HR expert Teresa Daly navigates her own career transition

Teresa Daly, who helps professionals transition from one career to another, has put herself through her own transition.

Daly and her business partner, Mary Kloehn, are co-founders of two-year-old Navigate Forward, a Loring Park boutique located at the entrepreneurial intersection of Daly's professional, personal and nonprofit passions.

Daly, 54, who earned a master's degree in industrial relations from the University of Minnesota, is a onetime corporate "HR weenie" who also spent 12 years at what is now Right Management Consultants. She worked on corporate contracts for outplacement, career counseling and organizational-development work, rising to senior vice president and a compensation package that topped a quarter-million bucks for a few years.

She served four years on the City Council of Burnsville, her hometown. A moderate Democrat, she also lost a 2004 congressional election to incumbent U.S. Rep. John Kline. The next year she joined the Prouty Project, a consulting firm to midsize companies. She was president there in 2006 and 2007.

"I loved it there," Daly recalled the other day. "But as I got older, I needed to own my own work. I thought, 'How much of my life is about what's significant to me versus just generating revenue?'"

Kloehn is also a veteran consultant and human resources executive who once worked with Daly at Right Management.

In early 2008, they launched Navigate Forward, which helps professionals transition from one job to another and also focuses on helping corporate refugees find different careers, perhaps in the nonprofit sector, board work. Daly and Kloehn each invested $30,000 to develop a strategy, lease an office, buy furniture and equipment and throw a champagne reception.

"We saw a little recession coming and thought that might be a good start for us," Daly recalled. "We felt that most of our work would be about executives saying it might be time to leave. Instead it was directors and vice presidents being shown the door."

Under the Navigate model, clients or their firms typically pay a one-time fee of up to $10,000, compared with the traditional outplacement model of fees for certain services and a placement bonus when a candidate lands the next job.

Needing to look forward'

"We can do 'CFO-to-CFO' transitions," Daly said. "But our sweet spot is more complex transitions. We stay with them for what can be a few months to 24 months. A lot of people come in scared ... at least it's hard for them to think outside their own box. Many want to do something different.

"We help them put the tools together. The last thing we work on is the résumé. We want them to look forward. The résumé connects them to the past."

There's the former Pillsbury brand manager who, after a couple of years at home raising kids, eventually started his own business helping entrepreneurs get products to market. There's the former corporate lawyer who now works for a school district.

Bill Levin was a 24-year institutional bond salesman for Piper Jaffray and longtime volunteer who started thinking about moving to the nonprofit world.

New life in a nonprofit

"I think I knew what I wanted to do, but I needed to define it and get feedback from people who knew networking and the search process," said Levin, 59. "They never wasted my time and always kept me on my toes. They raised my standards for me."

Levin joined the Gillette Children's Specialty Center Health Care Center in St. Paul as a fundraising officer in 2009.

"I'm not as rich as I was at Piper, but I work with a great group of people and I'm learning about health care and fundraising and working at a more measured pace than on a trading floor," Levin said. "Here I am, doing something I started thinking about in 2005. I wouldn't have gotten here without Teresa and Mary and the people you meet through Navigate Forward."

Kloehn and Daly, who did not pay themselves a salary in the start-up year of 2009, expect to take on 80-plus new clients this year, some of whom, particularly in nonprofit or hardship situations, will be on a pro bono or reduced-rate basis.

"We're paying ourselves a salary now, but it sure isn't $100,000 yet," Daly quipped. "We just want to do good work and make a reasonable salary."

Navigate Forward donates more than 10 percent of revenue to featured nonprofits; last year it was the Jeremiah Project, and this year it's the Cookie Cart, a north Minneapolis nonprofit that gives teens their first job experience.

Neal St. Anthony • 612-673-7144 • nstanthony@startribune.com