We were lucky to catch up with Keri Aaver recently and have shared our conversation below.

Keri, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

My parents were both very entrepreneurial. My mother was an artist and designer and my dad ran his own insurance agency. They were both very extroverted while I was very introverted. Their solution was to help me find a group that I would have interest in and step out of my familiar shell of family and close friends. After several failed attempts (I was kicked out of Bluebirds, Brownies, 4H), they finally got me involved in Junior Achievement as a teenager and the experience helped to open my eyes to what my life could look like if I focused my energies on applying my greatest strengths to anything that I wanted to achieve. It is what led to my interest and eventual participating building my first business venture after graduating from high school.

Keri, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I developed an interest in career development in 6th grade when my aunt (another family entrepreneur) gave me my first copy of What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Bolles and my teacher gave me the book Values Clarification. They saw me as a person filled with potential when most everyone else seemed to just see me as an unfocused, obstinate teenager. I fell in love with all things career and positive psychology related and continued to learn about both well into my adult career journey before I began to apply myself to the work I do now in 2007.

After building several businesses, from a point of purchase advertising company to an entertainment industry home automation business, which led to an international contract to install computer networks into every high school in one west African country, I finally took the leap to focus on doing the work that I had always wanted to do and redeveloped my career and business path to focus on career development leadership in higher education and government workforce development.

It’s my goal to make sure that every person that enters a government, non-profit, or academic career center receives outstanding support that leads to sustainable employment in their chosen career field that is best suited for their individual strengths.

I’m really proud of the America’s Job Center and Community College teams I developed that achieved outstanding placement results for our jobseekers consistently over the 10 years I was serving them as their director. While most job centers were achieving 55-60% placement rates, our center was achieving 85-95% placement rates and had a goal to help every single client that came to us for help to achieve their training and employment goals.

What has come out of that success is a strengths-based approach to supporting jobseekers in efficiently and effectively finding employment by starting with a focus on what’s right rather than starting with a focus on their barriers to success. Once we know their strengths, it’s much easier to build from there to overcome barriers to employment, help them manage their mindsets, and achieve outcomes much greater than many of them had previously though possible.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Every career and business transition requires resilience. It involves having clarity about what you want to offer, who you want to serve, what problem you want to solve, and how you can design your career around your desired life.

When I went through a divorce some years back, I became a single mother with two young daughters, a mortgage I couldn’t afford, and a need to make money even while I was spinning emotionally from the transition. Managing my mindset while I was moving forward and developing a strong support network of family, friends, and professionals further along the journey than I was turned out to be key in my success.

I designed a plan for developing my career that brought me to clarity, defined the journey ahead, directed my focus on where I wanted to end up, designed my professional brand, built a strong professional network based on genuine positive regard, and ultimately set my path for continued growth on the way to achieving my career goals by applying my strengths to the challenge.

It was (and is) rarely easy, but it often feels easy, because I spend a lot of time working in a state of flow, driven by my faith and gratitude. I make the choice every day to go after what I want out of life and maintain the perspective that life is happening for me, not to me. The best advise I can give to others starting a new career or self-employment adventure is to not try to do it alone.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Leadership is a role that requires giving before receiving. If you want to build and lead effective teams, trust that if you support them in applying their individual strengths and authentic selves to their roles, you will end up with the best team possible and outcomes that far exceed your expectations. If you want them to trust you, and you do, then you have to be the one to trust them first.

If you want to show up as your best self as a leader and not lead your teams to burnout, you need to set the example of tending to your own wellbeing also.

If you need a break, take it.

If you need a challenge, choose it.

If you make a mistake, own it and grow from it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.careerwiseconsulting.com
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/keriaaver