Elisa is a People and Culture Expert and Organisational Psychologist with more than 15 years of Talent Management experience at companies like early days Uber, Tesla, and the leading executive search firms Korn Ferry and Spencer Stuart. She helps Executives with career strategy, promotion preparation, transitions from corporate to entrepreneurial roles, relocation, and adapting to a new industry, function or geography. Elisa was born in Ukraine, raised in France, has worked with companies based in the US and EMEA. She is now based in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In our conversation we talk about her childhood growing up for the first 20 or so years of her life in what is now Ukraine. Elisa explains how the collapse of the Soviet Union had a significant impact on her personal family situation and how she gradually found her own independence. Elisa talks openly about realising that she needed to disappear and how she moved to Angers in France with her husband. She shares how she became interested in psychology at an early age but realised that she needed to get some life experience before she could realistically hope to become a psychologist. Starting a career in HR seemed to be the best place to get that experience and she took an internship with one of the top five executive search firms. Fast forward a little while and we find her working for UBER in Amsterdam until she suffered a burnout in her late twenties. Again Elisa tells the story of these challenging times with her characteristic openness and vulnerability. Undeterred she enters another fast paced mission driven organisation, Tesla, and she explains the differences between the corporate cultures that she experienced. Following a spell contracting at the EV startup, Arrival Elisa achieved her aspiration to set up her own consultancy. We talk about that move out of corporate and how she is about to launch a third pillar to her business, providing relationship counselling. It was a wonderful experience to spend some time in Elisa’s company and to hear the incredible life and career journey that she has had to date. I am proud to share her story with you and I look forward to hearing what resonates with you. Reach out to Elisa: LinkedIn: Elisa Viaud Thank you to our sponsors: ASKE Consulting Email: [email protected] Aquilae Email: [email protected] Episode Directory on Instagram @careerviewmirror   If you enjoy listening to our guests career stories, please follow CAREER-VIEW MIRROR in your podcast app.  Episode recorded on 12 May, 2023