General Assembly | Taking the Leap and Finding Your Exit Strategy

Once you’ve made the difficult decision to change your job, the process of preparing for this transition can be daunting. How can individuals protect their mental health, professional connections, and financial stability while navigating a career change?

This panel will feature career coaches and career changers to share their experiences and insights into the most important factors in a successful career change.

This is the third in a four-part series held in collaboration with Empathy in Tech. Check out the other events in this series here.

• how individuals have been able to navigate even the most unconventional career shifts into the tech world.
• necessary precautions to protect financial stability and mental health in a career transition.

To join the conversation across all four events in this series, join the Empathy in Tech Discord.

Lisa Dubler (she/her) is a Career Coach at General Assembly where she helps career changers cultivate authentic personal brands and build effective job search strategies to land opportunities in the fields of UX, software engineering, and data science. At Lisa Dubler Coaching,(https://lisadublercoaching.com/), she helps leaders to thrive at work and beyond.

Prior to joining GA, Lisa was part of the Human Resources team at The Washington Post where she built partnerships that elevated The Post’s talent brand for women in tech. She began her career in the nonprofit sector, organizing arts and culture programming at Sixth & I, a historic synagogue in Washington, D.C. Lisa’s work in career coaching has been featured in Idealist and Ladies Get Paid.

Joe is a lifelong problem solver and enjoys a good challenge. He has a background as a mechanic and troubleshooting is his passion. He’s found that those skills serve him well as a coder. He completed the Software Engineer Immersive course in December 2020 and is excited to help others learn…In his free time he enjoys kayaking, rebuilding old Jeeps, and camping with his family.

Nick Heggestad is a UX Designer that specializes in human-centered design and design strategy. He currently works at Thrivent Financial, where he is focused on creating customer experiences that help members reach their higher purpose. Prior to joining Thrivent, Nick worked in the Automotive space where his work included customer facing experiences (both digital and retail) and designing software solutions for dealerships. Nick believes that most problems can be solved through listening, learning and a little bit of common sense.

Prior to UX, Nick spent over a decade in theatre production design and management and his work has been seen on stages across the country including the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and on Broadway. Outside of work, Nick enjoys hiking, listening to music, and spending time with his husband and their three pups.

Fun Fact: Nick’s first job after college was with Disney on Ice, touring the east coast with High School Musical: The Ice Tour.

Nick is a graduate of General Assembly’s UX Design Immersive program (2018).

Empathy in Tech is an inclusive space for people who care about both empathy and technology to collaborate, learn, and share.