Beyond the Pivot: Redefining Leadership Through Reinvention
When Leadership Meets Reinvention
This year has demanded something deeper of us. It has asked us to confront change head-on and rediscover the parts of ourselves that leadership alone can’t define.
This conversation is personal for me. Earlier this year, I experienced a layoff after more than a decade in federal leadership. Like so many others, I was forced to pause and ask myself who I was without the mission and what kind of leader I wanted to become. That shared reality brought me together with three extraordinary women leaders at the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) International Conference (ICON) 2025 in Washington, D.C., for a conversation that became greater than we imagined.
Our session, Beyond the Pivot: How Government Communicators Reinvented Their Careers and Voice, was built around a simple but powerful idea: reinvention often begins where disruption leaves us. It invited a candid reflection on purpose, identity, and how we rebuild in the aftermath of change.
At the heart of our conversation was a question so many are facing. What do you do when the institution you’ve poured your heart and energy into no longer has space for you? For hundreds of federal communicators and public-sector professionals, that question defined 2025. Layoffs, reorganizations, and a prolonged government shutdown forced many to pause and confront an unexpected truth that leadership doesn’t end when the title does.
On the ICON stage, each panelist shared how she found a renewed purpose and power in her voice through disruption. We spoke about values as anchors, rest and reflection as a strategy, and storytelling and “daring to dream” as an act of leadership. The conversation was authentic and deeply human, transforming experience into wisdom.
When the session concluded, conversations spilled into the aisles as people lingered for more than an hour to share their stories, exchange contact information, and thank us for giving voice to what they had been witnessing or feeling. It was moving to lead this dialogue at ICON, in the very city where so much of this change is unfolding, and to see it resonate so deeply. That moment affirmed what I have long believed. Reinvention is not a reaction to loss. It is the beginning of leadership on new terms.
A Collective Reimagining
Following the widespread layoffs, some as recent as a few weeks ago, many professionals are still finding their footing, processing what’s been lost, and deciding how to move forward. What is less visible, but no less real, is the ripple effect across public-service careers. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment among Black women declined by more than 300,000 jobs between February and June 2025, reflecting both job losses and temporary exits from the labor force. Many of those affected worked in government and education sectors where service and purpose have long defined their work. I am one of them, and I’ve seen how this disruption is redefining how and where leadership shows up.
Even in this early stage, signs of reinvention are beginning to take shape. Former public servants are exploring new paths, launching consultancies, joining other sectors, starting businesses, teaching, and reclaiming their voices in spaces that once felt out of reach.
There are also those who remain in government, still doing the work, carrying heavier loads, and navigating the emotional weight of seeing colleagues and missions shift around them. Their experience represents another kind of reinvention, finding meaning and stability within systems still undergoing change. Though our panel was focused on government communicators, its message extends far beyond. Corporate teams, nonprofit leaders, educators, and entrepreneurs across all sectors and industries are confronting the same truth that stability isn’t guaranteed, but purpose still is.
Reinvention means carrying forward what has shaped us and using it to design our future.
What Reinvention Is Teaching Us
From that stage and from the many conversations that have continued since, I’ve reflected on what this moment is teaching us about purpose and leadership in transition. Here are a few lessons anyone navigating change can carry forward.
Acceptance is not surrender. It’s clarity.
The hardest part of reinvention is facing what has ended. Many of us resist change because we’re mourning the version of ourselves that once felt certain. When we stop fighting reality, space opens for a new direction to take shape.Your experience is your foundation, not your past.
The skills, relationships, and lessons you’ve built still belong to you. Reinvention doesn’t erase them. It gives them a new context. The work you’ve done still matters, and it takes on new meaning when you carry it forward.Stillness creates strategy.
When everything is shifting, the instinct is to move quickly. Clarity rarely comes in motion. Taking the grace and space to pause allows your purpose to recalibrate.Connection accelerates growth.
Every reinvention story we heard began with a community, a colleague who reached out, a network that held space, or a friend who reminded someone of their worth. Reinvention might start in solitude, but it never succeeds there.Storytelling is leadership in motion.
How you narrate your journey shapes how others perceive it. Telling your story with honesty and vision transforms uncertainty into influence.
The Reinvention Era Starts Here
Reinvention is the new career imperative. Across government, corporate, and nonprofit sectors, professionals are redefining what it means to lead and contribute, and shaping leadership on their own terms.
In the months ahead, I'll share stories from professionals, especially women of color, who are embodying this next chapter and rebuilding their careers, companies, and communities with purpose and power. I’ll also be curating new spaces for reflection and growth, including live conversations and workshops focused on reinvention and purposeful goal-setting, leading to the first of several Reinvention Experiences in 2026.
Reinvention begins the moment you decide to share your story and lead from it.