Changing Careers, one person's story

Gulfport, Mississippi---The combination of serious smarts and pretty face might have landed her on TV sooner than in a 20+ year newspaper career. But whenever the topic was mentioned, she would shut it down with a sarcastic, funny comment about the opposing media. She was committed to print.
From beat reporter, cops and cities, to the press corps in Tallahassee to management at a large Florida newspaper, Sharon McBreen followed her journalism training from The University of Florida.  Ending up as a regional editor, she fit her busy career in between a marriage and two kids… or vice versa.

But as the ink media evolved, she started looking for options, as did so many others. She wanted out, but that would mean a huge adjustment in lifestyle.

Combining a favorite pastime of fishing with her skill set, Sharon works on a fish conservation campaign in the Gulf of Mexico.

But wait. She doesn’t look like a tree hugger. She doesn’t talk like a “wacko” environmentalist. Like many others, she is a new face of the world’s concern for how things are going in the air, on land and sea. An ecosystemist. (Yes, I just made up that word.)  At an institution of people who base facts on science, then try to influence policy. (Not meaning that environmentalists don’t use science but, there have been some who HAVE given it a reputation of “extreme over balance”.)  One of her roles during this trip was for her to give information to a fishery council in support of investigating new ways to help balance recreational fishing opportunities with science-based limits.

When she’s not traveling, she works from a home office and is still intricately involved in all those parenting issues and challenges provided by teenagers. But how do you adapt to being on the road with the needs of a family after so many years of some regularity of routine?

Technology.

Via computer, she is no stranger to seeing what homework is due. Exhausted from a full day of meetings, she settles into her hotel room to multi-task between finishing up reports and checking in with her family.  Like a human day-timer, she can rattle off what needs to happen via cell phone. She jokes that she has to call three cell phones to talk to her family: the husband’s, the son’s, the daughter’s. And as a parent she worries passionately.

Balancing work and family and well, just a little fun, she squeezes in a charter fishing trip with one of her contacts prior to the 4-day marathon fisheries meeting. She couldn’t be happier with her decision to change the direction of her career.

“I absolutely love my job. I get paid to work with people who fish and try my best to make a difference. Plus I get to fish!” she said. “It’s one of the best decisions I’ve made.”