India, I traveled, gosh, I traveled all through the middle East. I spent about six months in Australia, double backed and like kind of hit some, some countries in between. And then at that point of my life, felt extremely, extremely lost. I didn't know what a person is supposed to do. after this, like, how do you go back to the real world? I remember being in, I think it was a store in, in Australia after a year in India, and I'm in the shampoo and conditioner aisle and I'm like, why are there so many options? Like, yeah, you just need to wash. and condition your hair like, know, cause in any of these countries you get one product and you're lucky to have that one product. And so to be in there was this disconnect of who am I now that I have lived so frugally and so joyously to come back into an environment that felt like it was exuberance and abundance and deep dissatisfaction and disconnect amongst people and families. again, I've gone from a disorienting time to this really, you know, beautiful moment in my life back home. And I met a person and that's where that. before we get into your first, your first big heart, I like how my choices in my 20s were, what am I gonna have for dinner? And how do I pay my rent? And you're like, what country do I want to go to next? right. How was that being, you at that time in your life, just making these very huge choices? Was it just like, I don't know, instilled by enthusiasm? I'm going to use the word freedom. If you didn't like a country you were in, you left. If you didn't like the people you were traveling with, you moved on. There was this real cycle of how you can choose a thing like an experiment, realize the experiments either going to work or it's not going to work, iterate and move on. And only now do I understand that that was the process. But at the time it just felt like, Where do I want to go today? I want to go to Goa. You know, everyone says how great Goa is. How long do you want to spend there? I don't know. We'll see. You know, I'll spend a month, six months, whatever it is. At least until I get kicked out by immigration. I mean, hands down, is that always something now? I'm like, I belong here. I swear. You know what? I walk in and I'm like, I have a visa. They're like, ma'am, you don't need a visa. I'm like, sorry, PTSD. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But there was such a freedom and a liberation to be able to choose who you wanted to be with and who you wanted to be. You could literally every day be a new person if you wanted to, because you could have a new group that you were traveling with, a new country that you showed up in. And I think that process of learning who you are and how you wanna be and who responds best to the best versions of yourself. Now in my work, I completely understand that at the time it was really experimental, it was very painful at times, it was very joyous at times, but it was always me and my choices. And again, I hadn't had that experience yet really in my life. And so was like a very pivotal time for me to kind of go. Well, I do have likes and dislikes while I do have choice where I didn't think that I had it before. and yet coming home or after some time, I was like, well, I've run out of money. I don't really know where else to go. Am I going to get this PhD? So I went back to America and I think within the first couple of weeks I was there, I met a teacher at my parents' school and, you know, he, the first day that he met me, he said, I'm going to marry this woman to my mother. And my mom's like, um, just a hard time out. Yeah. Which is his boss at the time. He was like, is that your daughter? She said, yeah. And he goes, I'm going to marry her. She was like, okay, that feels really. to get in with upper management at the school. We know how that education nepotism works. 100 % was I like, wow, that was a bold choice. And in the end, we got married. He was very focused on the things that he wanted in the world. And I happened to be someone that very much complimented who he wanted to be in that place. And so that ended up being a marriage. Yeah, yeah. And then what happens after marriage? It kind of dips down a little bit. I see a little Department of Health and Human Services understanding the dip immediately. Well, I just want to say the reason that like, I know I've seen other people have done their journey maps and they've got these high hearts, you know, they're doing things for love is like way up there at the time. If you had asked me to do this at the time, I probably would have put the heart up there. But I think I just for clarification, I wasn't ready to get married. I think at this point, I'm coming up to my thirties and this pressure to be a woman. to get married and to have kids was so extreme. I came from a very close family. All my friends were getting married. You everybody had careers already for five, six, seven, eight years. I come back and I'm like, I have zero money. I basically just have multiple degrees and a lot of life experience. And so when this really wonderful kind man said, I want to marry you, I was like, well, I should, right? This is what I should do. feels like the right everyone else is doing it right time. Okay. now looking back, I sort of have the heart a little bit more to neutral because it wasn't the right move potentially, because there was a lot of heartache of not going into a marriage really with the full sense of what it is and what it could be. And I just was trying to, once again, as I came back to America, do what people wanted me to do. So if you notice I'm in the world, I do what I want. I come back into America, I become this people pleaser, I become this good girl, become, you know, whatever it is that I felt like everyone else was doing. And that's a theme that I noticed in doing this was just how many times I said, well, everyone else is doing it. So I guess I should too. I wonder why you find that in America more than during your travels. I wonder if it's like a more stable community that you have here that you're like, well gosh, everyone else is. Whereas when you were traveling to your own point, you said you kind of reinvented yourself or would go to a new group when you were ready. I wonder, hmm. think that there are stereotypes. Like, I think if I look to what is America now, I used to be really obsessed with like celebrity news. And like, I think there is this thing that we have, especially in Western culture, of looking like we're supposed to and doing what we're supposed to. you know, there is this dichotomy of being perfect versus, you know, potentially being who you really are or going off the beaten track. And I definitely felt the pressure. of, you know, Coming from a good home, you know, of having good degrees, then what's the next thing that a person should do? So this next series of my life is literally do what everyone else is doing, because then you will feel like you fit in, you will feel like you're on the right path. And man, is this been a rub for my whole life of just trying to fit in and not and then feeling like it was me. Like, am I depressed? Am I doing something wrong? This must be me, me, me, me, me, because it can't possibly be everyone else. That's crazy. And yet we'll find later in my journey where I'm like, hey, it's everyone else. But, you know, at that moment I came back, a really lovely man said, I want to marry you. said, okay, that feels like the right thing to do. Then I got my first real job. Yeah, real job. That was with the government. So anybody that's ever worked for the government, I see you. Shout out to the Department of Health and Human Services. There was a lot of really great people that worked there and a lot of really wonderful people who are trying to do good for the people of America in the different areas that they're working. Mine was in Head Start and Early Head Start, again, coming from education. I very much responded to working within education. The job was awful. I am a do-gooder and I am a doer. Like I'm very ambitious. I want to do things. I'm consistently busy. This is a job where they said we had to fill a spot so we didn't lose it. You can sit at your desk and do whatever you want to do, but you have to be here from nine until five with a 45 minute break or whatever it was. And I was like, but what do you want me to do? Yeah. give me something to do? I would like some sort of impact. That was a, that was again, one of those moments where I was like, what are we doing here? Why am I here? But I knew I had to, because you have to get time on your resume with, really important jobs. So I stayed in that job for two years and I made the best out of it. And two things that came from it is one, I learned very quickly that no matter what job I have, I don't necessarily do it the best out of everyone else who's doing the job, but I can explain it to others. So, I come from a family of educators. I was like, I don't think I want to be a teacher because everyone in my family is a teacher. What did I end up becoming in my life? Basically an adult educator. But every job I had, I noticed that there were no ways that people were explaining to new hires or even to seasoned people the reason why somebody should do something, the order that things should get done on. So this was the first moment where I got hired to do a finance position. connect the dots on that one for me. I don't know, but they hired me for finance. The woman, I was like, yeah, they were like, you don't actually have to touch any calculator or number. was like, okay. And I worked with this other woman who was so brilliant. Like she could just speak in numbers. It was just her thing. And so anybody that came in, she would do all the presenting and the talking. So what I would do is I would explain to other people the mechanisms of our job. I would explain what we look at and why we look at it. I explained the processes and the systems and why we're using them. And so that was sort of my area of expertise where she did like the hard work. This is kind of now the theme of all of my jobs, which is I start in one thing and end up just taking over, you know, the training of other people in the job. And so. I worked in that job for two years. spent a lot of my time doing nothing. It was when smartphones first came out and I like got a phone where I could get a book on my phone so that I could like sit at my desk and read. Cause I, you know, I had a Nokia flip phone for about a thousand years. So that wasn't, I mean, it's true. And it started for me, you know, about 15 years ago, but that job was just a real look at like, There was no one trying to inspire me. There was no one trying to grow my career. There was no one saying like, what do you love to do? And what do you want to do? It was like, you have a job and you work because you need a paycheck to live in California. At that time, my job paid me $42,000 a year. In San Francisco, California, I got paid, was like 42 or $45,000. And I was like, my gosh, I'm loaded. I'm so wealthy. I can't even. compute that number now. But you know, again, it was my first job. I got married. You know, there were a lot of really beautiful things that were happening. Now in hindsight, I'm like, what? But at the time, I felt like big stuff getting a salary and you know, having benefits and you know, all the things that sort of at the beginning of your career, they feel like they're everything. And so I was doing everything I was supposed to do. And then I moved on. And you see a big jump above the line to UC Berkeley. So go Bears. I got a job, wait for it, in finance for their grant. That's right. As a grant administrator. And what really happened when I was at UC Berkeley is that this ability to be able to translate very complicated processes and systems into a way that could train new people. This is obviously a huge operation and there were, you know, probably, I don't know, in our department, like a hundred hires a year and nobody could train them. My first supervisor said, you sit behind me, you don't talk, you watch what I do and you figure out how to do it on your own. And I was like, that's a system that's maybe not going to work for most people. onboarding approach I've ever heard of. I mean, 100, you know, there's probably a lot of people that you work with that are like in HR and speak HR. Like this was an HR hell pit. You know, every single thing that went on there, you were like, wait, is this legal? Should I be doing this? Should you be talking to me like this? But I of course didn't know anything. I hadn't worked that long. I didn't know how you're supposed to work with your HR system. So I just really put my, again, going back to my master's degree, I didn't know how to do it. So I figured out how to do it. I figured out the systems who I should talk to. What's the order of people I should talk to? What's the order of operations? How to be successful? And I moved up within, I think the first year or two years, you know, to a very high level position because I was able to train all of these administrators that came through. I actually created a program. I'm still very proud of it if I look at the history of my profession, but I called it the R.A.M.P. program, Research Administrator Mentoring Program. And, you know, I basically was told, hey, you get groups of 25 people at a time. do what you want with them. So I was like, okay, we're going to have a schedule every day for four weeks. We're going to meet for four hours. I'm going to teach you a thing. You're going to go back to your office. You're going to use the thing that you just learned with your real work. So this is where I first started to learn that you have to embed training into work. Otherwise it's not going to, it's not going to click for people. And so coming into like where I am today and why I have the practices and the belief systems I do working in L and D started with, you can talk at people, forever. But if you can get them using a principle immediately in something that they're really doing on the job, they're going to learn it. They're going to embrace it. They're going to have much richer questions and, you know, dialogue and dynamic of how to develop. And again, I am in the business of development. And so seeing that in real life where there were no boundaries for me, do whatever you want. have no resources, you know, but you can do whatever it is that you want to do with these 25 people. I think I had four cohorts that first year before I really stepped up and took my first big time L &D role. And so from there, I actually called the supervisor and I said, look, I think you need to put me in learning and development. I think I'm doing all the training for this group, but can you find me a job on campus that's an L &D? And the first job that opened up happened to be a manager position. And I met with the woman who had the open position. She hired me on the spot. Now keep in mind, I didn't really have any background. I just explained how I think about things and how I have a belief system and people learning. And she just was very inspired by me. And this is one of the first times that I realized how I speak to people and the things I believe in make other people feel good. They make other people feel hopeful and that there is belief in what I'm doing. And she was the first person that really made me feel like I have authentic power to do good in the world. And I took it and absolutely ran with it. And so Berkeley was a great experience. I was there for eight years where I had a lot of different jobs. And you can see that now we start with the baby period. I wanted to do So now we're married. you know, we've got a few years of married life under our belt and we do, well, what's the next thing a woman should do? A family should do have, right? So like as soon as I turned 30, I was like, okay, well we need to start having babies because that's what everybody's doing. And again, because you said your dad was 60 when he had you, so you were half the age starting a family. Well, yeah, well, I know. But, I mean, kind of... that's important, at least to my understanding of the differences that women and men are treated. I don't think there were any guys around me that their parents were like, oh, you should definitely be getting pregnant, you know, this year where I was 30. And they're like, when are you going to have kids? When are you going to have kids? Literally, as soon as I'm holding my newborn, which I'll get back to that story in a second, brand new baby. And someone's like, when are you going to have your second? And I'm like, I literally just... pushed this one out this right here she's here she's two hours old maybe let's slow roll a little bit here right right and so the thing i felt like was really important about you know feeling like it was time to have kids i wanted to have kids you know i i think there is a biological response again that you know i want to just take note out for people is like sometimes we don't even have control of the decisions because we are biologically designed to want specific things And so potentially before I was ready or, you know, maybe a lot of other reasons, you know, I was blessed with a baby girl who I just want to do a shout out for myself. This is a, definitely a Snoop Dogg moment where I want to thank myself because I had this baby without drugs, which now having had two babies, one with drugs and one without drugs, having baby without drugs is crazy. Like it's literally, I don't know what metals you've won. Yeah. I mean, I probably would have still not taken drugs had I known better, but I feel really proud about that because that was again, this very insulated moment in my life where I was just in the zone with myself. Like that's not to say I didn't have, you know, doctors and my husband and family and whatever, but you get to this place where there's no relief from this labor that went on for 22 hours. You are in like a meditative zone. And this is like where, any hard thing that's ever happened to me, I'm like, I know I can get through it because I know how to tap into the zone, which kind of takes me back to being in India where I had done this Vipassana course. Have you heard of Vipassana? Okay. They call Vipassana like the bootcamp of meditation. You go to a center and for 11 days you don't speak. For 10 of those days you don't speak at all to anybody and you meditate for 11 hours a day. So I'm this like white kid from California that is hyperactive. And I go to the center because everyone on the travel thing goes to these centers. I don't even know what it is. I just show up and I sit down and they're like, okay, from here on, you're taking a vow of silence and we will teach you to meditate. And so having gone through that experience where I think I went crazy and then came back and I stayed. Yeah. I mean, I definitely sat through the 11 days, maybe it's 10 days actually, but neither here nor there. I definitely went crazy about day seven, day eight, and then had mastered this small part of ownership over my mind and my feelings and my spirit and connected, reconnected with that when I had the baby. And so when Evelyn was born, it was this really wonderful moment that quickly changed for me. And you know, everyone has their own stories. Mine, I feel like was very much led by having terrible postpartum depression to two babies through. And for any woman or any family that has had a person that has extreme postpartum depression, it's probably one of the worst things that's ever happened to me because I completely felt disconnected from who I was. I felt disconnected to my child who, you know, everyone says you have a baby and you love them. The best advice that I was given by a friend of mine who said, you may not love your kid when they hand them to you. You may not love your kid a month or two months or three months or a year after that baby's come to you. And that's how I was. It took me about 17 months, not to be too specific, but it took me about 17 months with each kid where I was not capable or able or functioning. I was just in this terrible place of disconnect and I just think that was a really, really hard period. Like when I think about my babies, you know, I just, don't remember. I have the feelings of being so deeply unhappy. And you know, you don't think that when you associate new babies and new families and all the sweetness, and I did all the things, I love it. I love motherhood. I love my kids. I love everything. Exactly. You're the threads. Yeah. So I had these two babies. I was doing everything that I was told to do, not have one kid, have two kids, you keep your job. My career was... they're three years apart, you went through 17 months-ish of postpartum depression, nine months of a preg- ten months of a pregnancy. That, I mean, that's almost four years of your life, just... I don't want to say lost, because that's not right, but altered. Yeah, I would say altered is a good word. I was going to say gone. You know, again, I don't have any memories, especially of my second child, like of my son, people like, don't you remember when he's this age? I'm like, I really don't. Because again, now I had a toddler and a newborn and was in terrible postpartum. And I do feel like the expectation of and no shade to Berkeley, because I do love it there. But, you know, you have to save up every sick day. You have to save up every single PTO day in order to have three months with your baby. And three months is nothing. I ended up pushing it to five for both kids. But you the strain that that put on our family in order to get that time off, like I went to work sick for a year before each baby, I did everything that I needed to so that I could have enough time to, both of our babies were born in January, to get to May when my husband, who was a teacher, could then take off for the rest of the summer and be with them. And that's before you know, have to find childcare, which is absolutely crazy, especially in California. And it's so much money. And just when I think about that time of life of like trying to have a career and trying to be a mother and having postpartum and you know, being married and living in a place where no one is close to you, you you want to go see somebody in the Bay area, you got to travel an hour and a half each way so you can have a half an hour coffee. So no one's coming to see your babies. You know, no one's like, hey, I can take the kids off your hands. Hey, you may need to go to therapy. You you seem crazy. I didn't have any of that. So I sort of have this period of my life that feels like was taken from me. And that I feel very sensitive about it. And I do talk to a lot of women about, you know, what I think is is potentially good for them to be aware of when they go into certain things and moments of their life. And again, coming from an educator perspective, I don't want people to reinvent the wheel. So that's just a sort of below the line series of years that I had. mean, I think that's really powerful. I'm very much a, I'm not a mother. I do not have a maternal instinct in my body. And I've only ever heard the good stuff. You know, this is why you should have it. This is why it's so easy. And I think just now in our society, women are talking more about postpartum, about the struggles, about childcare and inability to leave work and all of that things. Thank you so much for sharing that. I appreciate you saying that. I think it's just important because these things defined how I see the human condition and sort of the level of empathy that I have now for people in a lot of different areas. So I have them now for women and for mothers and for anybody that works, especially like in California or New York, like really you have to be making a set salary that if you make below $200,000 in your family, you're considered below the poverty line. It's a wild dichotomy to you know, these years of our life, which in my case were my thirties. And yet, because as I mentioned, I'm an extremely ambitious person and the smile is always there. I was still doing really good things and was still, you know, improving in my career. had become the department director of the astronomy department, which was kind of like a life goal, to be honest. Not that I knew it, but I love scientists. Like I just, their belief system, their inability to deal with, you know, sort of like the everyday thing because they believe in science and they believe in growth and they believe in experimentation and hypothesis. And, you know, I really loved that job because it felt like I was with my people. And for that, you know, I felt very grateful. However, you know, again, you have to work at a university. It's not going to give you this salary that you're really looking to have. And at some point I realized my husband, who was a teacher, we're never going to get too far, you know, into, you know, mega millions with both of us working in education. So at that point I started looking for a job and this was the first time in, you know, almost 10 years that I was like, maybe I should do something else. You know, what could I be good at having kind of done the work that I've done and enter square at the time it was called square. And I have a couple of shout outs. for some people, but relationships are everything. And I just really want to kind of level set of things that I really believe in, which is relationship intelligence, finding your people, connecting to your people. It's probably one of the most impactful things that you can do in your life if you give it the time and the attention, whether that's your partner or your best friends or your employer or mentors or your children, but relationships I think are what creates fulfillment. And you can have relationship in a lot of different ways, even with yourself. But why I took that job is that the hiring manager, shout out to Francois Cadeau, we had such synergy and symmetry in not being the same person, but believing in the same things and understanding where the opposite can compliment you and make you as a whole even better. And so this person said to me, I want to hire you as the head of leadership development at Square. And I'm going to give you carte blanche to do what you think is the best programming. There's nothing templative that you need to stick to. You can do whatever you want. And to have somebody say, I believe in you. I believe in your belief system. I believe in your methodology and your best practices. Do what you want in this company. And I created some of the most impactful work that still to this day, I'm like shocked that I could do. and that would be so well received and that they're still using, you know, many years after I've left there because it was just built with such love and with such intention and with such belief in the power of growth. And that's where I started to understand the different components that I now rely on for my work, which is around learned intelligence, how important emotional intelligence is, how important relationship intelligence is and how those two things used together will create strategic intelligence. And so that's my practice now of the work that I do. And I felt extremely confident in, you know, building out that programming, building out that methodology, really understanding the way that you can scale people's growth. And so it was like a same pivot of being, you know, traveling for three years. This was freedom. This was liberation. This was creativity. This is being who you wanted to be. and showing up how you want it to be and asking other people to do the same and them saying, absolutely, I will do that because how you explain it makes sense to me. And so I just think back on those. I worked there for three years and probably the best job I've ever had hands down, best people I've ever worked with. So shout out to everybody from that moment of my life, absolutely. I love that. And as great moments normally do, it looks like you go from a high high to a low low in your next role. I won't pretend to know what that logo is. If you want to say it, you're welcome to. I I won't because, you know, I think it was mostly an experience where I thought that I got it. And when somebody came to me and said, we're going to offer you this big promotion with a huge salary raise to what I was getting paid. Again, I thought rather than staying where I felt so good and so at ease and in control at my work at Square, I thought, well, I'm being asked to do this other thing, so I should take it. You know, like... that's what you're supposed to do, especially in America. Do the thing, check the box, get the next role with the next promotion, check the box, get the next role with the next promotion. Even, I mean, I was in San Francisco tech for a while. I took some jobs I was not qualified for and it was a struggle. I don't know, maybe you felt the same. mean, the struggle, you know, at this point now, I have been in the United States for maybe a decade. and I'm feeling worse and worse every day. I'm feeling like my profession is good, but you know, obviously if your entire life is your work, there's a problem there. You know, I have two beautiful children that I for the most part really enjoy being around, but Parenthood is very hard. think how I've described it to people as motherhood is wonderful. Parenthood is awful. You know, we're not given any way to succeed here. We're not given financial support. We're not giving, you know, educational support. It's just, there's no way to, I feel like, win unless you are exceedingly wealthy and you can hire those folks. But as a country, I don't think that they're supportive of parenthood, which was really hard for me because again, I love being an American. You know, I went out into the world and campaigned like, look, America is good. Americans can be good. And suddenly I'm here and I'm like, I'm like America, you don't like me. You don't want me to succeed. And so when I got this offer for this job, it was like, obviously I would leave this company that I loved to go to this new company because that's what I should do. And that's what I should do in order to make sure that there's enough financial support for my family. I have an ego. I would be lying if I didn't say I did. And so I felt really great that some company thought that I could do it and it didn't work out. I think the culture of the company wasn't right for me. think I didn't have supportive leadership in the way that worked best for me. There's a lot of excuses that I can give. What I will say is this is where I just started to unravel. Like my life really started to work in the opposite way of, you know, every way that we hope will go. And even though I had money and I had security in a lot of ways I had never before, this was probably one of the lowest periods of my life. And not only was my job not working out, my home life wasn't working out. And I realized that I had married a really wonderful person who was not right for me, nor I for him in a romantic marriage. You know, we were, we are still great co-parents and we think the same about parenting, but how we are in life, it just wasn't very aligned. And so suddenly I wasn't aligned in my job and I wasn't aligned in my partnership. And I kind of think of my life as in three things. They're all P's and you got your profession, you got your personal life and you got parenthood. And suddenly I had in November of 2022, I had separated from my husband. This was about six months old. I got laid off from my job of which is kind of the craziest story because I started having terrible health problems like heart palpitations, panic attacks, like going to the emergency room because I thought I was having a heart attack. So when people talk to me now about burnout, I have a completely different viewpoint of what it is to put yourself in a situation that is so negative every day and still try to where you literally burn off all of your ability to move in any direction. You just stop. And so I was in the process of going on medical leave because I still wouldn't leave this job because I was like, you have to do it. You have to be successful. You have to try. You must succeed. So when I got laid off, you know, I was in a terrible health moment. There was no possible way I could think about what I was going to do for work. And at the same time, my relationship was imploding and I have never felt so alone, like getting emotional, but sort of holding it at tempered bay. When I think back now, two years ago to, is it two years ago? No, I got laid off in 2023. What year are we in? I got laid off in 2023. Yeah, so it was in 2023, November of 2023. Wow, that's weird. Okay, you know, I just felt like, yeah, I spent three months I don't know if I want to say at the bottom of a barrel, but I spent three months really lost. I didn't know who I was supposed to be now. I didn't know what job I was supposed to do. I kept interviewing for corporate jobs. I would literally be having panic attacks in the interviews because I was like, I can't do this. This isn't what I want to be doing. I would come home. This is it exactly. Yeah, this is it exactly. There's like a funny story and since you know, I got you as a trapped audience, I feel like I'll tell it, but I'm in the urgent care and I'm crying to this doctor and she's like, okay, tell me what happened. And I said, well, this has been started from about six months ago and I was having trouble breathing and trouble sleeping. And then, you know, I was having panic attacks, but this cat came because he knew I was going to die alone and he was a stray and he didn't want me to. And she's like, sorry, hard time out. just, I just want to track the story here. So you're telling me that you were having health problems for about six months, but it was only when a stray cat came that you realized you were having real health problems that you could die. And this cat was there to save you. And I was like, okay, now you're saying it. I realized that that makes me feel crazy. But then my sister came from Texas and she said the same thing about the cat. She's like, hard time out again. So now your sister is saying, she's like, do you think we need to do a psychological exam? And I was like, no, but I do understand. But that's really where I was is like, I felt like I had nobody. I felt like the only sort of beacon for who I was as a person was my children. And I spent a great deal of time kind of coming back to a place of how do I want to be as a mother? Because I had lost all of that in the beginning years and then sort of bypassed it just in the working hard years and providing for my kids. But how did I want to be as a mother? How did I want to be as a person? So there was sort of this huge reset where I took three months and I was like, I do not want to work in, you know, a corporate office anymore. Don't want to be an executive anymore. and I had been doing coaching now for about 10 years. So that's a story I like bypass really hard, which was at Cal. When I took that first job in, L and D, what they had wanted me to do is sit with the SLT for a group, which had about 11 leaders. and really try to help them through this very challenging budgetary crisis to resource properly. And I had been sitting in these meetings for about six weeks and all of these people, the top top people in their organizations, all they did is fight and they fought ruthlessly. They yelled at each other. There were screaming matches. There was, you know, freeze outs. Like they were not working together at all. And I'm sitting there for six or seven minutes or six or seven weeks going. going to help these people? How am I going to build their organizations to work with each other and to have their people work with each other? So there was this moment where in one of the meetings, everyone just stopped talking. was like this weird, like no one's going to say anything. So I thought it a good idea to start sharing my observations and nobody interrupted me. So I went up to a whiteboard and started drawing maps of like, here's where I thought we could resource share. And here's where I thought that we could do cross training and doing all of this stuff. And I was really feeling myself. And then I kind of turned from the whiteboard and I see everyone looking at me like this. And I go, my God, this is so bad. My boss who's in the room goes, Karlyn, thank you so much. Could you maybe, we'll, we'll talk about this after the meeting. Could you maybe, you know, we'll thank you. There's the door. And I was like, well, that's it. I've been fired. You know, I have no idea now what I'm going to do. You know, I sort of sitting in my cubicle and he comes a hundred percent. I'm like, God, how bad is this? And he said something to me that really did change the course of my life. said, Carlin, have you ever thought about coaching? And I said, yeah, I'm pretty good at sports, but I don't think I could ever teach anybody how to do a sport. And he was like, my gosh, you are probably one of the stupidest people I've ever met. I'm talking about business coaching, which at the time no one had really heard about. It was kind of a new phenomenon. And he said, basically it's being able to bring up challenges and weaknesses and development areas without alienating or making people defensive. And he said, you just have a natural way of telling people the hard truths without making them feel like they're bad people. And he said, I really want to have you explore this. So I'm gonna pay for you to go into a coaching program. So during my first child, did I... go through a six month training program, and then you have to do hundreds of hours of training in order to get certified. So I'm pregnant, I have a baby, I literally complete all of my work at the end in order to get my credentials. So at this point, I've been doing coaching for about 10 years. And I had had clients, pretty much five to 10 clients for forever. I had done some work within organizations very lightly, depending on if my corporate job would allow me. So I kind of had this moment where I thought, I wonder if I could do this all the time. I wonder if me going into organizations and me working with leaders to really not have any confines or boundaries around what the company wants me to do, what the organization wants me to do and do what's best for this team, do what's best for this person. So I put out my shingle in February 1st, 2024, and I'm coming up now to my 12th month, right? So February 1 will be my one year anniversary. having had the most successful year of my professional life, hands down, thank you. And not only that, it was the biggest sort of light, guiding light. I wanna come up with like a better metaphor there, but truth telling that I could do hard things. Like shout out Glennon Doyle, but I did everything on my own. And I say that with like no amount of understanding of how, you know, people interact with me, but I didn't have a partner. I didn't have a corporate job. I had a belief system and I had skills. And so I went out into the world and I said to people, I do this work. Would you refer me? And you know, I'm doing right now my sort of, um, 12 month recap, you know, to prep for my February one sort of debrief to the world. And in that time I did 26 off sites. You know, we still have what's going to happen in January. So that's crazy. I traveled to five or six new countries. I pretty much every month had taken a trip for some component. I've applied for a PhD program. I'll probably be going to school to do something either in leadership studies or in psychology. I really figured out my finances. I figured out co-parenting. I figured out how to work in a corporate field without being internal to a company. And I suddenly became the truest version of myself. And I don't wish this on anyone, so to be fair when someone's like, I don't want to know who I am, this is maybe not the path I would say to take because it was the hardest thing I've ever done. And also. anytime you find yourself, it can be a hard path. Yeah. And that's what this was. And also as I sit here and kind of have these conversations with you and I'm looking back on this map of like not getting to make my own choices, feeling like I was doing things for other people, feeling I was doing something for a system to somehow break out of that and kind of go against everything that everybody tells you you should be doing. So, you know, I'm not thrilled to be a divorced mom of two, but I am thrilled that I have an amazing relationship with My co-parent, he's still the most phenomenal person and we have managed to do something that I don't see a lot of couples being able to do, which is to break up as amicably as you got together. I have a coaching practice and a development business that speaks to people on a level that is completely reminiscent of who do you want to be? Who can you be? How do we get you there? You have your own power. So it's a little bit of science. It's a little bit of, you know, art. I call it, you know, the art of learned intelligence. And I'm setting an example for my kids. I'm setting an example for my friends. I'm setting an example for the people that have been around me that I can do hard things that I know myself that, you know, I'm still as ambitious as ever. I just want to do it in the way that feels right to me, which took me 40 plus years to figure out what that looks like. And yet, I am in my happiest place that I've ever been. I am in my most fulfilled place, my most satisfied place. And as I mentioned earlier, you know, when you stack your dominoes, this time everything has fallen to the positive. It's fallen to you've laid the groundwork and now good things are happening for you. And I think that's how you and I ended up together is that somebody said, Hey, she's great. You would want to talk to her, of which I have talked your ear off for however long. And I'm just feeling so good, you know, and I, you know, Replay this video for me when I call you and I say, things are bad, Kim, things are bad. Wow. It's the worst day ever. You'd like, just replay the part where, you know, on a podcast, you said, this is the best moment. But I think it really is the best season of my life. And I look forward to see what's coming next. I look forward to the companies I get to work with and the friends that I have right now that have been so supportive and wonderful. And I just feel, you know, good. Well, it leads me to my last and final question. What's next for you? If you could wave that magic wand, what do you hope comes next in 2025? yes. I don't know that I have a succinct answer. I don't know that I have like the right answer, which feels appropriate to say for this, but I feel like trusting myself and doing actions and being the person that feels the best to me. And I know now what that means. Like I know how to interact with people. I know who to interact with. know what relationships are really going to serve me versus the ones that look good on paper. I understand what my business is doing. I have had so much success in helping individuals and leaders and teams and organizations grow that I know that this is a skillset that is my own and that it's going to continue to blossom. And I also know that my kids are wonderful and that they are healthy and that they are happy and that I've managed to do a thing that I didn't think was possible. And I will say that, you know, kind of the sky's the limit this year, and I'm going to be pushing that a little bit, but I am looking forward to working with, some new organizations this year, more as a strategic partner, less of, know, like, an offsite specialist. and I am looking forward to sort of taking my life more seriously in the ways that I want to. And we'll see what that looks like, you know, in 12 months from now, but it just feels very calm. It feels very stable. It's like your redwood tree. I just feel like I'm both touching the sun and the roots of the earth at the same time. And, God, it's good, it's good, it's good. It's so good. Well, if people want some of that goodness, where can they find you? Absolutely. Please find me at CLGcoaching.com. There are a lot of different things that will bring you to finding me. So please do. I'm very interested in you. I'm interested in the things that you know, you're going through, whether or not we end up working together. It's always good to have a friend in your corner. And I feel like that's what I am is the ubiquitous friend to everybody. So I do hope that you reach out. Deal, clgcoaching.com will be down in the description. Carlyn, thank you so much for joining. Thank you for telling the story. And we'll see everyone next time. Bye everyone.