What if the detours are part of the development?

Careers can look remarkably tidy in retrospect.

A role leads to another role. Experience becomes expertise. Eventually, we construct a story that makes the journey appear far more deliberate than it felt while we were actually living it.

But what about the periods that didn’t feel like progress at all?

In this Human Clarity Career Conversation, I speak with Remy Meraz, co-founder of Zella Life, about entrepreneurship, neurodivergence and a career that didn’t follow a predetermined route.

Remy’s story raises an important Human Clarity question: what changes when we stop judging our careers purely by where we’ve arrived and start recognising what we’ve developed along the way?

A career doesn’t have to make sense while you’re living it

Remy’s early ambition was to become an athlete. Her working life subsequently took her through different industries and experiences before she began recognising something consistent underneath them: an instinct for marketing, entrepreneurship and creating opportunities.

Eventually, she realised she wasn’t simply drawn to helping build other people’s businesses.

She wanted to create them.

That development didn’t depend upon following the conventional sequence of the “right” degree followed by the “right” first job and an orderly progression upwards.

Remy also navigated work without a degree, became a young single mother and had to make decisions at points when the next step wasn’t obvious.

Seen only through the lens of a conventional career path, those experiences might look like deviations.

Seen differently, they can reveal capabilities being built: adaptability, commercial instinct, resilience, judgement and the ability to operate without certainty.

Career confidence isn’t the same as having a perfect plan

One of the themes running through our conversation is the relationship between clarity and action.

We often assume confidence needs to come first.

We wait until we’re certain enough, qualified enough or fearless enough to make the next move.

But careers rarely provide that level of certainty.

Remy discusses fear of failure and the practical ways she has approached career decisions. We explore the difference between genuine limitations and the stories we can tell ourselves about what we’re capable of doing.

That distinction matters.

Career confidence doesn’t necessarily mean knowing exactly where you’re going. Sometimes it means understanding yourself sufficiently well to make the next useful decision, learn from it and adjust.

Understanding how you’re wired

Our conversation also moves into Remy’s experience of ADHD and what greater self-understanding has meant for leadership, workload and communication.

Neurodivergence isn’t discussed as a standalone workplace label. Instead, it becomes part of a wider question about human performance:

What do we need to understand about ourselves in order to work effectively?

Understanding your own patterns can affect how you manage capacity, recognise overload, communicate with colleagues and distinguish between a challenge that stretches you and an environment or workload that is genuinely unsustainable.

That becomes particularly important when responsibility increases.

The characteristics that help someone create, innovate and move quickly can coexist with the need to understand capacity and guard against burnout.

Self-awareness doesn’t remove challenge. It can give us better information with which to navigate it.

The human capabilities that become more important, not less

Our conversation eventually widens from Remy’s individual career to what is happening around all of us.

AI, remote and hybrid working, restructuring and technological change continue to alter how work is organised and what organisations need from people.

Technical capability matters.

But so do emotional intelligence, collaboration, communication, judgement and human connection.

As technology changes what can be automated, the question isn’t simply “What can AI do?”

It is also:

What becomes more valuable for humans to do well together?

That makes understanding ourselves and other people increasingly relevant to career development, leadership and organisational performance.

Turning experience into evidence

Perhaps one of the most useful ways to reconsider a non-linear career is to stop asking whether every move advanced you along a predetermined route.

Ask instead:

What did this experience develop in me?

A difficult role may have developed judgement.

An unexpected industry may have revealed a strength.

A period of uncertainty may have developed adaptability.

A failed idea may have provided information that changed the next one.

And an apparent detour may eventually become part of the experience that differentiates you.

The challenge is recognising it.

Career development isn’t simply the accumulation of job titles.

It is also the accumulation of capability, insight and self-knowledge.

And sometimes we only understand what we’ve been building once we look back.

Key takeaways

Careers don’t have to follow a straight line to build valuable capability.
Career detours can develop strengths that aren’t immediately obvious at the time.
Qualifications are one source of evidence, but experience can reveal capability in other ways.
Career confidence can come from understanding yourself rather than knowing exactly what happens next.
Understanding neurodivergence can inform communication, leadership, workload and capacity.
Fear and self-talk need to be distinguished from genuine constraints.
Emotional intelligence, collaboration and human connection remain significant as technology reshapes work.
Comparing career timelines can obscure the value of what you’ve actually learned and developed.

Watch the conversation

Watch the full Human Clarity Career Conversation with Remy Meraz to explore entrepreneurship, career confidence, ADHD, leadership, resilience and what can happen when we start treating experience as useful information rather than evidence that we’re behind.

About Remy Meraz

Remy Meraz is co-founder of Zella Life, a coaching and behavioural intelligence platform helping organisations identify talent-development gaps and improve workplace culture through insight and coaching.

Her work sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship, leadership, workplace development and human potential.

Connect with Remy:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/remy-meraz/

Explore more

Engage & Prosper
https://www.engageandprosper.com

Human Clarity
https://www.humanclarity.co.uk

Human Clarity Architect
https://www.humanclarityarchitect.co.uk

North★STAR Career Compass
https://www.northstarcareercompass.ai

Connect with Sharon Kennedy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mssharonkennedy/

Human Clarity Career Conversations — Episode 002

Human Clarity Career Conversations is a Human Clarity series from Engage & Prosper.

What If Your Career Detours Are Where Your Strengths Were Built? Remy Meraz on Entrepreneurship, ADHD and Career Confidence