I was raised in a typical American middle-class home… with a few variations. My mom and dad met teaching at South High School in Bakersfield, California. Dad had been married before. I had a one sister and four brothers. I was the oldest for mom and the first that dad raised, the guinea pig child. My parents divorced when I was 13 and all of the kids ended up with dad.

On Spring break in my senior year of high school I convinced my dad to let me travel on my first solo vacation to the beach at Cambria. It was a hard-won victory, but fate crushed this joyous triumph. My vacation turned into a month-long stay in the hospital with a broken back, nearly paralyzed, and a separated knee resulting from a blown tire and a perilous tumble 800 feet down a mountain. I learned at a very young age that every day is precious and tomorrow is not guaranteed.

Bakersfield, where I grew up, is an oil town. The horizon is lined with smoke stacks spewing hazy brown clouds. The air is thick and reeks of burnt petroleum. No one had to bury me with climate change data, I knew this was wrong. I wanted to do something to fix it, but at that time there were no degrees offered in sustainability. The term wouldn’t be invented for a couple of decades.

Yearning to do something meaningful, I had a hard time figuring out a way to have a fulfilling profession. Being young and naïve, and before the internet, I was told by a college financial advisor that I was not eligible for loans because my parents made too much money. I had to figure out a career path to take that was offered at my local university. I was good at math, so I majored in finance. It was easy and jobs paid well.

My husband David was a manager at a Good Guys electronics store and was transferred to Fresno during the penultimate semester of my senior year. We sold our house, moved and a month later, he was fired. I had already been accepted at Fresno State to finish my degree and had a part-time job in marketing at Payroll People. Defeated, I had to drop out and get a full-time job at a bank. David refused to work for another ten years while I supported us and worked my way up the corporate ladder.

Now in the Bay Area in California I was the world-wide Budget Manager at Autodesk, a large software company. I had reached the ceiling of what I could achieve in finance without a degree, let alone an MBA. The work was filled with number crunching and endless deadlines. My reports went to the Securities and Exchange Committee, the Executive Staff and the Board of Directors. They had to be flawless. Stress levels were high.

A new manager, Juliana, was hired from outside the company. She was determined to be on the promotional fast track. One person in my department, Richard, transferred to sales and marketing and she fired another. She gave all of their job responsibilities to me. I was overburdened with the work of three positions. Juliana told the VP of Finance that she had streamlined the workload so much that she was able to reduce her department headcount by 33%. The workload hadn’t changed at all, except I was now working 100 hours a week. This went on for months as my life withered away and migraines became a frequent visitor.

As if this wasn’t enough stress, I found out David was having an affair. It wasn’t the first; there had been many flings before. This one was the most humiliating. Now managing a Bed, Bath and Beyond, when I would go to his store and ask for him, I would be told, “David doesn’t have a wife, we know this for a fact”. His mistress was the mother of one of the employees. While in the store David would ignore me like I didn’t exist.

With all of the trials at work and home, I had been going to regular sessions with a counselor to decompress. Dr. Sherman guided me to determine what would make my life happy and fulfilled. Was staying with my cheating husband making me happy? Was a number-crunching job with untenable hours and constant deadlines fulfilling? Dr. Sherman helped me acknowledge the power of change was solely in my hands. The changes would be big, difficult, and scary, but this was the only way to truly be happy. The reminder was etched in my brain, “tomorrow is not guaranteed”.

Taking that leap of faith meant giving up a solid career making a good living. It wasn’t until I finally filed for divorce that I had the courage to make that jump. I moved to Phoenix to be near family.

I found out ASU has a School of Sustainability, what I was always passionate about. I could go back and finish that undergraduate degree, now in a field I loved.

Tuition was no longer $500 a semester like when I originally when to college. It would take 2 ½ years of requirements to get that degree and a major financial investment. I was older now. It wouldn’t be as easy to get a job as it used to be, in a totally new field where I had no experience. I was taking a big risk.

In order to off-set the costs, I looked for a part-time job. Everywhere I applied I was told “you’re overqualified”. My career advisor suggested I look for jobs on campus where hiring managers would not be deterred by my experience. Hourly wages ranging from $8-10 wouldn’t help much with my grown-up expenses. I finally found a job that paid about a third of what I was accustomed to. I stripped down my life to essentials and dug in for the long haul.

In January 2013 during my Sustainable World class, the professor Dr. Remington-Doucette announced that GreenLight Solutions, a new student sustainability consulting organization, was recruiting for members. My goal was to be a sustainability consultant, this sounded like something I should check out.

Getting in at its inception, I was able to help establish and develop the structure of the organization. It grew quickly, revealing the unfilled need on campus. After two years of continual refinement and growth, we knew it was time to take the next step and rollout to universities nationwide. With over thirty years of experience, it was logical for me to helm the launch the nonprofit parent organization. I applied for the competitive SEED SPOT social venture incubator program and we were chosen. Everything was coming together, the career change, the sacrifices, were all resulting in something meaningful.

Upon completion of my graduate degree of Executive Masters in Sustainability Leadership, I will embark upon a new journey as I apply the knowledge and skills I’ve acquired to help bring about the change that I wish to see in the world. Providing students across the nation with the opportunity to apply their theoretical knowledge of sustainability with local business who want to become more sustainable is my next call to adventure. It will bring new challenges, villains, fog, and crevasses. I will find a mentor to help me navigate the new road of trials to arrive at my next victory.