Elissa Unton is the CEO at ArcVida, a modern career guidance company based out of Los Angeles, California. Elissa partnered with career happiness coach Anna Hunter, and together they've been able to take career coaching to the next level. ArcVida uses an online software platform that provides ambitious U.S. professionals with the structure, expert guidance, and community to find and land fulfilling work, faster. Prior to founding ArcVida, Elissa spent several years mentoring college undergraduates while also recruiting and hiring professionals for her own corporate finance teams. She mentioned several helpful blog articles on their website that will be useful for professionals who are looking for a change.

In this episode, Elissa speaks about her past and present experience working corporate jobs, how she transitioned to working from home, and she lays out some of her experience as a serial entrepreneur. While earning her bachelor's degree, she started her career in investor relations, working full time at a small agency and then, after graduating, working in communications and investor relations for a small B2B e-commerce company. She moved to work at a larger investor relations agency before transitioning to strategy consulting. While working full-time by day in construction rental fleet and enterprise valuation, Elissa earned her MBA at night. Later, she managed and led financial planning and analysis teams. In 2015, while working full-time, Elissa also co-founded the Skid Row Spa, a volunteer project that resulted in the Refresh Spot, a publicly funded, 24-hour hygiene center for people living outside in downtown LA. 

Elissa talks about how prioritizing exercise every day has been really important for her physical health and focus, and she loves her Pelaton and the Peloton app as well and doesn't mind taking a call while on a walk around the neighborhood as walking and talking is her favorite way to hold catch up and networking conversations. She also shares about how she's been exploring different ways to do her shopping and trying out meal delivery services. During the heat of the pandemic, she and her family tried many different services but landed on a balance with a weekly grocery order delivered by the local market weekly and one meal planning (recipe and ingredients) delivery a week for four meals. She finds that this is the right blend of convenience, cooking, health, and quality; because she discovered, by trying delivery of fully-cooked meals, that the ritual of listening to jazz or folk or whatever happy music, after lighting a candle while cooking for her family makes for a happy bookend to the workday. 

Elissa enjoys mentoring first-time founders and strategizing on start-up financial models. She also volunteers as a finance consultant for her church and is excited to lead the local elementary school's book fair in Spring 2022!

You can learn more about ArcVida or contact Elissa in the following places:

Website: https://arcvida.com/

E-mail: elissa @ arcvida.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArcVidaInc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/arcvidacoaching

Also, don't forget to check out some of the helpful blog articles that Elissa mentioned during the episode: