Text me with feedback or questions!

Your values aren't preferences you pick from a menu. They're patterns that have been driving your choices all along — especially under pressure. The problem is, you're too close to your own patterns to see them. In this episode, Sarah breaks down how to excavate your real core values and turn them into language precise enough to guide every career decision you make.

Sarah shares how she accidentally discovered her own values while writing a business plan for someone else's company, why generic values like "empowerment" and "integrity" aren't precise enough to protect you, and what it actually feels like when you're in a role that honors what you stand for versus one that violates it. This episode moves between the moments that break you down and the ones that light you up — because both are showing you exactly who you are.

In this episode:

• Why you can't find your values through reflection alone — and what to do instead
• The difference between surface-level values and precise values that actually guide decisions
• How to recognize value violations before they cost you your health, your confidence, or your time
• What alignment really feels like — and why more complexity with the right fit means less exhaustion
• Three practices to start this week: a fury log, energy tracking three layers deep, and testing one values-based boundary

If this episode resonates and you're ready for precision instead of guesswork, the RVA Blueprint is a fully customized strategic analysis where Sarah helps you identify your real core values with precise language, map where they've been violated or honored, and build a focused action plan. Special pricing to celebrate the podcast release, delivered within 30 days.

New episodes weekly. Follow The Career Strategist wherever you listen.

Support the show

You were never satisfying anyone by satisfying everyone. Stop satisfying everyone.

I'm Sarah Caminiti. This is The Career Strategist. If this episode helped you see something more clearly, send it to someone who needs to hear it. And if you haven't yet — subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

Text me with feedback or questions!

You've felt it — the meeting where your ideas get built on without credit, the praise that somehow makes you smaller, the feedback that comes without names or specifics. That's power moving, and it rarely announces itself.

In this episode, Sarah breaks down the hidden power dynamics that shape your career before you even realize the game is being played. She introduces the "cardigan" — the polite power move that's cashmere on the outside, barbed wire underneath — and walks through the most common types: the moving target, the whispered warning, and claimed credit.

You'll learn a practical framework for reading any professional space (green, yellow, or red rooms), how to recognize when you've been cast in roles that serve the system instead of you — the fixer, the buffer, the daughter, the translator — and three strategic shifts you can make this week to stop shrinking and start reshaping the dynamic.

This episode is for anyone who's ever walked out of a room feeling smaller than when they walked in and wondered if they imagined it. You didn't.

Subscribe to The Career Strategist and leave a review if this episode gave you language for something you've been feeling but couldn't name.

Key takeaways:

• Power isn't just titles and corner offices — it's who gets to be comfortable, who gets forgiven, and who has to manage everyone else's reactions
• The "cardigan" is a polite power move that looks supportive on the surface but contains you underneath — learn to spot the moving target, whispered warnings, and claimed credit patterns
• Every professional space is a green, yellow, or red room — naming the color
• gives you back strategic choice about how much energy to invest
• If you've been cast as the fixer, the buffer, the daughter, or the translator, you're propping up someone else's comfort at the cost of your own growth
• Three shifts to try this week: stop auto-volunteering, name the real decision maker, and replace "happy to help" with "I deliver [specific outcome]"

Resources Mentioned

• The double bind research on women in leadership
• The Career Strategist Episode 1: Defining yourself before someone else does

Connect with Sarah

LinkedIn / website

Support the show

You were never satisfying anyone by satisfying everyone. Stop satisfying everyone.

I'm Sarah Caminiti. This is The Career Strategist. If this episode helped you see something more clearly, send it to someone who needs to hear it. And if you haven't yet — subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

Text me with feedback or questions!

Episode 1: The Right to Define Yourself

You walk into a room with years of experience, nuanced thinking, and complex capabilities. Within minutes, you've been reduced to something manageable. "She's so detail-oriented." "Such a team player." "Really approachable."

This is flattening. And you've been letting it happen.

In this episode, I break down exactly how flattening works—the daily patterns, the language traps, the performance of being smaller than you are. More importantly, I give you three strategic shifts you can practice this week to start resisting it.

This isn't about hoping things get better. It's about the tactical skills you need to demand better and create it yourself.

In this episode:

• What flattening actually looks like (and why you don't recognize it's happening)
• The cost of being "easy to work with"
• Professional masking: why you're exhausted from being someone you're not
• The three strategic shifts that change everything
• Why gratitude became the cage I built around my own growth
• How to start claiming authority you've already earned

Three actions you can take tomorrow:

1. Practice accurate self-representation - Write how you'd introduce someone else with your exact experience. The gap between that and how you introduce yourself? That's the flattening you've internalized.
2. Stop apologizing for your presence - Catch yourself saying "sorry" when nothing requires an apology. Practice occupying space without apologizing for it first.
3. Say no without elaborate justifications - "That won't work for me" is a complete sentence. People who respect boundaries don't need explanations.

Every episode of The Career Strategist gives you three actions you can take immediately. If something doesn't work for you, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong—it means your context is different. Let me know. This is meant to be a conversation.

Season 1 taught me I could be public. Season 2 is me being powerful.

Support the show

You were never satisfying anyone by satisfying everyone. Stop satisfying everyone.

I'm Sarah Caminiti. This is The Career Strategist. If this episode helped you see something more clearly, send it to someone who needs to hear it. And if you haven't yet — subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.