People often say to me, “You have had a wonderful career.” And I would have to agree.
Working in student affairs and services (SAS) for more than 35 years has given me opportunities I could never have imagined when I entered the profession. I have worked with students and colleagues across institutions and countries, taught, travelled, led teams, built professional networks, participated in Semester at Sea, and helped create a global association of professionals who share a passion for students and their success.
But several years ago, I began asking myself a different question:
What do I want the next part of my career and my life to look like?
It was not a question that came from being unhappy with my career. Quite the opposite. I loved the profession. But I was beginning to think differently about how I wanted to spend my time, where I wanted to live, what work I wanted to continue doing, and what I valued most.
I also knew that I wanted to remain connected to SAS. I just was not sure that connection needed to look the same as it had for most of my career.
Looking Back to Understand What Matters
When I look back now, I can see experiences throughout my career that were telling me something about what mattered to me long before I consciously connected them.
One of those experiences was Semester at Sea. I first sailed as a residential coordinator in 1992. Living, working, and learning with students, staff, faculty, and crew while travelling around the world had a profound impact on me.
I knew I wanted international experiences and intercultural learning to remain part of my life and career.
Of course, it was not always possible to leave a university position and sail around the world. So I found other ways to recreate parts of that experience. I became involved internationally in the profession. I took students overseas to conferences. I still remember taking three students to Thailand for an Asia Pacific Student Services Association (APSSA) conference and watching them experience another culture and interact with students from different countries.
Professional associations became another important part of my journey. I became deeply involved in association work in the United States and later internationally. Eventually, this helped lead me to the International Association of Student Affairs and Services (IASAS), and to colleagues around the world who believed, as I did, that our profession benefits when people from different higher education contexts learn from one another.
Looking back, the pattern seems obvious.
Connection. Learning. Other cultures. Developing people. Bringing people together.
Those things mattered to me.
Discovering What I Bring
Another important turning point came while I was at Pace University.
Our division was exploring what it would mean to become a strengths-based campus as part of our student success work. Through that process, I was introduced to CliftonStrengths.
My top five strengths are Woo, Positivity, Arranger, Communication, and Achiever.
At the time, I found the results interesting. Years later, I find them revealing.
I can now see those strengths running through much of my career.
I enjoy meeting people and creating connections. I get energy from bringing people and ideas together. I enjoy communicating whether I am teaching, presenting, mentoring, or facilitating a conversation. I tend to see possibilities. And, yes, Achiever probably explains why I have rarely been very good at sitting still when there is something meaningful I could be working on.
Understanding my strengths also helped me recognize something equally important:
None of us is good at everything.
That sounds obvious, but it took me time as a leader to fully appreciate it. There were parts of my work that energized me and others that did not. There were things I did particularly well and things other people did much better.
Leadership became less about believing I needed to do everything well myself and more about understanding what I brought and surrounding myself with people who brought strengths I did not have.
That lesson eventually became important in thinking about my career as well.
Getting Help to Ask the Right Questions
At another point in my career, I decided to hire a coach.
This was somewhat unusual for me. I had experienced coaching through one of my universities and had benefited from mentors throughout my career. As a first-generation college graduate, mentors had been especially important in helping me understand opportunities and navigate professional environments.
But hiring someone myself to help me think about my future felt different.
I had some fairly specific ideas. I wanted to work internationally. I was interested in becoming a Fulbright Specialist. I wanted greater freedom eventually to live outside the United States and spend more time with my partner, family, and friends. At the same time, I did not want to leave a profession that had given me far more than I ever felt I could give back.
I chose someone who had been a mentor earlier in my career and who was also on the Fulbright Specialist roster. Part of me simply thought: I would like to do what he has done.
But more importantly, I wanted someone who would ask questions, challenge me, and hold me accountable for taking steps toward what I said I wanted.
The process pushed me to think not only about my next position, but about my values.
What mattered most? What did I want more of? What was I willing to give up? And what did success mean to me now?
Success Does Not Always Mean Moving Up
Career development research helped me put language around something I was beginning to understand intuitively.
Douglas Hall's work on the protean career describes careers as increasingly self-directed and values-driven. Rather than defining career success only through advancement, title, salary, or organizational status, individuals also define success through their own values and sense of psychological success.
That idea resonates with me.
For much of our professional lives, the next step can seem relatively obvious. We build expertise. We take on more responsibility. Perhaps we supervise larger teams, manage larger budgets, become a director, dean, vice president, or move into another senior role.
There is nothing wrong with any of that. Those opportunities can be tremendously fulfilling.
But at some point, another question may become more important:
Am I still moving toward what matters to me, or am I simply continuing to move?
My own answer began to change.
I wanted more control over my time. I wanted more time with the people I love. I wanted to continue travelling and learning from people in other cultures. I wanted to teach. I wanted to mentor. I wanted to connect professionals from different parts of the world. I wanted to continue contributing to research and the development of our profession.
And I wanted to do more of the work that gave me energy and joy.
Leaving the Position, Not the Purpose
Today, I am transitioning away from full-time university administration.
But I don't feel that I am leaving SAS.
In many ways, I feel as connected to the purpose of the profession as I ever have been.
I teach. I mentor. I consult. I conduct research. I continue my international association work. I connect colleagues around the world. And increasingly, I want to help other professionals think intentionally about their own development and what they want next.
Research on job crafting suggests that people can actively reshape aspects of their work to create greater meaning and alignment. Perhaps what I am doing now is a form of career crafting — taking the parts of 35 years of professional experience that continue to matter most to me and intentionally building a different kind of professional life around them.
I also recognize the privilege inherent in being able to make some of these choices. Financial circumstances, family responsibilities, health, geography, immigration, employment opportunities, and many other factors affect the choices available to each of us. Not everyone has the same options.
But I do believe most of us can benefit from periodically asking whether our professional lives remain aligned with what matters to us.
What About Your Story?
You do not have to be approaching the end of a long administrative career to ask these questions.
In fact, I wish I had asked some of them more intentionally at different points throughout mine.
So wherever you are in your professional journey, consider taking some time to reflect:
What experiences, people, and decisions have shaped the professional you have become? What do you value most at this stage of your life — not five or ten years ago, but now? When are you at your best? What strengths are you using in those moments? What parts of your work give you energy and purpose? What would you like to do more of, and what might you be ready to do less of?
And perhaps the hardest question:
If you removed titles and traditional definitions of advancement from the equation, what would you want the next chapter of your professional life to look like?
You may not immediately know the answers. I certainly did not.
Sometimes we need other people to help us find them.
Moving Through It Together
One of the things I have learned throughout my career is how important other people are to our development. Coaches, mentors, supervisors, colleagues, friends, and professional communities have all helped me understand myself differently at various points in my life.
Now, as part of my work with GSA Consulting Group, I find myself wanting to create those same kinds of opportunities for others.
I am particularly interested in three deceptively simple ideas:
Know Yourself.
What do I value? What are my strengths? When am I at my best?
Lead Yourself.
How do I show up? What patterns help me grow — and which ones may be holding me back?
Shape Your Career.
How can I use what I know about myself to intentionally build a professional life that remains meaningful and aligned with who I am becoming?
I am still working through these questions myself.
Perhaps that is another lesson I have learned after 35 years: professional growth is not something we complete.
Our values evolve. Our circumstances change. What gives us energy changes. Our definition of success changes.
The important thing may be creating enough space to notice those changes and having people around us who will listen, ask good questions, challenge us, and help us turn reflection into action.
I have left positions before, and I am leaving one kind of professional life now.
But I have not left the purpose.
I am simply finding new ways to live it.
About the Author
Lisa Bardill Moscaritolo, Ph.D. is Senior Consultant at GSA Consulting Group. Based in Portugal and the US, Lisa brings more than 35 years of student affairs and services leadership, and is GSA's specialist in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. She is a longtime leader within the International Association of Student Affairs and Services (IASAS). Lisa now focuses on executive mentoring, career coaching, and connecting student affairs and services practitioners across cultures.