Stress Awareness Month is recognised every April and aims to increase public awareness of the global stress epidemic we face today. According to the Mental Health Foundation, over 74 per cent of adults in the UK state that at some point over the last year they have felt overwhelmed by stress or unable to cope.

Stress Awareness Month is recognised every April and aims to increase public awareness of the global stress epidemic we face today. According to the Mental Health Foundation, over 74 per cent of adults in the UK state that at some point over the last year they have felt overwhelmed by stress or unable to cope.

Throughout my life, both personally and professionally, I have had the pleasure of crossing paths with some outstanding women. This International Women’s Day, I’ve chosen to celebrate 3 of the women that have inspired me and share their stories, which I hope will inspire others.

Throughout my life, both personally and professionally, I have had the pleasure of crossing paths with some outstanding women. This International Women’s Day, I’d like to celebrate 3 of the women that have inspired me and share their stories, which I hope will inspire others.

This week is National Careers Week (NCW) - an annual celebration of careers guidance and educational resources across the UK. The vision is to provide focus for careers guidance activity at an important stage in the academic calendar to help support young people leaving education. The ethos of the initiative is to empower positive change through careers education, but there is an important message that often slips through the net – and that is to take charge of your planning.

Mentoring is an important way of supporting the advancement and growth of talent in an organisation. Every employee, whatever their level, will benefit from having someone who will help them grow professionally, and individuals from minority groups even more so.

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from the pandemic, it’s that we cannot solve unpredictable challenges without diverse leadership. We need different skillsets to bring creative and agile thinking, which we don’t get by pursuing traditional methods of talent management.

It can be challenging to reach out to strangers and make new connections - whether it’s to research a job opportunity, generate new leads or grow your network - especially when you need to do it all virtually.

The tech industry has been criticised in recent years as being a hostile place for women to work. Women represent 17% of the tech population and hold only 10% of leadership roles.

“When you take risks, you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” Ellen DeGeneres

One of the topics that comes up regularly in my coaching is women who are uncomfortable with their own ambition and worried about how others perceive them. Some have shared stories about how women in their organisations are labelled as ‘pushy’ and almost demonised if they’ve shown too strong a desire and a determination to succeed.

I was very proud but also a bit scared when my 9 year-old son announced this summer that in addition to rugby, he also wanted to join the after school netball club.