The Exit Strategy Network™
Some exits are chosen. Some choose you.
Some exits are chosen.
Some choose you.
Some exits begin with a layoff. Others begin with a diagnosis, a divorce, a death, a move, an empty nest, a crisis of faith, or the quiet realization that the life you built is costing you too much to keep.
Then comes the in-between…
The old life no longer aligns, the next life has not yet taken shape, and every decision seems connected to five others.
You’re not only looking for another job.
You may be grieving an identity, renegotiating relationships, trying to stabilize your finances, listening to a body that can no longer sustain the pace, questioning what you believe and wondering where or with whom you belong.
Maybe this is you. Maybe it is someone you love.
The Exit Strategy Network™ is building a more humane way to navigate that place between no longer and not yet.
MAYBE THIS IS YOU.
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Work + Identity
The title disappeared, the income changed and suddenly you were not only looking for work, you were trying to remember who you were without the role that once organized your time, identity, relationships and sense of worth.
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Relationship + Home
You are grieving a person, a partnership, a family structure, a familiar place or a version of the future you assumed you would have. Everyone keeps asking what comes next, but you’re still trying to understand what ended.
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Body + Health
Illness, disability, hormonal change, burnout depression or accumulated stress made the old pace impossible to maintain. The world calls it midlife, but your body may be telling you that the way you were living was never sustainable.
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Purpose + Inner Life
You’re still functioning, achieving, and showing up, but your beliefs, desires, identity or definition of success has changed. Continuing to perform the old life now feels like abandoning yourself.
Maybe this is you or someone you love.
PEOPLE DO NOT LIVE IN SILOS. SUPPORT SYSTEMS OFTEN DO.
One office handles employment while another handles housing. Another system handles mental health and benefits, and still another handles education or retraining.
Each comes with a new portal, new forms, new eligibility rules and another request to explain what happened.
At the exact moment you may feel least clear, you are expected to diagnose your needs, find the right institution, understand its language, prove that you qualify and make decisions that could shape the rest of your life...all while managing the grief, fear, shame, exhaustion or uncertainty that brought you there.
The problem is not transition itself.
The problem is transition is made unnecessarily isolating, fragmented and harmful because the support surrounding it is difficult to find, disconnected or missing entirely.Read “Transition Is Personal. The Conditions Are Structural.”
MY PERSONAL EXIT BECAME A PUBLIC INQUIRY
After nearly two decades designing learning journeys, facilitating community experiences and helping institutions engage the people they served, I stepped away from higher education for an unpaid mental health sabbatical.
My professional life was the visible disruption, but the transition reached into everything including my body, my finances, relationships, my understanding of home, my creative and sensual life, and my faith in the institutions and definitions of success I had been taught to trust.
I intuitively began to use writing, sound, nature, documentary conversation, conceptual portraiture and four artistic personas to examine the different selves I had performed, protected, hidden and outgrown.
What I first understood as a personal need eventually revealed a larger question:
How many people are trying to rebuild internal authority while also lacking the external support needed to make clear, healthy and sustainable choices?
That question became The Exit Strategy Network™.
WHAT I’M BUILDING
The Exit Strategy Network™ is an emerging relationship experience ecosystem for whole life learning and transition support.
THE PLATFORM BRINGS TOGETHER
PEOPLE NAVIGATING TRANSITION
Midlife/mid-career, impact professionals seeking language, relationships, practices, resources and places to safely explore what comes next.
SCHOLARS / CREATORS-IN-RESIDENCE
Educators, artists, health practitioners, community/cultural leaders, and other impact professionals translating lived experience, professional knowledge and creative intelligence into meaningful media, tools, gatherings and other forms of public value.
HOSTS, FUNDERS & COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Universities, cultural organizations, employers, public agencies, brands and community organizations contributing expertise, space, capital, reach and material support.
The Exit Strategy Network™ connects these groups through meaningful media, creative practice, facilitated experiences, enrichment resources, in-person community activations., and responsible technology.
TECHNOLOGY THAT HELPS YOU HEAR YOURSELF
Most digital platforms begin by asking what content you like.
We want to begin somewhere else:
WHAT’S TRUE FOR YOU RIGHT NOW?
The Exit Strategy Network™ is developing a lightweight transition navigation experience called YOUR NOW.
A participant could enter through one of two doors:
“I know what needs attention” or “I genuinely do not know where to start.”
The experience would help identify:
What life area deserves care or what might provide support.
What capacity is available today.
One relevant person or gathering.
One manageable action.
One invitation away from the screen.
This isn’t an endless library of self-help content or another algorithm announcing the correct next step.
It’s a humane recommendation engine for the in-between.
The goal isn’t to make the technology more certain about someone’s life.
The goal is to help real humans become more articulate about what feels true for them in the moment, encounter possibilities, borrow perspective from other people, experiment safely and decide again.
THE WHOLE LIFE MATTERS
The Exit Strategy Network™ uses ‘The 8 Dimensions of Wellness’ to understand how change in one area can affect the others:
“The objective is not to optimize every dimension at once, it’s to recognize what deserves care now and what parts of life might help support the repair, reorientation or expansion.”
THE FIRST LIVING EXPERIMENT
I am currently participating in this work through three connected roles:
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As a member, I’m reflecting on what I needed while navigating my own disorienting life and professional transition.
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As a founding Scholar/Creator-in-Residence, I am translating lived experience, professional knowledge, and creative intelligence through writing, sound, documentary conversation, conceptual portraiture, facilitated experience, and social practice.
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As the founder of The Exit Strategy Network™, I’m developing and testing the relationships, creative formats, technology and partnership models that could support other impact professionals in transition.
I am Case Study 001.
This is not a universal blueprint, just the first living experiment. Explore my interdisciplinary practice.
HELP US LEARN WHAT SHOULD EXIST
The Exit Strategy Network™ is currently preparing to test the social behavior before overbuilding the technology.
The first phase will listen to people navigating different forms of transition and examine:
What language feels true? What feels invasive?
What information is actually useful?
What kinds of recommendations feel supportive rather than prescriptive?
What should technology facilitate? What is better held by people?
If you’re navigating the place between no longer and not yet, your experience can help shape what is tested.
HELP US RESOURCE A MORE HUMANE EXPERIMENT
We’re also seeking host organizations, research collaborators, Scholar/Creator contributors, financial and in-kind sponsors interested in supporting the first pilot.
Potential partnership areas include:
Member access and sponsored seats
Scholar/Creator compensation
Technology and prototype development
Community gatherings
Research, documentation and evaluation
Space, hospitality and local partnerships
START HERE
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“There Is No Syllabus for This Part”
For the human experience of navigating life without a predetermined rubric.
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“Before You Reinvent Yourself”
For impact professionals searching for a more self-authored way to contribute.
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“CIRs: How to Build What's Next”
For the emerging residency, partnership and public-value model.
THE EXIT STRATEGY NETWORK™ IS NOT HERE TO TELL PEOPLE HOW TO REBUILD THEIR LIVES.
I’m creating a place where people can notice what has changed in their lives, identify and get radically honest about what deserves care right now, encounter people and possibilities, access relevant support, and recover enough internal authority to choose how to begin again.
Leaving what no longer aligns is only one part of an exit strategy, the rest is building a life you don’t have to abandon yourself to remain inside.
The Exit Strategy Network™ is an emerging learning, media, technology and community-engagement ecosystem. It is not therapy, healthcare, crisis response, legal advice or guaranteed employment.