Are you a Toni Basil or a Baryshnikov?

Toni Basil: This is what it looks like when your career is a long, unfolding dance.

I recently came across a video of Toni Basil — yes, that Toni Basil, of “Hey Mickey” fame — absolutely on 🔥 at age 81, doing dance moves she’s been mastering for over 60 years. She was one of the original members of the Lockers, a pioneering street dance group, and has choreographed for decades.

The moves she’s doing in the video are fairly simple, but the way she performs them — her precision, her presence, even her outfit — makes it spectacular. You can feel the years of practice and evolution, distilled into something effortless.

It made me think about how we grow in our careers.

When we think about career change, we often imagine a complete reinvention. And sometimes it is that. But other times, it’s about adapting and deepening within the same world, taking your skills in a new direction you might not have considered.

Toni Basil never stopped being a dancer. But what “being a dancer” means for her has shifted over the decades.

Take Mikhail Baryshnikov. One of the greatest ballet dancers of all time. But when he outgrew ballet, he didn’t stop dancing. He moved into modern and jazz. Then into acting. Now he’s running a foundation to support the next generation of choreographers. Still in the arts, still using his experience — but evolving the way he contributes.

So here’s a question:

🔹 Are you a Toni Basil, staying within your core craft but letting it evolve?

🔹 Are you a Baryshnikov, moving adjacent to the world you know?

🔹 Or are you building something entirely new?

How I’ve changed careers (more than once)

I’ve done a little of each: I’ve been a Toni, a Baryshnikov, and I’ve ventured into totally new territory.

I started out in Human Factors, an early version of what we now call User Experience. After my MA, I spent my 30s working in giant enterprise companies. And then, on my 30th birthday, I had a moment — the kind that’s part epiphany, part early midlife crisis. I realized I was completely unsatisfied with both my personal and professional life, and I needed space to figure out what I actually wanted.

So I made changes. A lot of them.

One of the most memorable? I took myself to Mexico for a month to study Spanish — something that had been on my bucket list for a long time. During the last weekend of the trip, I was walking through the anthropology museum in Mexico City and had another deep realization:

“I want to do something that brings culture from one place, group, or person to another.”

I had no idea what that meant in practical terms. But I knew I needed to follow it.

Back in Southern California, I spent hours sitting on the sand in Laguna Beach, reflecting and journaling. I still have those notes. I asked myself questions like:

🔹 What are my broad skills?

🔹 What do I enjoy?

🔹 What kind of lifestyle do I want?

I had been studying various dance forms for a decade at that point, and my reflections eventually led to an MA in Dance Ethnology at UCLA, with the intention of pursuing a PhD in anthropology. Along the way, I abandoned my ambitions for a PhD when my yoga practice became more serious and I started teaching yoga — at community colleges and a university, where I developed a for-credit comprehensive yoga program for undergrads.

But I never fully left tech.

At UCLA, someone noticed I had a tech background and asked me to manage the computer lab for the dance department. My first students were dance majors learning to write papers in WordPerfect on a Mac Classic.

Later, I taught basic computer skills (hello, Windows 95!) to seniors in Beverly Hills. That led to private tech lessons, contract research work, and a dual-track career in yoga and technology that lasted 13 years.

In 2008, I started wondering: What would it be like to have ONE job again? One job that brought together everything I’d learned.

After another round of reflection, I landed at Kelley Blue Book and built their UX research function from the ground up. That role led to others — at Edmunds, NerdWallet, and eventually my own consultancy.

My career shifts didn’t happen overnight

They all started with reflection:

🔹 How can my skills transfer?

🔹 What do I like about what I’m doing?

🔹 What’s not working?

🔹 What kind of problems do I want to solve — and which ones do I want to stop solving?

🔹 What kind of environment and lifestyle do I want?

Sometimes you just need a job to pay the bills — that’s real and I would never suggest you navel gaze when your reality doesn’t allow it. But when you do have a little space to think, it’s worth asking the bigger questions.

So if you’re contemplating a shift — whether it’s a new direction within your current field or a total pivot — I invite you to take some time. Reflect. Write. Walk. Dance. Do some yoga. Sit on a beach, if that’s your thing. I’ve done a little of each.

A few prompts to get you started

🔹 What parts of your current role do you enjoy most?

🔹 What’s draining your energy?

🔹 What kinds of challenges light you up?

🔹 What kinds of people do you want to work with?

🔹 What does your ideal day look like?

🔹 What does success look like now (which might be very different than what it looked like five years ago)?

Like Rilke said, you don’t have to have all the answers (“Live the questions now.”) But giving yourself the time to ask the right questions is a powerful first step.

This post also appears on Medium.

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