The career is dead—long live the career!" Such is the mixed message regarding careers that we are carrying into the next millennium. The business environment is highly turbulent and complex, resulting in terribly ambiguous and contradictory career signals. Individuals, perhaps in self-defense, are becoming correspondingly ambivalent about their desires and plans for career development. The traditional psychological contract in which an employee entered a firm, worked hard, performed well, was loyal and committed, and thus received ever-greater rewards and job security, has been replaced by a new contract based on continuous learning and identity change, guided by the search for what Herb Shepard called "the path with a heart." In short, the organizational career is dead, while the protean career is alive and flourishing. In this special issue of The Executive we will examine the ways the career environment and the executive of the 21st century will shape the direction of careers in the years to come. In this opening paper, we will provide a brief overview of the emerging career landscape, for both organizations and individuals. Then we will turn to an overview of the papers in this Special Issue and then to the papers themselves.