I’m an award-winning executive, the Department of Defense’s first Customer Experience Officer, the author of Laid Off and Lost, and the host of the Life Between Titles podcast network. Most of what I write and talk about comes from the same place: figuring out who you are when the title, the role, or the certainty you built your identity on is suddenly gone.
I’m Cambodian-American. My parents survived the Khmer Rouge genocide and rebuilt a life in Washington state after resettlement. That history stayed mostly unspoken for most of my life — it’s the subject of Halfway Light, the memoir I’m currently writing.
I live and work in Longview, where the podcast is recorded and most of what I write gets its first draft.
A lot of what I do outside of writing and hosting is informal — checking in on people mid-search, making introductions, being the person who picks up the phone. It’s the same instinct that started the podcast in the first place.
The fastest way to get a feel for the work is to listen to an episode, read the book, or catch up on the journal.