Caroline Wanga on the Career Path No One Tells You About

Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel

Careers, Business

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s easy to feel lost in your career, especially as the world around us keeps shifting. Whether you’re starting over, seeking purpose, or just unsure what your next move is, this episode is for you. This week, Jessi Hempel sits down with Caroline Wanga, president and CEO of Essence Ventures and co-founder of Wanga Woman. Caroline is a dynamic leader and an unapologetic champion of authenticity. She joins Jessi to share her approach to building a career map – not just once, but continuously throughout your life. Before leading Essence, Caroline spent 15 years at Target, rising from intern to C-suite executive. Today, she’s focused on democratizing authenticity through her personal purpose, her leadership, and her new memoir, I’m Highly Percent Sure. Jessi and Caroline dig deep into: Why your “next right move” may not look like anyone else’s Why playing with your career map, not perfecting it, leads to clarity How, and when, Caroline has created her own career maps The role of authenticity in leadership and life What it really takes to live and work with personal purpose Tools and mindsets for building a meaningful career in today’s world Don’t miss Caroline’s practical wisdom on shaping a professional life that evolves with you. This episode was filmed live in-studio. LinkedIn Premium subscribers can watch the full video version here. Want to keep the conversation going? Join us at Hello Monday Office Hours, live on the LinkedIn News page this Wednesday at 3 PM EST.

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn News
0:02.1	Forget your age.
0:07.8	Focus on where you are in your professional career.
0:10.4	Are you in a place where you know what you want to do next or you don't?
0:13.3	If you don't play with a mat.
0:15.7	That's how it works.
0:16.7	And I will probably have a career map for the rest of my life.
0:19.4	But I will probably have 682 of them.
0:23.7	From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jesse Hempel, and this is Hello Monday.
0:28.3	It's our show about work on our own terms.
0:33.5	If you've found yourself here today, my guess is that you are in the middle of the question that so many of us are asking ourselves, what am I supposed to do next?
0:43.1	I mean, what's my next right move?
0:45.4	Be it here, somewhere else.
0:47.4	How do I make the money I need?
0:49.0	How do I live according to the purpose that I want?
0:52.1	What do I even like to do?
0:53.9	Maybe you're not sure anymore.
0:55.6	Well, today's episode is for you.
0:58.2	Our guest is Caroline Wanga.
1:01.0	Caroline is the president and CEO of Essence Ventures,
1:04.1	the premier media company dedicated to black women.
1:07.0	She got her start as an intern at Target.
	...

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