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How MYCOOLCAREER.com Happened
I mostly wish MyCoolCareer.com had been around when I was in high school! That pretty much says it. In 1999, I started noticing that I was surrounded by teens and young adults who didn't have directions for their lives ‚ so I decided to create MyCoolCareer.com.
BIO OverviewI was a good student and liked school a lot but I without a clear goal other than that I knew I was going to college. I graduated from college still not having a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. I thought that the right career would poof! magically appear at the right time. I found myself poofless.
To start with, I didn't know who I was in high school ‚ and it's important to have a sense of yourself to prepare for your future. If I had I could have focused and explored all kinds of career ideas, tried on different ones. There are a lot of ways to explore: through getting more information, talking with professionals in different careers, reading, asking questions, volunteering . . . but I didn't get that far. That's why there are online 1) self-assessment tools and 2) career exploration ideas throughout the website.
I cast about for a career to love for six years after college in retail fashion buying and advertising & public relations. Those were perfectly good careers and ones I thought would interest me, but I didn't have the college training I needed in them, so it's hard to know, really. It was good I "tried them on" because I learned quite a bit about each.
Then I landed in business-to-business sales and found a fun, exciting and financially rewarding career that was a good fit for me. For ten years I sold new technologies in wide area data networking for Telenet, Sprint and Cable & Wireless, and learned a lot about different businesses, and made good contacts. Then it was time for a change, to get closer to helping people, and for four years I sold for BI, a company that motivates groups of people to strive for excellence in their attitudes and behaviors. What I learned there has been invaluable to developing MyCoolCareer.
During my last year at BI Performance, I noticed this big gaping need: young adults in high school and college needed to get a passion and direction for their lives so that they could start to prepare for and explore career ideas they would enjoy (just like I needed when I was their age). I was hearing the same questions that had also bewildered me: what kinds of careers are out there & what are they really like, and which ones would be a good fit for me? These are fair questions. My mission:To help youth everywhere discover who they are and what the possibilities are, and to inspire them to explore, and prepare for, them.
The website and webcasts have received praise for their content and unique approach to getting the word out about all the cool careers out there. Barbara Sher, popular career guru, loves MyCoolCareer's focus. CareerProNews.com, a professional national career counselor website recommended the website to school counselors across North America, and the website is endorsed by the Los Angeles Unified School District's Counseling Services K-12.
I've hosted the MyCoolCareer weekly web radio career interview show since June 2001. I am a member of the press with the American Radio Network (ARN) in Los Angeles. My broadcast training includes on-camera interviewing at UCLA, radio hosting at the ARN, and producing talk show segments for KPCC 89.3 FM public radio. I study young adults (12-21), their priorities, and the challenges they face today in preparing for a good education and rewarding career. I speak to and conduct inspirational and practical workshops for young adult groups about career preparation, and also to parent groups about how to help their teens prepare for the workforce. I am fortunate to be involved with experts in teen trends and generational marketing, advertising, career counseling, the Internet, educators, parents of teens and young adults themselves.
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