Nonlinear Teal

Shay Loko began her professional life pursuing a law degree because it made sense to her—but near completion of the degree, she realized what she actually wanted was something that would help her create connections through her day-to-day life. From sales to a consulting job out of Ireland, to where she is now as a senior account manager in a tech company helping others find jobs in their fields of passion, she’s learned that you should be deliberate, clear, and confident in planning your future and building your personal brand. She’s always believed that every experience is valuable; what matters are what you put into it and what you focus on getting out of it. Follow Shay as she accounts the extraordinary trajectory of her life post-law school.

After graduating from college with a degree in English, Natalie Sportelli took on a series of internships—most notably at Forbes, where she later accepted a full-time position as an editor (and the first under the age of 30). She found herself especially inspired by founders and startups, and got to work more directly with them when she moved from journalism to venture capital. Through multiple career pivots, she has had to re-establish her personal brand with her expertise in each new space. Follow along as Natalie recounts her professional life and how her internship experience ultimately informed her career.

Laura Brounstein is a storyteller, having taken up a deep interest in stories through books and other mediums from a young age. She found her way to her career path through politics, television, magazines, real estate—and now tech. Her life’s through-line is that she was able to propel herself from editing stories to helping brands (and even presidential campaigns) find unique, fresh ways to tell their stories. Join Laura as she details the major turns in her life that led her to become the Senior Vice President of Brand and Creative at Clear.

Sally Rogers has gone through multiple major career shifts in her professional life—from academia to banking, consulting, and, most recently, entrepreneurship. Through it all, she began to understand her own interests and motivations, and began to see building a career as an effort existing in tandem with self-exploration. Through this introspection, she ended up leaving behind the corporate world and creating her first startup company, finding herself happier and more unshackled than ever before. She’s learned the importance of following her dreams in her career, as well as the necessity of learning who she is outside of her professional life. Listen as Sally takes you from her darkest moments to the amazing place where she is today—the founder and CEO of Parsnip!

Alexa Meyer, the Co-Founder and CEO of Coa, has approached her career from the mindset of wanting to build something herself someday. Early in her career, she was recruited into a sales role, which later led her to work for Interbrand, the world’s largest brand strategy company. That experience gave her an understanding of how Fortune 500 companies build brands and marketing strategies that keep them relevant in our constantly changing world.

Later, Alexa used her network to find a position in marketing at a startup, working closely with the founders and using it as a learning experience to better understand the challenges and pitfalls of running a company. In this episode, Alexa reveals her journey from selling McDonald's toys door-to-door to her leap into the world of startups and her role as Co-Founder and CEO of Coa, which is fighting the stigmatization of mental health and working toward getting people as proactive about it as they are about their physical health.

Rebekah Bastian, the Co-Founder and CEO of OwnTrail, started off her professional life with a mechanical engineering degree because she wanted to be an inventor. She ended up realizing it wasn’t what she expected, and later got a job with Microsoft as a program manager. After about three years there, she sought something different from a large, corporate environment. That’s how she ended up at a new startup called Zillow, where she worked for the next 15 years, essentially touching every part of the company. Rebekah then wrote a book, which ended up becoming an entire startup—and she left her career to pursue it.