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Inspirational Stories

Find out how other people have made successful career changes
Jackie – Return to Work Mum & Career Transition 

From Legal Expert to Wellness & Diversity Director

“I’m glad I had the courage to take the opportunity and put my ideas forward”.

“Find people who are doing things you would like to do and ask them how you can achieve it.”

Six years ago I was working as an In-house Legal Expert for an oil and gas consulting company. I am passionate about wellness and diversity and have always been involved in women’s networking events throughout my career. Attrition rates were high within the organisation and employee opinion survey results were low. I was looking at other job opportunities and was about to go on maternity leave around the same time as the CEO started “Project Thrive”. I took the opportunity to present my ideas to the CEO of how this project could cover the three pillars of wellness, diversity and corporate social responsibility. I crafted a new Director role with the support of the CEO to run the Thrive Project globally. We now have a Wellness representative in each of our 45 offices worldwide. Project Thrive is embedded in our culture, attrition has decreased and productivity has increased. 

The biggest challenge for me was my personal credibility. People were used to seeing me as risk management and legal, as a barrier as opposed to helping people. I overcame this by talking to people, building trust and using research evidence and data. 

In hindsight I would have worried less about what people thought and spent more time focussing on being effective as possible. I was concerned that people would think I was less committed as I had been on maternity leave and as a result put undue pressure on myself. I have learned that as long as you deliver, it doesn’t matter how you achieve the results. 

The advice I would give to anyone looking to make a career change is to find people who are doing things you would like to do and ask them how you can achieve it. People are surprisingly helpful and do not mind giving up their time to meet for a coffee or message over LinkedIn. My journey has been unexpected, exciting and fulfilling. I’m glad I had the courage to take the opportunity and put my ideas forward. I feel privileged to have been able to set up a project that has had a genuinely positive impact on employees’ lives.  
Sara – Return to Work Mum & Career Transition

From Head of Commercial Strategy to Founder of Ginibee

“I’m really proud of myself for keeping strong, disciplined and structured in order to spend time with the kids and maintain my work life balance.” 

“I believe if there is a better way of doing something, you don’t have to settle and accept the way it is”.

I have always been ambitious and have had senior level roles in business and sales development. In 2010 I was the Head of Commercial Strategy within the energy sector and fell pregnant with my first child.  After maternity leave, my flexible working request for three days was rejected. The idea of job sharing didn’t even occur to me. I took a step down to work part-time and was grateful to work two days remotely and one day in the office (even though it was a four hour commute each way!) It was massively successful and feedback from my team was that I was as productive, if not more so, than my full-time counterparts. 

Two years later, the company was taken over and I took redundancy whilst I was on maternity leave for the second time. I helped set up an energy consulting business with my partner and the entrepreneur in me was born. In 2013 I became a single parent to a 1 year old and a 3 year old. 

I was looking for a role working three days a week at a senior level where I could add value and apply the skills and experience I had gained to make a difference. I had 15 years’ commercial experience and an MBA specialising in knowledge management. I was asking recruitment agencies if they could partner me up with someone as all the roles were full time. At this time, the legislation was coming in for flexible working, social media was full of building partnership apps such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Match.com, there was even talk of the Queen and Prince Charles taking on a job share partnership!  I couldn’t believe there was nothing out there to enable me to create a jobshare partnership so we could apply for full-time roles together.

I started to research and network with successful people in job share partnerships and realised it wasn’t just mums who wanted the partnerships, it was millennials, people looking to retire, people who had family members to care for or who just wanted time for their passions in life. 

In 2013 I registered the name Ginibee Ltd with the mission to make successful job share partnerships accessible, accepted and the norm. I believe if you can see there’s a better way of doing something, you don’t have to settle and accept the way it is. In my experience, people working part time are either burning out or not challenged enough. You should be able to have a family and retain the level of career you achieved through your education and experience. I felt I had discovered a hidden pot of gold during my early research into job sharing, which I wanted to make accessible through a mission I truly believed in and still do today. In the early days, in conjunction with Cambridge Judge Business School MBA candidates, we undertook a lot of quantitative and qualitative work to establish how the employee could find a partner and how the company could sustain it, supporting both parties. Our first case was an Associate Medicinal Chemist role on a six-month contract!

I would describe my journey as chaotic, rewarding and testing. The biggest challenge has been the unknown and the uncertainty, both financially and pioneering the way forward with a mission led start up. My advice to others making a career change is to reflect on what is important to you, what you really want, what do you enjoy and what direction you want to go in.  It isn’t easy setting up your own company, so it’s crucial to have belief in your mission and value your brand.  Set yourself mini objectives and celebrate the successes, have self-belief and consciously listen out for the positive voice in you, even when it’s really quiet. In hindsight, I would be less self-critical and listen to the more positive voice within me during my journey, it makes the whole thing more enjoyable, which is a massive factor. I’m really proud of myself for keeping strong, disciplined and structured in order to spend time with the kids and maintain my work life balance. As an entrepreneur, the opportunity to network is a constant pressure and when you’re at the start of your journey it’s tempting to fill every hour you have with it.  My values meant I had to say no a lot, which felt difficult in the moment, but on reflection I’m so grateful for the bond and the memories I have created alongside the progress made with Ginibee.

Sara is the CEO and founder of Ginibee Ltd, a web-based Talent Matching Platform supporting the mission to make successful job share partnerships accessible, accepted and the norm. To find out more, take a look at www.ginibee.com. It is free to register if you are looking for a talent partnership match!
Liza – Career Transition 

From Service Director to Trauma Specialist

“I am now who I was meant to be”.

“There is more to life than materialistic wealth and that is self-fulfilment”. 
I was a Service Manager for a group of children’s homes, working within the industry for twenty years. I was respected professionally and was known as a no nonsense tough minded individual. I loved my job making a difference to kids, however I began to feel unfulfilled in that my job was primarily the business of sales and marketing with very little of my work impacting the young people. My mum was dying at the time and this led to a period of self-reflection. One day I was on the train to work with the same people I travelled with every day, on the same commute. It dawned on me that we all looked like we were slowly dying. I decided then and there that I was going to quit my high earning job, get off the train so to speak.

I had always been into alternative therapies, so I mixed my professional understanding of trauma with this side of me. I sold my house to fund my career change and pay for my training. By biggest fear was that of being an imposter, I feared failure and being ridiculed. I felt vulnerable without the security of a job and many of my friends were questioning what I was doing. I overcame my challenges with the help from friends and family who believed in me. I also put to use what I had learnt in Clinical Hypnotherapy and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) with my own professional understanding of trauma to overcome my own self-limiting beliefs. It’s been a long journey, but I am now who I was meant to be and enjoying life. I may not earn the money or have the lifestyle that I used to, but I am happy and fulfilled. My advice to others would be to find the confidence to move forward with your life and do what makes you happy, we don’t know how long we have got do we. There is more to life than materialistic wealth and that is self-fulfilment. 

Liza is a Personal Development Coach, Clinical Hypnotherapist and NLP Practicioner. To find out more about the therapies Liza provides, take a look at her website www.restingintheheart.com and www.workingtherapies.co.uk – facilitating change for groups, individuals and organisations.  
Richard – Career Transition 

From Landscape Gardener in London to Teacher in Devon 

“My advice to anyone thinking about taking a leap would be that people always think they can’t afford to take a risk, but you find ways of making it work”.
I never wanted to be a teacher when I was a child, this desire stemmed from working with young people who had joined us as labourers at my Design & Build Landscape Gardening business. They were predominantly school leavers, 16 plus who had failed at school. I enjoyed working with them, watching them change and develop, eventually moving on to better jobs. I was also involved with the local football club working with young people who had often been let down by the school system. I enjoyed teaching the kids the mentality of having a good working ethic and inspiring them to achieve more in life. 

A few years before I took the leap, I half heartedly looked into becoming a teacher and spoke to a few people who had said “you would be good at that.” I sent a few letters out to volunteer within a school but didn’t get any replies so I just put it on the backburner. 

One particular lad was my business partner and I’s biggest success story, we managed to get him back on the straight and narrow. When he died, it gave me a massive reality check and I seriously started to look into what I needed to do to become a teacher and what qualifications I needed.

I changed my approach in how I looked for work. I contacted people directly, wrote more letters and did a lot of research. I volunteered one day a week for 5 months at a school and decided to do a paid placement as it wasn’t viable financially do my PGCE. In September 2014 I started work as a teacher on a year’s paid placement, with one day a week at university. 

My wife and I had always talked about moving to the west country. I then did a triathlon in Braunton, Devon and felt that it had everything, it wasn’t touristy and was closer to London than Cornwall. We decided where to live, not where the jobs were. I got offered two teaching jobs and went with the one which felt right. Soon into my new role I was successful at interview as Head of Year 11, which really suited my passion for pastoral care.  

I found that in the Landscaping business I didn’t get the freedom to be creative. Teaching enables me to inspire students and push their boundaries in what they can achieve. I love teaching and have no regrets. I don’t think I would have been as good at it now as if I was just 22 on the job, so for me, the timing was right. 

I faced many challenges along the way, such as dealing with difficult parents of students and leaving our friends and family back in London. My wife and I took massive pay cuts, however the cost of living and house prices were much less. 

My advice to anyone thinking about taking a leap would be that people always think they can’t afford to take a risk, but you find ways of making it work. We haven’t been on holiday abroad for years but the life in Devon means I can go surfing regularly. A supportive wife has been imperative in my journey, along with research, self-belief and resilience. 

The three phrases I would use to describe my journey would be “rewarding”, “tough at times” and “worth it”. 

I keep a five-year diary, which has the same page for each day of each year. You can then see patterns emerging such as when things get stressful and know that it won’t last for very long. Its fascinating as my entry two years ago was about some fertility results we had received, which were really bad. I am now working in a new school close to where I live and have a baby boy. 
Karen - Return to Work Mum 

Professional Woman of the Year Finalist 2018

"Give yourself time to adjust to your new normal”

Karen took a year’s maternity leave after having her first daughter in 2016. Karen returned to a new challenging project role including travelling to Germany and was then transferred to Customer Operations Manager. Karen fulfilled this role overseeing 250 staff working 3.5 days a week. Karen achieved amazing results in her first 18 months back at work leading her to be a finalist in the 2018 Professional Woman of the Year awards for Customer Experience. Karen is now on maternity leave with her second child. 

Karen’s Top Tips for New Mums Returning to Work

1. Research all options for childcare
I did a lot of research to find the right childcare that would suit my daughter before returning to work. You need to be open-minded about your childcare preferences and consider all options. I looked into childminders, nurseries, nannies and family members. If I didn’t have my childminder I would have a lot more mum guilt. My childminder is my new best bud and my daughter is happy to go there and happy when she is picked up.
 
2. Phased return / flexible working 
If possible, a phased return to work can help ease you back into your role, especially if you are returning full time. You may be able to use annual leave to do this, it’s worth speaking to your manager/HR to find out. I agreed flexible working with my company and undertake a senior role working three and a half days a week. 

3. Give yourself time to adjust to “your new normal”
When you return to work after maternity leave for the first time, you need to be realistic that there is a 6 month period of adjustment both at work and at home. It’s a new phase in your life that you haven’t had experience in before, it is a new reality, “your new normal.” 

4. Manage people’s expectations 
You need to change your expectations and forget what you used to be like and treat it as something totally new. If a meeting was overrunning I would have previously just stayed late at work, whereas now I manage expectations and let people know I will have to leave on time to pick up my daughter. On my second day back at work, I had to take annual leave as my daughter had a sickness bug. Luckily I have a supportive and understanding manager. 

5. Prepare for “Mum Guilt”
Sometimes you have to prioritise work over your child and visa versa. There have been circumstances where I have not been able to leave work on time and have had to ring my childminder to let her know I am going to be late. 

6. Your confidence will return
I work in a fast paced, changing business. When I returned, a lot of the language used was different and I felt that people wouldn’t take me seriously as a part time worker. Keeping in Touch (KIT) days may help some mums return to work as it breaks down the barrier of going into the office. Personally I didn’t do KIT days as I was well and truly in the mum zone!

7. Take on new challenges
I faced a massive challenge three weeks into my return where I had to travel to Europe. I was beyond anxious about leaving my daughter, I was really glad I did it and it proved to me that my daughter was fine.

8. Be kind to yourself 
I found that towards the end of my maternity leave that I was ready to go back to work, however my biggest fear was that my daughter would be unhappy and miss me. Returning to work for me was scary, guilt ridden and tiring. I now feel fulfilled, in control, that I add value and not as guilty!

Trudy - Career Changer 

From Explosives Engineering to Hypnotherapy

“When you focus on what you can’t do, nothing changes”.

"I would advise anyone thinking of making a career change to face your fears and take a leap. I’ve never looked back".

I was a single mum of three working as an Environmental Trials Manager testing ammunition. After ten years I became really ill with workplace stress but I refused to go off sick and take tablets. Instead, I used Future Life Progression (FLP) and Hypnotherapy to get better. FLP took me forward 5 years, allowing me to see clearly what was hidden deep within my heart, what I really wanted. My needs were hidden so deep, I had no idea what they were. I had never even contemplated them prior to this session. I could see myself working from home as a therapist. Hypnotherapy healed my fears, anxieties and phobias.  

At the age of 55 I came to the realisation that I wanted to work from home as a therapist, however I didn’t have any relevant qualifications. I received an email about training in FLP and immediately thought of all the reasons why I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t afford it, I wouldn’t get the time off work. When you focus on what you can’t do, nothing changes. I pushed my brave button and went for it. My biggest fear was money, so I reprioritised. I postponed a holiday to pay for the course. Another course I did was in Oslo so I combined the trip as my holiday for that year. I used up my annual leave to attend the training and took unpaid leave to do future training. 

I then had a skiing accident which resulted in me having a month off work at home. I had so much time to think, it made me realise that I was finished with the corporate world. It was liberating. I was scared of failure however in hindsight I wish I had done it sooner. I would advise anyone thinking of making a career change to face your fears and take a leap. I’ve never looked back and now have a private practice and a partnership company. 

Trudy is a Clinical Hypnotherapist specialising in work place stress. To find out more about the therapies Trudy provides, take a look at her website www.trudyglenister.co.uk and www.workingtherapies.co.uk. 
Jem - Return to Work Mum of 3 Boys 


From Full Time Employment to Flexible Freelancer

“I found it difficult to find part time work at a senior level. Taking a leap has been the best thing I have ever done”.



I started off my marketing career in 2003 for Eurostar, then worked in various marketing roles for a few different companies. In 2012 I landed the role of Commercial Marketing Manager for the London Olympics. Just after the Olympics I had my first son, Mac. I found it really difficult to find part time work at a senior level. I am career minded and what was on offer didn’t suit me. I tried working for a couple of local firms, however I wasn’t challenged enough. I realised there was a an opportunity to offer freelance marketing services.

In 2013 I used my previous networks in London to start freelancing as a Marketing Consultant specialising in project and campaign management. In 2014 I had my second son, Rex. During 2014 I also started the Pick Your Own Pumpkins event. This started off with a Facebook page, 8 wheelbarrows and 2,000 members of the public. In 2017 I had my third son, Gus, whilst continuing to head up the PYOP campaign. PYOP now has 13,000 Facebook followers with thousands of members of the public visiting in 2017. My non-seasonal work is project managing campaigns for a London based agency. 

I would describe my journey as liberating and empowering. Taking a leap has been the best thing I have ever done, however you need to be motivated and driven. It isn’t a 9 to 5 job and you don’t switch off. The main challenge of project work is uncertainty of where your next job is coming from, so forward planning and networking is essential. 

Returning to work after maternity leave has been a different experience each time. You lose your confidence and worry about over-committing and taking time off when the kids are ill. Once you recognise that you need to have two jobs, one at work and one at home, it becomes easier.

I wouldn’t have changed my journey, as the roles I had previously gave me invaluable experience and helped me find the right path in life to suit my family.
Jem is a Freelance Marketing Consultant and heads up Pick Your Own Pumpkins. Why not take your kids pumpkin picking in Kent!
More stories to come....If you would like to make a change, contact me today and book your free initial consultation!
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