Storyteller. Strategist. Behaviourist. And someone who has navigated exactly what you’re navigating.

Stories have been my obsession for as long as I can remember. It started with Greek myths at school, then comic books and science fiction, culminating with studying French and German literature at university.

I didn’t realise it then, but I was on the journey to understanding how stories shape the way human beings make sense of the world. An Arts education was followed by an MBA teaching me how organisations and the people inside them actually work. And most recently an MSc in Coaching and Behavioural Change that brought all of this together – what does it mean to know who you are?

In between, I spent twenty years at BT in senior strategy and innovation roles, and the years before and after that in consulting, working with some of the biggest names in the technology and telecoms sector.

As I approached 50, I felt something was missing. Like I had lost my way. The career was fine on paper. The rewards had come. And quietly, gradually, I had started to wonder whether any of it still fit. Was it just something about midlife? Was this just how it was going to be until retirement? Could I get away with treading water until then?

I started reading authors such as Arthur Brooks and Chip Conley, who talked about midlife chrysalises rather than midlife crises. So as a throw of the dice, I enrolled in a professional executive coaching course at Henley Business School. A leap of faith if you will.

I could never have imagined on that first day that four years later I would leave Henley with a coaching MSc and find myself reinvigorated with a sense of purpose, thanks to research that focused on midlife career transitions. Specifically: what actually happens when experienced professionals leave careers they’ve spent decades building, and whether the Hero’s Journey, the ancient storytelling framework behind films such as Star Wars, The Lion King and The Hunger Games, accurately describes what they go through.

What I found is that most people don’t suddenly choose to change careers in midlife. The desire builds slowly, over years. Identity erodes before it ruptures. And when people come through the other side, they don’t become someone new, they recover someone they’d gradually buried under decades of professional performance. These transitions carry meaning if you know how to read them.

This runs through everything I do, through my work as a Narrative Coach, and as Managing Partner at Cambridge Management Consulting, where narrative shapes how I approach strategy and organisational change as much as individual coaching.