This story is part of the Behind the Desk series, where CNBC Make It gets personal with successful business executives to find out everything from how they got to where they are to what makes them get out of bed in the morning to their daily routines.
In August 2020, Michele C. Meyer-Shipp started her dream job — becoming the first woman of color to be named Major League Baseball’s chief people and culture officer.
Barely a year later, in September 2021, she announced she was stepping away. The reality was that the stress of being a diversity, equity and inclusion leader during the Covid-19 pandemic had led her to a breaking point.
The burnout had little to do with MLB, Meyer-Shipp says: Her peers at other organizations felt the same relentless exhaustion. First came figuring out how to make work happen during a global health crisis. Then, nationwide racial reckonings following the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and more.
“I was going through that as a Black woman myself, worried about my own children, worried about my own safety, worried about all of that,” Meyer-Shipp, 55, told CNBC Make It. “I was completely tapped out.”
A few months after leaving MLB, she got a call about Dress for Success. The 25-year-old nonprofit, which helps women through the job search and interview process, was looking for a new CEO.
The role came with a significant pay cut, and Meyer-Shipp was still focused on recovering from burnout. But she was drawn to its mission: Women lost more jobs than men during Covid, have stayed out of the workforce for longer and are being rehired at lower rates.
In January, she took the job. Engaging with those big issues with the limited resources of a nonprofit could stretch her thin again, but she says she doesn’t know any other way: “Every personality assessment I’ve ever taken pulls out my top quality as caring.”
Here, she discusses burnout, the country’s gender pay gap and why you should make risky career decisions like she did.
On realizing she was burned out: ‘It was firefighting every single day’
About a year into the pandemic, I remember coming home one night. One of my sons said to me repeatedly, “Mom, you look really exhausted. You just look so tired. You have dark circles under your eyes.”
I kept thinking, “God, do I look that bad?”
For 20-something years, I’d been on a hamster wheel. During Covid, I’d been in a 150% crisis management mode, unable to do the normal things I’d do as a people leader and a diversity leader. It was firefighting every single day.
I started to have health issues. I wasn’t sleeping. One of my colleagues said to me, “Michele, you’re not going to be any good to us if you’re not good to yourself.”
That’s when I knew it was time. I was physically and mentally exhausted, totally tapped out. So I stepped away, with no plan other than to take a sabbatical.
I didn’t realize until after I stopped working how tired I actually was.
On being a Black woman in a room of white men: ‘Trust me, nobody wants to assimilate’
In law school, I was the only woman, sometimes the only person of color, and definitely the only Black person in the classroom. My difference was actually my superpower.
I was able, through my lived experiences, to see things that the majority of the folks in that room did not appreciate. And when I spoke up on whatever that might be, you would see people go, “Oh wow, I never thought of that.”
People around the table, in a classroom, in a conference room, could come from different backgrounds and experiences. Everybody’s going to see something that the other person can’t see.
It doesn’t make me nervous. It doesn’t make me feel like I don’t belong, or that I have to assimilate. Look up the word “assimilate.” Trust me, nobody wants to assimilate.
I want to show up and be able to use my difference as my superpower to contribute in a meaningful way.
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Read More: Dress for Success CEO Michele C. Meyer-Shipp on burnout, career advice