Career Maven Tiffany Tate Joins SPS to Support Students’ Professional Growth

Tiffany Tate’s approach to career coaching emphasizes, above all, the importance of agency.

“A lot of professionals find a job opening and then try to figure out how to contour themselves to be a viable candidate,” she says. “I like to do the reverse.” 

When working with clients, Tiffany helps them to think about who they are, their values, the type of role they’re looking for; she helps them to understand their “why.” Then, armed with that knowledge, she works with them to find the right opportunity and successfully position themselves for it.

In 2009, Tiffany began her professional journey coaching students as an Academic Counselor at Wake Forest  When she progressed to the career development team a few years later, she got her first taste of career counseling work and immediately knew – she found her niche. 

From there, she’s blossomed in the field of career development in higher education. Tiffany took a job as Assistant Director of Career Development at Davidson College and began to truly refine her career coaching capabilities. “In my four years at Davidson, I built out our suite of offerings,” she recalls. “This involved helping the students understand how to look for jobs, how to position themselves well, how to pursue graduate and professional school studies, and how to connect themselves to the alumni office.”

Then in 2021, Tiffany took her coaching skills and expanded to the corporate world. Currently, Tiffany serves as the Leadership Excellence & Manager Development Learning Manager at a global climate technology company.  

From helping someone land their first professional job to supporting organizations recruit and retain top talent, she’s seen the same struggles time and time again from both sides of the hiring desk. That’s why in 2018 she planted her flag and founded Career Maven Consulting.

At Career Maven, Tiffany works with clients to demystify the job search process while also partnering with organizations to develop high quality teams. She’s coached hundreds of professionals to attract their dream job with confidence and agency.

“Your professional path starts with you. Taking ownership of that is practicing agency,” she explains. “If you’ve already counted yourself out of an opportunity, then 100% of the time you won’t get it. Confidence is critical.” 

Tiffany is now bringing her skills, unique approach, and extensive experience to the School of Professional Studies. SPS is partnering with Career Maven Consulting to offer students a variety of career resources including a series of development experiences starting May 16th. This will cover relevant topics such as how to brand yourself, developing work life balance, making pivotal decisions in your career, and more. These virtual webinars will be recorded and stored for future student access in the Pearl Cafe.   

In the fall, students will have the opportunity to work in person with Tiffany through Laser Career Coaching at Wake360. 

“We’re thrilled to connect our students with Tiffany,” says Loréal Maguire, Director of Student Services at SPS. “Tiffany, a Wake Forest alumna, provides expertise and a wealth of knowledge in the career space. We look forward to partnering with her to support our students.” 

This partnership with SPS is like returning home for Tiffany, who also completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Wake: “I feel really fortunate that I had the experiences that I had in college. A lot of people have poured a ton into me and have been incredible resources, so to do the same for others is really important to me.”

Just as she does with Career Maven clients, Tiffany encourages SPS students to be proactive, forward thinking, and reflective of what they have to offer. 

In fact, her go-to job search advice for anyone is to: “Extrapolate skills from the experiences that you’ve had and start thinking about how those skills add value. Figure out how to bridge the connection between what you’re able to do and how it might add value to a new organization or team.” 

Tiffany’s first webinar, “Pivots & Pathways: Career Exploration for Professionals” is Tuesday, May 16th at 7pm ET. SPS Students can sign up and view future webinar topics here.