The First Five

About The First Five

The beginning
deserves perspective.

Earning the degree and learning to navigate professional life are different experiences. The First Five focuses on the practical questions that appear along that transition.

Why this exists

Make the unfamiliar
a little more understandable.

How do you explain your experience? How do you learn what is expected in a new role? How do you ask for feedback, build working relationships, or decide what to explore next?

The First Five brings those questions into the open. Its focus is workplace understanding, professional communication, career strategy, and confidence through preparation and action.

The resource shop brings together practical resources for college women preparing for professional life and women in the early years of their careers.

Christy Burnham, founder of The First Five and Launching Her
Christy BurnhamFounder / The First Five & Launching Her

Meet the founder

Practical knowledge.
Shared earlier.

Christy Burnham is the founder of The First Five and Launching Her.

She brings a business, data, and analytics leadership perspective to early-career questions. Her focus is practical preparation: understanding the context, communicating clearly, and taking responsibility for your next step.

Through The First Five, Christy works to make more of the practical knowledge about professional life visible earlier while keeping each young woman in charge of her own decisions. The emphasis is preparation and agency, not promises about what an employer will do.

Two audiences. A connected purpose.

Support around you.
Ownership with you.

Launching Her and The First Five approach the college-to-career transition from different sides.

For young women

The First Five

Practical career-readiness topics for the person taking the next step: making sense of work, asking questions, preparing for conversations, and thinking about direction.

The resource shop follows a direct digital-resource model. No membership or cohort enrollment is offered here.

Explore the resource collections

For parents

Launching Her

Guidance for families supporting a daughter’s transition from college to professional life—without taking over her career or making the decisions for her.

The parent can be a guide. The young woman remains in the driver’s seat.

A useful name. Not a finish line.

Why the first five?

The early years are a beginning—not a test you have to pass on a schedule.

The name invites an intentional approach to the first years of professional life: noticing what you are learning, building relationships, and making choices with more context. There is no promise that everything becomes clear in year five, and no suggestion that it is too late to begin again.

Start from where you are

Find your
starting point.

Explore the resource collections and the free reflection exercises on their pages.

Explore the resource shop