Jessica O'ConnorSpeaking at The Pivot, the first of a series of events combining networking, workshops and fire-side chats, Rachael Twumasi-Corson and Natasha Bird examined changing attitudes to linear careers.
While non-linear careers – with breaks, periods of self-employment, side-steps and entire career moves – becoming more commonplace, the event also examined the idea that for women, this was already par for the course.
Bird said: “Linear careers are an anachronism now, but I’d argue that they never really existed for women anyway.”
In order to explore effective ways of making the most of all potential career paths, particularly in what Twumasi-Corson described as the current “time of fear, uncertainty and doubt,” the pair discussed their own experiences changing and shaping their careers, fielded questions from the audience, and led a planning exercised that encouraged attendees to map three drastically different life options.
Twumasi-Corson pointed out that the ability to adapt and find opportunities was integral considering the current period of socio-economic upheaval.
She said: “We’ve lived through these revolutions before, as a species, and a lot of the survival was about pivoting.”
Twumasi-Corson spoke of her own experience as an entrepreneur, having worked across various careers and made her way into opportunities that would otherwise have been closed to her.
She said: “Coming from a working class background, and being Black and a woman, doors don’t just open.”
Being able to leverage a network and find different routes into a career is integral to increasing diversity and inclusion within businesses, particularly at board level where it is much needed.
Twumasi-Corson reinforced the importance of creating “opportunities for yourself and for other people,” for example through mentoring, and “going for jobs you know you won’t get” in order to practice and get in front of the right people.
She also discussed the fact that “talent is equally distributed, but funding is not.”
According to the British Business Bank, only 10 Black female entrepreneurs received venture capital investment (0.02% of the total amount invested) over 10 years from 2009 to 2019.
Meanwhile, Bird discussed the importance of curiosity in establishing life satisfaction, particularly among women.
She said: “The idea that retirement happens in the way we have always imagined it is simply not right any more.
“We might be working into our 70s or 80s, and doing the same job the whole way through would be incredibly boring.”
This is not just a case of finding opportunities to spark and nurture curiosity within a career, but as “holistic beings,” taking into account life and family not as separate challenges, but part of a whole.
Bird, whose career has spanned news journalism, leadership roles at Yahoo and ELLE Magazine, and now forming a business working with luxury automotive industry clients, went on to discuss the importance of storytelling, and spoke of her own experience finding ways to highlight different skills and successes, even through periods where things did not go as planned.
The first in the Pivot series – which included drinks, nibbles, networking and a goody bag of items from Yendy Skin and Diome worth around £80 – took place in the NoMad Hotel in London on 24th July.
