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Hello Bright Minds, my guest today is 53 year old journalist Samantha Downes, who last year took up the post of senior news reporter at The Express after many years working freelance. She joined The Express in November after specialising in pensions and investment journalism as an investigative reporter for both trade and national publications including the Financial Times, City AM, and Pensions Expert.

She’s a mother of two teenage girls and writes about midlife, parenting and money issues for her own substack. She’s written two books and has another underway and is also a financial commentator on TV and radio. We met a couple of months ago at the House of Lords at a breakfast hosted by another podcast guest, Baroness Helena Morrissey – episode 102 – to launch a report about the gender ISA gap.

I think you’ll love Samantha’s honesty about returning to employment and her raw self-reflections about ambition. I really could have listened to her for much longer than we had time for and at the end of the episode I share my thoughts on why and how mothers careers come in and out of bloom – and it’s not to do with the age of their children.

References

The power of small wins – HBR article by Teresa Amabile & Steven Kramer.

Visualisation podcast episode with Maya Raichoora.

Danna Greenberg paper - Identity and the Transition to Motherhood: Navigating Existing, Temporary, and Anticipatory Identities.

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