How to Write Your Mission-Driven Professional Summary
“Let’s start with some introductions,” he says, getting the meeting going.
Cue the cold sweat. My mind starts racing.
Instead of listening to everyone else share their backgrounds, I'm internally panicking about how I'm going to communicate who I am as a professional.
Does this happen to you?
I hear it from my clients all the time—they're not really sure how to articulate who they are professionally.
Our default is to blurt out our job title and company, but we're so much more than that.
--> Your job title might communicate WHAT you do, but it doesn't tell anything about HOW or WHY you uniquely do it.
--> Your title pigeonholes you into one role, limiting the possibilities you can imagine for yourself.
--> If you've been laid off or feel anything short of fantastic about your work, defaulting to your job title is...complicated.
--> And falling back on your title means that you're letting someone else define you, instead of owning your professional identity.
When I work with clients through Individual Coaching or The Career Reset Course, we rethink how they define themselves professionally and go through a series of guided exercises to articulate who they are, what they stand for, and what they bring to the table.
The result is a mission-driven professional summary that is true to who they are—no matter their job status.
—> Want to see what that looks like in practice?
Here are some examples of my clients’ professional summaries:
WARREN
I’m a strategic collaborator on a mission to innovate in the realm of public administration and public policy. I believe in applying the power of curiosity and the principles of project management to transform how the government operates and delivers impactful projects on behalf of its citizens.
Currently, I manage a portfolio of projects that generate value for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the Mass Department of Transportation. On any given day, you’ll find me researching new tactics to address complex problems, negotiating beneficial agreements, or bringing innovation, knowledge, and efficiency to everyday work—but I’m always striving to create opportunities as well as monetary and public value in the projects I oversee.
I am driven by my extreme curiosity to learn about how things work, and approach all that I do as a public servant working on behalf of the community. I thrive when taking on large-level ideas and breaking them down to strategic action steps. Outside of work, I enjoy going on adventures with my partner Jenn and our dog Aspen, enjoying live music, spending time with friends, or playing a round of golf.
Specialties: Project Management | Negotiation Strategy | Strategic Planning | Economic Development | Government Affairs | Consensus Builder | Curious Learner.
MEG
I’m a goal-driven project manager and operations leader with a passion for leading cross-functional teams and providing creative solutions that drive strategic business growth.
I am skilled at managing the lifecycle of multiple projects, leading initiatives across teams and levels to inspire project momentum, and clearly communicating goals to elicit great work and to set the team up for success. I thrive when managing complex projects and overcoming obstacles in an energized, positive, and collaborative environment.
In 2015, my team won the Innovators of the Year Award from Conde Nast for our work on the Allure Beauty Box. I have also worked on subscription-box programs with NewBeauty, Walmart, and GQ, as well as marketing projects at top publications including Self, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Wired.
Specialties: Project/Vendor Management | E-commerce Operations | Strategic Sourcing | Overseas Manufacturing | Fulfillment & Mailing Services | Time Management | Utilizing Technology to Streamline Work & Collaboration
If you have a project I can help with, please get in touch.
FELICIA
Every community is made up of valuable, diverse citizens, each with their own opinions, needs, and dreams. My mission is to seek and promote the varied perspectives of citizen stakeholders so that decisions made about a community are made by the community.
I am an organizer, and a facilitator. I help mission-based teams design and implement inclusive processes to set goals, create policy, and make improvements. I engage, educate, and come to understand groups of stakeholders so that they may together achieve the highest and most equitable results for children.
Currently, I provide technical assistance and professional development to leaders of PK-12 public schools, school districts, and state education agencies across the country as a specialist with WestEd.
My specialities include strategic planning, systems improvement, resource strategy, adult learning design, implementation monitoring, education policy, and project management.
Here are some more creative approaches clients have taken to introduce themselves:
FOCUS ON YOUR UNIQUE SKILLS/APPROACH:
DEBORAH
What I do: Audience communication is my craft—I help organizations communicate their messages and stories to the public. I specialize in finding innovative ways to make complex content accessible and engaging to a broad audience, to inspire learning, action, and positive change.
Process: Whether I’m helping to create printed graphics, interactives, web content, videos, or other media, I start with the collective vision, audience, and educational objectives. From there, my process involves brainstorming engagement techniques and distilling content into a cohesive and compelling narrative. This synthesis results in messaging that is meaningful, relevant, and easy to understand. Flexible collaboration and focused research, writing, editing, and project management heroics are also an important part of my work.
Engagement approach: Keep it simple and succinct; make it relevant; explain why someone should care; use diverse media to appeal to different learning styles; balance weighty topics with uplifting messages; suggest tangible ways people can make a difference and allow them to voice their opinion.
Mediums: Audience-facing exhibitions, interactive media, web content, printed publications, outreach and marketing materials, media scripts, apps. Client-facing interpretive plans, proposals, and visitor experience narratives.
What’s most important: Ultimately, I want my work to inspire people to take action to improve themselves or the world around them. Small or large, I believe these actions lead us all towards making positive changes.
FOCUS ON HOW YOU LEAD:
BETSY
I offer 20+ years of experience managing complex projects and processes. I bring a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to managing collaborations, developing exhibits, conducting workshops, and engaging community. Peers cite my passion and optimism, strong work ethic, and ability to help others to bring their best to the table. Others endorse my extreme cat herding skills.
My leadership style is that of a collaborative pragmatist, someone who co-designs a process that truly includes all stakeholders—visitors, the team, and leadership. Throughout a project, I hold all of us accountable to innovate and grow both the project/product and ourselves as professionals and to advance the field of informal learning. My pragmatism dictates that I keep the team mindful that any interactive must withstand the most destructive force on Earth - the 8th grade field trip.
Driven by project rather than by job title, I seek short or long-term opportunities that apply my collaborative, iterative design-centered approach to help museums, researchers, educational organizations, or community planners achieve educational, communications, and community-building goals.
I believe that enthusiasm, mutual respect, humor, and chocolate is the best fuel mix for brainstorming and delivering engaging, memorable learning experiences.
FOCUS ON YOUR ORIGIN STORY:
PASCALE
Thirty-five years ago, my mother emigrated from Haiti, left the convent, and proceeded to have four American children. Once she touched American soil, it was clear to her that the American dream was not just a dream, but a mission that could be fulfilled with the right amount of discipline and fortitude.
After attending a low-performing public elementary and middle school, I was granted access to a high-performing, college preparatory, private high school. It was then that I realized that the American dream was only accessible to a select few; that educational policy, while complicated, is highly politicized and seldom seeks to serve students that are experiencing poverty.
This realization has driven all of my career’s work – I engage in efforts to make this nation what my mother (and so many others) thought it was when she arrived here. A nation of opportunity for all, especially students in families living in poverty.
I was an educator in the classroom for two years before graduate school. While in graduate school, I worked in one of the lowest performing public middle schools in Boston. After earning my Masters degree in Education, I began work in charter schools, seeing them as laboratories for instructional innovation, and agents of reform for high-poverty education. I am currently serving my mission through my work at the Rhode Island Department of Education and work to establish, refine and improve systems and policies that affect the state’s most vulnerable and underrepresented populations.
I am interested in continuing this equity work in spaces where I am able to disrupt the status quo and elevate teams to strategically bring resources to children living in underserved communities.
Before you start to compare you answer to theirs, remember that each of these clients started the coaching process feeling confused, lost, and unsure of how to define themselves professionally.
Through our work together, they discovered greater clarity, direction, and confidence to communicate who they are with others.
I hope they inspire you to get to the bottom of what makes you you, and write your own mission-driven professional summary.
To help you get started, I created a free, fill-in-the-blank template for you. Download your Mission-Driven Professional Summary Template here.
Not sure how to fill in those blanks? Let me help you discover the right words. Join me in the Career Collaborative Accelerator, which launches on May 4th. Applications close on Friday, April 30th, so apply now!
