20something profile: Luisa

This post was written by Luisa, who works with artificial intelligence and is a career coach:

Before graduating, I’d always thought I’d join one company and work my way to the top over the next two decades. The past few years could not have been more different. I’ve been a business analyst, a startup entrepreneur, an artificial intelligence analyst, and now a success coach.

I graduated in 2010 from Princeton with a degree in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Robotics. With a record of academic success under my belt, I fully expected to continue my success in the “real world.”

I could not have been more wrong.

During my first-year rotation program, I thought I’d won the career lottery when I was placed directly under the management of a senior executive. My new mentor told me I had talent, and I was thrilled when she started giving me more responsibilities and taking me to meetings with other senior executives.

Then the company restructured, and they let my manager go, dissolved her team, and placed me under a new manager who had no knowledge of my work.

A year into my first job, I was back at square one.

I started over and did everything I’d done before, but over the next few months, I watched as my peers were promoted while I was repeatedly told that I wasn’t ready.

Never one to give up easily, I was determined to figure out what I was missing. I started researching the topics of business, human resources, and psychology. At the same time, I developed a startup that taught me invaluable lessons about entrepreneurship, marketing, and communication.

Applying what I had learned, I found a new job in an industry I had no experience in, increased my salary by 32%, and got promoted within a year.

While I was overjoyed with my new career, it broke my heart that so many young professionals were struggling with similar problems.

I started mentoring women who were feeling lost in the corporate world, giving them the strategic advice and direction they needed to get ahead.

It turns out this was my calling. I started professionally coaching and established CareeringIt so I could share my formula for career success with women around the world and experience the reward of helping them get the promotions and salary increases they deserve.

Having experienced so many career changes in the past few years, multiple times pursuing simultaneous careers at once, I’m finally starting to understand how different we are from our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Not only are we a multi-passionate generation: we are also freedom seekers, demanding to live our lives on our own terms and willing to work for our dreams.

Join me on our journey to figure it out and achieve our dreams. Visit me at www.luisazhou.com

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