October 16, 2026Your Career Path Doesn’t Have to Be a Straight Line

Most of us were handed the same picture of a career early in life. It looks like a ladder. You choose a rung, you climb, and you never look down. Then I sat down with Melissa Proctor, and she described a career that looks nothing like that picture.

Melissa is Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and State Farm Arena. She is also the author of the bestseller From Ball Girl to CMO. Her career began as the first ball girl for the Miami Heat. It moved through senior brand roles at Turner Broadcasting before it landed in the front office of an NBA team. It did not move in a straight line. It went up, sideways, and back again. What stayed with me is that she doesn’t see that as a flaw. She sees it as the reason she leads the way she does.

This is a conversation about how a career can be built without a master plan. It is about what happens when you follow your interest, say yes to the work nobody wants, and learn a little about a lot of things. It is also about a leader who turned down the top marketing job more than once, and the surprising reason her boss kept choosing her. If you have ever worried that your own career has taken too many turns, I think you will find something useful here.

🎬 Watch and listen to the full interview about career here

Why the Straight-Line Career Is a Myth Worth Questioning

The ladder is a comforting idea. It tells us that a career is a series of clear steps, and that the person who climbs fastest wins. I understand why we hold on to it. It gives us something to measure ourselves against. But the longer I think about my conversation with Melissa, the more I believe the ladder is a story we tell after the fact. It is not a map anyone follows in real time.

Melissa never planned to become a chief marketing officer. She did not sketch a route on paper and then walk it. Her childhood dream was to be the first female coach in the NBA, even though she never played the game. That dream pulled her toward basketball, and the first door that opened was the job of ball girl for the Miami Heat. Nobody designing a career on a spreadsheet would start there. Yet that unlikely first step set everything else in motion.

What I find striking is how rarely the important moments in a career look important when they happen. A ball girl job looks small. A sideways move looks like a pause. A project nobody wants looks like a burden. Only later do we see that each one was adding something. This is the part that business leadership advice often skips. Leaders are not made by a perfect string of promotions. They are made by what they learn in the spaces between promotions.

If you are early in your working life, I hope that comes as a relief. You do not need to know where you are going before you start moving. And if you are partway through your career and feel off course, it may be that you are collecting the exact experience you will need later. A straight line is tidy. A winding path is often richer.

Following Interest Is a Real Career Strategy

Melissa did not map out a plan to reach the top. She followed what interested her. When I first heard that, I wondered if it was too simple. We tend to treat serious career planning as something that needs five-year goals and a target title. Following your interest sounds soft by comparison.

The more I thought about it, the more it looked like a quiet kind of strategy. Interest is a signal. When something holds your attention, you work harder at it, learn faster, and stay with it longer when it gets hard. Over time, that adds up to real skill. A career built on interest has fuel that a career built on title chasing does not.

Think about what this did for Melissa. She moved from the arena floor to television networks and back into professional basketball. On paper, that can look scattered. In practice, she stayed close to what pulled her: brands, stories, and people who care deeply about what they watch and cheer for. The jobs changed, but the thread did not. I think that is what people miss when they judge a career from the outside. They see the job titles. They do not see the thread.

I have seen this pattern in people I admire. The ones who seem most settled in their career are rarely the ones with the clearest plan at twenty-five. They are the ones who kept asking what they were curious about and then acted on it. Planning matters, but curiosity gives the plan something to aim at. If your career feels stuck, one useful question is simple. What have I been drawn to that I keep talking myself out of?

Raise Your Hand for the Work Nobody Else Wants

The second habit Melissa described is one I keep coming back to. She took on the tasks nobody else wanted. At first that sounds like bad advice. Why volunteer for the hard, messy, unglamorous job? But when I looked at her path, I saw why it works.

Unwanted work has very little competition. When a task is risky or confusing, most people step back, and that leaves room for someone willing to step in. The person who does it gets to learn something others never touch. They also get noticed, not because they asked for attention, but because they solved a problem that was bothering everyone. Over a long career, that kind of reputation is worth more than any title.

Look at some of the work in Melissa’s history. She helped create the first Corporate Social Responsibility Division in Turner’s UK office. She managed the rebranding of Court TV as truTV. She led corporate culture efforts focused on engagement, collaboration, and innovation. I can’t say which of those assignments others avoided, but they share something. They were big, uncertain, and hard to do well. That is the kind of work that teaches you about branding & marketing, about people, and about yourself, all at once.

I also think this habit says something about attitude. Raising your hand for hard work tells your team that you care more about the outcome than about how the work looks on your resume. It builds a career on proof instead of promises. When someone has handled the tough assignments, nobody needs to wonder if they can handle the next one. The career becomes a record of problems solved, and that record speaks louder than any pitch.

The Jungle Gym Career and the Well-Rounded Leader

Melissa gave me an image I have not been able to shake. She does not describe her path as a ladder. She calls it a jungle gym. In her words:

“And my career has absolutely been a jungle gym, but I also think that helps to create a kind of well-rounded executive where you know a little bit about a lot of different things.”

A ladder has one direction. You are either higher or lower than the person next to you. A jungle gym is different. You can climb, swing across, drop down, and climb again. Every move builds a different muscle. When I picture a leader who has grown on a jungle gym, I picture someone who can see the whole playground, not just the next bar.

This matters because the problems that reach a chief marketing officer do not arrive in neat categories. A decision about the fan experience touches brand, operations, community, money, and people at once. A leader who has only gone up one track will see one slice of the problem. A leader who has moved sideways will see how the slices connect. That is the real value of a sideways move in a career. It does not slow you down. It widens what you can see.

I think this is one of the most useful ideas in modern leadership. We often reward depth and forget that range is also a skill. Specialists are valuable, but the people who lead specialists need to understand a little of what each one does. Melissa’s willingness to move across different roles gave her that. Her career did not stall when it went sideways. It gained breadth.

If you are weighing a lateral move right now, try asking a different question than “Is this a promotion?” Ask, “What will I know after this that I don’t know now?” A career built on that question tends to age well.

Why Turning Down the Top Job Became Her Strongest Credential

Here is the part of our full interview that surprised me most. When the CMO role came up, Melissa turned it down. She did it more than once. Her boss kept choosing her anyway. The reason her boss gave was “because you don’t want it.”

I have thought about that line many times since. On the surface, it sounds odd. We are taught that wanting the job is the first step to getting it. But I think her boss saw something real. A person who is desperate for a title has a lot to protect. They may guard their turf, avoid risks, and hide mistakes. A person who is not chasing the title has less to prove. They can tell the truth, ask for help, and make the call that is best for the team even when it is not best for them.

This idea changes how I think about ambition in a career. We tend to treat ambition as loud and visible. Melissa’s story suggests there is a quieter version, one that focuses on the work and lets the role follow. That version is not lazy. It is steady. It trusts that doing the work well is the best argument for advancement. I think this is worth noting for women leaders, who often hear that ambition has to look a certain way. Her story shows another path.

There is a lesson here for anyone who feels pressure to chase the next title. A career is not only a race to the top. It is also a long record of how you make decisions when your own gain is not the driving force. The leaders people trust most are often the ones who could walk away from the job and would still do right by the team. That is a hard thing to fake. It tends to show up in a career built on genuine interest and honest work.

Building a Team Where Good Ideas Come From Anywhere

Melissa’s open mind about her own path carries into how she runs her team. She asks for ideas from everyone, not only from the top. That sounds like a small habit, but I think it grows from the same root as everything else we have talked about. A leader who has moved around, who has not clung to a single title, is more comfortable hearing from people in every role.

Most workplaces say they want ideas from all levels. Few build the habits to make it happen. The usual pattern is that the most senior person speaks first and everyone else adjusts. Ideas get shaped around what the boss seems to like. Over time, the quiet people stop speaking, and the team loses the very thing it needed. When a leader asks everyone, the room changes. People begin to believe their view counts.

This is where the conversation touches DE&I in a very practical way. Inclusion is not only about who gets hired. It is about whose voice shapes the decision once they are in the room. A team can be diverse on paper and still run like a ladder, with ideas moving only downward. Melissa’s approach turns that around by treating every seat as a source of insight.

I also see a link to a healthy career for the people on the team. When a junior person’s idea is heard and used, that person learns that their career can grow right where they are. They see that contribution matters more than rank. That belief is powerful, and it builds a kind of loyalty that no perk can match.

Hawk Tank and the Part-Time Employee Who Won

The best example Melissa shared is Hawk Tank, an idea pitch session at the Hawks. Anyone can bring an idea, and the ideas are judged on their merit. One year, a part-time employee came out on top. Think about what that means. In an organization built around a professional basketball team, with executives and big budgets, the winning idea came from someone who worked part time.

I find the story powerful because of what it teaches without lecturing. A lot of storytelling about leadership tells us to listen. Hawk Tank shows what listening looks like when it is built into a system. It does not rely on a leader being in a good mood. It creates a regular place for ideas to rise, and it gives the winner real recognition.

What does that do to a person’s career? I think it can change the way they see their whole future. A part-time employee who wins in front of the team learns that their thinking is valued. That may open doors, but even if it does not, it changes how they carry themselves. They become more willing to speak, more willing to try, and more connected to the mission. For the organization, the benefit is even bigger. Every good idea that would have stayed hidden now has a path to the surface.

I also think Hawk Tank fits naturally in the world of sports. Nobody in that world is surprised when talent turns up where no one expected it. Melissa applied that same belief to ideas. And her own career began in that world, as a ball girl, so she knows what it feels like to start at the edge of the action.

Why Setting Ego Aside Is a Career Skill

When Melissa talked about what makes an open team possible, she kept coming back to ego. She put it plainly:

“A lot of that requires putting away an ego and not feeling like you have to be, you know, the highest paid person in the room to have the best idea.”

I think ego is the hidden cost in most leadership problems. It is not always loud. Sometimes it looks like needing to be right, needing to be first, or needing credit. Each of those makes it harder to hear a better idea from someone else. The leader who has to be the smartest person in the room ends up with a team that stops offering its best thinking.

Putting ego aside is not weakness. It takes strength to say that the best answer may come from someone with less experience or less pay. It also takes confidence. Melissa’s route helps explain where that confidence comes from. A person who has moved up, sideways, and back again has been the newcomer many times. They know how it feels to know less than the person across the table, and they know that is not a reason to be ignored. Her career taught her humility through repetition.

That is why I would call this a career skill, not just a personality trait. We tend to think of ego management as something you either have or don’t. I disagree. It can be practiced. You can practice by asking one more person before you decide. You can practice by crediting an idea out loud to the person who raised it. You can practice by taking a sideways step when your pride wants a promotion. Each of those habits makes your career stronger because it makes you easier to work with and easier to learn from.

Melissa also shares a framework she calls Guiding Principles, built to help people face high-stakes decisions. I take that as a hint that ego gets easier to manage when you know what you stand for. When your values are clear, you do not need to defend your status. You can defend the principle and let the best idea win. It is also why this bestselling author comes across as down to earth, and why career keynote speaker Melissa Proctor feels relatable rather than polished.

The Best Career Maps Are Drawn Looking Backward

When I step back from this conversation, I keep returning to the image of a ladder and a jungle gym. One promises a clean path and asks you to stay in your lane. The other invites you to explore, and trusts that what you pick up along the way will make you more useful than a single track ever could. Melissa Proctor’s career is the proof. It started with a ball girl job, passed through television brands, and arrived at the executive table of an NBA team. None of it followed a plan she could have written ahead of time.

The lessons are simple to say and hard to live. Follow what interests you. Take the work that others avoid. Treat a sideways move as growth. Do not cling to a title, and do not let ego decide whose idea is best. Each of these makes a career more resilient. Each one also makes you a person others want to work with.

I will leave you with this thought. Most of us can only see the shape of our own career when we look back. In the moment, it feels like a series of small, uncertain choices. But those choices add up to a map, and the map is often more interesting than the one we would have drawn in advance. So if your path has bent more than you expected, do not apologize for it. Ask what it taught you, and ask who on your team might be holding the next great idea.

🎬 Watch the full interview with Melissa Proctor here

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