When I started dabbling with a career transition to find ‘fulfillment,’ I had no idea what that meant. I had an awesome job as an investor, running a multi-billion portfolio and investing on behalf of institutional clients. It was well-paying, intellectually stimulating, and well-respected. I was working with smart and competent people, with a promising trajectory to continue leveling up.

There was only one small problem: the mission didn’t feel true to my heart. Beating the market didn’t excite me as much as it did to many of my peers. I was doing well at work simply because that has always been my personality - constantly delivering and pushing boundaries. But underneath this drive, I didn’t know what I was fighting for.

Something felt missing. If not this, then what?

Facing reality

It wasn’t the first time I struggled to find meaning. In fact, I was haunted by this question my entire tenure. I sought solutions by making pivots within Finance, expanding my role at work, focusing on passion projects, recharging my batteries through vacations, etc., but none brought sustained contentment.

In fact, they were nothing but distractions. The reality was that I wasn’t happy. As a mission-driven person, I embody my work. Not everyone needs meaning in their work, but unfortunately, I do.

Growth mindset

Accepting that I had to make a change didn’t answer the question of ‘how’. After swallowing my red pill, I fell into the dark. Clueless of where to go next, I questioned if I could ever make any meaningful career transition at such a late age.

I was lucky to have a supportive partner who reminded me of my capability. Not only that, he helped me rediscover the power of a growth mindset, something I knew and agreed with but hadn’t embraced fully.

Seeing ‘growth mindset’ in a new light, I learned that:

  • Everything is learnable: Both hard skills and soft skills, even those touchy feeling skills people like to call ‘natural talent.’
  • Failure is to be embraced: Only courageous minds dare to fail because they are taking risks and doing hard things. To grow, we must fail.
  • Imposter syndrome is not an excuse: There’s no such thing as an imposter as long as we are willing to put in the work to learn and grow.

Exploration

With the faith that I could learn anything and that it would not be too late, I started exploring again.

My plan was simple: scout my areas of interest, sample one direction at a time, summarize what I liked and didn’t like, and repeat. I hoped to discover myself as I discovered the world.

To start, I had to unlearn certain thinking patterns and build new habits, including making quick decisions and applying ‘80/20’ to iterate fast, translating my ‘intuition’ and ‘feelings’ into frameworks for uncovering my inner world, and, importantly, focusing on the process rather than the results.

Within a year’s span, I explored multiple domains: data science, product management, venture capital, and writing. The process helped me draw connections between industries and roles, see what they entail, and understand the implications of different pathways. However, what I truly learned through the process was about me:

  • I realized that my experience as an Investor offers me many transferrable skills that are not exclusive to Finance
  • I learned that I’m more capable than I think of learning and transforming myself
  • My uncompromising values include clarity, growth, and connections. I thrive in meaningful work that aligns with these values.

The lightbulb moment

Things started to click in 2022.

It was late July in Seattle when I visited Mt Rainier for the first time. For whatever reason that year, the snow had yet to thaw in July, which we only realized as we neared the trailhead. A nice and easy summer hike transformed into a strenuous snow hike.

But this turned out to be one of the most memorable experiences of the trip. As we hiked into the mountain, all trails disappeared under the snow. At certain points, there was no trace of human footprints, only white, boundless white, extending into the distant horizon and blending into the sky. Standing in the snow and admiring the mountain in awe, I heard a voice in my head murmuring, ‘Maybe my kids will never get to see a snow-covered mountain like this in the future with global warming. We need to do something about this.’ That thought has stayed with me ever since.

Nature has always been my haven. Mountains, in particular, seem to encompass some special healing power that always soothes my soul. While I never considered myself an environmentalist, I respected and cherished Mother Earth deeply.

It was strange that I never drew the connection between this deep passion and my work. Looking back, I could see the false constraints placed on me due to my past experience, skills, and credentials, and I did not focus on the problems I cared to solve. I over-indexed on specific job functions and roles and overlooked the bigger-picture, societal-level impact.

Finding the path

The capital market plays a pivotal role in fighting climate change. From technology innovation to sustainability practice, funding has to go hand in hand, making expertise in Finance not just relevant but critical. But the field is vast, even on the financing side. I had to figure out where to position myself.

2022 was the year when ESG entered the mainstream. Before the whole concept turned into politics and ‘greenwashing’, many organizations were launching initiatives to enhance their ESG practice. My company was also one of the first movers, so naturally, I started looking in this direction.

As it turns out, ESG or corporate sustainability, in its current form, is still a compliance and marketing practice. It’s a necessary risk management tool but hardly an investment strategy. I have no doubt the field will evolve and play a critical role in the future, but also see the changes dependent on policy and regulations improvement, which I have no interest in engaging.

From ESG, I went into Impact Investing, the process needed from the investment perspective to generate a positive ‘ESG’ impact. While the direction seemed correct, the field was too big to swallow all at once. I needed to go down one step further to find my ‘impact’ vertical.

It didn’t take too long before I turned my attention to Energy Transition. I remembered the kinship I had developed over this topic since college because of its role in human history, economy, and geopolitics: much of human evolution has centered around the energy transition; from wood to coal to oil, remarkable changes in primary energy sources forever altered our human experience. Today, a new round of energy transition is happening as clean energy takes over the baton. Only this time, we’re tasked with making it happen at a historical speed to tackle the climate crisis in time, and the capital market has a critical role to play in accelerating the change. My expertise in this area could actually help!

Preparing for a change

Almost right away, I started taking action to move in this direction. Having traded commodities and real assets at work, I leveraged our internal resources and became an ‘intrapreneur’ in clean energy, researching and investing in companies across the supply chains of energy transition technologies.

I took courses on the side, including a year-long certificate program at Yale focusing on Financing and Deploying Clean Energy. The curriculum filled my knowledge gap in policy and technology, helped me appreciate the interwoven pieces, and showed me a whole spectrum of potential opportunities.

I tapped into my network and even used cold messages to reach out to practitioners in the field, from investors to researchers to subject experts, to learn about their work, experience, and views of the industry. The information I gathered on the ground gave me a more holistic and realistic grasp of the ecosystem.

Gradually, different pieces started to connect. It became clearer to me where the bottlenecks are and how capital markets can best help. And I knew, as much as I liked investing in public markets, I needed to get down to the project level and further build my expertise from the ground up. The idea of joining a renewable energy company and going behind the curtain to invest in projects for the company started to crystallize.

Not everyone was supportive. Some said that my investment skills didn’t match, as project finance focuses more on cash flow modeling rather than backtesting and simulation. Some said that I didn’t have enough industry expertise in the energy sector. Some said the opportunity cost for me to pivot at this point in my career was too high. The 20-year-old me would have totally given in to those opinions (in fact, I probably did unconsciously). But this time, I kept going. All the inner work and external exploration prepared me well for the transition: I know who I am and what I want now, and I’m ready to take full agency of my path.

A new chapter

I started preparing to leave my job at the start of 2024 to pursue this new direction full-time. Up until that point, all my exploration was done on the side during nights and weekends. It had been the right decision back then: without a paycheck, I wouldn’t have given myself the time needed to explore and grow. It was time to move on and move fast again.

I handed in my resignation at the end of the first quarter. Within two months, a few offers came, including an opportunity in project investments for a renewable energy company that I’ve come to admire. The destination was finally within sight.

Looking back, it had been almost four years since I started the journey. It was tough, especially at the beginning, when I was clueless about myself, the world, and how the journey would end. But I couldn’t be more grateful that I did this. Not only did I find my career passion, I felt forever transformed as a human being.

So finally, what advice would I give to those who are not content, itching for a change, but don’t know where to start?

  • Stop running away from your reality. If you don’t feel content, then you probably aren’t.
  • Start exploring. Don’t limit yourself to problems that you ‘can’ solve. Work on those that you ‘want’ to solve.
  • Be introspective as you explore. What makes your heart sing? What’s worth fighting for?
  • It’s ok to start over and be a beginner again. Have faith in your ability to grow.
  • Once you find your path, own it, focus, and keep going.