Ask me a Q Jessica talks to six brilliant women in big jobs talk about FLEXIBILITY. This is a snippet from career panel Q&A we hosted as part of The Talent Keeper Specialists' 10th birthday celebration (TTKS is the business behind the Comeback Community employee experience of which COMEBACK COACH is a part). The six women: Daisy Allington - Chief Operating Officer, Cognitant Justine Anderson, Chief Operating Officer, BlackRock (EMEA) Debbie Dalzell, Global HR Director, GAM Investments Dr Mel...
Nov 02, 2022•6 min
Ask me a Q Jessica talks to six brilliant women in big jobs talk about GUILT. This is a snippet from career panel Q&A we hosted as part of The Talent Keeper Specialists' 10th birthday celebration (TTKS is the business behind the Comeback Community employee experience of which COMEBACK COACH is a part). The six women: Daisy Allington - Chief Operating Officer, Cognitant Justine Anderson, Chief Operating Officer, BlackRock (EMEA) Debbie Dalzell, Global HR Director, GAM Investments Dr Melinda R...
Oct 26, 2022•7 min
Ask me a Q Jessica talks to six brilliant women in big jobs talk about AMBITION. This is a snippet from career panel Q&A we hosted as part of The Talent Keeper Specialists' 10th birthday celebration (TTKS is the business behind the Comeback Community employee experience of which COMEBACK COACH is a part). The six women: Daisy Allington - Chief Operating Officer, Cognitant Justine Anderson, Chief Operating Officer, BlackRock (EMEA) Debbie Dalzell, Global HR Director, GAM Investments Dr Melind...
Oct 26, 2022•7 min
Ask me a Q Jessica talks to six brilliant women in big jobs talk about SPEAKING UP. This is a snippet from career panel Q&A we hosted as part of The Talent Keeper Specialists' 10th birthday celebration (TTKS is the business behind the Comeback Community employee experience of which COMEBACK COACH is a part). The six women: Daisy Allington - Chief Operating Officer, Cognitant Justine Anderson, Chief Operating Officer, BlackRock (EMEA) Debbie Dalzell, Global HR Director, GAM Investments Dr Mel...
Oct 19, 2022•5 min
Ask me a Q Jessica talks to six brilliant women in big jobs talk about SUCCESS. This is a snippet from career panel Q&A we hosted as part of The Talent Keeper Specialists' 10th birthday celebration (TTKS is the business behind the Comeback Community employee experience of which COMEBACK COACH is a part). The six women: Daisy Allington - Chief Operating Officer, Cognitant Justine Anderson, Chief Operating Officer, BlackRock (EMEA) Debbie Dalzell, Global HR Director, GAM Investments Dr Melinda...
Oct 19, 2022•7 min
Ask me a Q Hello Bright Minds, I wanted to pop up and say hello and share a little bit about the tricky time I've had this year which has delayed season 4. That's what you'll hear in this 10 minute 'episode'. If you'd like to be in touch about anything I mention: e-mail jc@talentkeepers.co.uk Instagram: @comebackcommuk Whilst season 4 is in the making I'm going to bring you 8 snippets from a brilliant career Q&A panel I hosted as part of The Talent Keeper Specialists 10th birthday gathering ...
Oct 05, 2022•11 min
Ask me a Q Hello Bright Minds and welcome to episode 41, with my guest Pippa Rudling, one of our very recent coachees. Pippa works for an institutional investment platform, in a sales & client relationship role, working with investment consultants and pension scheme trustees. She has two daughters – Poppy 4 and Jasmine 1 and I worked with Pippa when she was coming back from her second maternity leave. HOW WAS YOUR RETURN TO WORK? Could your return to work have been smoother? Could your line ...
Aug 31, 2022•29 min
Ask me a Q Hello, it’s me, Jessica Chivers for a different kind of episode to usual. It’s just me today – no guests - and in this ‘COACH’ episode I’m exploring seven Qs to ask yourself before you return to work. I’ve chosen these because over the last 18 years of executive coaching with people returning to work I’ve found these are the ones that really help set you up for success. The seven Qs that I unpack one by one: 1. Why am I returning to work? 2. What will a successful return look, smell, ...
Aug 17, 2022•23 min
Ask me a Q My guest today is Verena Hefti MBE, the founder and CEO of the social enterprise, Leaders Plus. She’s also the host of the Big Careers Small Children podcast on which I’ve had the pleasure of being a guest talking about how to progress your career when you work part time. Verena has three children and we’re talking when Verena is 6 months back from returning from her third maternity leave. HOW WAS YOUR RETURN TO WORK? Could your return to work have been smoother? Could your line manag...
Aug 03, 2022•30 min
Ask me a Q Hello I’m Jessica and my guest coachee today is Jo, a Learning & Development Professional, who’s returning from maternity and redundancy to a new organisation in a brand new sector. She’s had a 13 year career in L&D and is taking up the role of Head of Performance and Capability three days a week – something she negotiated after applying for what was advertised as a full time role. She’s not new to making sector moves having worked in Healthcare, Education, Pharmaceuticals and...
Jul 20, 2022•39 min
Ask me a Q My guest today is Carla Miller, host of the 'Influence & Impact for female leaders' podcast which sits in the top 20 management podcasts in the UK Apple charts most weeks. Her book Closing the Influence Gap: A practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard is available for pre-order now. We talk about: Choosing to be a solo parent Challenges associated with returning to work as a solo parent Increasing your impact when returning from maternity and other long breaks As ment...
Jul 06, 2022•28 min
Ask me a Q My guest today is Chris Ashton-Holt, a Director in EY’s Consulting business, leading the Project Development offering within their Sustainable Infrastructure team. He has worked there for nearly 12 years after joining straight from university, and within EY he focuses on setting large infrastructure projects up for success, with a particular focus on low carbon electricity generation including nuclear power. Chris has just returned from 4 months of shared parental leave following the ...
Jun 22, 2022•33 min
Ask me a Q My guest today is Emily Wheen, a senior Recruiting Lead at Google, managing a team that recruits the best technical, sales, marketing and partnerships talent for Google Cloud in APAC. She’s originally from the UK and has spent the last 10 years living and working in Asia with her husband. She’s currently based in Singapore, where they’ve spent the last 5 years, and prior to that lived in Tokyo. Emily had her first baby in 2020, was promoted on maternity leave, and returned to work in ...
Jun 08, 2022•31 min
Ask me a Q My guest today is Beatrice Gloor, whose life changed dramatically when she was en route to a client meeting in Silicon Valley. Beatrice has 20 years’ experience as a Senior Relationship Manager and leader in highly demanding, volatile, fast-paced global corporates. In 2015 Beatrice was in a car accident which caused an aneurysm, six mini strokes, severe concussion, internal injuries, loss of short term memory and various cognitive impairments. She was out of the business for about a y...
May 25, 2022•26 min
Ask me a Q Hello I’m Jessica and my guest today has been in the civil service for 12 years since she gained a Masters degree in Economics. She’s expecting her third child and has two young children already – a 6 and a 4 year old – and without any family nearby it makes it very hard to carve time out for themselves, although she says she really got into gardening over the last 3 years and turned into a plant enthusiast! Our conversation is about preparing for leave as a leader and we’re talking w...
May 11, 2022•38 min
Ask me a Q Hello and welcome to the first episode of season three of Comeback Coach, the podcast for people returning to work after a break. Sally Williams is a journalist at ITN who presents the weather and reports for ITV London News. She returned to work after her third child and having had a career break in the US when her husband’s work for ITN took them there. She got a call from her boss when her daughter was 4 ½ months old asking if she’d consider coming back freelance one day a week. Sh...
Apr 27, 2022•26 min
Ask me a Q Hello and welcome to the last episode of season two of Comeback Coach., the podcast for people returning to work after a break. It felt fitting for this season finale to talk to someone from Rayden Solicitors , the award-winning Tier 1 family law firm that’s sponsored the podcast from the beginning. And my guest is Abby Westell, Legal Director at Rayden’s which involves lots of client contact, running the office, managing the team, supervising junior lawyers and business development. ...
Mar 16, 2022•30 min
Ask me a Q My guest today is Danielle, the Head of Master Planning and Landscape at a multi-disciplinary property firm. She started a phased return to work when her baby was 8 months old and she’s now been back four months. We’re talking about the path to partner and the support she’d like as she makes that transition. As you’re listening, if you’ve got a question or want to tell me about your return to work please find me on Instagram @comebackcommuk because I really do love hearing from you. H...
Mar 02, 2022•33 min
Ask me a Q My guest today is Cheney Hamilton, founder of Find Your Flex, the flexible job site that’s on a mission to create a better work culture for future generations. It was developed off the back of her 16 years employment in recruitment advertising, which came to an end after she had her second daughter. She’s married to Liam and they have three children who are 6, 4 and 2. Their eldest child, Bea, was born with hip dysplasia and it was an incredibly difficult time for both Cheney and Liam...
Feb 16, 2022•24 min
Ask me a Q My guest today is Deborah, a lawyer who specialises in inheritance and trust disputes. We’re talking when Deborah has been back at work from maternity leave a few months and she’s feeling that the world of work is very different to how it was before she went on leave. She wants to get a sense of control and find time for herself. HOW WAS YOUR RETURN TO WORK? Could your return to work have been smoother? Could your line manager have been more empathetic? Share these two short films (le...
Feb 02, 2022•39 min
Ask me a Q 54,000 women a year are forced out of their jobs due to pregnancy or for taking maternity leave and 77% have encountered some form of discrimination in the workplace. Those stats are lifted from the back of the brilliant book “Pregnant Then Screwed: The Truth about the Motherhood Penalty and how to fix it” by my guest Joeli Brearley . It’s not right, it’s not OK and in many ways I hope this episode doesn’t resonate with you. It was a joy to chat to Joeli because she’s a woman taking a...
Jan 19, 2022•32 min
Ask me a Q My guest today is Katy, a marketing professional who’s been back at work from her second parental leave for 18 months. She returned during the pandemic to a wholesale restructuring of the marketing team which led to her heading for redundancy. However, two weeks before she was due to leave, role that was perfect for her came up and so she stayed – but it’s only for a year. Our conversation took place when Katy had been in this new role six months and she’s feeling uncertain, a little ...
Jan 05, 2022•39 min
Ask me a Q My guest today is Claire Garwood, a civil servant at the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency. She went through four rounds of IVF and two miscarriages before conceiving her now three year old twins. She went through so much to get where she is today and I think you’re going to find this encouraging and heart warming especially if you’re going through IVF or you’ve experienced miscarriage. NHS information about IVF: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ivf/ NHS information on miscarria...
Dec 22, 2021•26 min
Ask me a Q Alex is looking to re-engage with the working world after a four year career break raising two children. We’re talking when Alex is four months away from her son starting nursery and as you’ll hear, she doesn’t have a career path to pick up on and she’s questioning whether now is the time to turn her hobby into a business rather than try to return to employment. . . THINGS REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE Olive & Blossom – team building company based around flower arranging. Conversation...
Dec 08, 2021•38 min
Ask me a Q Rachael is a seasoned HR professional who started her career in in-house recruitment and spent much of her 15 year HR career partnering businesses and connecting teams including for a luxury floral company. She finished her corporate HR days in a cyber security growth company as an HR Business Partner covering EMEA and beyond and this is where we pick up the return to work story. . . HOW WAS YOUR RETURN TO WORK? Could your return to work have been smoother? Could your line manager hav...
Nov 24, 2021•22 min
Ask me a Q Katie is an HR professional with over a decade of experience in financial services who’s making a move into a different role of which she has no experience. She’s returning to work after her second maternity leave into a new role that’s never been done before – no ‘playbook’ and no one to have a handover with. Our conversation takes place two weeks before her start date. I mentioned an article about how to raise your visibility when you work remotely . . . THINGS REFERENCED IN THE EPI...
Nov 10, 2021•33 min
Ask me a Q Amanda Newman is a senior manager at Accenture and mother of four. She’s also the woman behind The Career Mum community, which has a global membership of over 5000 people. Amanda had all of her children whilst she was at Shell, where she held various project manager roles before doing a brief stint at Microsoft and then moving to Accenture. Her youngest are five year old twins and in this episode we’re talking confidence. HOW WAS YOUR RETURN TO WORK? Could your return to work have bee...
Oct 27, 2021•19 min
Ask me a Q Sara is an Associate Director at a recruitment firm where she manages a team of Consultants and is the lead personal contact on over 40 client accounts. When she returned to work after having her first baby she discovered that the career she had found so energising and rewarding, was no longer a good fit and that her professional achievements no longer felt like success. Sara’s currently on maternity leave after having had her second child and a career change into a field that better ...
Oct 13, 2021•37 min
Ask me a Q Rachel and Hannah AKA "The Job Share Pair" worked their way up through the corporate ranks to HR Director level. They were both – and still are – really committed, motivated, determined women, passionate about work and not wanting to take a step back. Their first babies were born six days apart and they began job sharing when they returned from maternity leave and really found their groove and made it work brilliantly well. In 2020 they set up their Instagram account The Job Share Pai...
Sep 29, 2021•30 min
Ask me a Q Emily is a partner in a small law firm who’s returned to work after her second maternity leave. She’s been back six months and her confidence has taken a significant knock not least due to returning remotely. She’s really missed the ‘sounding board’ type conversations she enjoyed with colleagues when she returned to work the first time. HOW WAS YOUR RETURN TO WORK? Could your return to work have been smoother? Could your line manager have been more empathetic? We’re on a mission to ke...
Sep 15, 2021•37 min
