“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

For many children, the answer comes quickly. Doctor. Teacher. Astronaut. Artist. Police officer. Lawyer. Teacher. Sports player, etc.

Then there are the ones who find it difficult to choose; every possibility feels equally compelling. Their interests shift constantly with new curiosities and new skills. The way in which they see the world, kaleidoscopic, provides open doors and opportunities, and marries dreams together rather than one dedicated goal. These individuals move through the world with a sometimes misdefined gift: multipotentiality.

Isabel Paez MBA, MS ’27, recognized herself in that description as she never had one dream career. What she did have, though, was a persistent fascination with people. She found herself asking the same question over and over: Why can two people experience the same moment and walk away seeing it completely differently?

She wouldn’t realize until years later that this question guided every major decision she made. What once felt like a collection of unrelated interests and experiences eventually revealed itself as a single thread stitching together her passion for creativity, psychology, and business into a seamless purpose: marketing.

A Jane of All Trades

Besides her fascination with people, Paez had another defining characteristic: relentless interests and a zeal for learning. “From a young age, I genuinely enjoyed learning, and that passion only grew stronger over time,” she shared. “As I got older, I became more curious and more intentional about what I was learning. I didn’t just want to memorize information; I wanted to understand it, apply it, and see how it connected to real life.”

That mindset influenced how she approached every new opportunity, where every endeavor offered a chance to better understand the world around her and, ultimately, herself. The same intentionality guided her choices as she entered college, where she pursued undergraduate studies in business and performing arts at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. As she noted, “Performing arts was a huge passion of mine; I grew up in the arts, and I didn’t want to let that go. At the same time, I knew I wanted a foundation in business.”

Pursuing both disciplines allowed Paez to explore two different ways of understanding human experiences: through creativity and expression in the arts, and through strategy and decision-making in business. While those interests may have appeared to belong to separate worlds, both reflected the same inquisitiveness that had guided her from the beginning, a desire to understand how people think and respond to the world around them.

At the time, however, those connections were unclear, as they were simply areas that fascinated her, each offering a different way to explore questions she had carried with her for years. Still, as she graduated, Paez expected the next step to build naturally on everything she prepared for. But as many graduates discover, the future rarely unfolds neatly.

Purpose in Unexpected Places

Paez graduated in 2020, during the COVID pandemic. In a job market already fraught with uncertainty, the pandemic spurred endless questions about the future and forced Paez to pivot. That shift offered a path into finance and banking through an opportunity at JPMorgan Chase. Not her originally intended destination, the choice became one of the most valuable chapters of her career.

Working in banking gave Paez early exposure to client relationships, professional environments, and the decisions people make when navigating important financial choices. Through those conversations, she gained insight into how trust shaped relationships, how individuals approached decisions differently, and how emotions often played a role alongside logic. As she explained, “I realized over time that what I enjoyed most wasn’t just the numbers; it was the ‘why.’ I wanted to know why people picked [our services] and became interested in the behavioral side of decision-making.”

Although she did not have the vocabulary for it yet, her long-asked question from childhood appeared again in a new setting: “What shapes the way people think and what influences the choices they make?” Finance gave her a new perspective on those queries, but it would take another step before she discovered the field that could fully amalgamate them.

The Thread that Binds

That next step came through graduate school at CU Denver Business School. As Paez continued exploring business, she encountered a discipline that approached decision-making from a different angle: marketing.

Given her professional background, she initially expected to continue focusing on finance. However, Professor Sarah Erickson’s consumer behavior course introduced her to a different side of business she hadn’t previously considered. Through discussions of perception, memory, attention, and the psychological processes behind consumer decisions, Paez discovered that marketing wasn’t so much about simply promoting and selling as it was about understanding people, a skill rooted in psychology and science.

For the first time, she found a framework that connected the questions she had been exploring across different stages of her life. With that, performing arts, business, and finance were no longer isolated interests. Each offered different lenses on human behavior: storytelling and emotional connection through the arts, trust and decision-making through finance, and the analytical tools to study those behaviors through marketing.

Now, Paez’s long-standing curiosity resolved. In her words, “I had always been fascinated by neuroscience and understanding how people think, but I never knew how to translate that into a career outside of medicine. I had no clue neuromarketing was real.”

Through neuromarketing, Paez merged psychology, research, and business, examining how consumers respond to brands, messages, and experiences; it offered a way to study the relationship between human behavior and decision-making that had intrigued her for years.

The pursuit of understanding didn’t stop once she found the field that resonated with her. As a Teaching Assistant, Paez helped others engage with complex concepts. Teaching required her to break down ideas, clarify her own thinking, and approach knowledge from another perspective.

All Roads Lead to ‘Known’

Curiosity can be a powerful force, but it works alongside the challenge of distinguishing between when to pursue a goal and when to simply enjoy the task as a passion.

For Paez, growth has not only meant taking on new opportunities; it has also meant learning how to create space away from them. Balancing full-time work, graduate school, personal life, along with additional responsibilities has required her to be intentional about protecting her time for herself. As she put it, “I think one of my biggest highlights has been learning how to balance being productive while still allowing myself to be a person, because it can be very easy to fall into a routine where you’re constantly ‘on.’”

That mindset has also shaped the way she approaches her passions. However, performing arts played an important role in her journey of self-discovery. Paez never wanted to feel pressured to turn every interest into a career path. So, when asked, her answer is simple: “I didn’t want to make something I loved into a chore. I didn’t want to feel like I had to be ‘on’ all the time.”

In a culture that often encourages people to monetize every passion and measure themselves by constant output, Paez’s perspective offers a refreshing approach. Not every meaningful interest needs to be a professional pursuit. Some passions can exist simply as spaces of expression and sources of joy and relief.

With that in mind, outside of work and academics, Paez continues to make room for those experiences. She describes herself as an avid reader, often joking that she reads more than she sleeps. Reading and writing allow her to explore new ideas and perspectives, while activities like attending the Avalanche games, watching car racing, traveling, and spending time with friends and family help her stay connected to the world beyond her work.

Finding Direction Without A Clear Map

Looking back on her path, Paez does not see a series of unrelated decisions, but a collection of experiences that gradually revealed what mattered most to her.

“I think what stands out most about my journey is that it hasn’t been linear, but every step has been intentional,” she reflected. “From performing arts to finance to marketing, each experience has helped me better understand both people and myself.”

What once felt like separate interests – creativity, psychology, and business – now come together through her work in marketing and her interest in neuromarketing. Moving forward, Paez hopes to continue exploring the intersection of consumer behavior and psychology, particularly through deeper research in neuromarketing and the study of how people respond to brands, messages, and experiences.

Ultimately, her goal remains connected to the question that has shaped her journey from the beginning: understanding people and using that understanding to create meaningful impact.

Perhaps the greatest lesson from Paez’s journey is that curiosity is not a distraction from finding your path; it can be the very thing that leads you there. The interests that seem disconnected today may be pointing toward the same thread and may just be waiting to be recognized. The challenge is to keep exploring and trust that the connections will reveal themselves along the way.