Prep, Push, Pivot

Essential Career Strategies for Underrepresented Women

By: Octavia Goredema

Narrated by: Zoleka Vundla

Advance your career with this insightful playbook for underrepresented women.

In Prep, Push, Pivot, award-winning career coach and author Octavia Goredema delivers an indispensable career coaching guide for women looking for a new job, dealing with job loss, pivoting to a new career, or returning to the workforce after an extended absence.

You'll discover practical strategies you can implement at crucial times during your career, ensuring your considerable talents and skills are used to their full potential. In this important book, you'll:

• Discover your true worth, cement your career values, and carve out a realistic and aspirational career plan
• Learn how to position yourself for a promotion, navigate a break in your career, and integrate your role as a mother or caregiver with your professional life
• Deal with monumental career changes, contribute to the development of the women around you, and benefit from an array of professional resources in your journey forward

Perfect for women who are ready to overcome any obstacles that await them, Prep, Push, Pivot is a thoughtful road map to help women chart their professional and personal success.

©2022 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (P)2022 Ascent Audio

6,7,8 Stars, but Five will have to do

As a professor who teaches career development, a practitioner in workforce development, and a member of the working world myself, I cannot recommend this book enough. Prep, Push, Pivot belongs in curriculum. Full stop.

This is not a superficial self-help book. It is not spiritual fluff that sidesteps reality. This book is hard-hitting, strategic, and honest about what actually happens to people navigating the working world — particularly those of us who have played by every rule, done everything right, and still found ourselves on the losing side of an unfair system. For that person who is at their wit's end, this book says: it's not just you, here are the tools, and here is how the pivot looks.

The lens through which Goredema writes is that of an African American woman — and that lens does not limit the book's reach, it deepens it. The stories of perseverance she shares are universal in the same way Nike's story is universal. Perseverance does not belong to one group. Neither does struggle. What makes this book distinct is that it refuses to pretend those struggles are identical for everyone, and that honesty is precisely what makes it so valuable.

To see victimhood in these pages says more about the reader than the author. If you prefer self-development books that never name the real challenges people face ,especially within the United States, Canada, or the broader Americas, this book is simply not written for you, and that is okay. But these books must exist. Young people coming out of college need to know the path will not be linear. Seasoned professionals need to know that hitting a wall does not mean failure. Everyone deserves to read something that says: you are not alone, it is not always you, and you've got this.

Self-development books are written through the lens of the writer. This writer shows us ,clearly, practically, and with genuine care , that the prep, the push, and the pivot are always available to us. That is the whole point.

Highly recommend. Five stars, reluctantly, because the platform won't let me give more.

The Authors Identity In Victim hood

After reading Brand Yourself for Success, I was intrigued enough to pick up Push, Prep, Pivot by the same author. However, not too far into the book, I realized her messaging took a turn I couldn’t align with. As someone who firmly believes in personal empowerment—that the world reflects what you choose to see and create—I found her heavy emphasis on victimhood disheartening. The narrative leaned into the idea that certain groups are inherently at a disadvantage due to how society views them. While I understand the importance of acknowledging societal challenges, I personally don’t subscribe to a mindset that reinforces limitation over possibility. After a couple of chapters, I found it difficult to continue and ultimately stopped listening. It was disappointing to see the author take that angle, especially after the strong, empowering tone of her previous work and her own personal success.