In my first career, I was a lawyer. I enjoyed my work for the first several years, but increasingly I felt that it was out of alignment with my passions and interests. I represented corporations, not real people. And often, I didn’t believe in the issues about which I was asked to advocate.

So I changed careers. I have always been drawn to writing — when I was younger I thought I’d write fiction, maybe plays. But after having a career in the world of facts, I was drawn to nonfiction, specifically journalism. My transformation took several years and quite a lot of hard work, but in time I left the legal field and established myself as a freelance journalist, author, speaker and educator (teaching writing to others.)

In that stage of my career, I wrote a book (“One Person/Multiple Careers”), a column and blog for The New York Times, scores of newspaper and magazine articles, a blog for Yahoo! (“Working the New Economy”). I also traveled around the country speaking about career issues.

With that first career change, I moved more towards the kind of meaningful work I’d like to always be a part of my life. But I believe that people need to constantly tweak and transform. So I’ve recently made yet another change. I’ve joined Civic Ventures as a Senior Fellow. In this job, I will still focus on career issues — and I’ll still write, speak and educate others — but for the first time I’ll be doing that as part of an organization with a mission far greater than just helping people to change careers. I will be helping people to change the world. And that feels pretty good!