After 30+ years of work in the consulting industry, I look back at lessons I wish I had learned and advice that I wish I had received earlier in my career.  In sharing these personal lessons learned, I hope to help you with your career. I finished my career in the position of Senior Vice President of Infrastructure Engineering for SNC-Lavalin, one of Canada’s largest engineering companies. I managed a team of engineers and scientists in Ontario who were designing major infrastructure (highways, transit lines, bridges, and buildings), providing geotechnical and environmental support services to infrastructure construction, and investigating and cleaning up contaminated sites. A female geoscientist managing a large infrastructure engineering group. This was a first! But let’s go back to when the story began…. I started my career in the Washington D.C. area working to clean up groundwater at former military bases.  Explosives and chemical warfare agents sound like something from an action movie. But early in my career, they were a daily concern. As I stood in my full PPE in the middle of a field riddled with ticks and unexploded ordnance, I wondered what in the world I was doing! I bonded with my co-workers while we helped each other in and out of our PPE, and even had to practice giving each other injections of an antidote in case of chemical warfare agent exposure. We bonded over this crazy work and relied on one another to accomplish our tasks safely. When I graduated with my B.Sc. in Environmental Geology, I thought I knew everything. I studied geology because I liked science and didn’t really want to work with people. I used to say I don’t like people; I just like rocks – they don’t talk back! My early experiences in the field taught me how little I really knew, and that people could teach me things, if I listened. My work on the military bases projects got me new assignments working on other projects in the western US, France, and Puerto Rico. I would travel from one site to another, often without any breaks in between because managers all wanted me on their projects. I had turned into a pretty good field team leader, and they knew they could count on me to get the scope of work done right. I was managing field teams and drilling crews, often the only female at the site. I felt like I had to be tough and work hard to prove myself. I had no social life, I missed weddings and funerals, but I was busy with work. I thought that my dedication would be recognized and rewarded. Instead, I got exhausted and burned out. I eventually left my job to go to graduate school. I thought having my M.Sc. would help me get what I wanted: a career that I enjoyed as well as a life. PIECE OF ADVICE #1:  Don’t sit back and wait for rewards to come to you. Good work is rewarded with more work. Speak up and ask for what you want! While I was working on my master’s degree, my advisor told me that I should have a “career plan.”  I had no idea what that was at the time, but I thought about it a lot.  I asked my fellow grad students if they had a career plan.  I got some interesting perspectives from them and started talking to more people to see what I could learn from them.  This was a turning point for me.  I realized that my “drive for excellence” mindset that made project managers love me was probably considered aggressive and off-putting to a lot of people. I learned empathy and to listen to learn and understand. PIECE OF ADVICE #2:  Listen, don’t assume. Focus on learning everything you can from those around you. Everyone has something interesting to teach you if you set aside your ego and listen. M.Sc. in hand, I moved to Ontario and worked in the environmental consulting business as a hydrogeologist.  I came to realize that armed with the skills of empathy and listening, I did like working with people after all, and I made a pretty good project manager. In fact, I had leadership skills. I was an excellent “second banana.” I took pride in how much my bosses relied on me to get things done behind the scenes. One day my boss approached me and one of my colleagues in the hall. He said, “I’m planning a reorganization and I need to promote someone to Vice President and it will be one of you two, who wants it?” To this day I don’t really know why I had such a sudden reaction, but I immediately took a step back and pointed at my colleague. I didn’t say a word, just pointed at him. A month later he was my boss. PIECE OF ADVICE #3:  Your career starts out like a leaf in a stream, you float along learning the ropes but if you don’t take charge, you will just end up where you drift. Don’t be passive, make some goals and a plan to achieve them, with these you have a way to navigate the stream to get to where you want to go. When you engage with a mentor, you are adding a motor to get where you want to go faster. After I realized my mistake, I started engaging people as mentors, and trying to demonstrate that I was a senior manager. I had the skills, why didn’t I demonstrate them more openly? I started speaking out – a lot. I came up with ideas and strategies to improve the business. After a few years, there was another re-org, and I got that VP job. I loved it! I had really hit my stride. But it had taken me too long to get here. PIECE OF ADVICE #4:  Go for it! You don’t have to have 90% of the qualifications of a job to apply; if you meet 50% go for it! You can demonstrate that you can quickly learn the rest. If it doesn’t work out this time, you