In December 2004, I graduated from Augsburg College in Minnesota with a bachelor’s degree in management information systems, economics, and business administration. I wasn’t sure which direction my future career would take me but I was looking forward to finding out what was next.
Discovering Disaster Recovery
Fortunately, I landed the first job I applied for at a large local retail company in their rotational Information Technology (IT) program. I spent the next 18 months trying my hand at IT support, infrastructure, and development. While I enjoyed the various work I was doing, nothing sparked my interest as a potential career path I wanted to pursue.
My final stop in the program landed me on the company’s disaster recovery team… and I was hooked… I knew I had stumbled onto the path I wanted to take and that this was where I was interested in developing subject matter expertise and growing my career. When the program ended, I applied for and happily accepted a permanent position on the team.
I spent the next 5 years moving steadily along the path, doing all things disaster recovery, and accumulating abundant new knowledge. I partnered with various IT teams and learned about various technologies while facilitating the development, maintenance, and exercise of disaster recovery plans for everything from critical infrastructure to middleware and applications.
Some of the most challenging and rewarding work I did in this space involved overseeing data center outage preparedness efforts, resulting in the creation of a technology crisis action team and the documentation of a detailed technical recovery sequence. I also got a taste of crisis management by driving corporate-wide remote access initiatives in response to H1N1, which were instrumental in the ability to enable a remote workforce strategy.
I was especially drawn to the uniqueness of the role, being able to engage with a wide variety of teams across IT as well as gain valuable perspectives on the vital interplay of technologies and the importance of designing resilient technical solutions to support the continuation of business operations.
Branching Out Into Business Continuity
In 2011, I reached a fork in the path and decided to pursue an opportunity to move to the business continuity team. I was excited to expand my skill set beyond the world of technology recovery and learn more about ensuring the resilience of critical business processes.
In this new position, I developed training curriculums and facilitated an annual program lifecycle designed to assess, plan, exercise, and mature business continuity strategies. This included capturing business impact analysis data and creating business continuity plans with actionable workarounds to mitigate the impact of disruptions from incidents such as a workforce shortage or the loss of a key facility, technology, or vendor. I was also able to lean on my history in IT to promote the integration of efforts between business and technology teams, helping to drive a more holistic corporate continuity program.
As the program matured, I had the opportunity to help design and onboard a corporate continuity tool. I enjoyed leveraging my technical acumen in this capacity and became proficient as a tool administrator. It also provided a creative outlet, allowing me to design and maintain a streamlined and intuitive interface for users of the tool. I found this part of the job particularly rewarding and often gravitated toward performing this work.
Through my experience, I learned that keeping continuity planning relevant and engaging was critical to program participation and success, as it was a secondary responsibility for most of the individuals involved in the process. I continually looked for ways to simplify, streamline, and innovate program activities. My favorite example of this was introducing the concept of resiliency scoring for continuity plans, which involved the business continuity team providing each plan with an annual score based on the maturity of its plan strategies and the exercises that had been performed to prove the viability of those strategies. Adopting resiliency scoring benefited the program in many areas, including driving plan consistency, providing a roadmap for plan maturity, and producing metrics to help facilitate conversations about the overall corporate resiliency posture.
I was thrilled to be at a point in my career where I was leading strategic conversations and efforts tied directly to advancing the continuity program.
During development conversations, I was often asked to consider what my next position at the company might look like, as switching teams every few years was customary. I assumed that one day my appeal for the subject matter may start to wane and it would be time for me to move on in pursuit of a new area of interest. But the dynamic nature of the continuity industry and my propensity for continuous learning and improvement kept me hooked year after year.
Conquering Consulting
I grew in both confidence and competence during my time spent in retail disaster recovery and business continuity planning. I gained professional certifications, spoke at conferences, and even published an article in an international journal, but most importantly, I felt fulfilled by the work that I was doing. All reaffirming that I was indeed on the right path.
But as is the case with any path you take, there are bound to be some bumps along the way, and I ran into those bumps at the beginning of 2023 when after nearly 18 years at the company, I was laid off.
While I was forced to navigate some uneven terrain, the amazing thing about the path I was on was that I had made incredible connections along the way, and I knew immediately that I wanted to pursue a job at Bryghtpath. It was an obvious choice for me for many reasons. Bryan Strawser, the founder, and CEO, was a past manager of mine with an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience, whom I had enjoyed working for almost a decade prior. I also knew a few other members of the team and was excited about the opportunity for our paths to cross again in a new endeavor.
Over the years, I had followed the company’s growth and success and the core values they were guided by really resonated with me. Becoming a consultant felt like a natural career progression where my years of experience in the industry would shine and I was thankful I had been given the push I needed to take my career to the next level.
Once again, the stars seemed to align and after reaching out to Bryan and meeting with the team, I was offered a role as a senior consultant at Bryghtpath. While the idea of leaving a major corporate retailer after nearly two decades and joining a small consulting company seemed incredibly daunting, I was able to get my footing pretty quickly, and after a small uphill climb with great support from the team I had acclimated myself to a new way of doing things and I absolutely loved what I saw on the horizon.
As a consultant, I get the opportunity to work with a diverse client base, including enterprises of varying sizes and backgrounds and those in a variety of industries, providing exposure to different business models, operations, and challenges. This has already allowed me to gain experience in new areas, take on more challenging responsibilities and develop additional skills, including expanding my expertise in crisis management and communications.
The great thing about joining such a small company is that everyone works closely together and is extremely collaborative and supportive of one another. I thrive in a team-oriented environment and love being able to partner with my colleagues, who are also subject matter experts, while working together towards a common goal. If that wasn’t enough, I have greater flexibility in my schedule, a voice that matters, the freedom to get things done, and my contributions are noticed and valued. There is also incredible transparency into all aspects of the business, which is extremely refreshing and empowering.
In just a few short months as a senior consultant at Bryghtpath, I have already had the opportunity to perform a resiliency diagnosis, create continuity product offerings, write a blog article, participate in a podcast episode, work with multiple clients, oversee the administration of continuity tools and so much more. Best of all, I get to partner with an amazingly talented team to help our clients manage uncertainty and navigate resilience, which is particularly rewarding since I am incredibly passionate about the work we do.
I am excited to see what the future holds for the ever-evolving continuity industry and look forward to seeing what lies around the next corner of this unexpected path.
Crisis Management and Preparedness as an Imperative