Re-Energize Your Career with Michele Martin and Rosetta Thurman

Rosetta Thurman (of Perspectives from the Pipeline) and I share a strong passion for professional development. We both see the importance of developing your strengths, skills and knowledge to achieve personal satisfaction and professional excellence. We’re also both interested in the career needs of women and how to support women in the career development process.  A lot of women don’t take the time to invest in themselves and we want to do something about it. So here’s our idea:

We want to run a pilot one-day retreat for about 15 women on a Saturday (9am-5pm) in the Washington, DC area. I am certified by the National Career Development Association as a Career Development Facilitator Instructor and have over 10 years of experience in helping people figure out what they want to do with their lives. I also have a lot of great materials and exercises that we would use during the retreat. We would facilitate the retreat and provide all materials for free and the only cost to participants would be for food and, potentially, meeting space, but we’re working on trying to find something free or very low-cost.

At the retreat, you would work with me, Rosetta and the other participants to go through some self-assessment and goal-mapping exercises to develop a mission statement for your career. We would also help you to develop a practical action plan to implement your career goals. At the end of the day, you would go away with a clear picture of where you want to go next in your career and with some concrete ideas of next steps you could take to achieve that.  This process would be especially empowering for women who have never done a career plan before. 

The retreat would also, we hope, be the beginning of forging some ongoing connections between the women in the group that could be continued and reinforced through online work together, as well as future face-to-face meetings. To support this idea, we are also considering setting up an online social community where you could “meet” your fellow participants prior to the retreat and continue to connect and work with each other following the retreat.

What we’re trying to do now is see if there’s any interest in the idea, as well as get any suggestions for potential dates, logistical thoughts, etc. We’d also be interested in hearing from you about what elements you would want to have in a retreat to make it the most meaningful and useful to you. If you’re at all interested in the idea, please drop me an email. Right now we’re just trying to gauge interest. If enough people want to do it, then we’ll start working on really planning for it so we could be more specific about dates, costs, etc.

Let us know if this sounds like something you'd want to participate in. We'd love to have you!

Comments

[Danielle Blogging for Balanced]

I so wish I lived in that vicinity! I was at one time a Career Counselor and I used to give three day workshops on this very same thing!! I actually use some of my material in my lectures when we get to the decision making chapters ;) I hope you have a great turn out!!

[russburke]

Michele:

I've been a fan of Rosetta Thurman's Perpective from the Pipeline blogsite for only a few weeks and truly enjoy her commentary and viewpoint.

But I was doubly engaged when I saw you and Rosetta will be collaborating to offer "Take Back Your 9 to 5".

Young or beginning nonprofit professionals...men and woman alike...have so few opportunities for profeesional exploration and support, your pilot seems like a significant step in the right direction. Our field needs so much more of this!

I've promo'ed you project on www.sustainablenonprofit.org to help get the word out. Best wishes for a successful project.

[Michele Martin]

Thanks for the great PR on this, Russ--we're really hoping that it takes off. Both Rosetta and I are really committed to providing tools and resources to help with career and professional development and we think that this idea could have a lot of potential. We're particularly excited about the idea of being able to create community and ongoing support, so we'll see how it goes. Thanks again for your support.

And Danielle--I wish you could be with us, too!

[celeste w, studio 501c]

I have similar interests (nonprofits, communications, blogging, and career coaching) and would love to attend, even if it meant flying to D.C. I would also be interested in doing something in Chicago.

Warm regards,
celeste

[Michele Martin]

We'd love to have you, Celeste!

[erin]

This sounds great--I would be interested in learning more and possibly attending! If Chicago is a possibility, that would definitely be easier, but if the date is far enough out to allow for cheap airfare, that might work too.

I'm very excited about hearing more about this idea!