Hello Bright Minds, my guest today is Elena Gorman, a UX designer at an experience transformation studio in the north of England. She’s a mother two of two, married to Tim and has two naughty cats, Bella and Isaac, and lives in Gateshead.
Elena experienced PND after her first child and again after her second. Whilst working as a project manager she stumbled across UX design and fell in love with it and it’s totally changed her career and where she sees it going. She also has PhD in theology and wanted to be a costume designer but never followed it up.
In this episode we cover:
A book Elena read that helped her through her PND is What Am I Thinking: Having a Baby After Postpartum Depression by Karen Kleiman
She also found “Squiggly Careers” very helpful for her career change by Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper – and when we’d finished recording she said she was taking some time this afternoon to go and read “She’s in Ctrl” by Anne-Marie Imafidon. This reminded me of the advice Emmie Faust gave in episode 52 about coming back from burnout and how she was learning to stop doing, doing, doing and to be able to take time to sit and read.
I also wanted to mention the work of an organisation I first read about in The Times over a decade ago called careershifters – their website is a go-to destination for people who want to make a career change and a member of our coaching team, Shiobhaun, does some work with them so I can whole-heartedly say what they’re doing is good quality.
Finally, Elena talked about the environment Professor Sue Black has created at the University of Durham, and that’s uncommon practice.
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