Pivot with Purpose

Thirty years ago, fresh out of university and full of the usual mix of ambition and uncertainty, I stumbled into a lecture that quietly rewired how I thought about work and life. The speaker wasn't famous. I don't even remember how I ended up in the room. But what he said has stayed with me ever since.

He talked about how, every seven years or so, he took a full year off from his career — not to retire, not because he burned out, but intentionally. Deliberately. He had made peace with the idea that he would work a little longer before retiring, and in exchange, he gave himself the freedom to step off the treadmill, catch his breath, and try something completely different. Then he'd come back, sharper and more deliberate than before.

I loved that idea immediately. So I borrowed it.

The First Time Was Mostly Luck

The first year I took off, I'll be honest — I didn't do anything impressive. I rested. I wandered a bit. I didn't have a grand plan, and I didn't need one. Just doing it at all felt like a quiet act of courage in a world that told you to keep your head down and climb.

But something shifted. When I came back, I started to see these pauses differently. Not as gaps in a résumé to explain away, but as leverage. A moment to look up from the work and actually read the landscape — where the world was heading, where the opportunities were forming, where I could be most useful.

By the third time, it had become something of a system, even if I didn't have a name for it yet. I was pivoting with purpose — reading signals, making moves, arriving somewhere new before the crowd caught on. It just didn't have a label.

When Purpose Met Opportunity

Looking back, I can identify two moves that shaped everything that followed.

In 2003, I moved to London. The finance industry was humming with possibility, and I could feel it. I'd be lying if I said it was purely strategic — there was a healthy dose of luck involved. But I was paying attention, and I said yes when the moment came.

Then in 2010, I moved to Singapore. That one I'd call my first true Pivot with Purpose — the name fits, even if I only coined it later. Regulatory change was sweeping through Asia's financial sector. I had the skills that mattered, I could see the wave building, and I positioned myself to ride it rather than watch it pass from the shore.

That's really what this philosophy is about. Not recklessness. Not restlessness. It's about reading the macro signals — economic shifts, regulatory tides, where industries are heading — and then moving with intention rather than reaction.

Why I'm Sharing It Now

I've lived this way for three decades. Every five to seven years, a deliberate pause. Every pause, a sharper return. It has never led me astray.

And that's exactly why it felt like time to stop keeping it to myself.

The website was born from that instinct. And the Pivot with Purpose workshop — built for GRC and audit professionals who have spent years accumulating expertise and are now asking themselves what's next? — is the practical expression of everything I've learned.

The framework is real. The career moves it produces are real. If you've ever looked at the landscape around you and sensed that the next opportunity is forming before most people can see it, this is for you.

The question isn't whether to pivot. The question is whether you do it with purpose — or whether you wait until you have no choice.

Interested in the workshop? https://web.cvent.com/event/722d6cb2-e6c0-40ab-b480-c9f736b1a506/summary