At first, the conversation sounded like it was going to be about strategy.

Change management. Career pivots. Leadership transitions. The mechanics of professional growth.

But within minutes, the panelists on “From Transition to Transformation: Creating Opportunity Through Change” made it clear that transformation is rarely about titles, technology or organizational charts. It is about people—and often, about the quiet internal battles no one else sees.

“The hardest part about change management isn’t the planning,” moderator Heather Esposito told the audience as she opened the discussion during CalCPA’s Elevate: Women’s Leadership Forum. “It’s the people.”

The panel, featuring Heather Esposito of BPM, Nellie Montoya of RSM and Marilyn Suey of Diamond Group Wealth Advisors, became less of a conversation about career advancement and more of an honest exploration of identity, ambition, fulfillment and self-advocacy.

The Moment You Realize It’s Time

For Suey, the first major pivot came after years inside corporate America.

“I got my MBA and I thought, I’m ready to be noticed and to be promoted,” she recalled. “And I knew I wasn’t going to get promoted. It just wasn’t going to happen.”

So instead of waiting for recognition, she made a move.

“I had to keep looking and be proactive about it,” she said. “I couldn’t wait to have somebody notice me.”

That first leap led to six or seven more pivots throughout her career—each one bringing more experience, more learning and more clarity about what she actually wanted and led her to launch The Diamond Group Wealth Advisors, where she is CEO, and become a nationally recognized financial educator, author and speaker.

Montoya’s transition looked different. After nearly a decade on the assurance side at RSM and a clear trajectory toward partner, she realized the work that energized her most wasn’t the technical side of accounting.

It was the people.

“I really enjoyed the people side of it more,” she said. “How do you prepare the people? How do you make the shift? And how do you make it stick?”

That realization eventually led her into change advisory and organizational transformation work. But walking away from the partner path wasn’t easy.

“That hurt a little bit,” she admitted. “Because that had been the goal for the nine years prior.”

Redefining Success

One of the strongest themes throughout the discussion was the evolution of success over time.

Early in their careers, success often meant promotions, compensation, visibility and titles. But over time, both women said they began redefining success in more personal and holistic ways.

“Success is immediate, ‘I got a promotion. I’m going to get compensated better. I’m going to have a bigger role,’” Suey said. “But I think it’s also in the fulfillment.”

She now coaches many women to think differently about achievement.

“When your mind and your heart and your soul are fully aligned, you’re going to do your very best work,” she said. “And that opportunity will find you.”

Montoya described her own evolution in similarly personal terms.

“A lot of the validation that I saw come my way was external,” she said. “It was the promotion, it was the raise, it was the exposure. What I had to let go of was essentially allowing others to determine what was successful for me.”

That shift became especially important as she reconsidered how work fit into the larger picture of her life.

“My involvement with community and the causes that I really care about—I just didn’t have time,” she said. “And then when I re-evaluated, I realized I really like focusing on those things in my definition of success.”

The Grief Nobody Talks About

One of the most powerful moments of the panel came when the conversation turned toward grief. Not grief in the traditional sense, but the grief that accompanies transformation itself.

“In anything that we’re doing, there’s a giving up of something else,” said Esposito, who is Director of Learning, Development and Colleague Engagement at BPM.

Montoya spoke candidly about how difficult it was to acknowledge feelings of loss after stepping away from the partner path she had worked toward for years.

“Once I allowed myself to really say, ‘I’m really sad that I did walk away from this potential path,’” she said, “everything shifted. Two things can be true at once. I can be sad about it, and I can be really, really happy that I’m on to the next step.”

For someone raised in a culture where emotions were often suppressed, even acknowledging grief was transformational.

“I learned that there are certain emotions that I could express that were safe,” she said. “For me, I had to work a lot of years on really trusting myself.”

The discussion opened the door to something rarely addressed in conversations about leadership: the emotional complexity of ambition.

Learning to Advocate for Yourself

A recurring theme for the panelists was the idea of self-advocacy.

Suey described finally learning how to advocate for herself in her 40s and how dramatically it changed her career.

“When I learned to advocate for myself, everything changed on a dime,” she said. “I was recognized. I was seen and heard.”

Montoya agreed, noting that women are often their own harshest critics.

“There’s so many friends and loved ones that know how amazing you are,” she said. “And yet somehow, oftentimes, you are the one that actually doubts that you can do it.”

Her advice was simple but emphatic: “Believe in yourself. It really is that.”

Building a Career Through Curiosity

As the conversation wrapped up, the panelists offered one final insight: careers do not always unfold in straight lines. In fact, sometimes the best opportunities emerge from curiosity rather than rigid planning.

“I always just picked the next thing I was curious about,” Montoya said. “And I can draw a red thread from each experience into how that serves me today.”

Suey echoed that sentiment through her own experience of reinventing herself repeatedly across decades.

“Every decade you need to be a different you,” she said.

Transformation, the panel suggested, is rarely a single dramatic leap. More often, it is a series of decisions to listen to yourself, redefine success, release outdated expectations and trust that the next chapter may look very different from the one you originally planned.

You can relive the fun and revisit some of our favorite moments—or get a taste of what you missed if you couldn't join us this year—by visiting the photo collection. And we hope to see you in 2027—take advantage of our early access discount while it’s available through July 7.