The Wobbly Middle

From olympic dreams to a digital sisterhood, Joy Foster traded a career in the City for a quiver of arrows, followed love across borders and then and then, somewhat accidentally, became a digital entrepreneur. 

Her creation, TechPixies, now serves as both launchpad and lifeline for women looking to pivot, re-enter the workforce, or start from scratch.

In this episode, Joy talks about what it means to bloom wherever you’re planted even when the soil is foreign or the sun unreliable. She shares her belief that confidence is a decision, reinforced daily through small acts of...

...and how to build a brand.

Liberating and taboo-busting, Rachael Newton (former hedge fund lawyer turned entrepreneur) is part of a new wave of founders, thinkers, and advocates throwing open the bathroom door and reshaping the policies, products, and possibilities of period care. 

In this episode, Rachael tells us how she designed Nixit, the revolutionary, reusable menstrual disc after she realised her tampon waste took so long to break down it would likely survive the apocalypse alongside the cockroach. 

Rachael assessed the alternatives in the market and found them wanting. (Hell, th...

Where female investors bring the values—and the returns.

Experienced fund manager Leila Kardouche knew that to keep doing what she loved—investing—it had to be on her own terms. So she co-founded Variis Partners, a women-led firm that’s diverse by name (Variis means “diverse” in Latin) and by nature, built on a culture rarely found in traditional finance.

In the high-stakes investment world, Leila is confident about what sets the foundation for success: her age, experience, financial stability, and wisdom—along with the complementary strengths of her co-founders. On taking bold steps later in life...

Sophia Champion de Crespigny loved physics. She studied civil engineering for 8 years, fascinated by structure and design. In the workplace, however, she found herself wading through actual sewage in the field - and the more metaphorical kind in the office. Engineering may have been the plan but it turns out it wasn’t the fit.

When Sophie finally quit, she left without a grand plan, just with the instinct that there was something else out there for her.

We’ve got mail.

Susannah and Patsy open the mailbag and respond to some of your excellent (occasionally panic-tinged) every-woman questions about navigating midlife career change.

This means, Patsy, who usually prefers to hide behind the microphone (and strong opinions about editing), has to sit in front of it. Susannah on the other hand is already on her second podcast of the day—just casually interviewing biotech CEOs before breakfast—and brings her usual mix of energy and insight.

They discuss:
→ How do you find space to even think about change when life kee...

When Hannah McCracken returned to advertising after a career break raising her children, she anticipated going back at the same level, with some flexibility. She was met with a “no” — neatly packaged as professional advice: expect less.

Less responsibility. Less pay. Less relevance. 

But for Hannah, time out never meant value lost. She had built her career at some of the world’s top ad agencies. She knew her worth—and wasn’t about to apologise for the years spent mothering. She rejected the tired narrative that stepping away from work somehow erases your talent, ambition or p...

We get the inside scoop on what it was really like producing a live, chaotic political interview with then-candidate Donald Trump — the pressure, the reputational stakes, and Aundrea’s strategies for the toughest of interviews.

This bonus episode is packed with big energy, behind-the-scenes moments plus Aundrea’s “Wobbly Middle” Go-Bag essentials.

Listen now! Don’t miss the full conversation with Aundrea Cline-Thomas in our main episode, Lights, Camera...Pivot!

Stay up to date with our newsletter. 

To hear more from Aundrea, listen to her totally energising podcast The NEXT Best Thing. <...

Newsrooms collapsing. Journalism jobs vanishing. Three-time Emmy winner and TV reporter Aundrea Cline-Thomas saw the signs flashing like a breaking news ticker: the industry she loved was falling apart live on air.

Stepping behind the camera, Aundrea launched her own production company, Mountain Court Media, as well as the community initiative The Rewrite to help other journalists navigate their own pivots.

With the poise of a prime-time pro and the candour of a hot mic, she shares the behind-the-scenes on walking away from a career in front of the camera to build a new career — an...

Do you feel a pull towards something new but aren’t sure what’s next?

So do we! Following a No. 1 ranking on Apple Podcasts GB Careers chart, hosts Susannah de Jager and Patsy Day—who leapt off their own corporate career ladders—return for Season 2 on Wednesday, April 23 with more inspiring conversations about bold career shifts, unexpected opportunities, and the skills we’ve been quietly building all along.

This season, they sit down with women who’ve made remarkable career moves, including:

Donna was in her 40s when she picked up a camera. A stay-at-home mum in a new country, she poured her passion for food into a blog to fill the long school days. Good photos were essential, so—like every resourceful mother—she taught herself. The result? Drool-worthy, award-winning images that launched a stellar career.

Now in her 50s, professional food photographer Donna Crous has cancer. With the same creativity, determination, and heart that shaped her career, she’s using her Diary of a Booby Queen to educate women about secondary breast cancer and to give them the co...

Notebooks at the ready—this is a masterclass in taking ideas to thriving ventures from one of the UK’s most dynamic businesswomen. Debbie Wosskow OBE has built, scaled, and sold multimillion-pound businesses, including Love Home Swap, and now leads the charge for female founded businesses with the £250 million Invest in Women Taskforce and her new venture The Better Menopause.

In this candid conversation, Debbie shares the lessons learned from decades of experience: the sunlit uplands as well as the darkness. With a different business for every decade of her life, Debbie’s playbook is packed with insight...

Born in the New Mexico deserts where running water was a luxury, Dr. Emily Connally was an unlikely contender for the ivory towers of Harvard and Oxford — but with grit, brilliance, and a touch of rebellion, she soared. Yet her greatest achievements may not be in the lab...

When the pandemic struck, Emily applied the same expertise she used to map the brain’s complex pathways to chart a thriving grassroots network. Starting with a schoolgate foodbank, she built Cherwell Collective which is transforming how local networks tackle food waste and sustainability.

From elite academia to c...

Sophie was 37 when she was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Recovered but with a heavy dose of heartache, she had a choice to make: return to the legal career she had spent years building or follow her passion into the fires of the kitchen.

With humour, grit, and inspiring zest, Sophie Archer reveals how her strength grew to fuel her culinary dreams - all the way to MasterChef: The Professionals. This is a story that will ignite your own ambitions and leave you hungry for possibility.

New episodes of The Wobble Middle, released fortnightly. For...

Midwife Nina Van Schaick felt a deep calling to support mothers through the transformative experience of childbirth. But as she witnessed the trauma caused by failures in maternal care, she knew change was urgently needed. With less than 2% of pharmaceutical R&D dedicated to maternal health, Nina decided to take action herself.

Join the warm, funny, and bold FemTech innovator as she shares how she moved from the delivery suite to the boardroom to create meaningful change for women’s health.

What happens when one of the most influential woman in the City resigns at the top of her game? Dame Helena Morrissey stunned the financial world when she stepped down as CEO of Newton Asset Management at 50 — without a fully formed plan. In this compelling episode, Helena opens up about the unfinished business that drove her forward; and how she learned to embrace discomfort as she forged a new path. 

As one of the most prominent advocates for equal pay and opportunity, Helena also sets out her powerful vision for getting more mid-career women into investment rol...

Helen was made redundant while pregnant. In the playground, she watched as skilled mums - lawyers, accountants, architects - pushed swings, frustrated by the lack of jobs that could accommodate family life. Grabbing her phone and laptop, she decided to take matters into her own hands. In this episode, Helen Wright of 9-2-3 tells us of life at the forefront of the movement that is reshaping our working lives.

You can find Helen at www.923jobs.com

New episodes of The Wobbly Middle drop every two weeks. For...

When they couldn't find help for their often young, sub-fertile patients who were being slammed by the perimenopause, Drs Susanne Hooper and Melanie Hacking took a sharp right turn in their own careers...

Find Susanne and Melanie at the Oxford Hormone Clinic.

New episodes of The Wobble Middle drop every two weeks. You can also read our Wobbly Middle musings on Substack at The Wobbly Middle. You can also find us on Instagram, @thewobblymiddle

If you are in the wobbly middle of your career and would like to share your story with us...

Patsy quit her job. Susannah quit the city. Now they’re on a quest to find the path through the wobbly middle of their careers. This podcast is for every woman who’s asking “What now?”.

Hosted by Susannah de Jager and Patsy Day, The Wobbly Middle features interviews with famed city superwomen, dazzling entrepreneurs and revolutionary midwives and doctors who reveal what they’ve learnt through their own wobbly middle experiences.

Follow us on Instagram: @thewobblymiddle

Find us on Substack: thewobblymiddle.substack.com

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