Pamela Pagliochini, a career development counselor who helped hundreds of clients find their ideal job and coach them on such breakthrough projects as writing their first book, died of lung cancer on November 3, 2019. A nonsmoker, she was 69 and lived in New York City and Fleischmanns, New York.
In private practice since 1983, Pagliochini founded Vocatus Career Development Specialists in New York City in 1985 and helped clients nationwide. Her innovative approach combined career psychology and management techniques to help people identify and build meaningful and profitable careers.
She also provided coaching on interview preparation, job-offer negotiations, dealing with difficult co-workers and techniques for improving on-the-job communication skills and performance evaluation. Using humor, compassion, and when needed, bluntness, she also helped identify destructive patterns and family-of-origin issues that interfered with improving career and quality of life goals. Pagliochini also specialized in using visual techniques, including blueprints and graphics for developing ideas, to aid clients in achieving their goals. She was also a gifted photographer.
Proud of her Italian heritage and in love with all things Italian, Pagliochini visited relatives in Italy annually and excelled in Italian cooking, including a delicious Bolognese sauce. Her studio apartment on the upper west side was the scene of many dinner parties and gatherings where she showed off the skills she had honed in cooking classes. When she learned a guest had Celiac disease she prepared a memorable Mexican meal featuring chicken mole and margaritas.
Her thoughtfulness was often expressed through her gifts and the cards that accompanied them. Shortly after a friend told Pagliochini she had changed careers and had become a filmmaker, a card appeared on the friend’s doorstep with a three-dimensional image of a camera. When the same friend relayed that as a child she had longed for a box of Blackwing pencils that her family could not afford, Pagliochini sent her a box for her next birthday.
A stalwart friend to anyone whom she perceived had been wronged, Pagliochini also had great compassion for those struggling with poverty and gave generously to those in need even when she herself was on a tight budget.
A generous supporter of animal welfare groups including the ASPCA and the Hearth of the Catskills Humane Society, Pagliochini had a special affinity for German white shepherds, including her beloved dogs Snowy and Harper. She often bonded with people, including strangers, over their love of animals. After assisting a young woman and her mother, who had fallen in the street while pushing a shopping cart and holding onto the family dog, Pagliochini became close friends with both women.
Pagliochini was born in Washington D.C. in 1950. Her parents operated a bar in D.C. and the family later moved to Maryland. She graduated from DuVal High School in Lanham, Maryland, in 1968 and earned a master’s in education, specializing in counseling, from the University of Maryland in 1978.
Pagliochini was certified as a master career counselor by the National Career Development Association. A longtime member of the American Counseling Association, she was also a national certified career counselor and national certified counselor.
A memorial service is planned in New York City for early spring.