Future Leaders: Brittany Wilson from Career Candor On How Ambitious Young Adults Are Redefining Success
An Interview With Eden Gold
Scaling balance: One of the greatest benefits of working for young leaders is their appreciation of work-life balance. Young leaders care and want to see you have a good work-life balance. They recognize that there is life outside of work, and they work hard to help you achieve that.
In a world rapidly changing through technology, societal norms, and global challenges, a new generation of leaders is emerging. Ambitious young adults are not just aiming for traditional markers of success; they are redefining what it means to be successful. Beyond the corporate ladder and financial milestones, they prioritize impact, sustainability, and personal fulfillment. They are entrepreneurs, activists, scientists, and artists who are shaping the future with innovative ideas and actions. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Brittany Wilson.
Brittany Wilson, Founder of Career Candor, holds a Bachelor’s in Psychology and a Master’s in Organizational Development and Leadership. With nearly a decade of experience in human resources and learning and development across diverse industries, she excels in topics related to career development and organizational culture. Drawing from a rich background in small business consulting, real estate, technology, and manufacturing, Brittany is set to share how young adults are transforming the workplace for the better.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about Future Leaders, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I grew up in a household where work was constant. My mother was a single parent and she worked two or three jobs at any one time and she always came home exhausted and I knew she didn’t enjoy any of those jobs. And I thought to myself there has to be a better way of working. There have to be people out there who enjoy their job. And there has to be a way to help people enjoy work. That’s what set me on my path.
So I had a career in HR and learning and development in small and Fortune 500 companies. In these roles, I’ve been able to help people develop in their careers, reach their goals and transform workplaces to build and maintain learning cultures. Now, I’ve branched out to create my own company where I essentially, I help people enjoy their work a little more than they did before.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
In 2023 I was laid off during the big tech layoffs. I loved my job. I was learning every day, I was doing something different, and I enjoyed the people I worked with. So, when I was laid off it really hurt. I found myself in a very dark place. It was hard having my whole identity connected to who I was at work and how I was helping other people at work, only for me not to have work at all.
After I was laid off, I had some clients and co-workers encouraging me to use this as an opportunity to launch my business full time. And I didn’t listen to them. I was too afraid to go into business for myself full-time. I didn’t think I had enough experience, I didn’t think I had enough money, and I wasn’t confident in my own skills. So, I went back to work in corporate.
The entire time I was there, I kept thinking how my life would look like if I had just went into business for myself. So, I save up my money, did some pro bono work, and ultimately then gave my notice and launched my business full-time.
I would have never thought I would be an entrepreneur. Especially watching my mom growing up, I thought living the corporate life was success. But when I was laid off, I realized corporate work is not the only definition of success and it is not the only path to financial stability. Now here I am living all the contradictions that I would have never anticipated for myself earlier in my life.
You are a successful individual. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Agility: I always defined financial stability as working at a company making a regular paycheck. That’s what my mom did after all. But in 2023, I was laid off from my job. I had never thought it would happen to me. I worked hard, I worked long hours, and I enjoyed what I did, but it still happened. During that time, I had a lot of friends and previous clients who were encouraging me to open my own business full-time, but I was too afraid, especially financially, to take the leap. So I went back into corporate work, and all that time, I just kept thinking about how my life would be if I had just taken the leap and opened my own business. So, I started saving up my money and started doing some pro bono services until I felt comfortable enough to launch my business. It’s an incredibly terrifying, but exhilarating experience to go from the corporate world, to go from working multiple jobs at one time, to ultimately working for yourself. And I would never think that I would be thankful for being laid off, but now I really am.
Relationship building: I am here, today, because of all the people in my life; any of my successes can be attributed to those who have supported me along the way. I have developed some great relationships with friends, coworkers and mentors. I have learned everything — good and bad — from them. These people have taught me self-reflection, patience, forgiveness, and confidence. If it weren’t for all of these people, I would not be in business today, and I certainly would not be here speaking with you today. So, spend time building relationships. You never know where it can take you.
Perseverance: I am nothing if not perseverant. And when you’re unrelentingly persistent, you enter unexplored territories. You go to places where you have never been, and that’s where you discover the worst versions of yourself and the best versions of yourself. When I was laid off during the big tech playoffs, I was in a dark place, and I didn’t know many people who were laid off. Plus, it was very difficult to find work. But I persevered by expanding the scope of roles that I was interested in, talking about the taboo topics of being laid off, and being very clear in what I wanted as end goal. Because I persevered I landed a job and because of that job, I now own my own business.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview about how ambitious young adults are redefining success. How would you define success?
Success is living a life that aligns with your personal values. It’s being your whole, authentic self and living the life you always wanted. Success isn’t money, unless you personally value money. It isn’t fame, unless you personally value fame. If you value you family, it’s having family dinner every night. If you value other cultures, it’s traveling. If you enjoy learning, it’s learning something new every day.
Success has previously been defined as climbing the corporate ladder, making the most money, and having fame. We usually want prestige, money, and fame because they give us other things like time and freedom. But, along our path to having more time and freedom, we have gotten caught up with prestige, money, and fame, so we have lost our way. Today, young leaders see older leaders living with the prestige, money, and fame, and they see they aren’t happy, they don’t have more time, and they don’t have freedom. Young leaders are learning from this and paving the way for new definitions of success.
How do you incorporate social responsibility and sustainability into your definition of success?
I define social responsibility and sustainability more loosely than others. As a career development and workplace culture expert, I live social responsibility every day by coaching and advising others in their careers and by helping companies define and maintain a healthy corporate culture. That level of service is socially responsible. I help people define what matters to them and help them live their values and aspire toward their goals.
For sustainability, I focus on social sustainability. How much am I working, and can I maintain that level of output sustainably? Will I exhaust myself by working too much? What will help me deliver value on a full battery this week?
Then, once I’ve helped myself, I can help others answer the same questions. For job seekers, I may ask them how many jobs they’re applying to this week, versus how much energy they have. For organizations who want to change their culture, I may ask how quickly they want to implement changes versus how happy and engaged their workforce will be after those changes.
Can you describe a moment or decision that significantly redirected your path toward leadership?
When I was in school, I always wanted to be a leader for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to be liked, followed, and I wanted to have the prestige. For all those reasons, I never found myself in a leadership position, and I started to accept my fate: I wasn’t the leadership type. It wasn’t until I landed my first job out of college that I learned about leadership. In my onboarding session, the facilitator mentioned said, “Leaders light the path.” It was in that moment, my glass shattered. A lightbulb went off in my head; I had been going about leadership all wrong. Leadership wasn’t about bring in front, having all the answers, and taking all the glory. I was about letting each individual walk their path and simply providing light for them to help them reach their goals. In that moment, how I chose to lead changed. Since then, I realized I could be a leader even without a team of people. I could be a leader as an individual contributor and I could be a thought leader. Since then, I have led teams, but all with the perspective of lighting the path.
What role do mentorship and community play in shaping your approach to leadership and success?
Everything in the world is figure out-able and I believe most of the things in the world have been figured out already, by someone else. One of the best ways to learn is from others. As a leader myself, I have had several mentors help me in a variety of topics like business development, leading through my values, and career transitions. I have found each of these mentors through my community. They were either previous managers of mine, leaders I admired, or mentors in a community group. Each of these people have helped me through difficult career decisions, transform my business model, and navigate hard leadership conversations.
By learning from your community, they can pave the way for you. They can tell you all the mistakes they made to help you get ahead and they can point you in the direction of other resources. Your community, and the mentors within it, are instrumental in your success.
In what ways do you think your generation’s view of success differs from previous generations?
I sit right on the line of Millennials and Gen Z. We’re often looked down upon because of our lack of experience, but with the help of technology and social media, I can learn from anyone anywhere no matter their age and expertise. Because of this, I’ve come to realize the stereotypical definition of success does not align with me. I don’t need to climb the corporate ladder. I don’t need all the money in the world. And I don’t need fame. Each of those definitions usually comes with more bad than good. When you climb the corporate ladder, your free time tends to slip away. When you aim for more money, you never get enough. When you aim for fame, too many people are watching. Instead, I want to live a life that I enjoy; I want to provide deep impact to as many people as I can sustain, I want to spend time with my friends and family, and I want to see and learn from other cultures. Now, I’m intentionally crafting a life that helps me achieve that type of success.
Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Ways Ambitious Young Adults Are Redefining Success?” If you can, please share a story or an example for each.
1 . Challenging the status quo: Gone are the days where the majority of people are ok with working over 40-hours a week. Now, the dream is work life balance. I was fortunate to have a corporate job during COVID, so I moved my work from the office to my apartment. During that time, I worked about 15 hours a day. I would wake up early, answer emails on my phone from bed, and eventually slink over to the next room to log onto my laptop. That year, I received the largest bonus I ever got, but I was exhausted. I enjoyed the brief, 1-hour walks I allowed myself, but felt chained to my laptop to answer questions all throughout the night. Some of that was because of me and some of that was because of the expectations placed on me. When my mental and physical health hit an all time low, I decided to control what I would control; I stopped working long hours. I challenged the status quo by putting in out-of-office blockers in my calendar for days and times I wouldn’t be available to work. People were shocked to see my calendar was blocked at 6AM; colleagues were negatively amazed that I wasn’t available at 8PM for a quick chat. Working at a global company, blocking your calendar for life was certainly against the norm. In 2020, this was a big, nerve-racking step for me, but looking back, this was a small step to help me achieve the work-life balance I have now.
2 . Living your values: We all want to be our own, authentic selves, but sometimes we get so caught up in what’s happening around us, we lose our authenticity. When we take on the values of other people, we can face a lot of stress and anxiety by not living according to our own values. A few times in my career, I worked for leaders whose values did not align with my own and I felt pressured to operate and work in accordance to their values. As a result, I developed anxiety and depression, I complained about work non-stop, I constantly talked about work, and I dreaded going to work every day. Work doesn’t have to be like that. When I left those leaders, all of my negative symptoms nearly disappeared, all because I chose to live by my values, and not by someone else’s.
3 . Scaling balance: One of the greatest benefits of working for young leaders is their appreciation of work-life balance. Young leaders care and want to see you have a good work-life balance. They recognize that there is life outside of work, and they work hard to help you achieve that.
When I was a leader, I worked for an organization that encouraged working after hours and I had a new member on my team who moved from a 12-hour shift to an 8-hour shift. The combination could have been unsustainable really quickly, so I regularly encouraged and rewarded them for working 8-hour days or flexing their time. At first, it was difficult; they wanted to work longer hours because they were used to it and to show their dedication. But I regularly encouraged them to leave the work for the next day and that we work to support life and not the other way around.
4 . Being transparent: Young leaders are unapologetically transparent. They know that honesty is the best policy, so they speak their mind in an attempt to create change. As a young leader, I’ve built a brand for saying the taboo thing, for speaking out against the grain. When we say the unspeakable or have difficult conversations, it can lead to change.
5 . Achieving your own goals, and not someone else’s: I once had a mentor tell me I could be an executive someday, specifically a chief officer. I was shocked and honored. I couldn’t believe someone saw so much in me and I never ever considered this career path before. Then, I spent every moment I could learning about how to be an executive and how to go after this career path. In my research, I realized it wasn’t for me, but I still kept going after it. I thought, “If someone sees this in me, then I have to see it in myself.” It wasn’t long before I found myself bored just learning about the career path itself; I didn’t even get to do any of the work. I was speaking to a friend about it, and she transparently said, “Brittany, stop taking other people’s advice. Listen to yourself.” Her advice was exactly what I needed to hear to create my own career path and live my own definition of success.
How do you navigate the challenges of innovation and change while staying true to your values and vision for success?
I don’t stay steadfast in my vision. If you have a steadfast, unwavering vision, you might be going after something that won’t exist in a few years. That’s why I stay flexible. Sure, I have a vision for what I want to achieve, but I don’t cement it into reality. I stay flexible, and let the people and events around me inform me and influence me into different paths. Four years ago, my goal was to become an executive at a large, Fortune 500 company. Today, I’m an entrepreneur. Had I stayed headfirst in my original vision, being laid off would have destroyed me, and I would be living a life that didn’t align with who I am. By listening to those around me, learning from people in my network, and trying the scariest things, I’ve learned so much and created a life I never imagined for myself.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I wish there were more self-coaching programs, to help others in work and in life. As a career development and workplace culture expert, I’ve seen how powerful coaching can be. By asking ourself deep, powerful questions, we can truly tap into our potential and help us find our next greatest adventure. So, I wish more people would practice self-coaching, to bring out the best in ourselves.
How can our readers further follow you online?
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
Thank you for the phenomenal opportunity and for all your time!
About The Interviewer: Eden Gold, is a youth speaker, keynote speaker, founder of the online program Life After High School, and host of the Real Life Adulting Podcast. Being America’s rising force for positive change, Eden is a catalyst for change in shaping the future of education. With a lifelong mission of impacting the lives of 1 billion young adults, Eden serves as a practical guide, aiding young adults in honing their self-confidence, challenging societal conventions, and crafting a strategic roadmap towards the fulfilling lives they envision.
Do you need a dynamic speaker, or want to learn more about Eden’s programs? Click here: https://bit.ly/EdenGold
Future Leaders: Brittany Wilson from Career Candor On How Ambitious Young Adults Are Redefining… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.