Darby Vannier’s Diverse Career Journey

Darby Vannier’s Diverse Career Journey

Sean: What coursed through your mind in deciding that ‘okay I’m going to try nonprofit this time, I’m going to try a leadership organization at this time?’

Darby: Yeah, it’s kind of one of those things when I coach young people in particular that were just exiting college and getting into their first career. One of the things I tell people is that, what you believe your career is going to be, is probably not what it’s actually going to be.

Darby: When I was going to college, I never imagined – I maybe could have imagined managing a retail store. I never would have imagined that I was CEO of a livestock association, especially a livestock association for alpacas. So not something that I could have actually imagined.

Darby: And actually they were advertising – it’s an interesting story. They were advertising through an agency, so they didn’t list the company name or what it was. They just described the role – reporting to the board of directors, running the company, all of those sorts of things, and so I applied for it. And then when I got my interview, they will tell you who the company is, and I had to look up what an alpaca was before I went to my interview. I had a general idea that it was kind of like a llama then, but I actually had to look up what an alpaca was so that I knew going into the interview what it was.

Darby: And I always tell people it’s kind of funny and I use this in coaching also. So if they had put the name of the organization in, I probably never would have applied for it, because I would have honestly thought, how big can it really be? And I wouldn’t have wanted to go somewhere where it was just me and one other person or something really small. And it turns out it was much bigger than I anticipated. And I ended up with multiple locations and we went through an international merger with another organization. And it was an interesting experience. And I certainly learned a lot over that time.

Darby: But again, I never would have anticipated that. And in coming to the end of it, like looking back, I was speaking on alpaca DNA testing. And how to verify or validate parentage and bloodlines. And breeding values and stuff, stuff that I never was educated for early on, that I just had to learn as I went. But again, you just don’t really know. So as you are evaluating, you’re ready to take that next step. It’s different for everybody.

Darby: So like. When I was managing at Kinko’s, I just kind of got to the point where I’m like, ‘Man, I am ready to be done with this 24 hour management thing and this retail management, it’s a lot of work. I mean, at one point I worked a 37 hour day.

Darby: So it was pretty crazy. And I was you know – my wife and I were considering starting a family and all of that. So at that point I was like, you know, I’ll start looking around and I saw this role and I’m like, ‘That sounds like something that I would like to do, and I’ve never been in the nonprofit sector, but let’s give it a try.’ And then kind of the same thing 11 and a half years later, when I was ready to move on, it was a similar thing where I felt like I had done everything that I could do for that organization. I felt like they needed to move on to somebody else and it was time for me to move on as well.

Darby: I also was kind of to the point it was a similar situation where I worked for a board, a nine member board of directors, and I got new board members every year. There would be a few that would switch out every year. So you were constantly getting new bosses. So I was ready to kind of be done with that and I decided, let’s go back into the for profit sector. And move on to that. But yeah, you just kind of evaluate it as you move on.