Career Coach Evan Inra (EMBA ’08) Lives His Own Advice

For Evan Inra (EMBA ’08), life and career have been marked by a desire to pivot and explore new challenges as exciting opportunities arise—and to embrace change.

While earning an aerospace engineering degree, he had three internships at Lockheed Martin in the mid-1990s, but soon the industry was laying off thousands and the factory that he worked at was closing. This was the moment he decided to refocus on a role combining business and technology, and started his career in management consulting.

Now Inra, a senior HR leader with Amazon Dedicated Cloud (ADC) at Amazon Web Services, shares this story with his two college-age children and with the Darden alumni he coaches after hours through Alumni Career Services.

“I like to use my story especially for people who feel stuck, who are waking up on a Monday morning and their first thought is a long sigh, and just feeling that heavy weight of ‘what do I need to do today’,” he says. “It’s never too late to make a pivot or decide to do something new.”

Inra says he has felt that way a couple of times in his career. What pointed him in a new direction was becoming aware of skills he could transfer easily into other industries and roles.

Inra worked for more than 20 years in management consulting for PwC (where he met his wife, Laura), IBM, and EY. He liked being at the intersection of technology, business, and people, but after his first decade working, he started to feel like he needed more tools in his leadership toolkit. With two young children, full-time graduate school was not practical. But when Laura showed him a flier for Darden’s inaugural Executive MBA Program launched in 2006, he said to himself, “This is it.”

Weeklong residencies and on-grounds classes every few weeks offered the 53 students immersive breaks from home and work routines. A cohort trip to China punctured Western assumptions as they got to know businesspeople and students there. Camping out on the Great Wall, under a crescent moon and stars with his classmates, is one of Inra’s favorite Darden memories.

“We were proud to be the pioneers to launch this new format. It was, without a doubt, the best decision I ever made in my career. And it’s been remarkable to watch Darden’s growth of the executive and now part-time formats ever since.”

Inra continued consulting after earning his MBA. He grew more interested in HR, but he didn’t know how to make the change. So he worked with Alumni Career Services (ACS) to help make this latest leap.

With ACS, he assessed his strengths, rebranded, and built his network. He landed a job with AWS HR, where his unique background was a plus. Inra supports AWS teams with a national security mission. He leads initiatives to help retain & grow employees and managers, and he finds deep meaning in being part of a team that helps keep us all safe, he says. He has also been a part of the Darden Alumni Board since 2018, and truly enjoys paying it forward to the next generation of Darden students and alumni.

“If I’ve learned nothing else in the last five years, in a post-Covid world, life is way too short to be bored, to not be engaged and to not be doing things that are meaningful and impactful to you,” Inra says. “It’s OK to be open to new experiences. One of the things I’ve learned is to be open to that pivot, no matter what stage of your life or your career you’re in. You won’t regret it.”