How I got here

I built a career in communications, helping organisations tell their stories and connect with the people they wanted to reach. I enjoyed the work, built up years of experience and assumed I'd continue along the same path. But life had other ideas.

Along came redundancy.

Not once, but three times.

The first two times were unsettling, but I was younger. I found another job in the same industry, carried on and didn't question the direction I was heading in.

The third time was different.

I was going through a divorce, bringing up my daughter on my own and trying to work out what the future looked like. The thought of returning to a full-time job, commuting every day and fitting everything else around work simply didn't feel right, or sustainable, anymore.

For the first time, I stopped asking myself, "What's my next job?"

Instead, I asked a different question.

What kind of life did I want, and how could work fit around it?

Looking back, that question changed everything.

I decided that traditional employment wasn’t going to work for me anymore so I went on a social media marketing course and built a freelance communications business. Later I trained as a coach.

Initially, I worked with women who were rebuilding their lives after divorce because I understood just how overwhelming that period could feel.

As I listened to their stories, I noticed something. Although divorce had brought them to me, it wasn't always the biggest question they were trying to answer. Again and again, our conversations turned to work.

Some had lost confidence in the careers they'd built. Others wanted the flexibility that employment no longer gave them. Many wondered whether they could start a business, work for themselves or finally do something they'd been thinking about for years.

They weren't just rebuilding after divorce.

They were trying to work out what the next stage of their lives should look like, and work was a huge part of that conversation.

The more women I spoke to, the more I realised these questions weren't unique to divorce.

Women who'd been made redundant were asking the same things. Women whose children had grown up were asking the same things. Women in their fifties who simply couldn't imagine doing the same job for another fifteen or twenty years were asking the same things.

That's why I created Work That Fits.

Not to persuade women to leave their jobs or start businesses.

Not to tell them there's one right way to build a successful career.

But to create a space for a different conversation about work.

A conversation that recognises our lives change, the world of work changes and that it's perfectly reasonable to stop every so often and ask whether the work we're doing still fits the life we're living.

Because I don't believe it's ever too late to rethink how you want to spend such a significant part of your life.

And I certainly don't believe anyone should spend another twenty years doing a job they don't enjoy.