Becoming the Bridge: When Career and Calling Finally Align

I used to view my career path as fumbling toward necessity.

I started as a receptionist. We didn’t have an in-house designer, but I had studied fine art in college, so I stepped in. When our website needed updates and there was no CMS, I taught myself HTML. Over time, I became the person who could fill gaps.

Others began to nudge me into roles they thought suited me, because I learned fast, because I was adaptable, because I could do a little bit of everything. 

I didn’t see it at the time, but I was iterating on myself to match the needs around me. I was shaping myself to fit roles, systems, expectations. What I wasn’t doing? Checking for alignment.

That changed in 2014, after my son was born. If I was going to be away from this magical little human being for 8+ hours of the day I needed to be doing something that lit me up. I knew I couldn’t keep falling into roles because someone else needed me to. I had to ask: what do I want to do, and how can that still serve the company?

Out of that intention, a new role emerged: UX Engineer. My manager and I defined it together, a bridge between design and engineering. This was a role that honored the way I worked: integrative, connective, cross-disciplinary. Design, front-end development, communication. All in one.

I hadn’t planned this path. I always thought I’d return to school and become a kindergarten teacher. But my real path wasn’t a plan, it was a pattern. Trying, feeling, stepping. That was the through-line.

When I left the company two decades later, I assumed I’d find another product leadership role. But the 2025 job market had other plans.

I reached out to old colleagues, hoping for guidance. They all said something similar: "Once you know what you want, things will take off."

So I journaled. I pulled apart what energized me and what drained me. I stopped looking for perfect job listings and started asking deeper questions:

• What makes me feel most alive when I’m working?

• What communities do I care about?

• What problems am I equipped to solve?

Climate change. LGBTQIA+ rights. Anti-racism. Systemic transformation.

I noticed that systems thinking had always come naturally to me. I saw connections, patterns, dependencies. And I began to wonder if that had something to do with my neurodivergence, this ability to synthesize across silos.

The more I peeled back, the more I aligned. And the more aligned I became, the more clearly I could see something taking shape: The Bridgework Project.

Not a business plan. Not a job title. A pattern I had finally named.

And it wasn’t born from a lightning strike of clarity. It was the slow unveiling of purpose through the work of boundaries, honesty, and alignment.

I wasn’t looking for a job that fit me. I was reclaiming the self I had flattened to fit jobs.

All of this was happening while I was also:

• Packing up a house with three kids

• Moving across town to an apartment

• Selling a home

• Redefining relationships

It was a season of undoing. And through the undoing, Bridgework emerged, not as a career goal, but as a way of being.

Because Bridgework is not just a role. It’s an identity.

I’ve always been a bridge. Even before the title "UX Engineer," I was translating between teams, stitching together gaps in communication, aligning design with development, pairing empathy with execution.

But the more a company scales, the more it craves boxes. Neat roles. Clear boundaries. And eventually, I no longer fit.

That was never a failing. It was a signal.

My strength wasn’t in staying in my lane. It was in building connections between lanes. Seeing how things fit. Helping others understand each other. Reducing friction. Creating flow.

And that work didn’t just improve outcomes. It made people feel seen. It made systems feel human.

Bridgework is:

• Valuable, because integration drives innovation

• Vulnerable, because you're constantly in-between

• Vital, because systems don’t transform unless someone helps re-thread them

Bridgework broke the mold I had been poured into.

It helped me realize: I was never "just" a designer. I was never "just" in product. I was never meant to pick a side.

I was always meant to build the bridge.

This is what authenticity revealed: not only who I am, but how I work best. Not only my values, but my value.

Bridgework isn’t a pivot away from leadership. It’s a deeper evolution of it.

And if any of this sounds familiar, if you’ve ever felt like your title doesn’t match the depth of your contribution, if you’ve ever felt like your true work lives between the bullet points on your resume, you’re not broken.

You’re a bridge.

And you’re not alone.