How a Banker Reinvented Herself

When I first met Vivian Chen, she was an investment banker. She had spent eight years working her way up the ranks to vice president. She had become an expert in her area of coverage, health care. Her staff numbered 100. And she had a global purview.

And then Vivian became one of the many casualties of the financial crisis. That’s when she came to see me.

I had been working in the public relations industry, with a focus on corporate communications. Since the recession began, I had also started to feel somewhat of a career coach, with so many friends of friends aspiring to move into PR. I found myself conducting informational interviews on a regular basis. Most of them were fairly standard introductory conversations, and I usually never heard from them again…

Artifacts from Your Former Life

For me, it’s a stash of overflowing bags crammed full of papers, pens, Post-It notes, trinkets, cards received, file folders, business cards.

For Sara, one of my co-founders, it’s boxes that contain art that once hung on the walls.

Everyone leaves their office with the bits and pieces that made up their former work life – how do you keep those artifacts from your former life from languishing, merely detritus of the old you?

Sara took her art and worked it into her apartment, combining the before and now. I’ve still got the bags waiting for me to sort through and toss.

Cards of Change has another idea for purging without purging: Use your business card, a symbolic signifier of who you are, to create change in your life.