Faye McCray is an author, speaker, and communications executive whose work explores ambition, identity, and the complicated relationship we have with success.
She is the author of More Than Your Job: Four Practices for Keeping Your Identity Bigger Than Your Career (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, June 2027), a book that challenges the idea that our careers should define who we are. Drawing on research, personal experience, and the stories of people navigating their own relationships with work, Faye examines why ambitious professionals become so deeply attached to their careers and what it takes to build a life where success doesn’t come at the expense of identity, security, or self-worth.
Her perspective is shaped by a career that has been anything but linear.
Faye began her professional life as an attorney, spending nearly a decade in federal service before making an unexpected pivot into journalism and media. When she decided to leave the security of government employment, a judge she respected warned her, “If you leave, you may not be able to come back.”
With three young children, a spouse, and a mortgage, the decision was hardly without risk. What followed was a messy middle of uncertainty, financial setbacks, and reinvention. Within five years, she had tripled her legal salary and built a new career in media and executive leadership. But the experience also changed how she thought about ambition, security, and the stories we tell ourselves about success.
Over the past decade, Faye has led content and communications strategy for some of the world’s most recognized health and wellness brands, including Healthline, Psych Central, Healthgrades, Well+Good, and Livestrong. She is currently the CEO of Culture & Quill, her strategic communications firm. Her work has reached millions of people, and she has been recognized on the Cynopsis Digital IT List for innovation and leadership in digital media and named an Aspen Ideas Fellow.
A journalist and storyteller at heart, Faye has written for the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Newsweek, HuffPost, Parade, and other publications. She has shared her ideas on stages including SXSW, Adweek, Reuters, ViVE, Aspen Ideas, and TEDx, where she delivered her talk You Were Never Meant to Be Just One Thing. Her insights have also been featured on NBC News Now, Good Day NY, and Fox 5 DC.
Across her writing, speaking, and leadership, Faye returns to a central question: What becomes possible when we stop asking our careers to tell us who we are?
Through More Than Your Job and her ongoing writing, she invites readers to examine the beliefs shaping their ambition, reconsider what they owe their work, and build lives that are bigger than any title they hold.
Stay Connected
More Than Your Job arrives June 2027. Sign up for Faye’s newsletter, What if it all works out, on Substack, for reflections on ambition, identity, work, and life beyond the job, along with updates on the book and its release.
You can also find Faye at the links below to stay in touch.
