In the summer of 2017, Nolan Miracle faced a dilemma. Though he had loved working as an analyst at Avanade for nearly a year and a half – making an impact on challenging, high-profile projects in Azure B2C – he was traveling about 3,000 miles per week. His little brother had just graduated from college and was moving to Phoenix, and after years of living far away from his family, Nolan wanted to be a little closer to home.

“I very much wanted to be a part of him being out here and helping him get his feet wet,” Nolan said. “It was not an easy decision to leave because I loved the work I was doing, but it was primarily due to the travel at that time. I just knew that I wanted to be here for him during his transition.”

He decided to take an Identity and Access Management position at Charles Schwab. The role kept him local, but his professional life suddenly felt radically different.

“When you leave consulting to then become a full-time employee at another company, it’s almost like you hit the brakes work-wise,” Nolan explained. “Everything slows down to a tremendous halt. That was a little tough to swallow.”

The experience at Charles Schwab taught Nolan more about himself and what he needed to be satisfied in his career. 

“I’m somebody who likes to go-go-go, especially when it comes to work,” he said. “If you’re on a new consulting project, exposed to new tech, you have to quickly become the subject matter expert (SME) in that space because we’ve got a solution to build. So you’re always having to learn very quickly, adapt to the project quickly and get your hands dirty quickly. You’re thrown into the fire, so to speak. So  for me, from a personality standpoint, consulting started to make more sense – but didn’t fully see that until I left.”

To get moving again, Nolan took his entrepreneurial passion forward and went into business for himself in the finance world under Northwestern Mutual. Although he won some big awards and gained traction quickly in his first year, he knew it wasn’t going to be a long-term fit for him, but he found the learning experiences invaluable – especially because he was considering returning to consulting.

“Being in business for myself, I was fully autonomous,” Nolan said. “If I didn’t do something, it didn’t get done. Nobody was going to do it for me. So many things I learned from growing a business translated directly back into consulting: client meetings constantly, learning how to build trust, how to prospect and market – everything to grow a business. I truly have a much better understanding of how to be confident in my abilities to get things done. 

Nolan had kept in touch with people at Avanade during his time away. Once his brother was settled, Nolan felt ready to stretch his wings again and began to have conversations about “coming home” earlier this year. He knew consulting was the right fit for him, but even beyond that, he was especially eager to return to Avanade.

“As cliché as it may sound, Avanade really does care for their people. With some big companies, it kind of feels like you’re a number, rather than an employee and we just don’t have that vibe. We are a large company, but we still hold true to those people values,” he said. “And I don’t think everyone really understands the power that we have being jointly owned by Microsoft and Accenture.  I was on a project call yesterday directly with the Microsoft Azure B2C product team – how cool is that! It’s awesome to have a massive company like Microsoft be there for us to make sure we’re doing everything we can to get the job done, do it right and succeed.  All in all, I’m excited to be welcomed back and even more excited for the challenges ahead.”