Direct Tv Careers

THE COMMUTE ISN'T THAT BAD. YOUR COWORKERS ARE COOL. THE COFFEE IS FREE, and hey, it pays the bills. But if you're like most of the respondents to a new survey, you're not loving your job. Fewer than half of all Americans do, says Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board's Consumer Research Center, which conducted the study last summer. "Workers are steadily growing more unhappy," she says.

Why shouldn't you switch to work you love? Most of us will, says Beatryce Nivens, author of Success Strategies for African Americans (Plume). In fact, she notes, the typical person will change careers three or more times during the course of her working life. And with corporate downsizing and other economic realities, change is coming for many of us anyway, whether we want it or not. So you can sit in that cubicle, bury your head in your in-box and hope the change doesn't flatten you like a steamroller, or you can seek it, embrace it and put it in service to your dreams. Pursuing a passion is hardest in uncertain times, but that's when it's most important, says Nivens. "If you do what you love, you'll find a way to make money from it," she adds.

Read on to find out how three women turned their own dreams into reality.

FROM CIRCUITS TO SITCOMS Andrea Wiley, 42, Executive Producer of UPN's The Parkers

Unlike most American kids, Andrea Wiley didn't grow up with her eyes glued to the television set. Her strict Jamaican parents, bent on raising a doctor, lawyer or scientist, kept her busy hitting the books. Still she fondly remembers the tube in their Brooklyn living room tuned to Good Times, All in the Family and The Jeffersons. When she wasn't solving equations, she liked making up stories, but it was her high marks in high-school math and science that earned her admission to Boston University's College of Engineering, where she majored in electrical engineering. Even before she graduated, she was on the fast track through the Fortune 500 by way of summer jobs at Digital Equipment Corp. and IBM. Eventually she took a management position with Procter & Gamble. Though her career was definitely high-voltage, she no longer felt the charge. "I was making good money, had a great position, a nice house and all of that, but I wasn't fulfilled," she remembers.

THE TURNING POINT

A friend who was well acquainted with Andrea's creative side suggested that she try screenwriting. "That kind of planted the seed, but I said, 'Oh, please, I could never do that,' "Wiley says. "I didn't know where to begin."

In the early 1990's, that seed started to sprout. Wiley was selling lab equipment when one of her friends made the leap from technology to Tinseltown: An engineering buddy, Mark Adkins, had signed on as manager for his brother, the comedian Sinbad. While Wiley was on a business trip in Los Angeles in 1990, she stopped by the set of Sinbad's show, A Different World, and got a chance to chat with folks behind the scenes. When she came back home, the idea of becoming a screenwriter suddenly didn't seem so far-fetched. "I was sitting watching an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and I said, 'I can do that,' " she remembers. "And I decided that I wasn't going to wait until I was 50 and think, What if. So I asked for a transfer from my company to one of their California offices."

FIRST STEPS

By 1991 her transfer was complete. "It was nothing but stepping out on faith--deep-water faith," Wiley says. "I knew only one person in L.A. I rented an apartment sight unseen and asked God to order my steps." She signed up for night and weekend screenwriting classes at UCLA's Extension program and began to meet writers and sit in the audience during the taping of TV shows.

She also started to write. To break into television, writers need a "spec script," a sample script for an existing hit television show. "I wrote one for Roseanne," Andrea recalls. "I taped several episodes and, using the analytical skills I learned in engineering, I watched until I knew the voices, the characters, the cadence of the show. After that, I wrote a script and showed it to as many writer friends as I could for feedback. I revised it to a point where I felt 1 was ready to send it to agents." After one rejection, she got a call from "a young, hungry brother" at one of the industry's largest agencies, International Creative Management. "He said, 'I'd like to represent you.' " The script got her a meeting with Norman Lear, the producer of Good Times and the developer of The Jeffersons. At the time he was hiring for a show called 704 Hauser, a twist on All in the Family, in which a Black family moves into Archie Bunker's old house.

"I didn't hear anything for weeks and thought, Oh, well," Wiley says. "Then one day my phone rings and the caller says, 'Andrea, this is Norman Lear, and I'd like to offer you a job.' I thought it was a friend playing a joke and said, 'Oh, yeah? If this is really Norman, what were you wearing when we met?' " When he answered correctly (a white golf hat), he accepted her apologies and she accepted the job. Eighteen months after landing on the West Coast, Wiley was malting a living doing what she loves.

MAKING THE MOVE

* DO THE TWO-STEP. The shortest route between two careers isn't always a direct one. Andrea Wiley took another job in sales, but its location, in an entertainment mecca, got her closer to her goal. If you're looking to make a radical switch, consider changing either your industry or your job title, but not both at the same time, suggests Marty Nemko, coauthor of Cool Careers for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons). Once you're within firing range, you're more likely to hit your target.

* TUNE IN TO THE NETWORK. Wiley got her current job on The Parkers through Sara Finney-Johnson, one of the mentors she'd sought feedback from long ago, who is now the creator and executive producer of the show. Begin nurturing professional friendships early, and tend them regularly. "When you need a relationship, it's too late to build one," says Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D., author of Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office (Warner Books).

* PAY YOUR DUES. Don't expect to begin at the same level of seniority in your new career that you had in yore old one. Andrea Wiley moved up through the ranks as a story editor, coproducer, supervising producer and so on to get to her current job.

* KEEP THE FAITH. "Prayer was just as important as networking in making my transition," says Wiley, who attends services regularly with husband. Roland, and sons, Roland III, 7, and Randall, 5.

FROM HR TO FBI Tene Carr, 32, Federal Agent

Tene Carr wasn't meant to be a desk jockey--she has always had a thirst for adventure. While studying business administration at the University of California, Riverside, she thought about a career as a missionary or diplomat. But she realized that such a transient lifestyle wouldn't easily support her other goal of someday settling down and starting a family. After earning a master's degree in public administration from the University of Southern California, she went to work as a human-resources analyst.

For three years, Carr did recruitment and help-wanted advertising and created job specs and qualifying exams for the Culver City Personnel Department. She didn't love the work, but her boss had a way of making her feel indispensable. "It was a totally full-time job," she says. "All my hours were consumed, but I wasn't fulfilled."

STEPPING INTO A NEW CAREER

Meanwhile, she was intrigued by one of the jobs she was recruiting for--police officer. "As a police officer, I would have time off and a flexible schedule. When not on active duly, I could go overseas and do short-term missionary work," says Carr, who is involved in several Christian organizations, has taught English in China, and has visited Japan and Argentina.

Carr gave notice with the city in August 2000 and applied to several law-enforcement agencies. She also put in an application with the FBI, although the bureau had a hiring freeze. "I figured if I was going into law enforcement, I might as well go for the best," she says. One year later she was hired as a deputy by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "I saw it as a good opportunity to see what law enforcement was like at the entry level," she says. "And if I liked it, I could work my way up to being an investigator."

Carr had been on her job for only one month when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Suddenly the FBI was hiring again. After a grueling eight-month qualifying period that included background checks and physical exams, she began FBI training in December 2002. The following April she graduated, one of 11 women and the only Black female in her class of 47. The academics and the physical tests were an adventure in themselves. "We studied law and sophisticated investigative techniques," she says. "We had counterterrorism training and white-collar-crime training and spent a lot of time on firearms and defensive tactics like boxing and ground fighting."

Was it all worth it? Though she could have earned more if she had stayed in HR and become a manager, Carr says yes. "I used to get sick in the morning at the thought of going to work. Now I am working for the premier law-enforcement agency in the world and loving my decision to change careers."

Currently assigned to a unit that investigates white-collar crime, she says she likes the job's flexibility, which allows her time for church work. She's also happy for the chance to use her analytical skills. "Doing surveillance, you come to understand who people really are, what makes them tick," she says. "And it always feels good to get the bad guy. It's an adrenaline rush!"

MAKING THE MOVE

* GET A FEEL FOR THE FIELD THAT INTERESTS YOU. Read industry journals, attend conferences, and talk to people in the profession about what they do. Check out the U.S. Department of Labor's Web site, dol.gov, for a comprehensive listing of job descriptions in the Occupational Outlook Handbook. You'll also learn whether your target industry has growth potential.

* GET MORE TRAINING. Sometimes transferable skills aren't enough, and you need specific additional training, says author Beatryce Nivens: "In a tight labor market, employers don't have to take a chance on someone who's willing to learn when there are plenty of applicants with specialized skills and experience."

* KNOW WHAT EMPLOYERS WANT, Chat up folks and get the inside scoop. When you write your resume, clarify the connection between your relevant accomplishments and an employer's needs, says Dwight Clarke, a New York career coach. The best place to do this is right on top, where you state your objective. "Your resume may be one in a thousand the manager sees," Clarke says. "Make sure what you have to offer pops." Career changers may opt to use a functional resume, which lists related experience first, regardless of when you got it, over a chronological resume, which emphasizes what you did last. You can also create a combination of both. For examples, visit blackcareerzone.com.

* TAKE A RISK. "It takes courage to face the unknown," Nivens says.

FROM ACADEMIA TO AGRICULTURE Willa Johnson, 46, Flower Farmer

Sometimes career growth means blooming where you're planted. Sometimes it means uprooting yourself. Earning a Ph.D. in religion in 1998 from Vanderbilt University, Willa Johnson sought full-time work as a professor until she realized that toiling on the tenure track didn't nurture her soul. "My husband, Kirk, and I were both in the running for teaching posts," she says. "He was on the short list for a job at Bowdoin College in Maine; I was on a short list at a prestigious Chicago seminary." But Kirk got an offer first.

"With my degree, there were only two places in Maine where I might have been able to teach, and they had nothing available, I was left to decide on a dime what to do with this coveted degree I'd sacrificed a decade to obtain."

A DIFFERENT DIRECTION

Willa did some soul-searching to decide whether to follow Kirk's path or the one she'd envisioned for herself. "1 realized that I just didn't fit into academia," she says. "I'm not a polite person; I'm more of a hell-raiser. It was a battle dealing daily with racism and sexism. The White-male establishment fights against people like me. I didn't want to be part of that anymore." Besides, Johnson wanted to keep her family, including her now-5-year-old daughter, Olivia, together. "I canceled my appointments in Chicago, and we accepted Bowdoin's offer."

The Johnsons had left Champaign, Illinois, and had settled into their Brunswick, Maine, condo when they got some life-altering news. Willa Johnson's dad was terminally ill. Her chief occupation became helping her siblings with his care. When he died in 2000, she started thinking about a family legacy. With the money he left her, the Johnsons bought 21 acres of land. "We wanted to do something with that money that was going to last," Willa says. "I had dug up the land around our condo and had joked to a neighbor that I was just going to buy a chunk of land and start a frickin' farm and forget it all. We laughed about it. But two months later I called her and said, 'Lainey, guess what I did ...' "

Johnson decided to go into the flower business. She collected horticulture books and wrote to the Small Business Administration. She also tapped the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), which offers information and support for entrepreneurs. "The guy at SCORE told me I needed to go back to school. I figured, why do I need to go to school for this? I can read," says the former educator. "I'd worked before grad school as a financial analyst. So I just used what I knew and took advantage of government resources. I went to the community small-business administration office and had my business plan reviewed," she says. As for cultivating crops, "I just knew how to do it. It was in my soul," she explains. She planted several lilac bushes and peonies using allorganic methods. "I chose crops that were hardy and could endure a short season. Something no one else here grows."

Meanwhile, the Johnsons bought additional land, and Willa planned to market her first crops within three years. To help cover expenses, the couple sold the condo and some of the land at a considerable profit. But fate intervened again, and before Johnson could focus on a harvest, she had to focus on healing. A succession of health problems, including surgery for breast cancer, delayed her plans until this spring. She is now well enough to do planting, and her husband pitches in with the plowing. "This amazing landscape was so healing during my convalescence," she says. She hopes to open her farm to hospice caregivers and patient-support groups. "We will share our space with the sick at no charge," she says. "The ancestral spirits who guided us to the garden and who granted us the means to share in this stewardship also gave us the wisdom to see the grace in giving back."

FULL BLOOM

Willa Johnson's flowers will be ready for sale by Mother's Day. A sign on Route I will direct customers to her farm, located in a "tourist sweet spot." She'll market blooms to seasonal residents and to the area's many restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts. But for now, as the bitter Maine winter is in retreat and buds are just appearing on the willows, she says, "Send us some bloomin' vibes."

MAKING THE MOVE

* CULTIVATE MENTORS. "By reaching out to the very best people selling whatever it was I needed, I found that these people not only could provide a superior product, but they also were compassionate and willing to help me learn the business," says Willa Johnson.

* HIT THE BOOKS. While formal training is a good idea, career changers can hit the ground running by immersing themselves in literature about their new field.

* CHECK INDUSTRY PUBLICATIONS. Web sites and newsletters from professional organizations are also good resources to use.

* GO WITH YOUR GUT FEELINGS! "With my hands in the soil, I realized that's where I needed to be, where my spirit was," Willa says. "1 belonged on a farm, like my father's father. I started making it happen. We all have the potential to be so much. When we understand who we are and what our purpose is, why not go for it?"

Claire McIntosh is the deputy editor of ESSENCE. Her last piece was "How to Be a Money Magnet" (October 2003).

Three dynamic and courageous women trade in high-paying jobs to journey down roads less familiar but far more fulfilling in "Extreme Career Makeovers" (page 172). Our deputy editor, CLAIRE MCINTOSH, tells how they stepped out on faith to create new life scripts. She also shows how you can channel your passion into profit. "Each of these sisters sees herself as a work in progress," says McIntosh. "Their stories really open up a world of possibilities available to all of us."

COPYRIGHT 2004 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

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