When Your Title is No Longer the Whole Answer
Who are you without your current title or role?
When people ask me what was hardest about leaving my role as a community pediatrician to become a healthcare technology executive, I almost always give the same answer.
It wasn’t the new vocabulary, the new pace, or the new org chart.
It was the shift in identity.
As a pediatrician, the value I brought was clear. I prevented life-threatening diseases by educating families and advocating for vaccines. I diagnosed and treated illness. I helped parents through some of the hardest nights of their lives. I sat across from teenagers and gave them a reason to hope.
There was very little ambiguity about who I was or why I mattered.
Then I stepped into a new role, and that clarity went with it.
I want to be clear: I’m not suggesting that your professional identity doesn’t matter. It matters enormously.
What you built matters. Your education and training matter. The experiences you’ve had, the people you’ve cared for and led, the problems you’ve solved—all of that is real, and it deserves to be honored.
But here’s what I’ve noticed, both in myself and in the women I coach:
For many of us, “clinician” or “leader” didn’t remain a role.
Over time, it became a container.
And that container quietly started holding everything: our sense of worth, our sense of safety, our answer to whether we were enough.
The Mindset Shift
Here’s the tender part.
Our careers often selected for exactly this.
From the moment you chose your path—whether that was medicine, leadership, or another high-stakes role in healthcare—you were rewarded for total commitment.
The people who advanced and earned visibility often seemed to be the ones willing to let the role consume them.
That wasn’t an accident.
The system was working exactly as it was designed.
So this isn’t about blame.
It’s about noticing what happened and gently asking:
Is this still serving me?
The part of you with her own preferences, curiosities, delights, and particular way of moving through the world.
For some of us, she feels close. Maybe even restless, knocking to be let back in.
For others, she has been quiet for so long that the idea of listening for her feels almost impossible.
Either way is okay.
You don’t have to tear anything down to find her.
This isn’t about demolition.
It’s about expansion. Making room.
Because here’s what I know to be true, and what I keep relearning:
The more of you that gets to show up in your life—not just the professional you, but the full, complicated, multidimensional you—the more sustainable everything else becomes.
I learned this when I became a yoga teacher.
I learned it again when I became a coach.
Is this still serving me?
Questions to sit with
You don’t need to answer all of these at once. Pick the one that catches your breath a little, and stay with it this week.
Outside of your professional role, how would you describe yourself right now?
Before your career began, what did you love? What did a free Saturday look like?
If you didn’t have your professional identity, who would you be?
Is there a part of you—a curiosity, a dream, an interest, a way of living—that you’ve quietly tucked away?
What would it look like, even in a small way, to let more of that part of you out this week?
The deeper question underneath all of them is this:
Who am I becoming when my old professional identity no longer fits?
A Gentle Close
I am a pediatrician.
I am also a healthcare technology strategist, a coach, a mother, a wife, a cyclist, and a yogi.
None of those identities cancel out the others.
They simply give me more room to be whole.
A wise friend introduced me to the idea of a portfolio career—a collection of roles, interests, and contributions rather than a single professional identity. The idea has really stuck with me.
“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.”
-Oscar Wilde
This is the first in a five-part series on the identity shifts that happen when we step away from the roles that once defined us completely—whether that means leaving clinical practice, stepping into leadership, or simply growing into someone new.
Next week, we’ll talk about what it feels like to lose the sense of competence that used to come so easily—and what to do when you suddenly find yourself a beginner again.