On Thursday, November 10th, Dallas SWE hosted a Career Shift Panel at Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse. Barbara Read was our moderator and the panelists consisted of Shelley Stracener, Zaineb Ahmad, Amanda Alsbrook and Rana Karimi, all past and present Dallas SWE Presidents. The panel began with introductions and a question for all panelist: When did you know it was time for a change? For Amanda, it came down to having a work-life balance, with her traveling all the time it eventually became taxing and needed a better lifestyle. Shelley brough up attending SWE conference and being introduced to other industries, networking at conference is a great way to find your first career job and find like minded women that support each other throughout the years. Zaineb, mentioned burnout being a key factor of her choosing to leave her role, working at a smaller company she had to wear many different hats and it was starting to project outwards to where close friends would advise her it was time for a change, and she deserves and can do better. Rana’s industry chance came through the oil & gas recession at that time her company was going through layoffs and Rana wanted to be prepared and started looking for a new role. While landing the next role everyone agreed the main challenge, they faced was having to prove themselves but like Zaineb mentioned, you now have more transformable skills you’re bringing to the table and do have what it takes to drive change. Rana’s recent role away from engineering brought on the biggest risk in her career path it was a decision that she knew “it would be hard to go back to engineering”, but the opportunity was too good to pass on. Rana was able to define her new role, influence change quicker by reporting to executive team directly, and problem-solving supply chain issues every day. In the case of all our panelists their challenges are not failures, and they have in a better place in their careers.
The panel concluded with Q&A from the attendees, driving the conversation to thoughts around working in a startup company (having more visibility with executive team) vs fortune 500 corporate company (may get lost with in more employees, more politics, but do get involve with ERGs and find advocates that will have your back). Shelley ended with advice on starting a new role which may turn into another panel discussion for us in the near future.
