I’m Michelle (Stark) Fetherston, an experienced educator, researcher, and data analyst passionate about helping teens and young adults navigate the future of work. My focus is holistic career coaching informed by my academic research background in career information seeking and self-efficacy and personal experience navigating career exploration and changes.

I thought I had my whole path figured out when I was 22…until I didn’t. Facing that uncertainty led me to explore new options, go back to school, and discover an interest in teaching and learning (which was not remotely on my radar during that whole “my path is figured out” era). From there, I worked as a college instructor, corporate training facilitator, instructional designer, program manager, and data science and analytics professional. Sounds like a weird and winding career path, but every single role has connected back to my original communication degree and that love of teaching and learning in some form.

I’ve spent many years working with college students and know how challenging it can be to choose a career path and navigate job searches…and that was before AI came along and made it even harder in some ways. I believe in taking a holistic approach to career coaching because things are constantly changing. Different things might be right at different times based on your stage in life, other responsibilities, and the state of the world, but I believe that’s much easier to do when we anchor our choices is core components of ourselves (like love of learning, in my case).
I also conducted research on career information-seeking and self-efficacy for my dissertation, so I incorporate those perspectives into my approach.