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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.

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

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Hello Bright Minds, I wonder whether you’ve seen the Netflix hit Buying London with Daniel Daggers and his team of agents at his property firm DDRE? It’s a lot of fun and very glamorous and my guest today is one of the team who you won’t have seen on screen. I met Serge Cowan on a flight to Nice last September when he was going out to look at a property in Monaco and we got into a deep conversation about his life, including his four children. Serge is a global real estate advisor at DDRE who has sold properties in 27 locations and deals with DDREs international sales. Serge’s 16 year old daughter Emily makes an occasional entertaining double act with him on Instagram and there’s a link in the show notes.

In 2002 Serge set up a property business which he told me he felt like he was married to. His wife worked with him too and alongside their professional life they spent five years trying to have a child. In 2007 along came baby Maddie who was born with cerebral palsy who very sadly passed away in 2017. Maddie’s early years also coincided with the recession of 2009-2012 which hammered the business Serge had built. By 2018, a year after Maddie’s death he realised the marriage wasn’t right and their divorced was finalised in 2024.

You’re going to hear us talk about:

• A father’s perspective of the strain and emotional difficulty of raising a profoundly disabled child.
• Battling the SEN system and local education authority for a child with cerebral palsy.
• His marriage coming to an end and walking away from the business he’d built
• Serge’s experience of ‘chronic anxiety’
• Negotiating with French estate agents

I hope you enjoy and extract something useful from my chat with Serge.

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

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Hello Bright Minds, today I’m talking to Baroness Helena Morrissey, ex CEO of Newton Asset Management, founder of the 30% Club and founding ambassador of AJ Bell’s Money Matters campaign to help women feel good about investing. She’s also the mother of nine children and author of A Good Time to Be a Girl.

• We talk about how to ask for a promotion and the power of holding silence when you do.
• The gender ISA gap, pensions and investing for children.
• Helena’s experience of returning to work after nine maternity leaves.
• The psychology of what we wear at work.
• Helena’s top tips for returning to work after a break.

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace