When the Plans Change

It was a Tuesday afternoon during my sophomore year of high school. The afternoon sun was shining through the classroom window on a cold winter day as my accounting class wrapped up.

I had signed up for the class as an elective because it seemed a little more interesting than some of the other options. What I did not expect was to become so fascinated by the subject that I began dreaming of a career in it.

Many afternoons that year, I fantasized about working in a modern office far away from my small hometown. I envisioned a place where the women were smart and confident, wearing beautiful suits with their hair and makeup polished and professional.

They were proud. They were confident. They were unstoppable.

How I longed to be one of those women someday.

But I knew life had other plans for me.

I wasn't one of those girls. You know the ones. The smart ones who went to college. The popular ones who were natural-born leaders. The stylish ones who knew how to dress to impress.

Nope. That wasn't me.

I definitely wasn't college material, and even if I had been, college was a dream so far-fetched that I put it out of my mind. Beautiful clothes seemed equally impossible, and who in the world would ever look at me as a leader?

But there was one thing I knew for certain.

That accounting class.

My gosh, it was interesting. The numbers were like puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly for me. They told a story as clearly as if I were reading a novel. I was challenged, intrigued, fascinated—and for perhaps the first time, I didn't want a class to end.

It was the beginning of an obsession.

Even so, I wrapped my school blazer tightly around me as I walked home on that icy Tuesday afternoon thinking, Wouldn't it be nice…

A few short years later, the plans changed.

A beloved uncle who lived in Washington, D.C., passed away suddenly. His wife, Bea—yes, I really had an Aunt Bea—held his funeral back in our small hometown so more family members could attend. Afterward, she invited me to visit her in D.C.

I had just turned 18 and had no plans for anything particularly constructive. A childhood of unfortunate circumstances had left me with very little confidence, very few resources, and no meaningful job prospects unless you counted the pizza place where I was waitressing.

But then the plans changed.

I took Aunt Bea up on her offer and went to D.C. I had never been to a city with highways bigger than two lanes, and most of the roads I knew were covered in dirt. I was terrified of the Capital Beltway. My goodness, I thought I'd kill myself and three other people trying to merge onto a six-lane highway.

Aunt Bea was having absolutely none of my pity party.

She was a well-respected educator and guidance counselor, and she began mentoring me. Slowly, some confidence started to emerge. She arranged for me to take an assessment to identify skills that aligned with my career goals.

Career?

Yeah, right.

But okay, Bea. I'll take the test.

Well, friends, guess what surfaced as a natural fit?

Yep. Accounting. The same subject I had fallen in love with a few years earlier.

So now what?

First, you should know that saying "no" to Aunt Bea wasn't really an option. She loved me, and I loved her. So when she announced, "Lisa, we're going to the community college tomorrow," I thought she had lost her mind.

The next day she said, "Get in the car. You need the practice driving on the Beltway anyway."

I'm still not sure which scared me more—the college admissions office or merging onto that Beltway.

But off we went.

The admissions officer placed a curriculum in front of me and said, "I think we should start here."

I stared at the paper and all those accounting classes. I couldn't believe my eyes. Then I looked at Bea. 

Without my saying a word, she simply said:

"You are college material. You just don't know it yet."

On that day, in that admissions office, the plans changed.

Later that year, I landed a job as an accounting clerk with a local supermarket chain. Suddenly, the concepts I was learning in school began taking shape in the real world. Those puzzle pieces were fitting together again.

I loved what I was learning. I loved my job. And perhaps most importantly, I began to realize that maybe I could have the life I had dreamed about as a teenager after all.

Over the years, I became an insatiable lifelong learner, earning degrees and professional credentials along the way.

And that supermarket job?

There's that.

I went from an accounting clerk processing Pepsi-Cola invoices to a regional executive responsible for finance and accounting for more than 100 grocery stores across three states.

Somewhere along the way, I had become the smart girl in the beautiful office building.

I'm not sure how stylish I was, but it didn't matter.

Over a 30-year career, I navigated multiple publicly traded acquisitions, led teams, became an experienced CFO, and built a professional identity I was incredibly proud of.

But then the plans changed.

In my 30th year with the company, I learned that the retail division I managed was being divested.

I was devastated.

My entire adult career had been connected to that company. Every professional experience I had—the good, the bad, and now the very ugly—was tied to it.

Thousands of us were laid off. Colleagues I had grown up with in the business were suddenly facing the same uncertainty. We had started as ambitious young associates and grown together into middle-aged professionals.

And suddenly, it was over.

What was I supposed to do now?

I had placed so much of my identity in my career that, for a moment, I was right back in that small hometown—lost, afraid, and wondering whether I was enough.

But then the plans changed.

I took a year off and went back to the classroom.

I needed time to heal, and education was my therapy.

My severance gave me the opportunity to step away long enough to figure out what came next, so I pleaded with my university to let me pursue two master's degrees in one year. The university reluctantly granted me some extraordinarily flexible leeway, and I spent that year lost in the wonder of learning.

My curious mind stayed busy.

My heart began to heal.

Eventually, I was ready to work again. I assumed I would return to supermarkets or perhaps another food and beverage company.

But unbeknownst to me, the plans were about to change again.

During my supermarket career, I had been honored to serve as president and treasurer of our division's charitable foundation, which supported more than 1,400 local organizations. Among our beneficiaries were local food banks.

Then a friend told me that one of the food banks I had supported through both the grocery stores and the foundation was looking for its next CFO.

I had one of those light-bulb moments.

Why not? It's still the food industry, right? This could be interesting.

And then the plans changed.

I abandoned my supermarket job search and went to work for the food bank.

It was my first experience working inside a nonprofit organization, and at first I felt like a fish out of water.

But this ole fish didn't sink.

I began to swim.

I began to change.

And I began to fall unapologetically in love with the mission—with serving the community and working alongside people who showed up every day determined to help their neighbors in need.

For a while, I barely recognized myself.

The business skills I had spent decades developing were still there. In fact, they mattered enormously. But now I was using them in a different way and for a different purpose.

My corporate career taught me how to become a CFO. My nonprofit career expanded my understanding of what I could do with everything I had learned.

Today, I take enormous pride in using my business experience to help mission-driven organizations become stronger. I'm grateful when I can use compassion alongside financial discipline to serve communities. And I'm honored whenever my leadership experiences allow me to coach and mentor someone else into becoming the leader they hope to be.

Sometimes when the plans change, life has a remarkable way of coming full circle.

The girl who once walked home from accounting class dreaming about a life she couldn't imagine ever having eventually became the woman she couldn't yet see.

And perhaps the most meaningful part of that journey is that she now gets to use everything she learned along the way to strengthen the same kinds of mission-driven organizations that once helped children just like her.

We may not recognize it while it's happening. Sometimes a changed plan feels like disappointment. Sometimes it feels like failure. Sometimes it feels downright terrifying.

But every once in a while, the plan we never made leads us exactly where we needed to go.