Curating Career Life Stories: How Did I Get Here? Ep. 73 with Robyn Burkes

Join me for the career reflections of Robyn Burkes, sales leader at CISCO Systems. After abandoning her dream of becoming a lawyer, she finds a job just to get by and is blown away by the sales training she receives. Setting her on a career path that feeds her strong competitive nature. Combine that with always having a healthy level of confidence, she excels quickly in several sales roles, even one she considers the worse job ever. With more experience she’s more particular about what she’s looking for and lands at a great company, with an amazing culture, where she thrives. After fourteen years, she’s ready for a new challenge and creates a new position for herself. Which doesn’t work out, but it was time to leave, and now she’s found something better and loving where she is today. What’s served her best: directness and influencing. Her words of wisdom: “Find someone to help you, look for a mentor, someone who has been there. So many people out there will help, and want to help, and that can be the difference. Then their network becomes your network, it just opens up. And it makes you look at things completely differently through a different lens.”