Over 500 years ago, a new vision of human beings began to emerge during the Renaissance period that “considered man empowered, limitless in his capacities for development.” This
idea was fully embraced by a group of individuals known as Renaissance
Men whose lives were dedicated to developing their skills in all areas
of knowledge, physical development, social accomplishments, and the
arts.

It is this same vision that I have pursed my career since graduating college. I
have always been the type of person who loves seeking out knowledge
from a wide array of fields and has tried to develop a  skill set that
draws from a diverse set of disciplines. This has been at the heart of
almost all the career decisions I’ve made and it has led me to discover
a brand that fits not only my personality, but also how I approach my
professional life. On this personal branding journey, I have come to realize  that I am a 21st century Renaissance Worker – and you may just be as well!

Marcos Salazar – Renaissance Worker

This past weekend, I was rereading one of my favorite books, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-sent-me-high-ee”) and there was a quote that really struck me: “To live means to experience—through doing, feeling, thinking…Over the years, the content of experience will determine the quality of life.”

As I have been reflecting back on my last post and the overall discover phase of my personal branding journey, I began to see that my
world since college has been consistently driven by the desire to fill
my life with experiences that allow me to fully explore all the aspects
of who I am and the many professional pathways I would like to
potentially travel down. After graduating from Amherst College
with a psychology degree,  I moved to Boston to get away from academia
and was interested in exercise and nutrition, so I became a personal
trainer, spinning instructor, and wrote a book

about the antidepressant effects of exercise. The plan was to apply for
a PhD in clinical psychology but nine months later I became interested
in politics, so I moved to DC and did an internship at the AFL-CIO and
took classes at American University.

I then moved back to my hometown of Taos, New Mexico where I was a
substitute teacher and then became a case manager for a community
mental health clinic. There I helped clients find meaningful jobs,
secure safe housing, assisted psychiatrists with psychological intakes,
and eventually developed a patient assistant program that allowed
low-income patients to receive badly needed medication for free from
pharmaceutical companies. I eventually got the bug to live abroad, so I
picked up and moved to Barcelona to experience international life while
starting my second book on the psychology of life after college.

I eventually I moved back to DC where I had a brief stint as a sales
consultant before I landed a job as a researcher for the American
Psychological Association where I conducted education and workforce
trends within psychology. While in DC, I published my second book and
also got my Masters in organizational management as well as a
certificate in leadership coaching from The George Washington
University. I soon became interested in business and technology and
opened up a DC focused online clothing company as well as taught myself
to code as I tried (unsuccessfully) to launch a few social networks
sites.

I eventually moved to New York, fell in love with Brooklyn, and am
now working as a psychology and leadership researcher for the Girl Scouts Research Institute
where we are studying how to develop a new generation of girl leaders
that will take us into the 21st century. I also run a positive
psychology website, FiveDailyGratitudes.com, and am now creating an iPhone app based on the site. And most recently, I opened up a New York based clothing business

as well as started working with a community organization in my
neighborhood to help teach low-income residents technology,
entrepreneurial, and business skills. Lastly, I am working on new book
focusing on psychological development for young professionals.

Whew!!!! Since graduation I have had 12 official jobs and probably just as many informal ones!
And what I have learned over the years is that I am someone who thrives
off of having new and different experiences, especially when it comes
to my professional life. More importantly, I love diving in into new
projects or fields, learning everything I can, and then integrating the
knowledge and skills I gain into other areas of my work life. I have learned that I was born to be an explorer. I was born to be a career adventurist. I was born to be a Renaissance Worker.

What about a niche?

In the first post on my personal branding journey,

I received an interesting comment regarding my desire to integrate all
my talents, passions, and work experiences into a unified personal
brand. Jose Paula told me, “…you have too many things happening at the
same time and simply cannot focus and pay undivided attention to your
niche…If you cannot define yourself in one sentence and state your one,
single niche in it, you’ll continue to be confused.”

While it is important to find a niche that you can become an expert in, a niche and a personal brand are not the same thing. You
will always able to have multiple niches; you just have to try to
connect under a single personal brand. More importantly, I believe it
is becoming increasingly important that all of us have more than one
niche simply because the working world is no longer designed for someone who is going to focus on one single path for 30 years. Those types of careers don’t exist anymore and adopting adopting a mindset of a Renaissance Worker
where you are constantly acquiring knowledge from a variety of fields
and developing a skill set from a multitude of disciplines will provide
you with a career advantage over those who have decided to put their
head down and focus on a single career or niche.

Coincidentally, as I was writing this post on introducing the
concept of a Renaissance Worker I checked my Twitter account and saw an
interesting tweet from my friend, Lindsay Pollak, entitled: “Defending Generation Y: The rise of the ’slash-career’” http://bit.ly/RLZ9c — follow @heymarci, the authority on slash careers.” Taking Lindsay’s advice, I went on to visit @heymarci (Marci Alboher) and eventually checked out her main web page and found that her writings discuss a very similar work life concept that I am exploring as a Renaissance Worker.

In her book One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success,
Marci tracked people whose careers were comprised of many professional
identities with Marci herself being a lawyer/author/speaker/journalist.
What she found was that adding “slashes” to your career not only makes life more interesting, but also provides many new career opportunities. For
example, if I was up against another candidate for a research job, the
fact that I have many more “slashes” on my resume would be to my
advantage. Since I am also as writer/speaker/entrepreneur/community
developer as well as being very adept at using social media, if the
other candidate just has lots of research experience who do you think
they are going to choose? Who adds more value to the organization?

In addition, having many slashes can bring you into contact with many different types of communities and allows you to build a diverse network that can significantly help you in your professional life (learn more in this great Authors@Google video
with Marci Alboher as well as Tim Ferriss, one of the ultimate
Renaissance Worker.)  As for me, you can see what my slashes would be
on my new logo for my blog.

What’s next?

In the next post I will be diving deeper into the concept of
being a Renaissance Worker, how I use my knowledge and skills from many
different fields to add value to every job or project I am involved in,
and discuss the benefits of adopting this type of mindset when it comes
to your career and personal brand in the 21st century. But for
now, I would like to know what you think about the concept of
Renaissance Worker? Do you feel you are a Renaissance Worker in your
own career? Would you ever integrate this into your personal brand?