Founding Vision
The Journey to Becoming You Labs
Over the years — as a leader, professor, coach, parent, and friend — I kept hearing the same quiet frustrations.
“I just don’t know what to do with my life. It’s so confusing out there. What am I really meant for? What’s my purpose?”
These weren’t casual remarks; they were the kinds of truths you share when you know something is off and you’re not just ready for change, you yearn for it. I understood exactly what they meant, because I had lived my own seasons of delays, detours, and hard choices. I knew how it felt to be moving fast but unsure if you were going in the right direction.
There had to be another way, I was sure of it.
“I just don’t know what to do with my life. It’s so confusing out there. What am I really meant for? What’s my purpose?”
These weren’t casual remarks; they were the kinds of truths you share when you know something is off and you’re not just ready for change, you yearn for it. I understood exactly what they meant, because I had lived my own seasons of delays, detours, and hard choices. I knew how it felt to be moving fast but unsure if you were going in the right direction.
There had to be another way, I was sure of it.
There had to be another way. I was sure of it.
That way, I came to discover, was a methodology I’d been formulating for nearly 15 years, and which I began teaching at NYU Stern School of Business in 2021.
From the start, I didn’t want to give my students just another career course — I wanted to give them a robust self-discovery and life-planning process they could return to again and again. The class combined behavioral science, decision theory, and the hard-earned life lessons I’d gathered from decades in leadership, research, business journalism, and coaching.
From the start, I didn’t want to give my students just another career course — I wanted to give them a robust self-discovery and life-planning process they could return to again and again. The class combined behavioral science, decision theory, and the hard-earned life lessons I’d gathered from decades in leadership, research, business journalism, and coaching.
And so Becoming You was born, built around a simple but powerful construct: Your purpose lies at the intersection of your authentic values, your natural cognitive and emotional aptitudes, and your most energizing economically viable interests. In other words, it lies at the heart of what matters to you, what you’re good at, and what the world needs.
I say “construct,” but I was soon to learn that Becoming You wasn’t just a tidy theory. It worked powerfully and effectively in real life. No longer did students talk about possible futures; they mapped them, stress-tested them, and learned how to forecast the tradeoffs of each choice.
The results were immediate and visible. A finance major turned down a coveted Wall Street offer to join a social-impact startup. A mid-career professional redesigned her role to better use her strengths. An entrepreneur made the difficult but liberating decision to close a business that no longer aligned with his values. In each case, the choices stuck — not because they were easy, but because they were deeply grounded in a cogent, cohesive system of analysis.
What I saw in that classroom echoed what decades of behavioral science tells us: when people have clarity about who they are and what matters most, when they understand their aptitudes and can realistically see the economic landscape, they make better decisions, with less regret, and greater follow-through. Living in alignment with that self-knowledge builds resilience, confidence, and purpose.
Word of the class spread. Alumni shared the tools with friends, families, and colleagues. Becoming You became a best-selling book and popular podcast. Leaders brought the framework into their teams.
Soon, it was clear this work belonged beyond the walls of NYU. People of all ages — from 18-year-olds choosing their first path to 80-year-olds reimagining their next chapter — were hungry for a way to make choices they could trust.
This movement and its community are why we created Becoming You Labs. To take what started in a single classroom and make it accessible anywhere: through workshops and intensives where people can step out of their lives to reset their direction, certification programs that equip coaches and leaders to bring the tools to others, andscience-backed assessment tools that put the process in hands of people everywhere.
Whether you’re making your first big career decision, navigating a midlife reinvention, seeking to reset an important relationship, or leading an organization through change, my hope is the same:
That this work gives you the clarity, conviction, and confidence to make decisions that are true, purposeful, and enlivening beyond your dreams.
I say “construct,” but I was soon to learn that Becoming You wasn’t just a tidy theory. It worked powerfully and effectively in real life. No longer did students talk about possible futures; they mapped them, stress-tested them, and learned how to forecast the tradeoffs of each choice.
The results were immediate and visible. A finance major turned down a coveted Wall Street offer to join a social-impact startup. A mid-career professional redesigned her role to better use her strengths. An entrepreneur made the difficult but liberating decision to close a business that no longer aligned with his values. In each case, the choices stuck — not because they were easy, but because they were deeply grounded in a cogent, cohesive system of analysis.
What I saw in that classroom echoed what decades of behavioral science tells us: when people have clarity about who they are and what matters most, when they understand their aptitudes and can realistically see the economic landscape, they make better decisions, with less regret, and greater follow-through. Living in alignment with that self-knowledge builds resilience, confidence, and purpose.
Word of the class spread. Alumni shared the tools with friends, families, and colleagues. Becoming You became a best-selling book and popular podcast. Leaders brought the framework into their teams.
Soon, it was clear this work belonged beyond the walls of NYU. People of all ages — from 18-year-olds choosing their first path to 80-year-olds reimagining their next chapter — were hungry for a way to make choices they could trust.
This movement and its community are why we created Becoming You Labs. To take what started in a single classroom and make it accessible anywhere: through workshops and intensives where people can step out of their lives to reset their direction, certification programs that equip coaches and leaders to bring the tools to others, andscience-backed assessment tools that put the process in hands of people everywhere.
Whether you’re making your first big career decision, navigating a midlife reinvention, seeking to reset an important relationship, or leading an organization through change, my hope is the same:
That this work gives you the clarity, conviction, and confidence to make decisions that are true, purposeful, and enlivening beyond your dreams.
My hope is that this work gives you the clarity, conviction, and confidence to make decisions that are true, purposeful, and enlivening beyond your dreams.
Suzy WelchFounder & CEO
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