“The CAPM was the thing that made me stand out in a new industry—it was the door-opener.” For years, Kathleen Norman worked as a high school counselor, a role she loved but left her drained. She wanted balance and a new career path. That’s when her mom, a design architect, pointed out something Kathleen hadn’t seen in herself: “You’re already doing project management. You just don’t use the same words we do.” That insight sparked a shift. Kathleen began networking with project managers, completed Google’s PM course, and set her sights on the CAPM® certification to validate her skills and signal her readiness for a new field. “The CAPM gave me the language and confidence to show that my skills from counseling translated into project management.” It worked. Kathleen passed the exam in December 2023 and quickly became a Project Management Analyst at an engineering consulting firm in St. Louis. Today, she combines her counseling background with project skills to create onboarding guide...