As a senior communications manager at the high-pressure, high-production institution that is Microsoft, Pine Crest alumna Raanah Amjadi ’09 was also highly visible within the company.
“I started working for Microsoft right out of college, and a lot of my time there in the beginning was figuring out what I did not want to do,” Raanah says. “I wasn't an engineer and I wasn't someone who wanted to be in spreadsheets all day. Halfway through my experience, I had tried several different things and eventually started down this path of storytelling through marketing and communications. That path then led to me doing some really incredible things like presenting with the CEO of Microsoft.”
Raanah explains how her time at Pine Crest helped lay some of the foundation for finding her niche. “In high school, I was a total drama fanatic,” she said. “Mr. Harrington really helped me nurture that part of myself. I thought that stage in my life would be over as an adult, so finding a new relationship with performance through keynotes and product demos at Microsoft was wonderful. I was really enjoying my time there—then Covid hit.”
In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Raanah says that everything began to shift for her. “With COVID, I just started experiencing severe burnout,” she said. “My routine was very mundane; I was in isolation, I wasn't going anywhere, and I essentially took the same 800 steps around my house over and over daily.”
Feeling the stress and anxiety of the circumstances, Raanah decided to take six weeks of mental health leave. She left her home in Washington for some of that time and returned to Florida, seeking to reflect and reset. “My body was super safe, but my mind was in chaos. I was feeling so much stress, so much grief, so much fear, constant stimulation, and it all felt very disjointed. So when I went home to Florida, my intention was to re-align the two—mind and body. I needed to pull away from the virtual world and focus on just the basics of health. That meant eating really nourishing foods, moving my body, and being surrounded by family and community.”
Raanah goes on to explain the silver lining she was able to find in her personal COVID experience. “While this pandemic was terribly tragic and heart-wrenching for so many,” she said, “I do think that for many other people, it granted perspective on how they wanted to live their lives for their own values and morals, particularly when the world was seemingly on fire. For me, those early days of quarantine allowed me to strip away many of the distractions and hone in on the most important things to me, which were holistic self-care, service, togetherness, community, and being in relationship with people.”
Raanah describes the catalyst for starting on the path toward a major career change.
“It was in these moments at home that I began to realize one of the biggest things I love about my culture, Persian culture, is understanding that food is medicine, and our relationship with that,” Raanah said. “Ayurveda, which is the nutritional sister science to yoga, really was a huge influence on why my culture has this knowledge. I immediately felt strongly connected with it.” According to the Johns Hopkins Medicine online portal, Ayurveda is a “natural system of medicine that originated in India over 3,000 years ago.” While it loosely translates as “knowledge of life”, it is rooted in the belief that health and wellness depend on a delicate balance between mind, body, and spirit.
“Being in Florida is when all of those elements just came back to center for me,” Raanah said. ”So I decided to try something new, and I signed up for an Ayurvedic wellness counselor program. I figured, best case scenario, it would be a potential new career path, and worst case scenario, I would just end up learning some good stuff for myself. Two months in, I realized that this is what I wanted to do. I also knew that I wanted my definition of impact to be closer to home, so I made plans to quit my Microsoft job in December 2021, which was challenging.”
Some may view leaving a lucrative, high-powered corporate career as drastic, unwise or even irrational. But Raanah explains why she felt comfortable with making the change. “Growing up in the high-achieving Pine Crest culture and then going into a high-achieving Duke culture and moving directly into a high-achieving Microsoft culture, you have a very specific lens on success and how that looks. Why would you just walk away from that, right? Why would you leave the fast track and the security? But for me, it was just realizing that the corporate institution wasn’t going away. And all of my collective experience was coming with me—that part I wouldn’t lose. So this became my time to experiment with the structure of my life; experiment to see what stuck.”
Raanah launched her business, Lili Jade, a combination of both her mother’s maiden name and her father’s surname, in March 2022. Currently, Raanah’s credentials include Certified Ayurvedic Wellness Counselor, certified life coach, and postpartum doula. Her objective is to help clients realign with their well-being to find self-sustaining joy, purpose, and vitality. She provides an array of services that include one-on-one coaching, group workshops, and strategic consulting, all serving to teach clients how to identify and sustain balance.
“Through this work, it’s been fascinating to see just how many people don’t listen to their bodies, because they don’t know how,” Raanah said. “In American culture, we get used to living with ailments, like heartburn for example, and we grow to accept them as part of life. Everything we see on TV sells us quick fixes for physical or mental symptoms of imbalance; we’re so focused on management that we forget these symptoms are signals that something isn’t working right within our system. Instead of slapping a band-aid on things, I want to support people in shifting their understanding of the root causes of their issues so they can address those things holistically, for the long term.”
Raanah’s passion is evident as she continues reflecting. “I love what I do; I love that I actually have an opportunity to be in service to people directly, and that my definition of community has been expanding. I have the privilege of helping people take the first step toward becoming aware of their mind-body systems and coaching them through their challenges so they can place their own well-being at the center of their lives.”
Raanah shares the long-term vision for her company. “The goal I have for all of my clients is for them to do a couple of sessions with me, and then never come back. I want my profession to be run out of business over time. I don’t want anyone to need a health counselor or wellness counselor because it has become knowledge and understanding that we all just have for ourselves, and we have the ability to apply it as needed.”
Raanah wasn’t aware at the time that she started this journey, but the enthusiasm for her new found purpose would soon be tested.
“I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in July of 2022, and that’s been fun.” The sarcasm and humor in Raanah’s voice are not lost as she begins describing another unexpected turn of events in her life. “I went on a family trip to Italy, and we were eating delicious food and drinking all the good wine, but it was so hot – in the 90s everyday. About a week into the trip, I started to lose sight in my left eye. It was like a black curtain descended into my field of vision, and I could tell that it seemed worse in the heat. It was horrifying, but even more so in a foreign country, away from all the comforts of my own medical system.”
After a few appointments with local doctors, it was determined that Raanah was suffering from optic neuritis, or inflammation within her optic nerve. “When I returned home, I completed additional testing, bloodwork and an MRI. While I was waiting for the results of the MRI, my right hand and arm began to go numb and weak and I couldn’t grip very well. Then I started having electrical shock sensations move up and down my leg, and at that point I felt like I already knew that it was going to be MS.”
The Mayo Clinic defines MS as a “potentially disabling disease of the brain and central nervous system, where the immune system attacks the protective sheath of nerve fibers, causing disruptions in the communications between the brain and the rest of the body.” Currently there is no cure for the disease, but there are treatments that can aid in recovery from the attacks, manage symptoms, or even alter the course of the disease.
“My diagnosis was confirmed within the next week,” says Raanah, “and it was tough. I won’t run from that. Many years ago, this disease represented something very different; for most people, it meant a near-complete loss in abilities and quality of life. But treatments have come a long way, and luckily my disease progression was identified really early before there had been enough time for my body’s systems to deteriorate significantly.”
Given the changes Raanah had made in her profession, she shares that she felt better equipped to face the disease head-on. “Even though I’d gladly give it back any day, the recent change in my career and my journey toward a more holistic approach to all the things in my life left me feeling like I had been training for this moment,” she says. “In a weird way, it was easier for me to integrate my ‘new normal’ because it felt like another layer of purpose. If I can tackle my own diagnosis and help someone else living with MS move through it with grace and ease, then I’m ok with that.”
As Raanah continues, she describes how things feel like they are coming full circle for her. “When I graduated from Duke and moved from my family across the continental U.S., I realized that finding my own relationship with culture and community was important to me. I feel like this journey I’m on is my own way of carrying my culture forward, even if I’m doing it in a context that’s ‘non-Persian.’ But I also see the kinship and togetherness reflected in the Pine Crest community. I was a lifer, and I grew up with my classmates.”
Raanah becomes emotional as she recalls sharing her diagnosis for the first time publicly. “Friends from Pine Crest that I hadn’t spoken to in years began pouring out love and support in ways I couldn’t begin to fathom, even more so than friends from other chapters of my life. There’s just something special when you grow up with someone. You know their parents and you’ve been in each other’s homes. We’ve seen one another evolve from goofy little kids into phenomenal adults. So even when it’s something that I am not always tapped into, it’s nice to know that the Pine Crest community is always there.”
Thinking back fondly of her time at Pine Crest, Raanah does have parting words of wisdom to share with current students, particularly the seniors. “Don’t discount your joy. I think going to school in such a prestigious, high-achieving environment lends for many potential pathways and careers that are all meaningful and great things to do. But as you go through that process, pay attention to what lights you up. What about a certain experience leads to the joy and the energy that sustains you? It’s ok if it’s not your job. It’s ok if the thing that makes you happy doesn’t make money. Feeling that bliss is your body’s way of telling you that you are in alignment with something. Do the work to find out what that something is. Don’t stop at the face value of that experience, but go deeper. Then you can pattern match, and you can go find those qualities in the other elements of your life, and you too can find what nourishes your soul.”