Hi all, so my wife and I are considering a possible relocation from Western NC back to middle TN to be able to be a bit closer to aging parents (and my in-laws, whom I love dearly).

My wife's profession is readily portable, in that she can find a job in her field nearly anywhere as it involves practicing a rather homogenized, licensed skill set that can be applied readily in nearly any location.

I, on the other hand, have been climbing in duties and importance of role (as well as salary) and status at a large not for profit corporation for the last 11 years. I have been passionately serving its mission while gaining incredible experience, as I built and now enjoyed my own created role/position here, over time, with an almost unmatchable quality of life and flexibility inherent to my role. Critically, I also used this as a path to discharge of my former substantial [now discharged, incredibly] grad school debt. I enjoy my job, so the prospect of moving is not a decision being made hastily or under any real duress.

But at the same time, I've also come to realize and accept that I've perhaps outgrown my current role (I'm the Director of HR & Risk Management here, along with many other horizontal duties I've inherited via attrition over the years). There is no real vertical growth left for me here; I'm topped out as far as pay and position. Well, the only vertical organizational step left would be to become CEO, and we're not at a point in life where I'd be ready for those responsibilities while also being a highly engaged and involved father to our one son, who is a thriving second grader right now. As he was a "one and done" for us (I'm 44, wifey is 41), I only get to be a dad once, and no job that takes full commitment like that is worth the trade-off of my first priority, focus and time; it's family, friends, career -- in that order.

Now, I'm a lifelong AV geek, and spend nearly all of my free time immersing myself in that industry, as an outsider. It's a little late in the game for a total career change altogether, and I don't think I would want to start working my way up as a new A&P or take on additional education debt, and though I've wanted to be a pilot since my first commercial flight when I was my son's age, I don't see that difficult and time consuming, expensive pursuit to be in the cards for me, and I'm ok with that. I don't have to be the guy sitting in the pointy end of an aircraft for a living to be around airplanes, or working somehow in the industry that has for so long captivated my imagination and fueled my passion for all things winged.

My question is, moving to middle TN (between Knoxville and Nashville), are there any career paths available either locally, or potentially hybrid/remote roles, that would make sense for an experienced mid-career-level ops guy, analyst, manager/director/leader/exec like me to jump into?

I've worked in several different fields, enjoying good succes in all of them, but ironically, never the one that I'm most interested in.

Thanks for reading and in advance for your thoughts and constructive, helpful advice and ideas to a guy who just wants to be a part of something he's loved since childhood -- but never had the right opportunity to jump into. Again, I don't have to be a pilot or even part of the flight crew, I just wanna breathe the same air, so to speak!

Oh, one last thing: salary requirements are fairly flexible; as I've been working in a mission-based field at a nonprofit for so long, I think that (sadly), I could probably be almost anything and replace my current income, haha. But from my own early benchmarking research, I'd probably be pretty marketable at somewhere around $120-$155k, I believe. So there's a data point to consider...

Again, TIA!