I recently sat down with my old friend Yvette Burton on The Will to Change, and our conversation left me thinking about the nature of reinvention. Twenty-five years ago, when we first met, I was transitioning from opera singer to organizational consultant, and she was blazing trails at IBM, one of very few Black women with a PhD in the company at that time.
What strikes me now is how Yvette has maintained that pioneer spirit. At a time when many would rest on their laurels after an illustrious career in human capital and DEI, she’s diving into cybersecurity. Not just dipping her toes in – she’s enrolled in a technical bootcamp at Columbia, writing scripts, and learning penetration testing. When she mentioned being “undoubtedly a rare gem” in her classes, I could feel both her humor and her courage.
Her journey to investigating cybersecurity started with an offhand comment from a neighbor who saw something in her background that she hadn’t seen herself. It reminded me of that moment when someone suggested I look into training and development after losing my singing voice – how a casual observation can illuminate a whole new path.
What I love about Yvette’s approach is her systematic wisdom. She described methodically reaching out to her network in concentric circles – from close colleagues to conference acquaintances – not with desperate networking energy, but with genuine curiosity and openness to possibility. “Your next opportunity,” she told me, “is going to be somebody that wants to work with you and will make a way to work with you.”
As she learns about new domains, I especially love the questions she’s asking in those meet-ups. “I am not following you – tell me more about that?” is something maybe our ego suppresses, especially if we’ve spent many years considered a knowledgeable expert, but Yvette knows how invaluable these kinds of questions are.
This feels particularly relevant as many of us wrestle with change – whether chosen or forced upon us. Yvette’s insight that “you should always be running towards something, not away from a situation” hit home for me. I’ve been wrestling with my own evolution, questioning what comes next after two decades of building something I’m proud of.
Perhaps most powerful was her grandmother’s wisdom about the sock in the dryer – how what feels like chaos from the inside often has a clear pattern when viewed from outside. Her seventh-grade-educated grandmother was teaching her chaos theory without knowing it, offering a metaphor we could all use right now.
For those of us at inflection points in our careers (and isn’t that most of us these days?), Yvette offers a masterclass in how to approach transformation:
– Honor the social capital you’ve built while being open to new directions
– Be willing to be both expert and beginner simultaneously
– Recognize that your past experience, even if not directly related, provides valuable perspective
– Stay curious about where your unique combination of skills might be needed
You can listen to my full conversation with Yvette here where we explore these themes and more. Her story reminds me that it’s never too late to begin again, and that our greatest strengths often lie not in what we know, but in how we approach what we don’t know.
I’d love to hear from you: What unexpected directions are calling to you? What would you explore if you trusted that your experience would serve you in new ways?