From Mapping to Movement: What We Learned in Week 2 of the Career Accelerator with Kinta Gates
Some sessions give you answers. This one gave language to things people have been feeling for a while.
In Week 2 of the 2026 AdaMarie Career Accelerator, Kinta Gates, VP of Supply Chain & Operations at Glossier, walked us through what it actually looks like to navigate a career in motion, especially when the path isn’t linear, predictable, or clearly defined.
Here are a few moments that stayed with us.
Your career isn’t a plan. It’s a pattern.
One of the first shifts Kinta offered was moving away from the pressure of having everything mapped out. Instead of trying to predict where you’ll be in five years, she encouraged participants to pay attention to what’s already showing up:
What kinds of problems do you gravitate toward?
Where do you feel stretched in a good way?
What keeps showing up across different roles or experiences?
Because direction comes from recognizing patterns in the present.
“Let your work speak for itself” will keep you invisible.
This one landed quickly. Kinta challenged a belief many people carry early in their careers, that doing good work is enough to be recognized.
It’s not.
Work doesn’t speak unless someone hears it. And if you’re not actively communicating your impact, you’re leaving your growth up to chance.
Power has less to do with title than you think.
At one point, the conversation turned to how decisions actually get made inside organizations.
Kinta broke it down simply: Power is access. Influence is currency.
The people shaping outcomes aren’t always the ones with the highest titles. They’re the ones connected to information, to conversations, and to decision-making moments early. Once you start to see that, you start to move differently.
You don’t just need support. You need the right kinds of support.
Not all relationships serve the same purpose. Kinta named three that matter most:
People who guide you
People who encourage you
People who advocate for you when you’re not in the room
The shift here is recognizing that building these relationships is part of the work.
Your job description is not your growth plan.
There was a moment where Kinta said, very directly: You can treat your job description as a starting point, but not a boundary.
Growth doesn’t come from doing everything. But it also doesn’t come from staying inside the lines. It comes from being intentional about what you take on, what you learn from it, and how you build from there.
At some point, you have to shift from doing to deciding.
One of the most important transitions in any career is moving from executing work to shaping it.
That shift doesn’t happen automatically. It comes from understanding how things work, where decisions are made, and how to position yourself inside those moments.
Or as Kinta put it: When you get good at doing, you earn the right to become a decision-maker.
This is just the starting point…
This conversation went deeper than we can capture here, especially around:
navigating power and influence in real time
recognizing when it’s time to move on
and how to build a career that reflects who you are, not just what you’ve done
If you want the full conversation, including the nuance, the examples, and the real-time coaching moments, you can watch the full replay inside the AdaMarie Professional Network. Become a member to access the full session and replay library.
