Angela, Global Operations Director, Kinesso (IPG), (3 year break)
After completing my Psychology degree, majoring in Artificial Intelligence, I started my career in the Marketing Industry working for customer consultancy Dunnhumby. After an impressive 15-year career as a data leader, working with amazing brands in FTSE 100’s, agencies, and consultancies, I became a Chief Data Officer for new UK start-up, Cardlytics. Unfortunately, during the height of my career, my brother committed suicide and my world came to an abrupt end. On the first-year anniversary of his passing, I was rushed to hospital with severe bruising and anaemia which was quickly diagnosed as Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. This left me isolated in a hospital bed receiving chemotherapy for the next year or so. The following year my dad passed away and the year after that my mother also passed.
After some time, I decided to re-join the working world slowly by taking interim and short-term consultancy contracts. Post the isolation of covid, I decided I was ready to take on a full-time role and wanted to be part of a team again. I discovered Women Returners through my network, decided to pay for coaching myself and found a full-time data role in a media company. I was quite slow at the beginning of the process as it had been a while since I had actually applied for a role, rather than finding one through my network, however, as the sessions progressed, I understood the process, and myself, much better. I personally have used coaching before during my career, but this was usually paid for and supplied by my employers, so I found it quite empowering to decide upon the right coach and pay for it myself.
Having career objectives established already upon starting in a full-time role again was really helpful and made the transition easier. The key takeaway for me was trusting the process, and the experts, to guide me back into the world of full-time work. By the end of the process, I was ready to hit the ground running in my role and got up to speed fairly quickly.