Co-founder of Find Your Wings
I had the corporate career and a great life, I travelled and I spend my “disposable income” mainly on shoes. I was working 60 hours a week and then I just thought why?
So, I engineered a way out and started a psychology degree at age 36, which sparked my curiosity in understanding gender equalities and family dynamics.
I also started my own consultancy business and worked on some complex dynamic change programmes. This sparked my interest in further understating how we process change. I loved working with leaders and shaping strategies and delivering new organisational designs, utilising my psychology knowledge to effect change.
Then I had my first baby at 40!…
Highlights
- Passionate about psychology and applying it to personal and professional development
- Leadership and strategy specialist
- Coach and mentor, currently training on the NeuroLeadership Brain Based Coaching programme
- Member of the British Psychological Society
- Mum of 3 trying to understand and be a conscious parent
- 25 years of delivering complex organisational and technology change
- Founder of a successful business consultancy
- Returner to work after a 4-year break
- Passionate about women supporting women
- Interested in understanding family dynamics, women in the workplace and the psychology of change.
…. Wow did this change my world! I didn’t know this at the time but I developed post-natal anxiety, this had such an impact on me.
I went back to my consultancy role after maternity leave but travelling and staying away from home just was not for me anymore.
I had always been so confident and assured in my professional roles, but my confidence was rocked. I was putting so much pressure on myself to raise these amazing little humans and still be able to do everything I did before.
So, after my second child I decided to take a career break, also during this time, my husband got the opportunity to take on a more senior role in the US and we decided to leave everything that was comfortable and give it a go!
This is when everything shifted for me. Yes having 2 children in 2 years was a challenge physically and mentally, but when I stopped working “outside the home” things shifted for me, my whole identity changed. I went from a dynamic, strong, confident woman to a person who did not know who she was. I totally underestimated the impact that changing ‘everything in one go’ would have on me mentally.
Oh, and I also became pregnant with my third! So … at 43 I had my third child in three years and became a stay at home “mom”! I had no familiarity in my life and literally no identity. Immigration rules meant I couldn’t get a Social Security number and I couldn’t work without one. In the US this literally means you don’t exist. I couldn’t pay a bill, get a credit card, get a mobile phone – everything was in my husband’s name.
I get that on the face of it I had “everything” and I could be at home with my babies, I was not having to make the difficult transition of having to go back to work, but I was so lost. I went to the mom meet ups and tried to fit into this crazy world, but I struggled for two years trying to make it work.
Eventually things got a bit better, I got a coach who really helped me overcome some of my fears and I started to plan how to come back from this place I had been in mentally.
Eventually things got a bit better, I got a coach who really helped me overcome some of my fears and I started to plan how to come back from this place I had been in mentally. I was able to secure a small piece of consultancy work for a UK firm who needed a point person in the US, and this helped me regain some sense of control.
This experience has shaped me and changed me that is why I wanted to start a community that provides support and helps women make those challenging decisions but mainly just to make sense of it all!
Kelly and I had always talked about doing something together to support working mums and luckily we are able to do this and hopefully provide access to a network of coaching, mentoring and training courses to offer simple practical solutions to women supporting women.