Let’s be honest: too many companies hire a fractional CFO and end up with a fractional drain.

Ongoing retainers, vague deliverables, and open-ended timelines can quietly erode your budget while adding little strategic value.

What you really need at critical moments, whether prepping for a fundraise, a board meeting, or a major strategic shift, is clarity, speed, and execution.

This blog explores the power of a nonlinear career path through the lens of startup CEO Traci Keen, who has transitioned from design student to fund accountant, consultant, and founder. Drawing on lessons from each chapter, the article highlights the value of curiosity over certainty, how transferable skills fuel reinvention, and why authenticity and pattern recognition are essential for modern leadership. Readers will walk away with actionable insights on navigating career pivots, embracing uncertainty, and building purpose-driven success. Includes a preview of two upcoming e-books: The Grit & Growth Blueprint and It’s Not About You, designed for professionals seeking clarity, growth, and resilience in their careers.

Fertility challenges affect a huge segment of the population, yet access to care remains far from adequate. According to the World Health Organization (World Health Organization, 2023), 1 in 6 people globally experiences infertility, underscoring an urgent need to improve access to fertility services.

Despite this widespread need, fertility treatments are often inaccessible due to high costs and limited availability, with most care paid for out-of-pocket and causing financial hardship for patients.

The U.S. exemplifies this gap: an estimated 12.2 million Americans (American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 2022) face infertility, but there are only about 1,351 reproductive endocrinologists (fertility specialists) to serve them, mostly clustered in urban centers.

As regional and community hospitals brace for the financial headwinds of proposed Medicaid reimbursement cuts, hospital leaders are under pressure to find new, high-impact ways to diversify revenue, strengthen care delivery, and meet the evolving needs of their communities.

One timely and often overlooked strategy? Adding fertility care as a service line.

We’ve been sold a narrative of panic: collapsing birth rates, aging populations, ticking biological clocks. But the truth, as highlighted in a powerful piece by UNFPA, is far more human and far more hopeful.

The real fertility crisis isn’t a shortage of babies. It’s a shortage of agency.

The fertility industry in the United States continues to grow rapidly, with market projections showing expansion from $8.9 billion in 2023 to an estimated $16.8 billion by 2028. Yet beneath this growth lies a troubling reality: a deeply fragmented ecosystem that often fails the very patients it aims to serve. My personal journey navigating this system recently as a patient has revealed how structural inefficiencies create emotional and financial burdens for patients, even for those of us who work within the industry.