Your Patterns Follow You Everywhere (Until You Do This)
Theresa Caragol had climbed the ranks in tech for 25 years. Territory salesperson to global partner leader, twice over. MBA, executive master's from Georgetown. On paper, she had everything.
But her values and her reality were no longer aligned.
So she did something most professionals are rarely encouraged to do, especially women: she stepped back, evaluated what she truly wanted, and made intentional moves that reflected her values. She didn’t “jump ship.” She made thoughtful transitions. Then she did the deeper work.
The Shift
Theresa's first intentional transition led to rapid success—promoted to run the Americas within three months, then global partners within 18 months. She did business in 60 countries and started writing a book.
Then she transitioned again.
"My values weren't aligned when the leadership shifted," Theresa explains. "I could feel I wasn't going to be the right fit."
Her mentor gave her permission: "Leave on your own terms." So she negotiated her way out and became a global channel leader at another company.
"I was on offense, not defense," she says. "It took a lot of courage because it's always easier to just sacrifice your values. But I couldn't do that."
The Pattern
Here's what most people miss: The exits weren't the transformation. The internal work was.
Every single time she transitioned, Theresa went deep. Got a coach. Turned inward before moving forward.
"Every time I've ever left, I go introspective to figure out what I can do differently," she says. "I'm not a big believer that you put it on everybody else."
By her third transition, she was sitting in Portugal with a CRO who needed her to travel 70% of the time. She had a five-year-old starting kindergarten and a sick one-year-old.
"In my 30s, I might have been your gal," Theresa told him. "But at that moment, I knew the demands weren’t aligned with my family.”
She negotiated a transition. Took care of her kids. Got all her stock. Then something unexpected happened. People kept calling to see if she could help them. Former colleagues. Industry contacts. Leaders who'd watched her build global partnerships and navigate complex transitions.
So she started consulting.
A year in, a realization hit: "Wait a minute, if I could build companies for other people, I could build a company for myself."
She knew nothing about entrepreneurship. But she knew how to build trust, develop leaders, and scale partnerships across 60 countries.
"Entrepreneurship is an amazing thing," she says. "It really probably was my calling, but I didn't know that all of those times."
The Truth
Women are taught to stay. To keep the peace. To “make it work.”
But here's what we're not taught: If you don't do the internal work, the same patterns will follow you everywhere.
You can leave a toxic job and land in another one. You can escape a bad boss and attract a worse one. You can negotiate a better title while still feeling hollow inside.
"The deeper you go in yourself, the more influential, the more confident you become," Theresa says. "The more you work through your own stuff, the more authentic and better a leader, human, mother, person you become."
This is the actual work of building a career that doesn't require you to sacrifice who you are.
How many times have you blamed the company, the boss, the culture? How many times have you thought, "If I just found the right job, everything would click"?
Theresa's asking a harder question: What if you haven't done the work to define what you actually want?
"The deeper you look inside, the more you find out what your why is," she says. "Then you start to head in that direction. You manifest that. You bring it out in your life."
Not vision boards. The brutal, honest work of getting a coach, identifying beliefs keeping you stuck, confronting the gap between your values and your choices.
"If you don't do that work, the same thing's going to happen at every company."
The Invitation
If your values and your reality are misaligned, you don't just need permission to leave. You need permission to do the harder work first.
The work of getting honest. The work of going deep. The work of figuring out what you're building, not just what you're escaping.
Theresa's now running AchieveUnite for nearly 10 years, teaching leadership programs that over a thousand professionals call "life-changing." She's certified on public company boards. She's living her values, not just listing them on a performance review.
And it all started with the hardest work there is: getting honest about what she actually wanted and what had been standing in her way.
Not the external obstacles, the internal ones. The beliefs. The fears. The should's. The voice that said stay when everything inside her was screaming go.
You can negotiate a better salary, demand a better title, switch companies, and still feel empty if you haven't done the internal work to know what "better" actually means to you.
Sometimes offense looks like walking away. Sometimes it looks like sitting still long enough to hear what you've been drowning out.
The question isn't whether you'll leave.
The question is: Will you do the work to know where you're actually going?
Theresa Caragol is the founder of AchieveUnite, The Partner Success Company. Her work continues to help women, and leaders of all kinds, step into their true power by first doing the hardest work: looking inward before moving forward.
If this resonates with you, you're not alone.
This is exactly why we need spaces where women can share these experiences without judgment. Your story matters, and there are thousands of women who need to hear it.
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