इस एपिसोड के बारे में
What happens when experienced professionals decide to stop waiting for the job market to tell them what comes next?
In this episode of Deprecated Human, Jess Lowry sits down with Lindsay Vetell and Angela Anderson, co-founders of Friend Group and creators of Effective Immediately, a peer-support community for people exploring independent work, consulting, fractional leadership, and new ways of building meaningful careers.
This conversation explores:
- The realities of prolonged unemployment and career transitions for experienced professionals
- Why some people are choosing not to re-enter traditional corporate roles
- Building trust, capability, and community instead of dependency
- The rise of independent, fractional, and portfolio careers
- Applying systems thinking and design practice to your own life and future
A conversation about what becomes possible when people decide to design new paths forward—together.
Featured Guests:
Lindsay Vetell
Lindsay's experience spans everything from typography to systems design. After 20 years of creating products and services for startups at Fortune 4 companies, she traded corporate life for small-business ownership, where she now helps entrepreneurs apply the same strategic thinking, research, and design practices typically reserved for large organizations.
Connect with Lindsay: Lindsay Vetell LinkedIn
Angela Anderson
Angela spent 20 years in operations and leadership across enterprise, product, and startup orgs. She’s built the operational backbone for large cross-functional programs including planning, roadmapping, vendor management, and systems that kept research, design, and product work on track. Angela is an experienced systems builder who believes that work moves faster when the messy middle is made visible early, so nobody's guessing about status, scope, or what comes next.
Connect with Angela: Angela Anderson LinkedIn
Friend Group
We're a business strategist and a service designer who realized our skills are two sides of the same coin. One of us focuses on the numbers: financials, business models, making sure the strategy pencils out.
The other focuses on the people: desirability, customer needs, understanding what truly works. We both have deep backgrounds in operations, which means we're all about efficient, human-centric workflows that don't make you want to pull your hair out.
https://www.hellofriendgroup.com/
Effective Immediately
Effective Immediately is a private, paid community for people leaving or considering leaving corporate life to build something of their own. It's a bridge for two kinds of people: professionals who aren't founders yet but feel the pull, and those who’ve made the leap and are navigating the early steps.
The premise is that your corporate experience proves you can operate in demanding environments. The community pairs real education with peer support so no one has to go it alone. Members get honest feedback, business fundamentals, and access to people a few steps ahead while they validate their idea, land first customers, and build the foundation.
https://www.hellofriendgroup.com/effective-immediately
Podcast Host: Jess Lowry
For over 15 years, Jess has helped organizations understand how work actually happens within complex enterprise environments. Through research, systems thinking, and human-centered design, she helps teams build the capabilities, relationships, and structures needed to support meaningful and sustainable change.
Connect with Jess: Jess Lowry LinkedIn
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