Services
Your experience is not the problem. It is the foundation for what comes next.
An unexpected career transition — especially in your 40s, 50s, or beyond — can leave you questioning your direction, confidence, identity, and options.
You may know that you are capable of more while still feeling uncertain about what your next chapter should look like.
Through Striding Forward, I help experienced professionals clarify what comes next, recognize the value of what they have already built, and create a practical plan for moving forward. My approach combines strategic coaching, professional mentoring, program-management principles, and practical AI tools to help you turn uncertainty into informed action.
Who I Help
My services are designed for experienced professionals who are:
- Navigating a layoff or unexpected career transition
- Considering a new career, consulting path, business, or personal brand
- Trying to determine which opportunities best match their experience
- Feeling overwhelmed by too many possible directions
- Concerned that age or changes in technology have reduced their options
- Interested in using AI but unsure how to apply it practically
- Ready to redefine success instead of continuing to follow someone else's expectations
- Looking for thoughtful guidance, structure, and accountability
You do not have to start over. You need to understand how to reposition what you already know.
Next Chapter Clarity and AI Strategy Session
A focused 90-minute session to help you decide what comes next
This intensive is designed for someone facing one important transition, decision, or opportunity — maybe you've been laid off, feel ready to leave an established career, want to create a new income stream, or simply realize your current path no longer fits.
During our session, we evaluate where you are today, identify your strongest options, and use AI strategically to help you research, organize, and develop a realistic next-step plan.
Your session may include
- Clarifying the decision or transition you're facing
- Identifying transferable skills and overlooked experience
- Evaluating career, consulting, business, or personal-brand possibilities
- Recognizing gaps between your current and desired future state
- Using AI to explore opportunities and test ideas
- Creating customized prompts for career research, planning, or content development
- Identifying immediate priorities and potential obstacles
- Developing a focused 30-day action plan
You will leave with
- Greater clarity around your best next-step options
- A written summary of key recommendations
- A personalized set of AI prompts
- A practical 30-day action plan
- Specific actions you can begin immediately
Best for: Someone who needs clarity and direction but isn't yet ready for an extended coaching engagement.
Apply for a Clarity SessionStriding Forward Private Coaching
Six weeks of personalized reinvention and career-transition support
Private coaching is designed for experienced professionals who need more than one conversation. Over six weeks, we create a structured plan for your next chapter, explore realistic opportunities, and help you translate your professional and life experience into meaningful forward movement.
This is not generic motivational coaching — it's a practical, personalized process grounded in strategy, reflection, research, accountability, and action.
We may work together on
- Recovering your direction after a layoff or unexpected transition
- Rebuilding professional confidence
- Identifying your strongest transferable skills
- Clarifying your next career or business direction
- Repositioning your professional story
- Exploring consulting, entrepreneurship, or personal-brand opportunities
- Improving your résumé, LinkedIn presence, professional bio, or interview narrative
- Using AI for research, planning, job searching, content development, and decision support
- Establishing priorities, milestones, and measures of progress
- Creating a realistic 90-day reinvention plan
Six-week structure
- 1
Current-State Assessment
Your circumstances, responsibilities, strengths, concerns, and needs.
- 2
Experience and Transferable Value
The capabilities and accomplishments you may be underestimating.
- 3
Future-State Possibilities
Career, consulting, business, lifestyle, and income options.
- 4
AI-Assisted Research and Positioning
Refining your story and accelerating research without losing your voice.
- 5
Your Strategic Plan
Priorities, milestones, risks, and practical actions.
- 6
Momentum and Accountability
Your 90-day plan and the systems to keep moving.
What's included
- One 90-minute strategy session
- Four 45-minute coaching sessions
- One final 60-minute planning session
- Customized AI prompts and exercises
- Limited email support between sessions
- A written 90-day Striding Forward plan
Currently accepting 2 private clients.
Apply for Private CoachingThe Striding Forward Next Chapter Lab
A guided group experience for people ready to rethink what comes next
The Striding Forward Next Chapter Lab will bring together experienced professionals who are navigating career change, personal reinvention, or the desire to build something new. Participants work through a structured process combining reflection, career strategy, practical AI exercises, peer conversation, and accountability.
Potential program themes
- Understanding what no longer fits
- Separating your goals from other people's expectations
- Identifying transferable skills
- Exploring new career and income possibilities
- Using AI to research and evaluate options
- Creating a personal reinvention roadmap
- Building confidence through consistent action
- Developing a 90-day plan
This program will be open to anyone navigating a meaningful midlife or professional transition.
Join the Group Coaching WaitlistHelp Experienced Professionals Adapt, Reposition, and Move Forward
Organizations are asking employees to navigate rapid technological change, shifting expectations, restructuring, and new ways of working. Experienced professionals often possess significant institutional knowledge, judgment, leadership ability, and problem-solving experience — but may need practical support to understand how AI fits into their work, and how their value can evolve rather than disappear.
Michelle Annette delivers practical, relatable presentations that help professionals approach change with greater clarity, confidence, and curiosity.
Signature speaking topics
You Are Not Too Late to Learn AI
A practical, encouraging presentation for experienced professionals who feel intimidated, behind, or uncertain about AI. Participants learn what generative AI can and cannot do, how to approach it without becoming overly technical, how professional judgment and AI complement each other, and practical ways to use AI for research, communication, planning, and productivity.
Striding Forward Through Career Transition
A layoff, restructuring, or major career change can affect more than employment — it can challenge confidence, identity, financial security, and a person's sense of direction. This presentation helps professionals separate their value from their most recent job title, identify transferable strengths, reframe an unexpected transition, and use AI to explore opportunities and prepare for what comes next.
A Program Manager's Approach to Reinvention
Complex transitions become more manageable when broken into clear components. Michelle translates program-management principles — current-state assessment, desired future state, stakeholder expectations, risks and opportunities, resources, milestones, and lessons learned — into a practical framework for personal and professional change.
The Weight of Other People's Maps
Many professionals spend years following definitions of success inherited from employers, families, industries, and earlier versions of themselves. This keynote examines what happens when an old map no longer leads where you want to go, and how to begin making more intentional choices.
Leading Change Without Leaving Experience Behind
Designed for managers and organizational leaders — this session explores how companies can introduce AI and process change without dismissing the judgment, knowledge, and contributions of experienced employees.
Available formats
Keynote presentations · Corporate workshops · Leadership-development programs · Employee-resource-group presentations · Conference breakout sessions · Facilitated strategic discussions · Virtual presentations · Panel and podcast appearances
Invite Michelle to SpeakYou do not need to have everything figured out.
You may need a focused conversation. You may need a structured coaching process. Your organization may need a practical, relatable presentation that helps experienced people see change differently.
The first step is identifying what kind of support would be most useful.