As an outsider, breaking into an industry can often seem like an impossible challenge and so we reached out to some very generous folks who agreed to share their stories of how they broke into their respective industries.

Alicia Tetteh

In social work, a large part of our work is the internship or placement experience. Whether you receive your Bachelor of Social Work or Master of Social work, internship/field education is the hands on learning experience that takes place. The purpose is to connect what students are learning in the classroom to what will potentially happen once they have matriculated out of school and working. My first job in the field was offered by my internship before I graduated. Read more>>

Tyanna Choyce

It is actually crazy how everything worked out for me. I was in the process of becoming a life insurance agent and I needed to get some paperwork notarize. I used to work for a law firm as a legal case manager and I came across a lot of documents that needed notary or was already notarized. I knew two friend who notarized documents and I reached out to one of them to get my documents notarized so I could become a life insurance agent. While I watched the process on her notarizing my paperwork and I started asking questions like what’s the purpose of all of this, Read more>>

Lynn Fredericks

I was a food and wine write and restaurant consultant when i found myself divorced and a single mom of two very young sons in New York City. This freelance work went well when i was married, but it was challenging due to many nights out once i was on my own with my boys. When the youngest was just two years old, he was clinging to me leg in the kitchen as a tried to prepare dinner. It felt like one more job on a long day and he was driving me a bit crazy, whining and wanting to be picked up. Read more>>

Jim Grant

I had resolved to leave my 20+ year IT career position, as I was disillusioned with the lack of anything truly meaningful or personally rewarding about our work or why we did it. I had met the founder Maison de Naissance, the maternal and infant health center in rural Haiti which I work for now, at a presentation he gave about its inception. Two years later I met him again, and after asking him several questions about how it operated, Read more>>

Samantha Cox

I always say, I didn’t find thrive. Thrive found me. I was 27 years old. I was a salon owner with a 4 year old and a 2 year old. My husband was a firefighter, and I was basically the definition of exhaustion! I was not looking for a new business. I was desperately searching for energy! I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was hitting the snooze button too many times, running late, drinking too much coffee and eating too much fast food. Read more>> 

Latrina Piper

They say when you know something is just for you, then you know. I have always been intrigued with the medical field. I originally wanted to be a general surgeon but after having kids that has went out of the picture, ha! One of the best moment of schooling for me was when I was in the Medical assistant program for about a year. It was a difficult time for me, with having given birth a few months prior to that and all of the other issues I was facing at that time. Read more>>