Off Path, On Purpose
A Guide for Black Women and LGBTQ+ Professionals When the Career Becomes a Cage
What happens when the career you built stops fitting?
I was 17 when my grandfather redirected my college acceptance from UCLA to USC. His alma mater. His major. His dream. That redirect became the blueprint for every misaligned choice I'd make for the next 30 years.
This book is for professionals who followed the script, reached the top, and realized the script was never theirs.
What's inside:
14 chapters. 4 phases. One framework.
Fitting In: Performing the role they scripted until it broke me
The Reckoning: When success looked good on paper but felt all wrong
Reclaiming: Redefining power, worth, and purpose on my own terms
Becoming: The version of me who always existed, under the surface
Every chapter opens with memoir. The wound. The pivot. The rebuild. Then the framework. Then the Mentor Table, lineage intelligence from everyday Black women who survived systems designed to break them. Then the reader's own arc. Here is me. Here is you. Then the path forward.
This book is different.
Not self-help. Survival intel.
I don't center elite Black women who made it to Fortune 500 C-suites. I honor the lineage intelligence of everyday Black women: the first manager in your family, the supervisor who pulled you aside, the entrepreneur who opened a business with no degree.
The frameworks aren't invented. They're what generations of Black women have always done, now with names and structure you use today.