Living Professional Identity — a definition
Published 1 September 2026 · New Zealand
The definition
A Living Professional Identity is a record of a person’s working life that they keep rather than assemble — current because it is added to as things happen, written in their own voice, held at an address that belongs to them, and shaped for a particular reader without being rewritten. Owned and controlled by them.
Kept
Not assembled at the point of need
Current
Right on the day someone asks
Owned
At an address that belongs to you
Shaped
Bends to a reader, never rewritten
It is the alternative to the curriculum vitae, which is none of those things.
A CV does not exist until you need it. You build it in an evening, from memory, under pressure, in whatever format you think the reader expects. It is out of date the day after you send it. It belongs to whoever holds a copy. And it flattens fifteen years into a few pages, the same shape as everyone else’s.
An identity works the other way round. It is already there. It has been accumulating while you were busy. When someone asks what you have done, the answer exists — and the work in front of you is deciding what to emphasise, not trying to remember.
Eight things have to be true before a record earns the name.
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