TL;DR: Audrey McDaris spent a decade teaching high school English before making a career pivot to corporate learning and development at Cummins. What started as a redirected job interview turned into a role she didn’t even know existed. Three years later, she’s a Senior Instructional Designer building eLearning experiences for a global engineering company. Her story shows that the skills you build in one career can carry you much further than you’d expect in the next.
Most career pivot stories don’t start with a plan. Audrey’s starts with leaving a career that felt like a calling and then meeting a hiring manager who saw something she hadn’t yet seen in herself. It developed into a beautiful story of discovery, learning, and fulfillment. Read on to learn how this journey led Audrey to becoming a senior instructional designer at
Cummins, designing eLearning experiences for a global engineering company that builds diesel engines and power generators.
A decade in the classroom
Audrey didn’t stumble into teaching. She chose it because she wanted to do meaningful work (the kind where what you do actually makes a difference for someone else). A teacher had once told her she was a strong writer and cared deeply about people, and that nudge pointed her toward education.
She spent her career teaching high school language arts, moving across Indiana, Oregon, and other states as her husband’s engineering career took the family to new places. Starting over in a new school system every few years wasn’t easy, but it sharpened a skill she still relies on: breaking down complex goals into something a learner can actually act on.
“Teachers are given very little information,” Audrey said. “You’re given state standards, and sometimes you’re given guides, but most of the time you build the blueprint.” She calls this ability to take a massive, ambiguous goal and reverse-engineer a path to get there a teacher’s “secret weapon”. It's a skill that translates well beyond the classroom.
When the work stopped working
Teaching is often talked about as a calling. Walking away from it is not just a career move. It can sometimes feel like giving something up. For Audrey, the idea of leaving built over time, but the pandemic accelerated it. COVID-19 widened the gaps (academic and interpersonal) between students who had support at home and those who didn’t. Administrative support shrank, yet the expectation to do more with less didn’t.
“I had seventh graders who were reading at a third-grade level,” she said. “You can’t ask them to write an essay if they can’t read the material. It was just so systemically difficult”. She isn’t the only one to share in this sentiment. A 2025 survey by the Center for American Progress found that nearly 70% of early-career teachers have either left the classroom or seriously considered it, citing poor working conditions, lack of support, and low pay as the primary reasons.
So, despite feeling like she had a calling to be in the classroom and receiving raving performance reviews over the course of a decade, Audrey simply wasn't happy anymore. And she knew it was time for a change. “I felt like I wasn’t making a difference anymore,” she said. “No matter what I did, I couldn’t help my students the way I wanted to.”
The redirect that changed everything
The move to Cummins wasn't part of a grand plan. Audrey applied for a call center agent position. The hiring manager could have just given her the job and told her it was hers if she wanted it. But she saw something more.
"She said, 'Frankly, you are so overqualified for this job that it would not be a service to you to hire you,'" Audrey recalled. "She sent me another job posting, a learning and development role for the parts department. I interviewed for that and got it."
It was a small moment, but it shifted everything. Someone at Cummins was already looking out for her before she was even hired. A transition to a more obvious teaching-adjacent role (like textbook authoring) would have been easier. But that experience made Cummins her top choice.
That first role involved onboarding and training new hires via Zoom, running sessions on Cummins’ core values and daily operations, and building eLearning modules to fill gaps in the company’s core curriculum. Lesson planning felt natural after a decade in the classroom. But turning that content into a digital format (video editing, eLearning authoring tools, interactive design) was completely new.
“That first job was like the entry way into eLearning and design,” Audrey said. “I’m grateful it got me in the door.”
What carries over and what you learn the hard way
When Audrey looks back at the lessons she learned in the classroom, she found that many of the skills needed to succeed in her new role were ones she already had. Just like building a curriculum for her language arts classes, “corporations still need complex problems solved,” she said. She was able to use those skills by breaking down problems into smaller, measurable solutions.
But some things didn’t carry over. The biggest gap was business knowledge. Teaching operates in the public sector, where you work with what you have. In corporate environments, you need to prove return on investment. That shift in mindset, from doing the best you can to measuring whether what you built actually moved the needle forward, was significant.
And then there was the language. Business jargon, acronyms, and metaphors were everywhere. “I had no idea what people were saying,” Audrey said. “I knew how to do what they were describing, but the way they talked about it was completely foreign to me. Sometimes I’d walk into meetings and just feel lost.”
She’s since turned that experience into something useful. This summer, one of the first tasks she’s giving her interns is to build a list: hear something confusing in a meeting, write it down, and she’ll explain it at the end of the day. “Because otherwise they’re going to be as lost as I was,” Audrey laughs.
Building a network from scratch
Starting over in a new industry means starting over socially, too. Audrey credits her early success at Cummins to a mentor who gave her one piece of advice she still follows: build your community intentionally.
“If you’re in a meeting with someone and you have a minute of small talk, explain who you are and what you’re working on,” Audrey said. “Then give them the chance to do the same. And ask: ‘If I ever need to reach out to you about this, could I do that?’ That helped me jump hurdles I wouldn’t have gotten over on my own.”
She also became what she calls “the process person” in her department. Coming from outside the industry, she asked questions that longtime employees had never thought to document. She wrote down the answers. Those notes turned into playbooks that her team now uses.
Cummins’ culture helped, too. The company’s core values (caring, integrity, and doing things with excellence) created an environment where saying “I don't know” wasn't a weakness. It was a starting point.
“Growth is meant to be intentional development here,” Audrey said. “I’ve had great coaching on putting my skill gaps into my development plan. Cummins allows me to take classes, attend conferences, and build skills that directly fill those gaps.”
What she's building now
Audrey’s day-to-day at Cummins looks nothing like it did when she was teaching. And that’s exactly what she wanted.
She manages team efficiency projects, collaborates with consulting partners and subject matter experts to build technical training modules, and is currently developing a university-style course catalog to make Cummins’ learning management system easier to navigate. She’s also building an AI agent with Microsoft Copilot that validates forms to reduce back-and-forth communication on her team.
Every Monday, she blocks two hours for learning. No meetings, no project work, just skill-building. It’s a habit she picked up from teaching and held onto through the career change. “As a teacher and as someone who’s done a career pivot, I find value in learning,” Audrey said. “I keep that up front. I always set aside time to learn something new every week.”
And the motivation she’d lost in the classroom is back. “Adults want to learn because they want to do well at their jobs,” she said. “That motivation factor is back, and it’s made a big difference for my mental health.”
What's next
Audrey’s director recently encouraged her to think about people leadership, a direction she hadn’t considered for herself. “My director is the most amazing leader I’ve ever had,” Audrey said. “She’s visionary and people-oriented at the same time. She’s encouraged me to start developing leadership skills, and it’s scary but exciting.”
The contrast with teaching is sharp. In education, advancement means years of service until you retire or become an administrator. At Cummins, the path can go anywhere: sales, global project management, leadership, or something she hasn’t discovered yet.
“I’ve never had people say, ‘What you’re doing is interesting and valuable. Let me invest in you,’” Audrey said. “Let’s sign you up for a class. Let’s get you to a conference. Let’s see what you can do with this project. It’s such a confidence builder.”
Research shows that 88% of career changers say they are happier since making the move. Audrey is one of them. And she’s just getting started. “I’m so young in my career here that I’m just exploring what’s possible,” she said. “And that’s the difference. At Cummins, your career could go anywhere.”
Frequently asked questions
What is a career pivot, and how do you know when it's time?
A career pivot is a shift from one profession or industry to another, often driven by changing priorities, burnout, or the desire for new challenges. You might be ready for one if you’re consistently unhappy despite performing well, or if you’ve stopped growing in your current role. The average age for a significant career shift is 39, and many people make the move in their late 30s or early 40s.
Is it too late to change careers in your 30s or 40s?
No. Career changes at this stage are more common than most people realize. The hardest part, according to Audrey, isn’t the practical side. It’s the mental toughness required. “You have to go in knowing you’re not going to know everything and that the first year will be difficult,” she said. “The disconnect between how you feel and how you’re actually doing is something people don’t talk about enough.”
What does an instructional designer do?
Instructional designers create learning experiences — eLearning modules, training programs, onboarding materials, and digital courses — that help people build specific skills or knowledge. They work in corporate settings, higher education, government, and nonprofits. The BLS projects 12% employment growth for training and development specialists by 2033, making it one of the fastest-growing fields in education-adjacent careers.
How do you break into instructional design without a corporate background?
Many instructional designers started as teachers. The key is recognizing that lesson planning, curriculum design, and learning assessment are directly applicable skills. From there, building familiarity with eLearning authoring tools, pursuing relevant certifications, and being open about your skill gaps during the transition can help you bridge the experience divide.
What skills do teachers bring to corporate roles?
Teachers develop strong analytical thinking, the ability to break complex goals into actionable steps, communication skills, and experience managing diverse groups of people. These skills transfer directly to roles in learning and development, project management, instructional design, and training.
Ready to explore what your career could look like at Cummins? Check out their open roles on PowerToFly and follow the company to stay updated on new opportunities.
