“Have faith in yourself – remember your professional skills and strengths are still there, and your time on your career break will have added a wide range of transferable skills that will be enormously valued when you return to work.” In this final episode of the series, Anna and Karen reflect on the inspirational stories they’ve heard over the series and weave together the main themes of the Return to Work journey, from when you first start thinking about returning to work, to how you might...

Adriana Ennab enjoyed a varied and successful career in investment banking, working in New York, London and Tokyo in her early career. She took a 16 year career break from banking during which time she not only brought up her 3 children but also seized the opportunity to set up her own businesses, enjoy higher education again as well as explore other interests such as the arts, yoga and drumming! But after 16 years away from investment banking, Adriana began to miss her old professional...

Chief Inspector Georgia Williams joined the Met Police in 1997, and enjoyed a hugely fulfilling career, where she felt like she was really making a difference. She was promoted twice, to Sergeant and then Inspector, before she took a career break in 2011 after the birth of her first child. During a 5-year career break, Georgia had a second child and also took on a local job as a School Chaplain, a flexible role she really enjoyed where she could use her transferable skills from policing....

Trained as a civil engineer, Bhavna started her career in India as an IT developer and network engineer. She came to the UK in 2003 with her husband and after the birth of her daughter, took a career break to spend more time with her. But as time passed, Bhavna needed to get back to work for financial reasons, and so, whilst her daughter was young, she looked for a different type of role that would give her more flexibility and retrained as a teacher. However, as the years passed, Bhavna...

Dr Tzany Kokalova Wheldon enjoyed an impressive early career in academia, gaining a doctorate in Natural Sciences and working in nuclear physics in Germany. Following the tragic loss of her unborn son at 5 months, a harrowing experience that Tzany describes as shaping her life going forwards, she decided to take an extended career break after the birth of her twin boys a few years later, so that she could dedicate time to being with them during their early years. When her boys were 3, she...

Laura Murphy is an experienced programme manager in the tech sector, with a background in management consultancy at Accenture. She loved the variety, intensity and challenge of management consultancy but after the birth of her first child, took a career break to enjoy life at home with her new baby. What she initially thought might be a 2-year career break turned into 9 years, as her second child came along, and Laura took the time to support her daughter’s learning needs as well as settle...

Yemi Morgan-Raiwe is an experienced strategic project manager with a background in engineering. After relocating from Nigeria to the UK in 2001, Yemi moved into economic development and built a fulfilling career working in regeneration. She took a 5 year career break to look after an elderly relative and to foster, and also took the opportunity whilst on her career break to set up her own organic food manufacturing business! But after a few years, she realised that as good as she was at...

Melissa Janvier is an experienced US lawyer with a background in financial services and public law. After relocating with her family to the UK in 2014 for her husband’s work, Melissa took a career break to settle her 3 young children into their new life. When her youngest started school, she decided the time was right to return to work but found the route back to law far more challenging than she initially imagined. After a friend told her about https://womenreturners.com/ (Women Returners),...

Sarah McKelvie enjoyed a fulfilling career as a doctor, and her work in hospital medicine and general practice took her all over the world. When her 1st child was born in 2007, she thought she’d be back at work in 6 months, but 2 more children later and her 6 month career break turned into 12 years. During her career break, Sarah became immersed in various charity projects from fundraising to setting up football teams for children with cerebral palsy, for which she won a FA Grassroots...

An early career in the military prepared Rachel well for the negotiations that lay ahead as a mum to 3 young boys! After 9 years at home with them, a little nudge from some former military friends encouraged Rachel to find her way back to work in 2015 through Tideway’s Returner Programme. As an integral part of Tideway's ground-breaking engineering project to clean up the Thames, Rachel found that the skills she’d developed before and during her career break served her very well back in the...

Take a listen to this trailer to find out more about the Career Returners Podcast. Karen and Anna from the Women Returners coaching team will be chatting to a wide range of women who are happily back at work after taking long career breaks. From a doctor to a lawyer to a nuclear physicist, these fantastic women share the ups and downs of their return to work stories and give practical advice to inspire other career returners.