Interview: Janae Gravitz — Designing Careers with Clarity, Intention, and Balance
Janae Gravitz is a career and leadership coach who helps professionals navigate transitions, pursue promotions, and align their work with their values. As the founder of True You Coach, she brings 15 years of talent acquisition experience to her coaching practice, offering clients an insider’s perspective on hiring processes and career development.
From Talent Acquisition to Career Coaching
Janae’s path to coaching began at a pivotal moment. After 15 years working in talent acquisition—spanning government, executive search, and leading the recruiting function for a media company—she became a parent. Suddenly, she was faced with a question many professionals encounter: how do you give your all to your career when you also want to give your all to your family?
In Washington, DC, where long hours and rough commutes were the norm (and this was before remote work became common), staying the course felt exhausting. But as Janae reflects, big life events are perfect times to pause and evaluate.
A friend recommended Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, which guides readers through exercises to better align work with values. The book resonated deeply. After giving birth to her daughter, Janae left paid work and used those foundational tools to evaluate future opportunities.
A few years later, while completing a master’s degree in HR at Georgetown University, she took a coaching course taught by Brodie Riordan and Shonna Waters. Halfway through, she had a lightbulb moment: coaching might be the profession that connected all the dots she’d been collecting over the years. And so far, that’s held true.
What Makes Coaching Valuable
Janae believes coaching can benefit everyone, no matter what stage they’re in. Life is busy, and we spend so much time reacting and putting out fires. Coaching offers dedicated time—and an objective partner—to tackle what really matters and reclaim the driver’s seat in your career.
Her approach centers on helping clients pursue their goals, align their work with their values, and become more intentional about their careers. It’s about moving from reactive to proactive, from overwhelmed to intentional.
The Journey That Shaped Her Practice
The journey from leaving her corporate job to launching her business True You Career Coaching. During that time, Janae had two children, navigated the pandemic, earned her master’s degree, and completed her coaching education.
Through it all, she learned three key things:
- Her experience as an executive recruiter and talent acquisition leader is invaluable to job seekers who often feel like hiring processes are a black box
- What she loved about recruiting—one-on-one conversations, helping people achieve career goals, tangible outcomes—is also present in coaching
- Coaching provides the flexibility she wants while raising young children
It’s allowed her to do what she’s good at, what she enjoys, and what’s important to her. And that’s her hope for her clients too. Through their sessions together, they identify strengths, interests, and values and explore how those might align with potential career paths. Clients leave with greater clarity, encouragement, and accountability.
How She Works with Clients
As a career and leadership coach, Janae offers one-on-one coaching for individuals seeking career transitions, promotions, or enhanced leadership skills. She also works with employers to coach high-potential employees, improve performance outcomes, and provide professional development.
For clients seeking career transitions or pivots, they work through questions and exercises to better understand who they are, what they want, and how to get there. Together, they put together a plan to explore potential career paths and identify any gaps in experience.
For clients who already know what they want, they focus energy on executing the search: resume and LinkedIn profile review, crafting an elevator pitch, developing job search strategy, networking, and interview preparation. She even offers a free “onboarding well” session when clients land their new job.
When working with employers, she spends time setting goals and getting alignment from all parties involved. Clients may take an assessment early in the process—she’s a Hogan Assessment certified coach and appreciates how Hogan helps clients understand how they may be perceived by others. Then they translate goals into actionable plans.
The Importance of Continuous Learning
Janae believes that none of us have it all figured out and if we did, wouldn’t that get boring? Learning leads to growth, and that makes life dynamic and energizing.
She’s learned so much through graduate school, her coaching education at American University, other coaches, and clients. And yet there’s so much more to learn. She appreciates that The International Coaching Federation (ICF) takes learning seriously and promotes growth opportunities to its members. She earned her Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential through ICF and looks forward to becoming a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) in 2026.
Teaching part-time at Georgetown University—in the same program where she got her master’s—keeps her engaged with the latest developments in the field. She learns a lot from her students’ experiences and insights.
What’s Next
Janae is hoping to launch a career coaching cohort in 2026, where participants can get the benefits of coaching in a structured format, with collaboration and support from their peers, at a more affordable rate.
For anyone navigating a career transition, seeking greater alignment between work and values, or simply wanting to be more intentional about their professional path, Janae’s message is clear: coaching gives you the space and partnership to tackle what really matters.
To learn more about Janae Gravitz and her work, visit trueyoucoach.com. Stay tuned for updates on her upcoming 2026 career coaching cohort.
