Dear Reader,
Twelve months ago I thought I was changing jobs. Looking back, I think I was learning an entirely new profession.
After more than a decade at Living Goods, including seven years as CEO, I stepped away without a clear plan for what came next. I knew I needed a break and perhaps more importantly, I knew I wanted time to think. What I did not know was that running a one-person business would require me to rethink almost everything I thought I knew about work, leadership and impact.
This is not really a story about a portfolio career. It is a story about what changed in me over the past year.
The year in numbers
15 organisations supported
7 countries (with many of those leaders working across multiple countries)
10 CEOs and senior leaders mentored or coached
3 strategy processes facilitated
3 in person leadership retreats and workshops
1 board role
1 coaching diploma underway
1 CEO Masterclass delivered
>200 LinkedIn articles and 60 newsletters published
240 000 LinkedIn impressions and over 4000 followers
One business launched, countless lessons learnt
Behind every one of those numbers is a conversation, a decision or a lesson I hadn't expected to learn.
Leaving certainty
After more than a decade at Living Goods, and stepping down as CEO at the end of 2024, I stepped away with no real plan other than taking a break.
For someone whose greatest strength has always been planning, that felt deeply uncomfortable. My transition had been two years in the making, working closely with my board and handing over to an exceptional internal successor. I knew how to leave well but I had absolutely no idea what came next.
I assumed I would eventually become a CEO again. After all, that was the obvious next step. But I had some niggling questions that I could not ignore.
In my mid-fifties, was it time to create space for the next generation of leaders? As someone who has made Kenya home for many years but is not originally from here, should I continue leading organisations on the continent, or was there another way to contribute that better reflected the future I wanted to help build?
I did not know the answers. I just knew I was not ready to jump into another role because it was familiar.
Then, while I was taking time to think, the world changed.
The dismantling of USAID and wider reductions in overseas development assistance reshaped the sector almost overnight. Organisations were restructuring, leaders were carrying extraordinary uncertainty and many of the assumptions that had underpinned careers in global development no longer felt certain.
Perhaps strangely, that uncertainty helped me. It forced me to think much more fundamentally about what I wanted to do, rather than simply what job I wanted next.
I was fortunate enough to have saved enough money to create that thinking space without immediately needing another salary. I also invested in a coach, partly because I knew how difficult it is to think clearly when you are in the middle of your own transition.
Slowly, Volante began to emerge. I had a real aversion to calling myself a consultant (I know legally it is registered as Volante Consulting!). My image of a consultant was positive, I had worked with a lot of good ones; but I was not interested in producing endless PowerPoint decks or writing reports that sat on shelves which I know happens. Ironically, one year later AI is becoming remarkably good at some of those things anyway.
Instead, I kept returning to one simple idea. Leadership is lonely, and I knew what it felt like to carry decisions that nobody else could make, to navigate ambiguity whilst trying to project confidence, and to wrestle with strategy, culture, boards, funding, people and scale, often all at the same time.
Perhaps there was value in simply sitting alongside leaders at those pivotal moments, and that ultimately became the foundation of Volante.
What I got right
Before I formally launched, I spent almost three months doing little more than having conversations.
Some were with people I had worked with for years. Others were introductions through introductions. Some were with funders. Some with founders. Some with consultants already living portfolio careers. Some with people who had completely reinvented themselves.
Looking back, those conversations were probably one of the smartest investments I made.
They broadened my world far beyond community health, which had naturally become my professional home after eleven years at Living Goods. I found myself talking to people in education, agriculture, food systems, philanthropy, private sector businesses and organisations tackling entirely different challenges.
Patterns began to emerge. Leaders were wrestling with complexity as organisations grew, funding uncertainty was forcing difficult strategic choices, boards were asking different questions, government partnerships were becoming increasingly important and many organisations were entering a stage where technical expertise alone was no longer enough. Leadership itself had become the bottleneck.
Those conversations gave me confidence that there was a need for the kind of support I wanted to offer, not because I had all the answers, but because I had sat in that seat myself.
What surprised me
I kind of knew I was setting up a business. What I did not realise was that I was becoming every department within it.
As CEO I had brilliant people around me across finance, HR, operations, communications, IT, executive support and business development. I had always been involved in those functions, but I had never been solely responsible for every single one.
Marketing became LinkedIn, Kit, Canva and my website, all things I barely thought about when someone else was responsible for them.
Business development became the relationships I had built over three decades and what I now realise was effectively my own CRM, although at the time I simply thought of it as a networking tracker. Years of writing down conversations, following up with people and remembering where our paths had crossed suddenly became one of the most valuable assets I owned.
Finance became forecasting my own pipeline, managing cash flow, invoicing and asking myself questions I had never previously had to ask personally. How many months of work do I have lined up? What happens if two projects finish at the same time? When is it sensible to invest? When should I hold back? How much do I need to earn?
Operations became capacity planning. I built tools to understand where my time was actually going, not unlike workforce planning models I had used in much larger organisations. Looking backwards helped me understand how I had spent my time. Looking forwards helped me decide whether I had capacity to say yes to new work.
Without really noticing, I had recreated many of the management systems I had relied upon as a CEO, just in much lighter versions for one person.
Technology quietly became another member of the team. AI became the colleague I did not have, somewhere to pressure test ideas, provide facilitation ideas for workshops, edit writing and challenge my thinking, while tools like Calendly, Granola, Canva and My Hours helped me build systems that previously would have relied on several people. Technology did not replace people, but it made it possible for one person to do far more than I could have imagined.
Then there were the people who quietly stepped in.
My husband became my Head of Operations, although he would argue Director sounds more impressive. Fortunately, he had more enthusiasm for financial administration than I did and, having worked as a consultant himself, helped me set up invoicing, timesheets and many practical systems I barely knew existed. My stepdaughter became my web team, proving that family businesses can take some unexpected forms. Neither role appeared anywhere in the original business plan.
Finding my own voice
One thing I had not appreciated was how much writing would improve my 'consulting'. Sitting down each week to make sense of what I was seeing across clients forced me to look for patterns rather than simply solving individual problems. Increasingly, I realised the writing was not separate from the work. It became part of the work, helping me clarify my own thinking long before I sat down with a client.
LinkedIn became much more than somewhere to promote work. It became my notebook, a place to test ideas, connect patterns I was seeing across organisations and hopefully leave something useful behind for leaders who might never become clients.
Alongside LinkedIn I also started writing regularly to the Volante community. Together they have become places to think in public, to test ideas and to capture patterns I am seeing across organisations.
Some of my most interesting conversations this year have started because somebody read something I wrote months earlier, reminding me that thought leadership is not really about building a profile but about contributing something useful to the wider conversation.
What I changed my mind about
When I started Volante, I thought mentoring would become the majority of my work because I had been doing it informally for years and loved it. What I discovered was both practical and surprising. Practically, I realised you need a lot more mentoring clients than I expected to build a sustainable business. More importantly, I realised I am at my best when I stay alongside leaders and their teams over several months, helping them navigate complex decisions together.
That has led me into strategy processes, organisational design, scaling through government guidance, leadership retreats, board discussions and executive team development.
Over the past year that has meant working with 15 organisations across seven countries, mentoring or coaching 10 CEOs and senior leaders, facilitating three strategy processes and three leadership retreats. Looking back, what connects all of that work is not the sector or geography but helping leaders make better decisions during moments that genuinely matter.
Increasingly, I have realised that clients are rarely buying a strategy document. They are buying better thinking, whether that means bringing someone in who has seen similar challenges elsewhere, asking difficult questions that nobody internally can ask or simply providing a trusted sounding board for the weight that leadership brings.
That has become the work I enjoy most.
I have also surprised myself by how much I enjoy facilitation. As CEO I often brought in facilitators because I believed leaders should participate in conversations rather than trying to facilitate them. Now I have become that facilitator. Am I naturally brilliant at it? No. Am I learning? Absolutely. Do I enjoy watching leadership teams have conversations they would never have had otherwise? Very much.
Investing in myself
One of the biggest shifts this year has been deciding that I am worth investing in, which sounds obvious but felt anything but when every dollar became my own rather than an organisational budget. I paid my own way for Skoll in Oxford because I wanted to stay connected to extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, enrolled in a coaching and mentoring diploma to develop a different discipline rather than relying solely on my own leadership experience, and bought far more books, most of which I still haven’t managed to read. Apparently, more flexibility does not automatically create more reading time.
Redefining impact
One of my personal values is creating lasting impact. For much of this year I have quietly wondered whether leaving an executive role meant giving some of that up.
I no longer think it does.
As CEO my impact came primarily through one organisation. Today my impact comes through multiple organisations and multiple leaders.
I no longer own the outcomes. I influence them.
That is a very different feeling.
It is also why I continue to enjoy longer engagements and why I accepted a board role. I still want to know what happens after I leave. I still care whether the changes stick.
One unexpected benefit has been seeing patterns that no single organisation can see on its own. Conversations about boards influence conversations about strategy. Challenges around scaling appear across sectors. Leadership struggles repeat themselves in remarkably similar ways.
Those patterns have shaped much of my writing and led me to develop practical guides that hopefully help leaders who may never become clients. That feels important to me.
The realities people do not talk about
Portfolio careers are often presented as freedom and they are, but they are also uncertainty.
There are months when work feels abundant and months when you quietly wonder whether another project will appear. There is no annual salary quietly arriving at the end of the month.
I also discovered that I have limits.
I can comfortably manage around three significant client engagements at one time. Beyond that, constantly switching between organisations becomes surprisingly exhausting.
Saying I have no capacity, taking a holiday or going to a Pilates class on a weekday morning without feeling vaguely guilty have all taken much longer to learn than I expected.
One challenge still sits with me.
Many people who contact me are building small community organisations with almost no resources. They are driven by remarkable passion and commitment but have very limited ability to pay for support.
The CEO Masterclass I did this year grew directly out of that tension and so has much of my writing. If I cannot always work directly with people, perhaps I can still leave behind ideas that help them navigate some of the same challenges.
It still does not feel enough. Perhaps it never will.
Looking ahead
One year in, I know much more about the work I enjoy.
I want to test coaching as well as mentoring to become a bigger part of my portfolio alongside advisory work.
I would like to continue developing longer strategic partnerships rather than simply delivering individual pieces of work.
I am increasingly interested in fractional and interim leadership roles, not simply because they provide more predictable income, but because I miss belonging to a team and helping implement change over time. But I still want flexibility so not sure how to navigate that.
I also want to keep experimenting through another masterclass, more writing, perhaps another board role when the timing is right - ideally paid for, and probably something else I cannot yet predict because this year has taught me the best opportunities rarely appear on a carefully constructed career plan. They emerge through conversations, relationships and curiosity.
And the biggest lesson has been remembering that I still need to lead, even if I am only leading one person and one business. That means making time to reflect, capturing what I am learning, noticing what gives me energy, being honest about what is not working and being willing to change course. It is very easy to neglect those things when there is no annual review, no board meeting and no one asking the questions except yourself.
One year later
Finally, this year has reminded me how generous people can be. If you have been one of those people, whether we have worked together, shared a coffee, made an introduction, read something I have written, challenged my thinking or simply stayed connected, thank you. None of us really builds a portfolio career alone, and this first year would have looked very different without that generosity.
One of the biggest lesson of all has been recognising that my business deserves the same intentionality I expected from the organisations I led before. It deserves the same reflection, the same discipline and the same willingness to adapt.
Looking back, the biggest surprise is not the number of clients, workshops or strategy sessions. It is how much I have genuinely enjoyed building something from scratch again.
A year ago I thought I was leaving one career and starting another. Looking back, I realise I wasn't changing jobs nearly as much as I was changing how I think about work.
I stopped defining myself by the organisation I led and started defining myself by the contribution I could make.
I still do not know exactly what this portfolio will look like in another year's time. I hope some of it changes. I hope I keep experimenting. I hope I continue saying yes to work that stretches me and no to work that does not fit.
What I do know is that this year has reminded me that careers are not always built by following a plan. Sometimes they are built by creating enough space to notice where your experience, your curiosity and the needs of others intersect.
For now, my guiding principle is simply this.
Find good people doing great work, and help them do even more of it.
Warmly,
Liz
Strategic Advisor | Former CEO | Founder, Volante
Based in Kenya, available globally
