Women are leaving corporate America in record numbers. Some are retiring. Some were downsized. Some simply decided they were done. Every one of them is now writing a next act.
On September 17, I joined Schmooze founder Shelly Lombard’s virtual panel, How I Launched My Next Act. It followed Schmooze’s “Let’s Toast To Your Next Act” gathering in Martha’s Vineyard. Our moderator was Aaliyah El-Amin, a senior health care executive and Schmooze member. I shared the stage with Monique Carkum Edwards and Hillary Sobel, who spent over three decades as a deal attorney before launching Minerva Turning Point Strategies.
Everything below comes from my answers on that panel.
I am invited onto women’s leadership and networking panels often. The question underneath is always the same. How do you become someone new without abandoning who you were?
HOW AALIYAH INTRODUCED ME
“Her own career has been a series of deliberate next acts. Fashion first. Then luxury weddings. Now portraits for professional women who have outgrown the image the world still has of them. She has lived across multiple continents and rebuilt her work more than once, which is why she understands that a pivot is rarely a straight line.”
Aaliyah El-Amin, panel moderator
FROM HEAD OF MENSWEAR TO A CAMERA
I trained at the London College of Fashion. I spent years climbing the ladder at a large fashion house in London. By twenty six, I was head of menswear. I had a team. I was flying to China to oversee sampling and production.
Then the collection I had wanted to create went to someone on my team. I was too busy being the boss.
That is what the ladder meant. The higher I climbed, the further I drifted from the reason I chose fashion. I was also questioning the waste. The industry produces a great deal, and it leaves a great deal behind.
So I left. I sold everything I had built in London and moved to America. I had no job. I had a camera.
I started a blog called the Fashington Press. I went through thrift stores and asked people what they had just bought. Then I brought them into a studio and styled one piece three completely different ways. People began asking me to photograph things for them. That is how it began.
THE COFFEE AT THE PLAZA THAT BUILT A WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY CAREER
I wanted weddings. I was drawn to the storytelling, and the work paid well.
I was new to New York. I did not know a single wedding photographer, so I went to the people who hire them. I invited the best luxury wedding planners in the city to coffee at the Plaza. Two said yes. One gave me my first break.
I shot luxury weddings for ten years. I built a team of photographers and videographers so we could book multiple weddings on the same day.
WHEN MY BRIDES CAME BACK AS FOUNDERS
Then my brides started coming back.
They had left their corporate jobs and started companies. They were mid pivot, and they needed photographs that matched the chapter they were living now.
What they brought me was the opposite. A woman running a company, represented by a photograph of who she used to be. Or a cropped wedding photo doing the job of a headshot.
She had built something real. Everything visible online still belonged to the woman before.
I knew that gap because I had lived inside it. Every pivot unlocked a new version of me, and every time, I had to rebrand.
So this business was not a market gap I spotted. It grew from two things I already had. I understood the assignment, and I knew how to draw a woman’s story out of her. That is what my personal branding photography is rooted in. Transformation.
Through The Legacy Project, I take a founder’s story from start to finish. Then I show her audience the chapters. The experience she accumulated. The challenges and what they taught her. And how all of it arrives at what she is building now. The brand that was waiting to be born out of her journey.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A BROKE ARTIST
Shelly once interviewed me for the Schmooze newsletter. I told her you do not have to be a broke artist to be a real artist. On the panel, I explained how each pivot built the business I run today.
Fashion taught me the first lesson, and it is the one artists resist hardest. A great designer does not make the best design. She makes the one the market wants. Inside a commercial house, the work either shipped or sat in a warehouse.
The second lesson was about investment and rooms. I hired a business coach. I began showing up in the circles my clients were already in. I booked four clients from my first Schmooze event, and I am still booking from it. The entry fee was less than one percent of what it returned. Some of those clients are now friends.
Artists price the entry. They rarely calculate the return.
PROTECTING THE NINETY MINUTES
The third lesson was the team. I outsourced everything that was not the artist. That includes hair and makeup, styling, and photo and video editing. It also includes a studio manager and, now, a sales team.
None of that is about scale. It protects the ninety minutes where only I can do the work.
When a woman is in my studio, I am fully present. I am drawing her whole story out of her. Nobody else can do that part for me.
The moment you are an artist, you are a business owner. The ones who accept that early stop being broke.
BRANDING PHOTOGRAPHY FOR WOMEN IN A CAREER PIVOT: WHO THIS WORK IS FOR
The women I photograph are rarely starting from zero. They are starting from everything they have already become.
- Women founders launching companies after leaving corporate careers
- Executives stepping into fractional, advisory, or board roles
- Attorneys, physicians, and consultants opening practices of their own
- Coaches, therapists, and creatives in the middle of a pivot
- Speakers and authors whose visibility has not caught up with their expertise
WHY THE PANEL STAGE KEEPS CALLING
I have been named Best Photographer in NYC by Photographer USA Magazine. My story has been told in outlets like The Bragging Mommy. But what brings me back to panels like this one is simpler. I have made the leap more than once, and I photograph the women making it now.
Some of them are navigating a career change. Others are building a second act, an encore career, or a portfolio career after a corporate exit. Some are retiring from one field while launching in another. Every one of them deserves imagery that shows who she is today.
I write more about this in How To Grow Your Personal Brand Through Thought Leadership and Why Storytelling Matters in Photography. When you are ready for your next chapter, book your session.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How do I rebrand myself after leaving a corporate career?
Start with your story, not your logo. Your audience needs to see the chapters that brought you here, and how your experience makes you different. Branding photography that reflects who you are now does that work before you say a word.
Why do I need new headshots after a career pivot?
Your old photos belong to your old role. When a founder’s image still shows who she used to be, her visibility falls behind her expertise. New imagery aligns how you are seen with what you now lead.
How did Priyanca Rao go from fashion to personal branding photography?
She trained at the London College of Fashion and rose to head of menswear at a London fashion house. Then she moved to America with a camera. She shot luxury weddings in New York for ten years before her brides returned as founders who needed branding photography.
What is The Legacy Project?
The Legacy Project is Priyanca Rao’s signature storytelling offering for women founders and leaders. It photographs the chapters of a woman’s life, from the experiences that shaped her to the legacy she is building now. It is available by application only.
Priyanca Rao is a personal branding photographer for women founders, CEOs, and leaders, working with clients across New York City and Westchester. Her signature offering, The Legacy Project, turns a woman’s story into a body of photographic work that reflects who she has become. Women preparing for a rebrand, a launch, a book, or a next chapter turn to Priyanca Rao Photography for imagery that matches their expertise. If you are searching for personal branding photography for a career pivot, her studio is built for exactly this moment.
