Amazon + Microsoft recognized leader | Proven coaching programs to help you land a job you love

You’ve worked too hard to feel this stuck.

You’ve led high-stakes projects, delivered results that mattered, and climbed further than most ever will.
But somewhere along the way, the work stopped feeling like it fit.

Maybe the role’s too small now.
Maybe the company’s changed.
Maybe you have.

I know what that moment feels like — because I’ve lived it.

The first time I left a “perfect” job, it made no sense to anyone but me.

On paper, I’d made it.
I was at Amazon, leading product marketing for high-profile products like Prime and Fire tablets.

I’d started in academia and retail, then landed at Microsoft in a role that valued my retail background (who knew?). That move brought me from D.C. to Seattle.

Just as I’d settled in, Amazon came knocking — asking me to get offline retailers ready for the Fire Phone launch. That move took my Big Tech career to a whole new level.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling something didn’t fit.
The work moved faster, the bar kept shifting higher — but my sense of purpose was shrinking.

When I looked around, I saw smart, capable colleagues stay in roles they no longer loved because the comp or title looked good. I realised I was on the same path — and I didn’t want to be.

So I walked away and rebuilt my career on different terms.
Ones that gave me impact and energy.
Ones that felt tangible, sustainable, and worth showing up for.

That change in focus led me to coaching.

Now, I help experienced Big Tech professionals navigate bold career moves — especially when they want their next step to look nothing like their last.

How we work together:
🧭 Clarity – Define your values, strengths, and direction
🎯 Job Search – Own your story and land roles you actually want
🚀 First 90 Days – Lead with purpose from day one in your new role

Results my clients see:
✅ Leadership roles at companies they believe in
✅ Bigger comp and better alignment
✅ Confidence in interviews, negotiations, and decisions
✅ A definition of success that fits their life

Because you’re too smart to waste your best years in the wrong role.
Especially when the next chapter can be the best one yet.

Want to know how coaching can accelerate your career? 
📅 Book your 20-minute clarity call:
https://calendly.com/mfdcoaching/clarity

Mel Fox Dhar

"I'm nervous to leave Amazon, what if I can't replicate my scope?" 

"You’ve been running a team of 40 people and a programme worth tens of millions of dollars. At Amazon, that makes you an L7. Everywhere else? That makes you a director. Maybe a VP. Seems like you can get the scope, it just might come with a step into more senior titles."

Most people don’t think about this until they start interviewing and someone across the table treats them like an executive. And they’re not sure how to respond because they’ve never been positioned that way.

You can move up when you move out. But only if you’re ready to show up at that altitude — in how you talk about your work, how you frame your decisions, and how you carry yourself in the room.

That’s a preparation problem, not a capability problem. And it’s one of my favourite things to work on with clients.

If you’re an L6 or L7 thinking about what’s next — you might be closer to a bigger role than you think.

Land a role you actually want | Career Strategist | 10 Years at Amazon + Microsoft

In my eight years at Amazon, I moved roles five times - but in my last role, there was a disconnect.

It looked great on paper. 

Solid brand. Smart people. 
A scope that made sense for my background.

But I didn’t ask the right questions:
→ How are decisions made on this team?
→ How do we define success?
→ And how would I actually contribute?

What I walked into was a team obsessed with micro-optimization.
We’re talking decimal-point-level changes.
“Does this button round better at 4px or 5px?” kind of energy.

And listen, that's all fine and good. 
But, I’m not built for that.
I want to test, experiment, blow things up and rebuild them.
They wanted tiny, precise wins. 
I wanted room to invent.

And it showed. I was checked out. 
They could tell. 
I could tell.
And it got awkward real quick. 
It’s what pushed me to walk away from product marketing and start coaching instead.

Now, when I work with clients, we dig into the questions they actually need to ask before accepting a role:

📌 How much change do I like to drive?
📌 Do I want to build from scratch—or optimize something that’s already working?
📌 What kinds of decisions do I want to make daily?
📌 Will I be working on things I care about or doing a bunch of stuff that puts me to sleep? 

Because being good at your job isn’t enough if you hate the way you’re expected to do it.

If you’re not asking these questions, you might end up solving the wrong problem in the wrong place.

Even been here? Was it salvageable for you?

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P.S. Last week’s newsletter broke down exactly how to set up an Impact Bank. If you want the template, you can grab it here: 
https://www.melfoxdhar.com/post/10-by-january-no-one-will-remember-what-you-did-this-fall

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 Hi {{Name}} I’ve applied for the {{Role}} role and wanted to reach out directly.

My background is in {{relevant domain / scope}}. Most recently, I’ve been focused on {{1–2 outcomes that map cleanly to the role}}. From the job description, this role appears closely aligned with the kind of work I’ve been doing, particularly {{specific problem or mandate from the spec}}.
Sharing context in case it’s helpful as you’re reviewing candidates.
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melfoxdharcoaching

Two of my clients had the same experience recently and it’s one of my favourite things to see.
 
Early in their search, they had catch-up conversations with people from their old teams. Nothing formal. Just “hey, here’s what I’m up to, here’s what I’m thinking about next.”
 
Months later - completely out of the blue - both got a DM: “Are you still looking?”
 
This is what I’m talking about when I describe network infrastructure.
 
Those DMs didn’t happen because my clients were doing aggressive outreach or mass-messaging recruiters. They happened because they’d had one honest conversation with someone who filed it away and thought of them when the right thing came along.
 
Most people think networking means reaching out when you need something. But the real work is much simpler and much earlier:
Make sure people know what you’re looking for. 

In plain language. Not corporate jargon. 
Not “I’m exploring opportunities.” 
Actual words about an actual direction.
 Then let their brains do the work.
 
You’d be amazed how many people want to help you. They just need to know what helping looks like.
 
So... who’s someone you could catch up with next week?

No alternative text description for this image

"I'd never take a contract."

I hear this constantly from senior candidates — particularly those coming out of Big Tech. Contract roles get dismissed on sight. Too risky. Too ambiguous. Not "real" enough.

That instinct costs people good options.

When I work through the contract question with clients, I'm not asking "is this beneath you?" I'm asking:

→ What does this let you claim on the other side?
→ Does it give you skills or bullets you don't currently have?
→ Does it let you step into your target role — even temporarily — so the next full-time move becomes a shorter leap?

That's a strategy question, not a status question.

The question isn't whether contract work is good or bad. It's whether this particular assignment builds something you can use next.


Have you ever taken a contract that repositioned you for something bigger? I'd love to hear how it played out.

The best time to start preparing for a job change isn’t when you’ve decided to leave.

It’s when you first notice that feeling. The one where you’re sitting in a meeting thinking “why am I still here?”

Most people wait until that feeling becomes unbearable. And then they scramble.

The clients I work with who have the smoothest searches? They started months before they were ready to go. Not applying. Not even job hunting. Just getting the pieces in place so that when they were ready, the ground was already warm.

There’s a huge difference between starting a search from a standing start and starting one where people already know what you’re looking for, your story is tight, and you’ve got conversations already in motion.

One of those takes three months. The other takes eight.

Watch the video for the three things worth doing right now if you're in that window.

I'm working with a VP of Marketing right now who knows exactly where she's headed. No confusion about direction, no identity crisis. Clear decision, strong network.

But when we looked at what she'd actually built around that decision — her materials, her positioning, her outreach strategy — none of it was telling the same story.

Her default mode was to have conversations. 
Fantastic. 
Except: 
- if she wasn't speaking with someone, nothing was moving forward. 
- even when the conversations were good (and they were) they weren't efficient because everything around them was out of sync.

That's a pattern I see a lot at the senior level. 
The direction is right. 
The instincts are sharp. 
But the system underneath hasn't been rebuilt to match the decision.

Once we started closing that gap — aligning her assets to her direction of travel, giving the search a structure beyond "who should I talk to next" — things have started clicking differently.

If you've made your decision but your search still feels like it runs on conversations alone, it might not be a strategy problem. It might be an infrastructure one.

Something I’ve noticed across every client who’s landed quickly in the last year:
 
They weren’t just applying. They were actually talking to people.
 
I know. Groundbreaking insight.
 
But here’s what I mean — they weren’t doing the “just reaching out to connect!” thing. They weren’t mass-messaging recruiters. They weren’t treating networking like a box to tick.
 
They were having five to ten specific conversations with specific people at companies they’d already decided they cared about. And they could articulate exactly why.
 
“I’m interested in your team because [specific reason]. Here’s what I’d bring to [specific problem].”
 
That’s it. That’s the whole trick.
 
And it’s a lot easier to have that conversation when you’ve already done the work of translating what you’ve built into language that means something outside your current company.
 
The clients who took twice as long? Strong profiles. Great experience. Relying almost entirely on applications.
 
Your LinkedIn profile is not a fishing net. It’s a signpost.
 
It tells people what you’re about. But it doesn’t replace the work of actually reaching out and starting a conversation.
 
Who’s on your list that you’ve been meaning to message but haven’t yet?

P.S. if it’s been a minute, my favourite approach is to “lead with the geek” - a genuine shared interest.

Something I keep hearing from senior candidates right now:

"I want to make a move but the market feels too uncertain."

I get the instinct. Stocks are down. Headlines are grim. It feels responsible to wait.

But here's what I've noticed working with people through multiple cycles:

The candidates who wait for the market to feel safe don't actually end up in 
a stronger position.

They end up six months older with a colder network, a staler story, and the same questions they had before — plus less momentum.

And the longer you wait, the harder it is to remember what your work looks like to someone who wasn't in the room when you did it.

The ones who move during uncertainty — deliberately, not recklessly — tend to face less competition. Because everyone else is waiting.

Tough markets don't punish movement. They punish unpreparedness.

More on this Wednesday.

In the last 12 months I’ve worked with 24 US clients on job searches.

10 have landed new roles. The rest are still in active searches at various stages. Same market everyone's calling impossible.
 
When I look at what separated the ones who landed in three months from the ones who took seven or eight, it wasn’t seniority. Wasn’t luck. Wasn’t the market being kinder to them on any given Tuesday.
 
It was two things:
How tight their personal brand was — and whether their application strategy actually matched it.

The fast movers had a clear story and were applying where that story was obviously relevant. Every conversation built on the last one. Things compounded.

The slow movers? They'd done serious work — launched products, run programs, driven real numbers. But the story was still shaped by the system they'd built it in. "I owned the returns strategy" makes perfect sense inside Amazon. It means nothing to a hiring manager at Stripe.

The other difference? The fast movers were actually talking to people. Not mass outreach. Not "just reaching out to connect." Real conversations with specific humans at companies they'd already decided they cared about.

The slow movers were relying almost entirely on applications and a strong profile. Which helps — but doesn't replace a real conversation with a real person.
 
Same calibre of person. Same economy. Completely different timelines.
 
The market isn’t the variable most people think it is.
 
Whether your story travels - and whether you're actually putting it in front of the right people - is.

Most senior people tell me they have a great network.
 
And they might. But when I ask what their network actually knows about what they’re looking for right now?
 
Crickets.
 
There’s a difference between knowing 2,000 people on LinkedIn and having 15 people who could pick up the phone, hear what you’re looking for, and immediately think of someone to connect you with.
 
The first is a vanity metric. The second is infrastructure.
 
And right now — in a market where applications disappear into black holes and job posts get 400 applicants in 48 hours — infrastructure is the thing that’s actually working.

Want more on this? Link in the comments.

One of the weirdest moments for my clients leaving Amazon is when they walk into an interview outside and realise the person across the table is treating them like a senior executive.

They've spent years in a culture where nobody defers to your title. Where the best idea wins regardless of your level. Where running a $50M program and managing 40 people is just... your job.

And then they're sitting across from someone who sees all of that as director-level leadership. Maybe VP.

Most of them have never been positioned that way. And they're not sure what to do with it.

That's what this video is about.

One of the first things I do with clients — before we touch the resume, before we prep for interviews, before any of that — is figure out what they’re actually great at.
 
Not their job title. Not their scope. Not the things on their performance review.
 
The stuff underneath. The patterns The through lines. The thing that keeps showing up across every role they’ve had, regardless of the company or the context.
 
I call it superpowers work and yeah, I know that sounds a bit cheesy. But here’s why it matters:
 
Most people — especially people coming out of Big Tech — describe themselves using the system’s language. “I owned the returns strategy.” “I led a cross-functional initiative.” “I drove $X in revenue.”
 
Cool. But what were you actually great at in those situations? What’s the thing you brought that someone else in your seat wouldn’t have?
 
When you can name that clearly, everything else gets easier. Your resume gets sharper. Your interviews get more natural. Your networking conversations stop feeling like performances.
 
And here’s the thing nobody tells you: you probably can’t figure this out alone. You’re too close to it. It’s like trying to read the label from inside the bottle.
 
That’s why the first thing I have people do is name it, then go say it out loud to someone who knows them.
 
Not because it’s some big moment of vulnerability.
 
Because usually the response is: 
“Yeah, obviously. Why weren’t you already saying that?”

There’s a thing that happens in interviews with senior candidates that I’ve seen so many times I can almost predict when it’s coming.

They’re telling a great story. Clear ownership. Real impact. You can feel the energy in the conversation building.

And then they say something like:
“Well, I mean, it was really a team effort.”
Or: “I didn’t technically own the decision, but I influenced it.”
Or: “It wasn’t that big of a deal, we just kind of figured it out.”

And the whole thing deflates. 

Not because the interviewer thinks they’re lying. But because the interviewer was leaning in — and now they’re not sure if they should have been.

Here’s the thing: nobody is asking you to take credit for work you didn’t do. But there’s a massive difference between being honest and being self-diminishing.

“I led the strategy and my team executed it brilliantly” — that’s honest and it communicates your level.

“It was a team effort” — that’s technically true and tells the interviewer absolutely nothing about what you did.

Senior interviews reward clarity of ownership. 
Not arrogance. Not exaggeration. 
Just: here’s what I did, here’s why it mattered, and here’s what changed because of it.

If you find yourself hedging every time you get to the good part of your story — that’s worth paying attention to.

A client recently wrote a near-perfect positioning statement.
Clear direction. Right keywords. Strong proof points. 
On paper, it was great.

Then I asked them to say it to me — without reading it.

Three minutes of verbal diarrhoea and buzzword bingo.

This happens constantly.

Especially with people who've done complex, cross-functional work. 
The more nuanced the contribution, the harder it is to compress into 90 seconds without losing what made it matter.

Even the people who used to nail those WBR inputs week after week struggle with this. Writing tight and speaking tight are different muscles.

And that's in a low-stakes conversation with me. Add a hiring manager and 90 seconds on the clock, and it gets worse.

The gap between how your story reads and how it lands out loud is one of the most underrated problems in a senior job search.

The fix isn't rehearsing more.

It's saying it to someone who'll stop you at the exact moment you start losing them. 
Someone who'll tell you "that sentence is dead weight" or "you just said the same thing three different ways."

Uncomfortable? Yes.

Faster than doing ten more interviews before you figure it out? Also yes.

When was the last time you actually said your pitch out loud to someone who'd give you an honest reaction?

There's a question I ask clients early on that almost always catches them off guard:

"Walk me through how you actually made that decision."

Not the outcome. Not the result. The process. Who did you talk to? What did you weigh up? What did you decide not to do, and why?

Most people stumble on the first try. They say something like "I wrote a really good doc" or "I got alignment from the right stakeholders" — and then look at me like that should be enough.

And inside Amazon, it was. The doc was good, everyone asked questions and the client's "HBDC" (have backbone, disagree and commit) was on point. So they got the decision made and moved on with execution. 

But in an interview, nobody has that context. And "I assessed the situation and made the right call" isn't a story. It's a placeholder.

The people who get hired into director roles aren't necessarily better at making decisions than the people who don't. They're just WAY better at showing how they think.

I wrote about this in my newsletter today — including a diagnostic I built that helps you see exactly where that gap is for you. Link in the comments.

People ask me all the time if I know someone for a role.
"Do you know anyone who does X?" or "Would any of your clients be a fit for Y?"

And I want to help. So I click through to whoever comes to mind. Read the headline. Skim the About.

And nine times out of ten — I can't answer the question. I can tell they're impressive. I just can't tell for what.

There’s a lot of “cross-functional leadership” and “customer-obsessed strategy” and I’m sure that’s all true. But it doesn’t help me figure out whether to make the introduction or not.

The ones where I can answer immediately? Those are usually my clients. Because we’ve already done the work of making it obvious.

Not clever. Not fancy. Just clear enough that someone scanning for eight seconds can go “oh — she’s the person who does that.”

That’s the bar. And most senior profiles don’t clear it yet.

Not because the people aren’t brilliant. Because the profile was built inside a system where everyone already had the context.

If someone who wants to refer you can’t explain you in one sentence — that’s not their problem to solve.

One of the biggest differences between a job search that moves and one that just feels busy:
 
The target list.
 
Most of my clients come to me with one. It’s usually 20–30 companies across completely different industries and business models.
 
I get it. When you’ve spent years building inside one system - launching products, driving nine-figure programs, owning work that was deeply cross-functional and deeply contextual - everything on the outside looks interesting. Because everything looks different.
 
But here’s the problem: you can’t position yourself for all of those simultaneously.
 
You built a $200M program inside Amazon. Now you’re trying to explain it to a hiring manager at a Series C company who’s never seen that scale. And also to an enterprise SaaS team that operates completely differently. And maybe a consulting firm too.
 
Each one needs a different version of your story. And when you try to tell all of them at once, none of them land.
 
Your best work happened inside a system that had its own language for what “good” looks like. The target list isn’t just about picking companies — it’s about finding the places where your specific kind of good is legible.
 
A target list that actually works looks more like 6–8 companies where you can answer:
 
> Why would I be valuable here — specifically?
> What problem is this team probably trying to solve?
> Who do I need to reach?
 
We're not trying to shrink you into a box, we're aiming for a tighter signal.
 
Because the people who move fast aren’t doing more. They’re working a shorter, sharper list — one where their story actually translates.

One of my favourite moments in coaching is when a client stops mid-sentence and goes “wait — that’s actually a bigger deal than I’ve been making it sound.”
 
It happens all the time. Someone’s describing how they rebuilt a team’s operating model, or made a bet that changed the direction of a product line, or held a room together when leadership was split on a decision that would affect the next two years.
 
And they’re telling it like it was just another Tuesday.
 
Because when you’re surrounded by other L6s and L7s all running global programmes with massive scope — it just feels normal. You don’t realise how unusual it is until you step outside and someone’s eyes go wide.
 
That moment — when you hear yourself say it out loud and actually register what it took — is usually where everything starts to shift.

I'm a strategic product leader focusing on AI strategy for Cisco’s Compute business. With over 10 years of experience in tech product development and strategy, I specialize in AI, AIOps, Privacy, and Enterprise SaaS solutions that deliver valuable customer experiences.

I've led the development of zero-to-one SaaS products, managed AI tools used by millions, and driven AI Platform Infrastructure and solution initiatives throughout my career. With a BA in Economics from Wake Forest and an MBA from Duke (where I served as Student Body Co-President), I bring both technical acumen and authentic leadership to every challenge.

Outside of work, I enjoy family time, early-stage investing, golf, yoga, mindfulness, ocean activities, and non-fiction reading—with the occasional guilty pleasure streaming binge to maintain balance.

Happy to connect to explore your AI challenges or talk Product Management!

Taylor Donner

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of sharing my thoughts on Product Management, Leadership, and Life, with a lecture hall of students at my alma mater, Duke University - The Fuqua School of Business

One of the students asked a GREAT question: how do I find a mentor?

Now, in my previous roles, I was never very intentional about mentorship, as building product over relationships was the priority.

Not at Cisco.

Here, I've been very intentional about seeking mentorship from folks that I believe in and I'm quite confident also believe in me.

It's been finding those specific mentors early in my tenure at Cisco that's helped succeed in my role today.

For those interested in this topic, here's how I approach finding a mentor.

🤝  First, the chemistry has to be there. You need to have built rapport, or if you're meeting through a mentor matching service and it's your first conversation, make sure it feels natural. That goes both ways... I love the time I spend with my mentors and mentees at Cisco.

💡 Second, there has to be something you admire about them. Maybe you were in a meeting where you were impressed with their technical acumen, or they built an entire business unit from scratch within the larger company. Maybe you admire their ability to connect with people while driving business results. Perhaps they’re also new to the company but have built massive businesses in the past. I couldn't think more highly of those that mentor me.

🛡️ Third, you need to trust that as you grow and follow their guidance, they'll be an advocate for you. Of the mentors I have at Cisco, at varying levels, I'm confident they will be when I need them.

Mentoring isn't just about learning from great people, it's about being mentored by people who will help make YOU great.

What else do you look for in a mentor?

#Mentorship #ThursdayThoughts

Head of AI Product Programs, Cisco Compute | Driving Secure AI Factory & AI PODs | Enterprise AI Infrastructure at Scale

Exciting to see Red Hat and NVIDIA formalize the AI Factory with this awesome platform play. Great validation for what we've been building with these partners and others at Cisco. 

#Cisco #RedHat #NVIDIA #SECUREAIFactory #AIPODs #AI #Partnership

Open article: Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA Accelerates the Path to Scalable Production AI by redhat.com

Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA Accelerates the Path to Scalable Production AI

Security is one of the largest barriers to adopting enterprise-grade agents. John Cuneo, breaks everything down in his video bringing enterprise-grade security to Open Claw.

Lots more to come from Cisco in the next few weeks on this...

Global AI Evangelist | I help organizations realize value from AI | Working on Secure AI Infrastructure at Cisco | CCIE #62517

One week ago OpenAI hired 🦄 Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw.
Two weeks ago Chuck Robbins and Jeetu Patel hosted the 2nd annual AI Summit. What do these two events have in common? 
Three things…

1. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Kevin Weil both attended as speakers for the AI Summit
2. OpenClaw and Agentic AI was discussed at great length
3. Addressing security concerns to close the trust deficit in AI was agreed upon as one of the last major hurdles to widespread enterprise adoption.

Peter really threw jet fuel onto the agentic AI fire with OpenClaw so I put together this quick showcase for how we can secure agentic AI with enterprise grade security.

This passion project of a video showcases:
- OpenClaw with a local vLLM model
- Isovalent Tetragon for complete kernel level visibility and control of OpenClaw tool execution, network connectivity, and file access.
- AI Defense Skill scanner to uncover potential threats in OpenClaw Skills (open source)
- AI Defense runtime guardrails preventing harmful dialogue

All tested on a DGX Spark system but also supported on AMD64 systems.
All fully supporting cloud deployment and on-prem Secure AI Factory options!

If my personal assumption is correct, Peter joining OpenAI means he’ll help productize agentic AI within the company and it’s my hope that whatever next version of codex or… OpenAIClaw(?) has these capabilities baked right in.

https://lnkd.in/e59TXgXx
_____________________

Drop a comment: 
What else do you need to see to close the trust deficit and adopt AI in your business and day-to-day life? 

Should I spin up a Github repo with scripts and resources to help set this up yourself?
_____________________

Special thanks to the isovalent and AI Defense teams!
Dan Wendlandt, Duffie Cooley, Chris Porter, Marcos Hernandez,
DJ Sampath, Vikram Varakantam, Keith O'Brien,

_____________________
P.S. Resource links in the comments

Open video: Bring Enterprise Security to Open Claw on youtu.be

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