Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to get paid to think.
It's true! When looking at colleges, I told my mom my dream job was simply to be asked what I thought about things—especially what I thought about humans. I started as a Cognitive Science major, then narrowed down to Sociology.
Almost 10 years later, I'm still finding ways to get paid for how my brain works. But I've also run into a particular dilemma on this journey.
I realized I am the kind of leader who leads through discovery.
I lead by testing things out. By having the courage to take the first step in the darkness. By sharing what I’m doing now, rather than what I did ten years ago.
The sandbox is where I come up with my most transformative ideas. If you spend any amount of time around me, you're bound to catch a free gem that flies out of my mouth. I'm used to hearing, “You just completely changed the way I think about this.”
But for a long time, I struggled to communicate the value of that.
I was comparing myself to the "Guru Leadership" I saw online—the kind of authority that comes from tenure, linear steps, and guaranteed results. The one that tells you: “Follow my exact steps and you can have what I have.”
When it came to advocating for myself, I hated the part where I had to "prove" my value through tenure rather than the metrics I actually excelled at: my ability to synthesize information, build strong frameworks, and navigate the unknown.
I began to ask: How do I command trust based on those metrics?
In other words—can I get people to pay me to try new things?
I think many of us, especially multi-hyphenates whose careers are designed to evolve as they do, come up against this wall.
But the timing is perfect now.
As old institutions fail and the world becomes more uncertain, the market is no longer looking for people who have "the answer" from 2015. They are looking for sharp thinkers capable of navigating the ambiguity of 2026. I think this is exactly what multi-hyphenates are built for.
I’ve spent the last few months codifying this shift. I wanted to understand how to be confident in this skillset and actually leverage it in the work I do moving forward.
I put together a strategy deck to explain it.
Leading in the Dark (Part 1 of my Future of Work series) covers:
- Why "Guru" leadership is expiring
- The rise of the "Pioneer" leader (and why it’s valuable right now)
- The 3 new metrics of trust that multi-hyphenates need to excel at to build their credibility
