Career planning - let the NI help you achieve what you deserve

摘要

As someone who has never planned their career, I realise I am on shaky ground advising our members how to plan theirs! However, there are key decisions and achievements I made in my career that have certainly helped with how it has developed, maybe not in the way I had expected but in a way that gave me satisfaction and progression. I graduated as an environmental scientist but ended up working in education for the next 35 years. These two worlds finally came together (by accident) in 2002 when I joined the Energy Institute. I also finally made it to chief executive, aged 55, but I suspect had I paid more attention to my own career I could have made it sooner. For women, particularly, this is a challenge. Having children, caring for elderly parents and becoming a single parent are all things that certainly impacted my career. It didn't dampen my determination and I wouldn't do anything differently but it did mean that juggling many more priorities in my life led to ambition taking a back seat for quite a while.