Crossing Thresholds Every Five Years

Some people walk a straight road. Their careers unfold like highways, with milestones clearly marked and the destination visible far ahead. Mine has been different. My path has always felt more like a spiral staircase — I return to familiar themes, but each turn lifts me to a new level. Every five years, I find myself entering a new domain, not by accident, but by instinct.

15–20: The Diplomat Dream

As a teenager, I was determined to become a diplomat. I majored in international politics, studied foreign relations, and imagined myself standing in global arenas negotiating solutions for complex problems. At the time, it felt like the purest form of service — connecting across borders, bridging differences, shaping brighter futures for the world.

20–25: Becoming a Mom and a Marketer

In my early twenties, I discovered another world: data-driven marketing. Instead of entering a highly political, bureaucratic environment, I chose a fast-paced learning path, turning what had once been my weakness — data and numbers — into my strength. I immersed myself in marketing research, performance marketing, and digital strategy. I learned to see patterns in human behavior, to build strategies from data, and to turn ideas into scalable systems. These were not just professional skills, but survival tools in a rapidly digitized world.

At the same time, I became a mother. Welcoming my daughter changed everything. Motherhood grew me as a person and widened my worldview. It sharpened my sense of responsibility — I wasn’t just building a career anymore; I was building a future for her and myself. I began to ask myself what I was modeling for her, and what kind of future I wanted her to inherit.

25–30: Exponential Growth in Tech Startups

The next pivot brought me into the heart of tech startups. This was a season of intensity — leading growth, scaling businesses, and ultimately serving as CMO and in other executive roles across organizations. The pace was exponential: speed, responsibility, teamwork, risk, and reward. Those years weren’t only about building companies; they were about building teams and building myself. I trained as a leader on the job, learning to navigate uncertainty and make decisions at high velocity.

30–35: Choosing Independence & Going Global

By thirty, I knew it was time to write my own script and live on my own terms. I began marketing consulting, helping startups grow from the outside in and training future CMOs. I also moved to the United States to work at a San Francisco–based startup, expanding my career beyond Korea and immersing myself in the heart of the global tech scene.

This was also when I stepped into the path of coaching, training and practicing as a career, leadership, and life coach. Coaching became another way of guiding people through transitions, courageous choices, and the pursuit of meaning.

At the same time, I allowed another identity I was born with to take root: I became a global nomadic interdisciplinary artist. In recent years, I have created and exhibited work in 10 different countries, carrying my studio in a suitcase, letting each place — its culture, people, environment, and materials — shape the art I made.

Reinvention as Expansion, Not Abandonment

Looking back, these shifts might seem like abrupt pivots. But for me, they were never about abandoning the past. They were expansions.

Diplomacy gave me the lens of internationalism that now colors my nomadic lifestyle. Marketing gave me the rigor and clarity to transform creative practice into sustainable platforms. Startups gave me the courage to lead and the speed to act with the most effective tools at hand. Coaching and art gave me the freedom to align my life with my deepest values.

I’m not changing into something else every five years. I’m becoming more myself.

At the heart of every pivot is the same impulse: to connect people, ideas, and ecosystems across boundaries — between nations, markets, professions, organizations, or cultures.

35–40: What Comes Next — Integration & Synthesis

Now, at 35 — soon to be 36 in January 2026 — I sense another cycle beginning. This one is not about discarding what came before, but about integration.

I am weaving my marketing and tech-business brain back into my art practice and deepening my expertise in the art world. I am creating and scaling platforms for artists and art communities around the world. At the same time, I am expanding my coaching practice, working with both business leaders and creative people who want to live with courage — those ready to choose creativity, reinvention, or a more authentic path.

What lies ahead is not a departure but a synthesis: art, business, technology, and coaching converging into something larger than the sum of its parts.

The Spiral Keeps Rising

Every five years, I arrive at a new threshold. What once looked like reinvention now feels like remembering. At each turn, I carry all my past selves with me: the diplomat, the marketer, the mother, the startup leader, the coach, the artist.

The path is not linear, but it is mine. And with every cycle, I rise closer to the core of who I’ve always been.

If you find yourself standing at a threshold — sensing the pull of change, wondering what the next cycle could hold — I’d love to explore it with you.

Coaching begins with a simple conversation — a chemistry call — to explore what’s possible together.

— Jay