Career Re Entry on Shine

Relauncher Tammy Thurow, Bentonville, Arkansas Chamber of Commerce, tells her return-to-work story

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This week we are featuring a guest blogger – Relauncher Tammy Thurow, Vice President, Marketing and Membership Services, for the Bentonville/Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce (as in Bentonville, Arkansas where Wal-Mart is based!). In fact, we were introduced to Tammy by Lucretia Pruitt, aka @GeekMommy, who is one of the Wal-Mart “Eleven Moms” influential mom bloggers and product testing group, and whom we profiled a few weeks ago. Tammy’s relaunch story was so authentic and instructive, that we asked her if she would guest blog this week so you can hear it from her directly, and she agreed. So here’s Tammy…

36 real examples of how to stay connected to your field while on career break (including 5 from retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor!)

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The highlight of our research for our career reentry strategy book Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work was interviewing Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor about her five years as a stay-at-home mom (she was still on the court when we met with her). Justice O’Connor was a master at staying connected to her field during her career break. Her contacts from one of her career break experiences, her volunteer work for the Republican Party, helped O’Connor relaunch her career in the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in 1965. And we all know what happened after that. Vivian and I are regularly asked for ideas on how relaunchers can stay connected to their fields while on career break. Rather than just give suggestions, I thought it would be more useful to see a list of actual examples. Here they are, beginning with five from Justice O’Connor:

Returning to work after a divorce

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Returning to work after a career break, or “relaunching,” in the face of a divorce brings special challenges. You may have immediate financial need and feel especially emotionally vulnerable. But you shouldn’t be any less strategic than if you were returning to work for other reasons. The “7 Steps to Relaunch Success” strategy my co-author Vivian Steir Rabin and I developed for returning to work after a career break provides an order to the relaunch process and helps you maintain momentum. But if divorce precipitated your relaunch, there are a couple of important tweaks to the process you will want to consider.

The Woman Who Resurrected Her Career After a 7-Year Hiatus from HE*L!

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Like many stay-at-home moms, Barbara Bamba is no stranger to stepping-out. Her first extended leave from the workforce was for an 8-month period to recover from an episode of heart failure, due to post-partum...