Melissa Withorn

Move Abroad, Keep your Career (& Income)

VP Group Creative Director and Expat Living in Portugal

Complete a skills inventory showing what translates abroad and what needs reinvention or upskilling.

Assess your career's international portability

Get honest numbers on what you need to earn vs. what's realistic in year one, including hidden costs people miss.

Calculate your real financial runway abroad

Leave with three prioritized action items to make your career move-ready before you relocate.

Build your personalized 90-day action plan

You'll walk away with more confidence about what you want next and a roadmap for getting there.

Work/life expert and bestselling author

Simone Stolzoff

IDEO Design Lead and bestselling Author of The Good Enough Job

Cohort 9

Cohort 10

Design Thinking is a creative approach to finding clarity amidst ambiguity. In this course, you'll be guided through how to apply Design Thinking to your own career exploration.The course itself is broken down into four sessions: Ground, Diverge, Converge, and Plan which will help you articulate your values, explore the career possibilities available to you, design experiments to figure out what you want, and plan your short, medium, and long-term next steps.Instead of spinning your wheels about what's next for your career, you'll follow a step-by-step process to determine what you value and plan your next move.

Clarify what you want with the help of Design Thinking

A step-by-step framework for intentional career design

Tips for navigating job searches and career transitions

Research-backed tools becoming more fulfilled and resilient 

Curious explorers who are ready for a change in their life but aren't clear on exactly what they're looking for

Overworked professionals who move a mile-a-minute but don't have the space to take a step back and reflect

Passionate generalists who feel pulled in multiple directions but aren't sure which path they want to choose

Transform Your Career, Transform Your Life﻿In 6 weeks, Career Pivots will guide you to a deeper understanding of your career journey by blending the ancient wisdom of myth, the precision of neuroscience, the insights of astrology, and the mystical understanding of depth psychology. This is not just another career advice course—it’s a transformative experience designed to help you learn about YOU in order to make bold, meaningful decisions about your future. By the end of this course, you’ll go from feeling stuck, uncertain, confused, or overwhelmed to empowered, clear, and ready to take action. You’ll understand not only what to do next—whether that’s quitting, staying, or pivoting—but also why your choices align with your deeper purpose and destiny. This course is for you if you are... → Longing for personal evolution and change.→ Ready for an internal career move or promotion.→ Not sure what is next in your career and feeling lost.→ Thinking about starting a business or creative endeavor.&nbsp;→ Navigating the liminal space following a layoff or resignation.→ Fascinated with discovering your personal myth and authentic expression. I've been exactly where you are... In 2020, my life was turned upside down. I was working at my dream job at Nike, but on the inside I felt disillusioned and unfulfilled. I was longing for something more. Truthfully, I had been longing for years to quit but was too scared and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I pivoted my career 7 times while at Nike, worked across 2 geographies, and held assignments in over 12 countries. I achieved incredible success. But, I had arrived at a place where my work felt more meaningless than ever. I was burnt out and struggling to find any purpose in what I did every day. I was in the throes of what could only be described as a mid-life crisis. And then, life gave me a dose of bitter medicine. In the span of just 6 months, I lost my grandma, my father-in-law, and my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Dealing with intense grief, exacerbated by the effects of a global pandemic, I came face-to-face with the stark reality that life is painfully short. I couldn’t ignore the truth any longer: I was living a life out of alignment with my soul's calling, and something had to change. I started work with a skilled therapist whose guidance and approach—rooted in the body and depth psychology—helped me wake up to the courage I needed to change. And eventually, I made the leap. I left the job I thought I’d always wanted and started my own business—something that felt meaningful, connected, and true to who I was. Since starting my company, I have worked with 7 different iconic brands across 5 different industries, and continue to develop myself in ways I never could have imagined. I am even pursuing a license in psychotherapy - yet another pivot. Now, I’ve taken everything I’ve learned from my process—every messy emotion, every doubt, every tool that helped me—and created Career Pivots, a 6 week digital course to guide others through this same transformation. Welcome to the path less traveled.

Unlock Your Unique Career Destiny Path

Course syllabus

Pre-recorded lectures will be released each week on Tuesday at 9am PST. Projects and discussion posts are due Monday the following week.

Content and Lectures Released on Tuesday's

The course is spacious, but also rigorous. We will journey together for 6 weeks.

6 Weeks

Cohort members will engage in introspective projects and interaction discussion posts on a weekly basis.

Weekly Projects and Discussion Posts

Over the course of the program, there will be two live-online group coaching sessions held via Zoom. Both sessions will be recorded for those who cannot attend.

Two Live Group Coaching Calls + Q&A

Course schedule

For those on the THRESHOLD. That deeply uncomfortable liminal space of in-between. In-between what was and what will be next.

For the Dreamers and Doers. With a desire to embrace myth, neuroscience, astrology, and depth psychology as New tools to guide your life.

For the Stuck Ones, hanging by a thread. Tired of feeling disillusioned, confused, powerless, and knowing you were born for something.

Who is this course for

What you’ll get out of this course

Discover your personal myth, astrological placements, archetypes. Identify the narrative that’s shaping your current career story.

Clarity and Purpose

Gather unique tools, based in psychology, to learn about yourself, understand what matters to you, and make a clear decision and transition with confidence.

Mystical Tools for Understanding and Transition

Understand what's holding you back. Break free from fear and self-doubt with practical tools to JUST DO IT. Whether it’s quitting your job, staying with intention, or launching a bold new path.

Confidence, Courage, and Mindset Shifts

Develop a clear, actionable plan to execute your next career move with precision.

Momentum and Direction

6 weeks. 
Rich in myth. 
Backed by neuroscience, astrology, & depth psychology. 
Find out who you are and JUST DO IT - quit, stay, pivot.

Brittney Van Matre

Cohort 2

Cohort 3

Define your niche, services, pricing, and business development rhythm so consulting becomes stable and aligned with the life you want. 

Former COO | Social Impact Strategy

The Global Fund

The Children's Investment Fund Foundation

Gavi

WHO Foundation

OECD ️ Better Policies for Better Lives

Kelsi Kriitmaa, PhD 

Former COO, strategist and coach with 20+ years in consulting and social impact

Portfolio Career Playbook for Social Impact Professionals - Cohort 1 (Jan 2026)

WHAT TO EXPECT8+ hours of live learning: Two 60-minute sessions each week for four weeks, a live lesson on Tuesdays and office hours on Thursdays. The course is designed to fit alongside full-time work and gives you focused, actionable guidance without overwhelm.Each Live Lesson blends practical frameworks, sector-specific examples, and live coaching to help you apply the concepts right away. Office Hours offer space to refine your niche, services, pricing, business development rhythm, and visibility strategy with real-time support. This is where we unblock challenges and deepen your confidence.Assignments are short and targeted, typically requiring 1 to 4 hours per week depending on your goals, available time, and stage of your consulting practice. Each assignment builds toward a final Portfolio Career Roadmap.You’ll learn by observing real-time coaching, doing the exercises yourself, and engaging with peers who are building their consulting practice alongside you. This course gives you the clarity, structure, systems, and confidence to build a consulting practice that works, on your terms, in your season of life.

Go from uncertain to clear, confident, and running a sustainable practice.

Define a clear consulting niche that clients understand

Package services that are easy to sell and deliver

Price your work confidently and sustainably

Build a simple, repeatable business development rhythm

Use your network strategically without feeling salesy

Design a portfolio career beyond pure consulting

It ensures you can apply the frameworks immediately to real client needs, sector norms, and context-specific challenges.

Experience in social impact or adjacent fields

Building a sustainable business requires growth through consistent steps; even tiny actions each week build clarity, confidence, momentum

Willingness to invest 3-4 hours / week

We work on positioning, pricing, and visibility, so being able to articulate your ideas clearly accelerates your progress.

Comfort communicating in English

For social impact professionals who want clearer services, confident pricing, and a stable consulting pipeline.

For new and current consultants who feel unclear, underpaid, or inconsistent and want a practice they can rely on.

For mission-driven experts ready to build a sustainable consulting practice aligned with their values and life.

Go from full-time tech worker to successful solopreneur and launch your client-ready business in 2 weeks.

Cohort 1

Tech pro who replaced salary going solo

GitHub

Neo4j

Vail

Clair Sullivan

20+ year tech veteran who who created a successful solo business from scratch.

You're competing with thousands of applicants for every role, submitting hundreds of applications that go nowhere. Meanwhile, going out on your own feels terrifying because no one's shown you how to make money at it. You've got the skills companies need, but you're stuck applying instead of converting your expertise into income.Here's what I learned: I started my GenAI business in less than 24 hours and replaced my corporate income in less than a week. That timeline might not be typical, but here's what is: building your own business is often faster than landing another corporate job when you have the right framework. Most tech professionals waste months figuring this out alone. This course gives you the exact system. You'll learn how to calculate your required income, design the right business model for your expertise (freelance, consulting, fractional, or product), set up operations, develop a client acquisition strategy, and set rates. Complete the optional capstone and you'll go live with your business by the end of the course! Whether you're employed or laid off, you'll have everything you need to start generating revenue from your expertise.

Tech layoffs keep coming, and the job market is a nightmare

Apply the Financial Readiness Framework to determine your income requirements

Design your personalized solopreneur model for your tech expertise

Set up your business operations and infrastructure

Develop your client acquisition strategy and set competitive rates

A big portion of what we will be talking about is leveraging your network. So it will help to have worked a corporate job or two already.

Tech workers with a few years of experience working for a company/in corporate

Senior ICs and managers who are worried about layoffs and want to build a business that replaces their corporate salary.

Tech workers between jobs who want to replace their salary through independent work, not through another vulnerable corporate role.

Managers and ICs creating career stability who want to build a side business now that can become primary income if they get laid off.