About Valerie Young

Following the sudden death of my mother Barbara, I left my corporate management job and 90-mile-a-day commute to follow my own road.

In 1995 I launched the Changing Course Newsletter.

Two years later I became the Dreamer in Residence at ChangingCourse.com, a site dedicated to helping people find creative ways to make money doing what they love.

Today over 23,000 people subscribe to the Changing Course Newsletter and 170 people from 16 countries have taken my Profiting from Your Profits® Career Coach Training Program.

Over the years I’ve gotten some pretty good press… The Wall Street Journal, USA Weekend magazine, More, Kiplinger's, Inc., Entrepreneur, Woman's Day, Reader's Digest, Redbook, Psychology Today, Self, Glamour (UK), Cosmopolitan, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Globe and Mail, The Edmonton Sun, The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Grazia (Italian and India editions), and the Irish Independent.

In addition to my work here at Changing Course I’m also an expert on the Impostor Syndrome (if you’ve never heard of it, the quickest way to explain it is that Mike Myers says he’s always waiting for the no-talent police to show up).

I’m proud to say that my first book The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It with Crown Publishing netted me a six-figure book deal (woo-hoo!)

I’ve delivered my “How to Feel As Bright and Capable As Everyone Seems to Think You Are” program to such diverse organizations as Intel, Chrysler, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Boeing, IMB, Procter and Gamble, Ernst & Young (Canada), American Women in Radio and Television, Society of Women Engineers, National Association of Bank Women, National Association of Insurance Women, Association of Women in Science, and Women Rainmaker's Roundtable (law firm partners)… to name a few.

I’ve also spoken at over 60 colleges and universities including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cornell, California Institute of Technology, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Boston University School of Medicine, Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, University of Texas, University of Michigan, and University of California.

I earned my doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst where I was also the founding coordinator of the Social Justice Education program.