Transition – My Story, Development Space and Career Insights.

I have never truly shared publicly about my career transition journey. How am I suddenly a development sector champion? How am I providing both full-time and advisory services, especially in administration and operations for Nonprofits and Social Enterprises?

You don’t need to go too far. If you go through my LinkedIn profile, you’ll see that I have a full technology background with two degrees in computer science, worked a full-time job in the tech space, and even volunteered for technology advancement, especially for children to be tech proficient at an early age and maybe become tech gurus themselves by training and being a tech school administrator. But then came the almighty 2020, the year the world changed and my mission on Earth changed.

I voluntarily quit my full-time tech career path and decided I was going into the third sector, my strong drivers around then were education, human rights, and policy-making. Little wonder, I am a champion of what The Destiny Trust does. I volunteered at Ideation Hub Africa and attended some of their major training events such as the development dialogue, the African Master Class series and the recent visioning retreat for NGOs and social enterprises. When I quit my full-time role, I was actively volunteering in the third sector, and attending every training and dialogue I could then, that’s when I also discovered The School of Politics Policy and Governance and became a member of the pioneer cohort before proceeding to full-time job roles in organizations championing good governance, human rights and social justice.

With 5 years of experience in the development sector, every day I discover and become more fully convinced that there is a need for more sustainable impact-making organizations that understand systems and structures as part of what makes them equally fit as the for-profit counterparts and other sectors.

More importantly, what my career transition five years ago has taught me is captured in 5 short points below:

• You can always start over again and chart a new course for yourself.
• Having a posture and position of service whether in a full-time or volunteer role fast-tracks your career progression.
• No matter how new a space or sector may seem, you will always find correlatives, and if you give yourself more to learning by observation, you’ll discover areas of need you can fit in.
• It’s in the mundane, seemingly difficult, and everyday tasks that ideas and visions are birthed.
• Leaders who create hands-on growth opportunities should be treasured by anyone who is transitioning or just starting a career journey.