Lorraine K. Lee is a Keynote Speaker and the Founder of RISE Learning Solutions. After a 10+ year career as a founding editor at organizations including LinkedIn and Prezi, Lorraine was laid off and jumped head first into the next stage of her career as a solopreneur, and Founder of a training and content company, where she focuses on helping professionals supercharge their professional presence. Through her own experiences and her work as a coach, speaker, and consultant, Lorraine has learned the importance of intentionally managing your career. During this conversation, Lorraine shared her thoughts on why all employees should proactively and intentionally manage their career, and some of the important career moments in her own career journey. Lorraine also shared some of her own favorite career habits that have helped her manage her own career.
The Edge of Work: What is your role, and what inspires you to do the work you do each day?
For the first 10 years of my career, I was a founding editor at various tech companies like LinkedIn and Prezi. I’ve always been someone who had the most fun in my pre-professional classes at university, and I continued that trend by working at companies whose products and missions helped professionals be better at what they do.
After getting laid off in November 2022 during a wave of mass tech layoffs, I became a solopreneur and the founder of RISE Learning Solutions, where I’m a keynote speaker and trainer, a consultant and coach, and an instructor with LinkedIn Learning and Stanford Continuing Studies.
Through everything I do I’m passionate about helping professionals supercharge their professional presence — in other words, how and where others see you — from presentations and LinkedIn presence to executive presence and communications. Presence is a concept that’s becoming increasingly important especially as our working worlds go hybrid or virtual, and I believe it’s so important for professionals to be intentional about if they want to advance in their careers.
The Edge of Work: Let’s talk about career development. These are not new topics to organizations, but why is it important, and perhaps, what is new, or different today (2024)?
Investing in career development helps both employees and employers. It’s been shown that investing in employee happiness positively impacts the bottom line — and employee development is one of the factors that contributes to that happiness. Unfortunately, many companies (at least in tech) are cutting budgets around this even though it’s key to a happier and more productive workforce.
The Edge of Work: In a perfect world, what are some things you’d like to see companies do to promote career development in their organization?
I think career ladders are very important. The first time I saw one was when I was at LinkedIn. It’s important to formalize what’s required of employees in each role and what’s needed to reach the next one. You should never leave your teams guessing what it takes to advance. When I joined Prezi as its first editor, one of the first things I did was create a career ladder. Not only did it help my future team, it required me to think more thoughtfully about the responsibilities and skills I was looking for at each level.
Another one is creating programs that focus on managers. Managers are squeezed the hardest from all sides (they need to manage up and also need to manage down with their own teams). If you want your employees to succeed and excel, you need to provide the training and support. It won’t just happen on its own.
The Edge of Work: What was a critical moment, experience, or opportunity in your career that made a positive impact?
Pushing myself to become more comfortable public speaking was a major one for me. It started when I was at Prezi and we had to come up with a personal goal for ourselves. I decided to get more comfortable presenting given I was working at a presentation company. My colleague Spencer agreed to mentor me and then it was off to the races! I began speaking in 2021 virtually and did as many events as I could to continue improving.
As more people saw me speaking, that led to more opportunities, and it became a mini side hustle. This was also an important part to me posting more on LinkedIn and getting active again (I had taken a break after leaving LinkedIn). And, ultimately, when I got laid off, it’s what gave me the confidence to start my own business.
Over these few years, public speaking has led to so many other opportunities and visibility I wouldn’t have imagined for myself — from teaching courses with LinkedIn Learning and Stanford Continuing Studies to being interviewed on podcasts and publishing articles. Public speaking is a scary thing for a lot of people — and I’ve learned that because of this, if you can be someone who pushes past that, you really stand out.
The Edge of Work: People often talk about the importance of networking and relationships as it relates to career development. Can you share an example of someone in your career who has made a positive impact? Who were they, and how did they help you grow in your career?
There are too many to name! I recently made this LinkedIn post celebrating 24+ women who have positively impacted my career, and I could name so many more. Relationships have allowed me to excel in my past roles and have also gotten me where I am today.
I would say all my managers have been amazing — I’m lucky in that way. Each one has provided something different to me that I’ve taken away, from understanding how to hire, learning how to advocate for myself, or simply becoming a better writer.
The Edge of Work: What is one habit, practice or action that you think all professionals should do so they can develop and manage their own career?
There’s an important mindset we all have to adopt no matter what we do or where we work or what level we’re at in our careers — it’s to remember that we are all the CEOs of our own careers.
That means if we want something to happen, we have to take the initiative. We can’t rely on others (no matter how amazing they might be) to drive our career forward because they are also worrying about their own careers and the billion other things they have going on.
Some ways I’ve done this include:
- Writing a weekly newsletter with the team’s learnings and wins so that the rest of the company understood what we did as a team and the value we provided
- Letting my manager know I wanted a promotion (I didn’t just assume she knew, which many people do!)
- Proactively find networking events/programs to apply to where I could learn from other industry leaders
The Edge of Work: What is one thing you’d like leaders to do differently so they can create a better workplace for their people?
Two things – allow for flexibility. This requires a lot of trust from the leader and goes a long way in ensuring your team’s work at their most productive hours and can also live their life how they want, which ultimately leads to employee happiness.
Secondly – understand how your team likes to be rewarded. Not everyone cares about a higher salary. Understand what drives and motivates them, and reward good work accordingly.
The Edge of Work:What does a better world of work look like to you?
I would love to see a world of work that is more flexible and that gives people back more time to live their lives.
You can learn more about Lorraine and how you can work with her by checking out her website