Mickie Senften French | Executive Director - The Center for Food Integrity

Having lost passion for her role in marketing at a food manufacturer, Mickie was looking to rediscover her spark and reframe her career story to step into a more sustainability-focused position. 

THE CHALLENGE

When I met Shannon I was working as a global marketing communications VP at a large ingredient manufacturer. I was finding that the work that I was doing was not as rewarding as I wanted it to be, and I knew it was time for me to make a change and to move on from that role. I wanted to work out, what is it that I love to do, as opposed to what am I doing now?

THE SOLUTION

I worked through the Shift Careers program with Shannon on where my skill sets were as opposed to what my job title was. It was incredibly helpful to take a look at my background, which was in marketing, advertising and PR, but realise that my passion was really more for sustainability-focused work and bringing together coalitions of people to help solve problems bigger than one company or one individual itself.

"Shannon helped me put together my story from a couple of different angles."

One was more from the marketing angle and how do I find a more purposeful marketing or communications role?

And the other was really from a skill set angle. What am I good at? I'm good at building teams. I'm good at bringing together uncommon alliances. I'm good at listening and understanding and hearing what an organisation is saying so that I can help them build a new strategy. Those things that I never would have thought of putting on a resume or out there on my social media, such as my LinkedIn profile, because I was very accustomed to that very linear background.

THE RESULT

I started doing some consulting work with a number of different companies. I severed the relationship with the large manufacturer and – as a result of all of the information I’d added to my LinkedIn profile and the networking I was doing thanks to Shannon – opportunities came through that I might not have seen otherwise. I'm now the executive Director of the Centre for Food Integrity and working with large companies like Costco, Starbucks, Merck Animal Health, The United Soybean Board, and the American Farm Bureau. I wouldn’t be here without her.