Megan Dunford: Physics Degree to Payments Leader

S3E10: Megan Dunford didn't know what to take in university and ended up getting a degree in Physics and ultimately built a career in international payments and foreign exchange.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Unexpected Career Podcast, where we share stories of real people and the twists and turns they have taken along their career journey. I am Megan Dunford, and as someone who found myself in the payments industry, largely by accident, I'm fascinated by how people's careers unfold and how they've gotten to where they are today. It's also why I'm passionate about reducing the pressure on young people, about going to university, what to take in school, and on getting that right first job

Megan: 0:31

I have a bit of a surprise guest for episode 10. It's me. This wasn't originally the plan, but sometimes you need to be flexible and, I haven't shared my own journey. Of course it's something I think about throughout these conversations and getting the opportunity to hear other people's journeys and share their stories. So for anyone who's listened to the podcast before the very first question is always, what did you wanna be when you grew up? and for me, that's a interesting question because I think it changed a lot and that's probably the case for most people when I was really small. Kind of the games I remember playing that are kind of career role play Were one banker. Definitely liked, counting money, having a till, that kind of thing. If we played Monopoly, I always wanted to be the banker. I also in a similar vein, played at being a cashier. I think we had one of those like Fisher-Price. Cash registers and the play money. So I liked that, but then also organizing the money and so that whole banker vibe. And then the other thing I used to play a lot when I was a kid was teacher. So, teaching my stuffed animals things, we used to torture our poor cat, and try to teach him French which obviously he didn't pick up. So those were the kinds of things I did, a lot when I was really, really small. And, it definitely evolved there. I think the only other thing I really remember thinking about as a job in high school was I went through a phase of wanting to be an interior designer. Sometimes back then,'houses for sale, they would be listed in the newspaper and some of them would have those like little floor plans. Loved a floor plan. Like I cut out floor plans and had them on my wall in my room. And my mom really liked to go to open houses, so I love to tag along with her and look at houses, look at how they were laid out, imagine living there. Look at how they were decorated, all of that. So those are kinds of the things that I was interested when I was young in terms of potential careers. But when it came time to make decisions about going to university first of all, university wasn't a decision I made. It was just something I assumed that's what you did. And you know, I was happy to do that and wanted to do that. I initially applied for sociology, so the way the process works in Ontario or did, at least when I was in OAC, which doesn't exist anymore, it ends at grade 12 now. But, when I was in OAC is you can apply on one application form in Ontario, you can apply to three things on one application. So it could be three schools, it could be three programs at the same school, or a combination of that. And you can do more than one application form. So if you wanted to apply to more than three, you could do that. So I applied to three schools in Ontario and I also, applied to two schools in Quebec. But in Ontario you did the application in two phases. So you do an application fairly early in your last year of high school, so fairly early in the year. And then later in the year you have an opportunity to review what you applied for and make changes if you want to. So in the first phase of the application, I applied for sociology, at all three schools in Ontario. And I don't think I knew what sociology was. I think it sounded like a university thing you might wanna take, but I didn't know what it was actually. And then luckily you can change your mind. So, in between, step one and step two, I again, still didn't know what sociology actually was, but realized or was told or understood that sociology would involve a lot of writing papers. And I didn't enjoy writing papers so that gave me pause. And then I actually reflected on all the university prep classes I was taking. So OAC was, taking, credits that were specifically for, university prep. And I looked at my OAC classes and everything I was taking was science. So I did chemistry and physics. I maths, I did three different maths. I did economics and languages. English is a requirement. If you wanna go to university, everyone has to take, English, but I also did French and German as my OACs. So very heavy science, lean. I thought, oh wait, why would I take something that's all writing papers, which I don't enjoy doing. Physics was my favorite class in high school. Partly'cause I had an amazing teacher. And so I just thought, well, maybe that's what I should take. And so in that opportunity later in the year, I think around Christmas time to make a change and change my application, I changed all of the schools to physics But I also was looking at, as I said, I applied to two schools in Quebec as well. And that application was later in the year, so I didn't go through the, sociology and had to change my mind, which is good. I applied to McGill and Bishops, again for physics and so that's what I did, I took physics in university and I went to Bishops, which I picked really, because I wanted to be in a small school that had community that kind of had that US university vibe like that you saw in movies in terms of a it had school spirit, people went to sporting events. It had the look of a university that you picture in your head. And so I went to Bishops and it was all of those things. It was an amazing school, very small school. So I think the school at that time had 1200 full-time students. So very small school and most people were in business, at Bishops, like in terms of the percentage students they were in business and I was in physics. There were three of us that started together in first year. And I was the only one who actually graduated my year, the other two did graduate. They just, stayed for an extra year. So I was the only one who graduated, in the year that I graduated in that class, which was kind of funny. And when I was there, the other reason I picked bishops is it was far away from home. As an introvert, I just felt like it was really important for me to go far away from home, kind of start to carve out a path for myself, which is weirdly a bit of a theme in my life. And yeah, when I went to school there, I mean, I think university is very formative for everyone. Good or bad. But yeah, I went and discovered physics wasn't for me. Exactly. So, we used to joke in first year of University, so because it was in Quebec, they made anyone out of province do like a year zero. So it was technically a three year program. But if you had come from out of the province and therefore hadn't done CGEP, they made you do a year zero just to make sure that you had all the background you needed to be at the same level of people who did the, Quebec schooling system, which is much more like a UK system with CGEP being kind of like sixth form. So in year zero, all the science kids are pretty much doing their classes together. So even though there were only three of us in physics you were doing all your classes with the wider science kids, because all the science kids had to do physics, chemistry, and calculus. The only science I didn't have to do was biology. We used to joke that when you get to university you realize, or you learn that what you thought was physics is really math. What you thought was chemistry is really physics and what you thought was biology is really chemistry in terms of what you learn in high school. Then going into university you realize, oh wait, it's different. So if you really loved chemistry in high school, then maybe biology was a better fit for you than taking chemistry in university, for example. And I seriously contemplated switching to chemistry. Because we were all together, we began to have a system where, one person would take the lead on the homework and assignments in a class and then share it around. And I, generally speaking, did the chemistry homework. I was in charge of that. And I seriously contemplated switching to chemistry, but ultimately didn't because chemistry had three labs a week and physics has one lab a week. This is the thing about the podcast of we make decisions on the funniest things. Like if I had gone to chemistry instead, who knows what I would be doing now or what my life would be. But because I didn't wanna do three labs a week, I only wanted to do one. I stayed in physics and have a degree in physics, which is ridiculous. But I also discovered a love beyond that, and particularly, really fell in love with English, which was something I hadn't really enjoyed in high school. Which maybe was just the teachers I had, or maybe it's the way you learn English in high school. I'm not sure. But I went to a liberal arts school, so there were a electives you had to do. So you had to, even in science, you had to get a a humanities credit and you had to get an English credit. And I just naively followed the recommendations of the head of our department which were based on a stereotype of oh, you're a physics person, you're a physics brain. Take logic as your humanities.'cause it's in the philosophy department. And take this English grammar course for your, your English. Check mark and I did those things. I barely passed logic. The grammar course is useful, so fine. And then I was going to minor in business because you do have electives, you have space for electives when you go to a liberal arts school. I certainly did in my program. And so I was gonna do business as my minor. I took a couple business classes, so I took a intro to marketing and an intro to accounting. But the problem with business as a minor, if you are in sciences is, at least at my school business, students do not have morning classes. They only have afternoon classes and if you are in science, your labs are in the afternoon, so all your classes are in the morning so that made it really difficult to take the business classes. And so I kind of let that idea go of minoring in business. And I'd had a conversation with it. Maybe this was the end of second year or the beginning of third year with the head of our department. This is the other great thing about going to really small school. The head of our department was a person I knew who took personal interest. He knew me. Which would not happen at a big university like half the time you don't even really know your profs at a big university. Whereas my physics classes would have like six people in them. It was so small that they would combine. Third and fourth year would just rotate so that you always, so my third year, I also had fourth years in it'cause they had done what I would do in fourth year and third year anyway. I don't know if that makes sense. Just to make the class sizes more reasonable, less ridiculous. And because they had limited profs, obviously,'cause it was such a small department. Anyway, so I had a conversation with him and he was like, look, I know you're interested in business. He's like, get your MBA after. He's like, after physics degree, an MBA will be easy. He had had other former students who had done MBAs after. And so with that I think was part of why I was like, okay, well maybe I don't need to minor in business, business will still be there. So suddenly I was able to look at what else I could do with my electives, which was quite exciting. And so I took humanities. I did a like a, I can't remember what it was called, but we did an excerpt from I think the Iliad, and I did a Intro to Religion, which was a, an amazing class. And then in third year maybe discovered English and it started with I wanna say an American poetry class. Once I discovered English, all my electives became English. And if I had stayed an extra year, I could have gotten a minor in English, but. I wasn't gonna stay another year just for that. But really discovered, a love for English as a discipline beyond just being a reader. So that was really cool. And so again, I got a very comprehensive liberal arts education, which was awesome. And then I graduated and you have to find a job I had had a job in high school. I was a cashier at a grocery store in high school. So playing with my Fisher-Price cash register, I pay it off. And I had worked summers, so I had worked for my uncle one summer, updating their database. And then I spent two summers working for a music publisher who publishes all the music books for the Royal Canadian music tests. So all the preparing for the test, but also a whole curriculum, like of music books. So I worked for them for two summers. And then the first job I got out of university was at a small immunology firm who also did like scientific equipment and that sort of thing. I think they would've called themselves a biotech, but it's not like what we think of what a biotech is today. And I worked there for a year, which was a really amazing first job to have because it was tiny. So it was two entities. There was. One person in the warehouse there was the president there was one person who was the person for the immuno side. There was the one person who was in charge of like the equipment side, the tech side, and then a junior person who, did helped cover, and the first few months I was that junior person and then I was the person who ran the tech side, which like crazy. And you literally got to do everything. I was the marketing person, I was the customer service person. I was working with suppliers. We had customers in Quebec. They paid for me to do, a French class. So I had done French immersion in school, so I had decent French, but ironically you lose it when you live in Quebec. And so I did a conversational French class and I spoke to customers in French, which is crazy'cause I couldn't do it now. And literally did everything, we wanted to do a promotion. So I was reaching out to different companies like, Hey, we wanna do this promotion and give one of your things away for free. Can we get a discount? I was working on the redesign for the catalog. We'd cover shipping, so sometimes I was doing shipping, so you literally got to do everything, which was a pretty amazing first job right about outside of university. But it was never gonna be a forever job. It was a very small place. There was nowhere to go ultimately. And then my friend got engaged in Australian and moved to Australia and was like, why don't you come, so I did. So I went to Australia for eight months I was on a working holiday visa, which at that time meant you could work for a firm for three months and then you would have to get another job. So I worked for. Her fiance's sister ran a preschool, so worked in a preschool which was a really fun job, but also the most exhausting job I've ever had. I also got to then travel around and which is amazing. And again, life changing experience because I am an introvert, but I was also very. Shy. And I went away on my own to university, which was good and helped with some of that, but then to be like, traveling by myself, so made my way down from Cairns down to back to Sydney and yeah, those first few days were terrifying. But that's why it was life changing you put yourself in these situations and you find a way to do it. You're okay. I felt a lot of anxiety during that whole, I think it was gone for six weeks and mine was very organized. Like my trip, some people wing it. My friend's fiance helped me plan out a whole itinerary, pre-booked all the hostels. I think I only deviated from it one time. And so it was very structured, which was good because I couldn't have been flexible and do things on the fly because I was already, dealing with something that was very difficult for me personally, which was just being on my own and having to do everything by myself. I grew up in the suburbs. I lived in a place where you drove everywhere. I didn't know how to take the bus. Those are all things I learned how to do. It sounds ridiculous, but really good. Life skills, and I think it was in my second or third hostel. I met this Dutch girl and she gave me a pep talk which stopped me from running back to my flat and my friends. People can be really wonderful. And it was so good for me to go through that experience. And then, as I was thinking about coming home and preparing to come home, started thinking about, okay, well, what am I gonna do now? Like, what do I wanna do? That first job I had right outta university was a great first job, but it wasn't a career. What's kind of a career? And I was like, banking, I think banking's what I wanna do. Which interestingly was one of the things I used to play as a kid. But what appealed to me about banking. So my dad worked at a bank at the time, and what appealed to me about banking is it felt structured. I am still a structured person at least at work. And it was very like there's rules, there's guardrails, there's a path to follow in terms of a right way and a wrong way to do things. And when I was young, rightly or wrongly, I was, I loved rules and got a lot of comfort, I think in the safety of there being rules and things to follow. I'm definitely relaxed on that a lot now. So that's what I want, I wanna work for a bank and I wanna be in Toronto. I wanna be in the city, I wanna be downtown. And so when I came back, I just started applying for jobs, in banking banking adjacent, like financial service, jobs in general. That took, five months or whatever. And it was starting to make my mom crazy. I was living with my parents and she was at the point of okay, just apply at Starbucks. Just have something to do while you're still looking for this thing. The career job. And I was starting to get to that point. And then I interviewed at a foreign exchange, international payments company, which was not a thing I knew existed or had ever heard of. Went into Toronto. This is back when even your very first conversation or interview would be in person. Which feels so strange now, but went into Toronto, met with a recruiter and she was like, let me see if they can meet you today. She comes back and she's like, they can meet you today. In, maybe it was two hours or something. So basically went to the Eaton Centre and wandered around the mall for, an hour and a half and then went back to the recruitment firm's office had my interview and then I think I got a call while I was on the train back home saying you got the job can you start? And I think I started the Tuesday, which is crazy. And that's how I got into payments, totally random. And the job description was pretty much an admin role. And I literally never did the job that they hired me for. So I started there and, I was in charge of the middle office operations for all our online transactions, which at the time involved a lot of manual workarounds in the background, but clients could book online and that's what I was in charge of and someone else did all the other kind of transactions and I don't know why or how, but my boss, I should ask her'cause we're still friends recognized something in me and that I had more capacity or capability or whatever to do more than what I was doing and which is maybe why I never really did the admin job they hired me for. And so got to be involved. A lot of stuff. It wasn't a tiny company in that we had offices around the world. We had offices in Australia and New Zealand and London and Rome, and across Canada. But the Toronto office, when I joined was very small. There were like 10 or 12 of us, or three women two of my closest friends to this day. And it was somewhere where I worked for 16 years, like a really long time. I got involved in some really big projects, was really part of some of the operationalization and professionalization which in retrospect and now see was in pursuit of selling the company. And then around the seven year mark, I was like, okay, I've worked here six or seven years. Maybe I need to leave to expand my skills. how do you keep growing and learning maybe I, I need to leave or maybe I need to go back to school. And my boss had done his MBA and he suggested that I should do my MBA. And so that's what I did. And so I stayed and I did my MBA and I was so lucky because they helped, they paid for half of it, which it was an executive MBA, so not inexpensive. And so that kind of was the first instance of getting a bit antsy, maybe I need to leave, what am I doing from a growth standpoint? And so did the MBA that kept me there. And just before I started it, the company did get sold. And so suddenly, this Canadian headquartered, smallish company was part of a big public companies. So we're part of Western Union, this massive public company. So that was a whole new thing, the things you need to do to make sure you're compliant for a public company. So in the US SOX compliance for example. So implementing all of those things. And that was a new level learning new things so that was quite exciting. And then they went out and a few years later bought our biggest competitor. So again, new things to learn, new people, I was the only person from the original company Custom House on the operations leadership team in the new combined org. So, getting up to speed on all their systems and processes and meeting everyone and really amazing time and opportunity and learn so much and not just learn like a lot about business and leadership and of course our business. But also about myself. I remember once being at a drinks thing and a colleague it's funny'cause he was talking about me, like I wasn't there, but I was sitting right beside him. But he was talking to someone else. We were like at a big dinner table and he's like, yeah, we need more people like Megan, Megan's nice and direct. We need more direct people. And like I, as an introvert I didn't know, I was a direct person and I always thought of that as maybe a, a negative character trait of someone who doesn't think before they speak, which is not me. As an introvert, you are very, this is a generalization of course, but generally, a lot of introverts are quite thoughtful with what they say and they only, say something if they have something to say. So I didn't think those things went together, but you can be thoughtful and direct. And so that was something I didn't know about myself. And at first, I thought that was maybe a negative thing, but actually realize, no, wait, this is a positive thing. This is one of my skills. It's something I bring to the table. and ultimately working there is what brought me to the UK. I'd been seconded on, a product project for two years. And of course once you're seconded for two years, your job doesn't really exist anymore. And so basically I got another secondment and they were like would you go to London? And again, this was another time where I had thought I would leave. I fully planned to leave, actually. I'd done some amazing projects, worked with some amazing people, but I was feeling a bit stuck and like I had plateaued and I was a bit frustrated with that. And so it was like, okay what's the next step? And I had even, I had reached out to two people. I'd reached out to a recruiter I knew through, through the MBA program. And I reached out to a colleague of mine who had left maybe six months before. And I reached out to him and was like, is the grass greener? Is it really? Because you don't know. And obviously it would just be his experience. And he said, for me it has been greener. Like it's been great. And I was like, okay, it's time to, to look. I've worked here. I think I was like 12 years at that point. And literally the next day I go into the office, my boss she was in London we have this conversation and she says, would you consider going to London for a year? She's like, we need someone to lead PSD2 and our Brexit programs. And I think originally GDPR was on the list as well. Programs they wanted leadership on. And I was like, damnit yes, I wanna go to London for a year. How could I say no to that? I remember speaking to the head of legal who was based in Toronto after, because she was the executive sponsor for these projects. And she was like your boss said she's asked you and that you might be interested in going. She's like, I was so excited when your name came up. it would be great if you did this. I trust you to do it. And I was super transparent with her and honest, and this is a random lesson, but being transparent, honest, just pretty much, not steered me wrong, but anyway, I was very honest with her and said here's the truth. I literally had decided I'm the kind of person that it takes a lot of processing and thinking for me to make a big life decision but when I do, I've made the decision and so sometimes it feels really fast to people. I make a decision and then it it happens. But it's because I've done so much processing and thinking and sometimes I can be like years. I had literally decided I was gonna leave the company and now this, and so there are some mental gymnastics I'm doing right now. And I'd asked to think about it, which of course everyone was fine with. And then I was like obviously I wanna go to London and what do I have to lose by going to London? It's one year, if I love it, I love it. If I hate it, then fine, it's one year and then when I come back I can quit and look for another job. There's really nothing to lose and a year is not that long. And so I decided to take it and came to London and of course, completely fell in love with London and didn't wanna go back and stayed and again, when I look back and think of the sponsors I've had in my career, Pretty, pretty amazing and lucky, more than once in my career have people advocated for me, got me invited to things that I was technically too junior for, like, I used to go to a Custom House. I used to have these global conferences, this annual global conference, and I was probably the only one at a manager level who got to go to them yeah, I mean crazy. And just that happened quite a few times, where people would advocate for me and I was in rooms. I was put on a project once where the sponsor of the project did not want me. And in the end he ended up hiring me for a role and he became my boss. So I went to my boss and she fully backed me and made it happen and supported it, which was amazing. So I ended up staying, four or five years. I did go to the money transfer side of the business for a couple years. So for almost my entire career I was on the B2B foreign exchange international payment side, which is very different than the money transfer side of the business. Different type of client. Also we were much smaller, had didn't, have the same investment from the parent company. So went to the money transfer side of the business for a couple years, which again, learned a lot.'cause it was new. It was the first time I had done an interview in 15 years. Again had been really lucky, with any restructure or opportunity. There was just a place and a role for me and I hadn't had to apply for anything. And had an amazing boss, which I learned a lot from. she was super strategic and sees all the chess pieces, but also really understands the customer and the strategy and where we should go. And I also got to, I had kind of muscled my way in on the global oversight of the women's ERG. As one of the representatives in the uk. A lot of things were happening out of head office and I just forced myself into those conversations to make sure they were more global. And anyway, when the person who was leading it left, I got the opportunity to step into that global lead role it was called Women at Wu at the time, so the women's ERG. And that was amazing. So again, work with so many people around the world and really think about diversity, equity, and inclusion and, how can we share more voices internally and got to launch programs that were completely outside of things I did in my day job. And so that was amazing and I loved that. And just had fun and it was a lot of work it's on top of your day job, side of the desk thing. But that was truly, truly amazing. But ultimately, that side of the business, that really corporate environment, wasn't the best fit for me, and I had a opportunity, to step into, a C-suite role. And I remember offhand mentioning it to my friend at dinner, like this recruiter reached out to me, but it's crazy. And she's like, well, what, why? You could do that. You'd be great at that. Like, of course you can. And I was like, oh, maybe I could. And I did. So after 16 years not the same organization, but on paper, the same organization I left and joined as the chief operating officer in another international payments foreign exchange company. A small one in the UK and a little bit in Europe. And I loved that. To me, I love the people side. I loved working with my team. I loved that balance of strategy and execution of having the seat at the table, having the conversation and then really figuring out how do we deliver it? And not just check the box, deliver it, but really implement it, embed it, et cetera. And like happens when you do move into that level. When there was a change in leadership of CEO, they wanted to change their team level and, totally was on board with the strategy and where the CEO wanted to take things, but we weren't necessarily a good match in terms of how to execute it. So we had different ideas about that. And for the kind of first time in my career ever we parted ways and I've never been through a redundancy or been fired or anything like that before, so that was super, super hard. Also scary'cause I was on a Visa and I don't wanna go back to Canada, love Canada it's always gonna be home, but. Truly, London is my home now. So that was really scary, but again, it's quite transformational. In some ways, if I didn't have the visa concern, it would've been even more, I think freeing in a way because you could fully explore. Whereas I still had to find a job that could sponsor you. So didn't have the space to fully expand and explore. But again, it was a good, a difficult time. But it's such a big learning and that's when I started the podcast. The podcast was an idea that I had before. And even started making lists of what would I need to do to actually start a podcast? But then I'm not working. And once I got my systems in place about networking and applying for jobs and all of that yeah, I was like, okay, well now I need a side project. So I started the podcast, but it was also very interesting because I had never looked for a job before, really, since I was entry level. Like yes, I had made an internal move that involved applying for a job and doing interviews. But that's not the same. So I had never really had to look for a job since I got my first job in the industry and was entry level. So that was, shocking. And it's very different a in terms of how you get a job now than, than it was then. But also it's a completely different thing when you're looking for a senior role. But again, learned a lot, grew a lot, be came more confident, have really already had started building networks, but really leaned into those networks. Yeah, and then I've done some kind of consulting, full-time contract work in the meantime again in the industry. And again learning so much about how different people operate and how different things are approached and how even in the same industry we think about things in a different way. And so I think that's been really amazing and valuable and when you work at the same place for a really long time. you know all the shorthand. And there's so much comfort and safety. So to be thrown outside of that, it's scary, but it's good. It's definitely good. And when I look back on this journey, a huge common thread has been sponsorship. People saying my name, advocating for me, getting me in rooms, getting me on projects supporting things. Like me wanting to stay in London and I had to work for that and multiple times had to prove myself. Like I said, I, got put on that project and the sponsor didn't want me, he wanted someone else from operations. In fact, in the early meetings it would be like, oh, our top ops person is this, other person. And I'm like, I'm on the call. But did prove myself. And in the end, he created a new role for me. I ended up moving to his team. Manager who ultimately was huge sponsor and support for me staying in London when I first started working with her. She was new to the business and the company. And when I first started working from her, I don't think she was sold on me. I got feedback in those early days of you're too collaborative. It's hard to know what you've done versus someone else because you're so collaborative. And then two years later when I wanted to stay in London, she was a huge advocate for me. I think maybe I did prove to her actually it's hard to get things done in this organization, so I must be doing something right, that I'm able to get things done in this organization. So yeah, I've definitely had to prove myself along the way. And then I think the third one is just this need and openness to grow. Every time I thought about needing to move on, it was'cause I felt like I'd gotten to a plateau and okay, well how do I grow? And I didn't say no to a lot of things. So if there was a project, if there was a secondment, I was in, and sometimes people asked me, sometimes I muscled my way in. Like I muscled my way into, Women@WU. I muscled my way into a transformation project where I was just meant to be a stakeholder and validate some things, but I was like, I don't like the way you're doing it. There's no change management here, and wouldn't stop talking about it. And so then I ended up owning change management for that transformation project. So sometimes it was being open to saying yes to things, but it was also not backing away from something that I was passionate about. I think a lot of that was related with growth and maybe a bit of a sense of for lack of a better, righteousness. There's a right way to do it. Let's do the best thing we can for our teams and for our customers. Those are some themes I would definitely say. Another question that I like to ask is what do you think 15, 16-year-old you would think of where you are now? And I think she would be proud. I think she'd be both surprised and not surprised. I was very shy in high school. I was very, my best friend was extroverted and I hid behind her a little bit. So on one hand I think I would be surprised. But on the other, I think not because, I have done these things through my life where I have purposely made decisions to push myself outside my comfort zone. And I can't remember how old we were when we did this, but we had done, and I wish I could find it, but we did this list when we might have been 16 or 17 of all the things we wanna accomplish in our life. And I can't remember everything that's on it. I think I had play soccer and tell I'm an adult, figure skate isn't adult. That's one I haven't done. I had on there live in Australia for a year, which I more or less did, I had live in France for a year, which I didn't do, but I live in London, so it's pretty close. Things like that. I always wanted big things and I, despite being shy, was never a pushover, even as a small child. And, I was bossy. And I was always okay with being bossy. It's a look down upon word now and it should be'cause it's only ever applied to girls, which is not okay. But I was called bossy when I was young and I was always fine with it. I was like, yeah, I'm bossy. I don't see what's wrong with that. It seems like a good thing to me. So I think like she wouldn't be that surprised. But in terms of piece of advice, if I could like go back in time and give myself, I think sometimes it is make decisions faster. There have definitely been scenarios and lots of times it ends up working out in a weird way. But times where you know, you're not in the right place and you wait too long to make the decision or you don't make a decision. For a long time that mostly worked out, in terms of a new thing would come along, a new opportunity would come, along. But there was maybe a five year stretch in my career where every year, it'd be this really hard year, a bit burned out and then you'd be getting towards the end of the year and you'd be like, but I see a light. They're talking about this change. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Next year will be different. And when you do that, for multiple years in a row. Maybe you've stayed too long. Again, it worked out. I got the opportunity to come to London, which is obviously the best thing that's ever happened to me. But I think that's one thing, and I, it's happened since you can see it's maybe not the right fit or whatever and I am like, no, I can fix it. I can get people to like me. And I think sometimes your own history can be a detriment where I have been able to prove myself in the past and get people on board who maybe didn't see it and then became sponsors for me. But yeah, that's not always the case. And I think maybe sometimes that history makes you think you're a bit invincible and you can do it every time and you just can't, sometimes you just need to see the writing on the wrong wall. And I think the other thing is I think I said this earlier the times I have been just almost shockingly honest and direct. I am a naturally direct person, but there's another level you can get to. But also being honest about I don't want this or whatever. Have been positive things. People have taken them well and maybe that's'cause I had already built up the reputation, but there was a period where I was super unhappy with my role. A peer got promoted above me. I was reporting to him. I was very unhappy about it and I challenge him on things but it was okay. It was fine to be honest and challenge and I think that was a lesson and that's not my natural state to be at that level of direct confrontational almost. But there is a place for it. So I think that would be the other piece of advice of maybe embrace that a little bit more. Keep it relationship first and make it not about the person, but make it about the problem so I think those are pieces of advice I would definitely give myself. And then what's my vision for what's next? I don't know, I'm not done with the corporate career necessarily. I still enjoy that. I do get a lot of fulfillment from work. I love the challenge, I love the people. I love being a manager. I love being part of a team and being really collaborative. I think there's more of that in my future for sure. But of course I have the podcast as well, which is really fun and who knows what will happen with that. And I've started a substack, so I really enjoy writing and that's something I've been really leaning into more dabbling with in the last, seven or eight years, but really focused on in terms of now created this substack. So I think those are all things I'm excited about. And then. The long term dream and what life could look like post corporate life someday, I don't know if that's five or 10 years, but have a vision of a bookstore that sells coffee and wine. Maybe in a village somewhere in the uk. I think there's lots to be excited about and looking forward to the future and continuing to be in London and love London and, built this amazing life here. So lots to be excited about and look forward to. I have rambled on about myself for a very long time, which I did not think I had in me. But who knew? I'm not gonna do the three takeaways like I normally would, because that would be a bit weird to do in my own journey, but I would love to hear from you what your three big takeaways from my journey. When you listened to my ramble, what did you take away from it or what has meaning for you? What stood out to you? I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Let me know in the comments on whatever provider you're listening to this on, or send me a DM on the Instagram account or on my personal LinkedIn.

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Thank you for listening to The Unexpected Career Podcast. This was the last episode of season three, so please follow, share, and rate on your favorite podcast provider. The Unexpected Career Podcast is produced, edited, and hosted by me, Megan Dunford, and we'll see you next year for season four.