Hi, It's Me

The Individual Behind "Individual Contributor"

Hi. It’s me.

Can you say “rural juror” without sounding drunk? How about “career trajectory”?

I recently read a piece by a recruiter on why she never asks about employment gaps and layoffs during an interview. Instead, she focuses on other things, like career trajectory.

I haven’t been in the corporate world for much time, despite my lengthy work history. While earning my master’s degree in publication design, I did odd jobs—some script and ad writing, some billing—at a two-person ad agency (for the guy who hired me based on my “Oooh! Pick me!” cover letter). When I graduated, my boss’s gift was letting me go because I was “too good for this job.” I immediately landed an adjunct teaching gig at University of Baltimore.

That time Resurrection was all that. (Beer can angel and photograph by me.)

Fortunately, the woman upstairs who ran a one-person design firm invited me to join her company, and we made quite a team. We were formidable. We got a bigger studio, landing enough work that we were both paid well. She concentrated on schmoozing and selling, and I concentrated on making things.

Some years later, she moved to PA with her family, and I had a baby and started freelancing, much of it for her, taking a little time off teaching. I went on like that, with extra teaching gigs at Towson University, for the entirety of my child’s elementary and junior high education.

All I had ever wanted to be was a writer and a tenured college English professor, so I enrolled in Goucher’s MFA program to get a terminal degree in nonfiction writing. I quit teaching to write my book, which was published by Simon & Schuster about a year after I graduated.

Life Goal: Complete.

I knew the MFA wouldn’t be enough, but now I had a real book! But the local competition was stiff and the opportunities infrequent. I was not leaving Baltimore, either.

In 2011, about two years later, I was diagnosed with a very mild form of lymphoma. I didn’t want to sit around and think about it, so a friend helped me get a job with Medifast. That was my official introduction to corporate life. I spent four years there writing comms plans for product launches and campaigns for every segment of our company (consumers, our MLM health coaches, center locations, physician partners, and our customer care team). I wrote ads, emails, and MLM convention scripts for our C-suite; I even edited a bestseller. I also acted as company photographer and proposed and brought to life recipe card sets with photos of our products made into other things.

After four years, another friend recruited me to work with his company as a marketing and communications manager. I had one direct report and enjoyed my five years with Avesis writing dental and vision newsletters, emails, website content, brochures, and thought leadership content until the company was about to be sold for the second time. My supervisor had gone to work at our sister company and took me along with her as a content marketing manager.

There was little room for leadership growth at any of these companies, but I was perfectly happy being an individual contributor! I loved what I did at AbsoluteCare—writing white papers and comms plans, laying out brochures and flyers, designing campaigns for our members and recruitment team. I loved the human interest stories I wrote about our members and doctors. It was the feel-goodest of all the feel-good gigs. I had hoped to retire there.

During my tenure, I wrote a LinkedIn post about the value of individual contributors like me: people who just want to do great work. It seemed that every article I read on LinkedIn, every corporate initiative, every bit of career advice pointed to the importance of leadership training. But not everybody is cut out to be a people leader. And even if we were, some of us really like having our hands in batter. Besides, if everyone is a leader, who’s left to be led?

(Ironically, at the time I was laid off, I was nominated for leadership training, which I had only just begun. I attended the first meeting while vacationing in North Carolina because I was so excited.)

I’ve been an artist and a writer all my life. Making useful and beautiful things was and is my greatest asset, and I have performed those functions like an innovative leader of thing-making. Should I be punished for not wanting to trade it for back-to-back meetings and delegation of the work I love?

“F Sharp Major,” lamp with horn, doll parts, metal junk, antique tin (SOLD)

In other words, my career trajectory is flat, but it does not need resuscitation. Under that line is an excited, enthusiastic heart beating. Being an individual contributor has given me the life I’ve wanted. I’m the architect and the builder. I take projects from concept to construct.

“Solar Plexus,” mixed media mosaic on plexiglass and Wedi board

These days, I’m only applying to jobs I know I can do exceptionally and which seem enjoyable and challenging. So If you happen to find my applications in your pile of 943 others, please don’t toss it because of my career trajectory when there are so many good reasons to call me: my storytelling, my great sense of humor, my loyalty, my grit, and my refusal to bend the knee and lick the boot of this immoral administration.