Transforming The Lives Of Young Professionals – Interview With Ibiyemi Balogun

Recognized as Talent Egg’s 2020 Career Coach of the Year, Ibiyemi Balogun is a Career Coach who helps professionals not only attain but SUSTAIN meaningful careers. As the Founder of Foot In The Door (FITD) Consulting, Ibiyemi works with professionals in Business and Technology. She is passionate about supporting underrepresented professionals and has been featured and spoken at Black Professionals in Tech Network BPTN, Accelerate Her Future and TorontoJobs. Ibiyemi has an MBA in entrepreneurship & social innovation with an extensive 7+ year background in Diversity Recruitment, Career Services, and Business Development. Ibiyemi currently works full-time at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University as a Manager of Graduate Careers & Student Engagement supporting MBA's with their career journey.

Ibiyemi Balogun, Founder & CEO at Foot In The Door Consulting (FITD)

Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.

My name is Ibiyemi Balogun and I am a career coach in Toronto, Canada. I was born in the UK, raised in Nigeria and immigrated to Canada at the age of 17 for educational purposes! After wrapping up my degree, my plan was to go back to Nigeria to start my career but then I got a 4 month internship as a recruiter. 8 years, 2 more degrees, 5 jobs and 1 business later and the rest is history!

What is your business name and how do you help your clients?

My business is called Foot In The Door Consulting and I support young professionals who feel burned out, unfulfilled or misaligned and are looking to accelerate or transition into more fulfilling & sustainable careers.

What kind of audience do you target your business towards?

Young professionals with 3-8+ years of experience in business & technology.

What are your current goals for your business?

The business is growing not only by scale but also in service offering to include work/life balance coaching and working with entrepreneurs. However, the biggest upcoming change will be the launch of a community for women of color who are looking to grow in their careers together. Launching in May, we will be opening our doors to women of color from a variety of industries who are looking for a network, a place to vent about their career frustrations. It will be a place to develop their career tools, and get clarification on their goals while learning from each other. The vision for this community came to me because of my own experiences. Coming up in my career, I never had mentors/ people that looked like me speaking into my career journey. Although I had fantastic mentors, I always had to adapt their advice to fit my context as a black woman in corporate Canada dealing with microaggressions in the workplace while trying to grow and accelerate my career. When I fast forward to my present day self who has built a strong personal & professional network of smart, capable & resilient women of color I am inspired to create that for others.

What would you like to achieve for yourself and your business in the future?

I would like to support young professionals & entrepreneurs with not just the tools to reach their goals BUT also the understanding that their career and business can be nimble, ever-changing, fulfilling and MOST of all sustainable.

Who inspires you to be the best that you can be?

The women in my family, including my late grandmothers, my mother, my sisters and sister in laws inspire me to be the best I can be. Every single one of them is a trailblazer in their industry. My grandmother started a school in Nigeria because as a teacher, she didn’t like how the Nigerian government at the time was running public schools. That school went on to educate 3 generations of our family. My mother who leads an HR consulting firm as the founder & CEO for the last 15 years taught me the importance of not just hard work but “smart work”. And lastly, all my sisters who have incredible careers, businesses and passions in PR, Marketing, Film production and NGOs. They inspire me to reach for more because it's the norm in our household.

Tell us about your greatest career achievement so far.

I have been blessed to have so many career achievements thus far, but the one that remains poignant in my mind was winning the “Career Coach of the Year Award for 2020”. It was very substantial because like many others 2020 was a TOUGH year for me not just because of the pandemic but because of the racial explosion in June. I remember hearing the news about George Floyd’s passing and feeling completely lost at work. I felt grief, overwhelm, confusion, hurt, pain and disappointment while being expected to show up as my “positive, uplifting and encouraging career coach self”. I felt like I couldn’t focus in the workplace and that everyone would find out that I was dropping balls and I would eventually lose my job. What I didn’t know was that my leaders had been watching me and tallying my achievements to create a case to nominate me for an external award that I eventually won! It’s an accomplishment because despite one of the hardest points in my career in terms of my ability to “show up”, people were speaking positively about me when I wasn’t in the room and nominating me for awards that they felt were well deserved.

If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?

I would love for career coaches to deliver more TANGIBLE, honest coaching that is impactful and tailored to the individual’s needs rather than providing generic information. I would also like for career coaches to spend more time on getting the client to really discover their “WHY” rather than just giving them tools to get to the “WHAT”.

Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.

A pivotal moment in my life has been “the ability to change my mind”. There have been many moments in my life and career where I’ve held beliefs about what it “SHOULD” look like rather than evaluating what it was and what I would like it to look like. I remember having a “DREAM JOB” and striving for it for many years, only to get it, love it and realise it was slowly affecting my mental & physical health. It was hard because up until then, I had only conceived my career in one way and when it wasn’t working, I felt lost, confused and stuck. It wasn’t until I changed my mind did I realise that my career can look like many different things and instead of boxing myself into a dream job, I can lean into a more fluid and flexible career.

Thank you for hearing about my story, if you are interested in 1 on 1 career coaching or learning more about the community I am building, feel free to follow me on Instagram at @fitdconsulting. If you already know you would like to be part of the community, feel free to complete this google form.

Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info!

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