Member since February 2023
Tonda Taylor Bean is concerned. Too many of our youth are getting lost in the transition between school life and independent adulthood. Who can change this? Parents! With the right strategy, parents can take on the many roles that support success beyond graduation.
A former Girl Scout leader and the mother of two, Tonda has dedicated her life to assisting youth and parents in developing strategies to champion their own potential. Tonda holds an MBA and an MSOD, and has combined her expertise in business, behavioral science, and youth development to create a revolutionary approach that has helped over a thousand students and parents navigate the complex world of career exploration.
Her greatest success is that using her proven system, both her children graduated from leading colleges (NYU, Harvard) and immediately started a career in their chosen field.
Want brilliant success for your children?
Find out more at https://WisdomInMinutes.com/
I get a .special thrill when I have the opportunity to speak with students, and see the light bulb turn on when they start to understand the shift between student life and working life after graduation. It changes their approach to school, gives them ownership over their own future. Getting emerging adults to see the range of their possibilities and to approach their futures with curiosity and a spirit of exploration instead of dread and doubt is exhilarating! That is why I work with students from middle school to the middle of college - because changing your approach, and your preparation changes your results in a very positive way!
We'll call her Carmen. When I met her she was a Girl Scout in middle school. When I asked about her career interest she said that she wanted to be a dancer, because she enjoyed her dance lessons. She is actually on my website, saying that she found my workshop especially useful because people don't usually talk seriously to kids her age about careers.
Carmen thought about careers during high school and realized that she was not drawn to the dancing as much as she was to the costumes. During high school she learned to sew, then to tailor, and then she began working and learning from a tailor from Ghana. Ghana is to African fashion what France is to European fashion, so she learned a lot - enough to get herself admitted to Parsons school of design. Not only that, she was invited to speak to the United Nations on sustainable fashion. And, while still working on her undergrad, she got a job (not an internship) at the Metropolitan Opera Company.
In high school I took the PSAT and colleges started contacting me with a peculiar question -" what is your intended major?" No one had been talking to me about a major, so I asked my parents about it. They Said that a major is the area of study that connects your college education to your intended career. WHAT? No one had been talking to me about a career either! They all told me to study hard and get good grades - so that is what I had done! Suddenly I had this major decision to make and I wasn't ready! I ended up in chemical engineering (my father was an engineer, and at the time engineering was being hyped as the career of the future). I did not enjoy chemical engineering and eventually transferred out to the school of business - a great relief! Tim passed, I had children and I was a Girl Scout Leader. When I started looking at the path in front of the girls trusting me to guide them I could see that it was the same one I had traveled. No career discussions until time for a decision. No real structure given for career explorations. No skill building for workplace environments. I decided to do something different. Using my corporate experience and background in organization development I created a series of workshops for my scouts. Each girl in my troop graduated with a resume, a career goal, and a plan on how to get there. Then all the girls and my daughters graduated. But I still have the frameworks, strategies, and workshops. And the need is not confined to my 2 daughters or the 20 girls in my troop. So now I share the strategy of Career Targeting and Vision-Aligned Parenting with students and families who have big dreams and the gumption to follow them.
We'll call her Carmen. When I met her she was a Girl Scout in middle school. When I asked about her career interest she said that she wanted to be a dancer, because she enjoyed her dance lessons. She is actually on my website, saying that she found my workshop especially useful because people don't usually talk seriously to kids her age about careers.
Carmen thought about careers during high school and realized that she was not drawn to the dancing as much as she was to the costumes. During high school she learned to sew, then to tailor, and then she began working and learning from a tailor from Ghana. Ghana is to African fashion what France is to European fashion, so she learned a lot - enough to get herself admitted to Parsons school of design. Not only that, she was invited to speak to the United Nations on sustainable fashion. And, while still working on her undergrad, she got a job (not an internship) at the Metropolitan Opera Company.
In high school I took the PSAT and colleges started contacting me with a peculiar question -" what is your intended major?" No one had been talking to me about a major, so I asked my parents about it. They Said that a major is the area of study that connects your college education to your intended career. WHAT? No one had been talking to me about a career either! They all told me to study hard and get good grades - so that is what I had done! Suddenly I had this major decision to make and I wasn't ready! I ended up in chemical engineering (my father was an engineer, and at the time engineering was being hyped as the career of the future). I did not enjoy chemical engineering and eventually transferred out to the school of business - a great relief! Tim passed, I had children and I was a Girl Scout Leader. When I started looking at the path in front of the girls trusting me to guide them I could see that it was the same one I had traveled. No career discussions until time for a decision. No real structure given for career explorations. No skill building for workplace environments. I decided to do something different. Using my corporate experience and background in organization development I created a series of workshops for my scouts. Each girl in my troop graduated with a resume, a career goal, and a plan on how to get there. Then all the girls and my daughters graduated. But I still have the frameworks, strategies, and workshops. And the need is not confined to my 2 daughters or the 20 girls in my troop. So now I share the strategy of Career Targeting and Vision-Aligned Parenting with students and families who have big dreams and the gumption to follow them.