About My So-Called Career

My So-Called Career is….

The experience and perspective of my 20 year so-called career put to work in service of yours.

If you are working so hard you can barely see straight, or so burned out you don’t care anymore, you cannot be at your best.

I don’t promise 6 figure salaries, but I will help you get clear about who you are, what you want, and what you need to get there.

My Story…

I spent 17 years working in media, with a career which was, by most people’s standards, a huge success.  I worked all over the world; lived in New York, Sydney and London, held leadership roles at the Guardian as Head of International Business Development, and Condé Nast as Global Strategy Director, where I was hired to run a hugely ambitious transformation programme.

I was also exhausted.   

Overwhelmed, overcommitted and increasingly unhappy.

When I looked up the ladder at what my next steps might be, I realised I’d never really thought about the top of the ladder - what it would look like, how I might get there, and most importantly, whether it was something I wanted.  And because I was in a pretty rotten place mentally and emotionally, I took this as a sign of personal failure and incompetence.

I was also terrified. Terrified of admitting how unhappy I was because then I would have to work out what to do - and as I felt like a massive, incompetent failure; struggling when everyone else appeared to be thriving, I was pretty certain my opportunities were going to be limited.

Over the next six months, I set out to talk to as many women as I could, to try and get some context for what I was feeling.  It was like opening a massive floodgate.

I discovered a theme of ambitious, talented women looking up when they reached their 30s, and finding their careers somehow happening to them or around them.   They lacked control, felt unseen, were working harder and harder just to keep still, and with no recognition, support or progression, they lost their passion and started to shrink.  

To play small just when they should be playing big.

I lost count of the number of times I heard versions of ‘is this it?’, ‘I know I should be grateful but…’, ‘Is this what I should be doing?’, ‘Is it meant to be this hard?’, ‘I can’t take the risk’.

Faced with economic upheaval, digital disruption, cost savings and redundancies, a fast shifting job market and increasing anxiety and mental health issues, this was a demographic who had rarely felt supported at work.

It got me thinking about what could be possible if this wasn’t the case. What if women were given the structural and emotional support they needed to thrive in the workplace, rather than barely survive? 

I decided thinking about it wasn’t enough, and set out to put my money where my mouth is and make a difference.

More from me

You can see what’s on my mind, and hear from others, over on the My So-Called Career blog.