A Conversation With College2Career Academy Founder, Career Coach & Professional Pivoter, Andrea Koppel

Andrea Koppel coaches young people in how to find their professional passions.  She shares, through personal experiences in allowing herself to fail and explore new opportunities, that the best way to finding a fulfilling career is to experiment with different iterations.  It is by working through one's fears that we may uncover our true passions and evolve into the most authentic versions of ourselves. Andrea is a former award-winning CNN correspondent, who followed a path for years along the trail blazed by her esteemed father, veteran news broadcaster and "CBS Sunday Morning" correspondent, Ted Koppel.  Andrea currently is an Ed Tech start-up entrepreneur, career coach, and Founder and CEO of the College2Career Academy, which helps confused college students and grad students find careers they will love.  She urges students to explore the tangible hard and soft skills they have that are applicable to many different career paths. Andrea models for her students, as well as for all of us, how to live a life without regrets.  While, at age 43, her identity was caught up in being a CNN correspondent, she is living a life true to who she is now, a person who had a son at age 40, who has different priorities and who no longer relishes the 24/7 stress of the high-powered job she once held.  She is still "mission driven," but her current work resonates more with her values.  She reframed her setbacks as opportunities, remarking that getting fired as a CNN correspondent was "an incredible gift," because it allowed her to launch into the great unknown and to pursue ultimately more fulfilling positions during various stages in her life.  She was able to explore how to use her transferable skills in different industries.  While the learning curve was sometimes steep, she appreciated the growth she experienced in various positions she tried, and encourages others to do the same. She reminds us that fear is an indication that something is new.  It is an emotion that can trigger a flight, fight or freeze reaction.  Yet it is through leaning into our fears that we evolve.  Andrea learned how to "drop into her heart," as opposed to following her brain's messages in every situation.  She now emphasizes her mental, physical and spiritual wellness, noting that food is medicine, movement is healing, and meditation is more than managing anxiety and stress.  Andrea views meditation as a way to drop into our intuition.  She reads voraciously and encourages listeners to manifest in their lives what they truly want. In 2021, Andrea was named a Top Job Search Expert to follow on LinkedIn.  She is also the host of the Apple TOP 100 podcast, Time4Coffee (on which she has interviewed more than 300 people about how they uncovered their career passions), and founder of Time4Coffee LLC, a company with a mission to empower 1 million students to turn their degrees into careers they will love.  Prior to becoming an entrepreneur and podcaster, Andrea zigged and zagged her way across three different industries.  She started out her professional life as a journalist where she spent 20 years, the last 14 of them with CNN.  She then pivoted from journalism into public relations; and eventually moved into the nonprofit world, leading global affairs and policy for Mercy Corps, an international humanitarian and development organization.  Andrea has a B.A. in political science, Asian studies and Chinese from Middlebury College and never studied any of the industries she ended up pursuing.  Her resiliency, brilliance and insight will inspire you! Follow Andrea's work at https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-koppel-caffeinated-career-coaching/ and https://Time4Coffee.org

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