Angie Callen engineers high-potential careers

“I’m a recovering engineer who loves people. That one sentence alone should tell you I was destined for the Sunday Scaries the minute I enrolled in Civil Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.”

These first two lines of Angie Callen’s book, "Scary Good: Discovering Life Beyond the Sunday Scaries," are an effective summary of why Angie and her new book are resonating with people who are wondering about their career directions.

The “Sunday Scaries” are Angie’s term for the workweek dread that often sets in when vocation and motivation don’t align. That’s where she found herself in 2003 as a freshly-minted graduate from Carnegie Mellon University. She was working as a civil engineer focused on physical infrastructure. Unfulfilled and isolated, she eventually realized the most important project she needed to rebuild was her own career.

Engineer or leader?

A problem solver at heart, Angie enjoyed the rigor of her undergraduate engineering training and its focus on process and analytical skills. Doubts, such as her dislike of a first-year physics class, didn’t set off big alarms.

Angie’s energy was well-utilized as a campus leader. She was selected as a Head Orientation Counselor for new student orientation and was active in Greek life and the civil engineering department. Sporting a tasseled hard hat rather than a traditional cap at graduation in 2003, she brushed off lingering misgivings and remained optimistic about her path as an engineer.

Angie moved to Boston and began building her career in engineering, where she leaned into what was comfortable: leadership and connection. Her drive to build relationships created early-career opportunities that pushed her up the ladder quickly. In short order, she moved from a place on the team to leading it, which was a tall order for an engineer with under five years of experience.

“I was the poster child for grin and bear it,” she says. “But control and perfectionism were coping mechanisms. I was burning myself out attempting to maintain someone else’s version of success.”

In 2008, Angie was given the opportunity to transfer from Boston to Colorado, but rather than a dream assignment, the move turned into a wake-up call.

“For someone who thrives on impact and connection, showing up to a sterile cubicle to design paved parking on National Forest land so ski resorts could pack in more cars was soul-crushing,” she says.

Fortunately, a curveball in the form of the Great Recession helped her make big changes.

Economic downturn, career turnaround

Angie’s career salvation came in step with the economic downturn that began shortly after her move across the country. Construction projects halted, and furloughs and free time followed. Angie spent that time outside, met her husband Jim, and embraced a new passion: ski slopes, mountains and rustic trails as nature — not engineers — intended. That challenged her values and beliefs. When she found joy outside, and outside of engineering, inevitably, she left engineering altogether.

What followed over the next few years was a revitalizing vagabond existence in both life and work. Her career change journey included jobs at an art gallery, an arts nonprofit, and a failing business. But by living lean, prioritizing time outside and connections with people, Angie began to find glimmers of gratification. Despite facing both bankruptcy and near homelessness in 2017, Angie persisted.

“What I learned is what real resilience is. It’s absorbing the hit,” Angie says. “I grieved what was gone, then started again with the pieces I could salvage, even feeling they were flawed and incomplete. It wasn’t about recreating the past but about building something new that would hold the weight of who I had become.”

The next phase of building was both literal and figurative. To solve their housing needs, Angie and her husband renovated a 30-year-old school bus and called it home full-time for four years. She also realized her multiple career reinventions and life iterations were the elite training necessary to start a coaching business. She funneled that experience into the creation of Career Benders and The Modern Coach, career and leadership coaching firms focused on helping others with the same “Sunday Scary” feelings of being stuck, uninspired and in need of a new direction.

Bold and empowered

Though coaching may seem like a divergence from Angie’s start in engineering, in many ways it’s a full-circle return to where she started.

“I engineer human potential instead of buildings,” Angie says. “I started my career working in infrastructure, data and math-heavy systems, and now I get to work on the most complex, unpredictable, fascinating system of them all — people.”

Angie’s skills as a coach caught on, with dozens of her clients raving about her help in transforming their work to align with values and purpose. Over time, she’s continued to build her brand and expand her work in the leadership and career coaching spaces. She launched the “No More Mondays” podcast in 2021, a show to inspire others to live up to their full potential. Her book “Scary Good” was published in early 2026, garnering excellent reviews and three independent book awards. In the book, she shares her coaching philosophy framed by her personal journey.

Yet another transformation is in the works, as well. As a people-person in a tech world, Angie sees a tear in the cultural fabric forming with the onset of AI. People are increasingly isolated, and the same void-of-purpose that drives the Sunday Scaries is also rewiring traditional approaches to executive leadership and team-based work. Through speaking and consulting avenues, Angie is focused on improving communications, restoring connections and refocusing workplaces on the humans within them.

“I have a purpose to make sure that humans still matter — to themselves and to each other,” she says. As an engineer who loves people, Angie has a unique perspective about the intersection of humans and technology, and she’s passionate about it. And teaser alert: another book is in the works on that topic.

Throughout all of it — the career changes, coaching, and even building a house inside of a bus, Angie’s approach looks very much like one thing: an engineering project. From gathering the requirements that inform an individual’s goals to prototyping, problem-solving, and offering support, Angie guides people until their personal “punch list” is complete and the results are in. This approach may be rooted in engineering, but it draws just as much on the natural leadership skills she began honing on her first day at CMU.

“My career is built on a layer of academic work and extracurricular involvement from college,” Angie says. “Yes, I think like an engineer but while serving in the visible roles I held on campus, it was like the leader in me was just screaming to come out. If I’d had more awareness, I’d have seen those as guideposts that should have informed my vocational decisions much sooner. But that’s my journey, and CMU Tartan plaid is woven throughout all of it.”

For more information, visit AngieCallen.com