The beginning
I built my career the hard way. And loved every minute of it.
I grew up with a strong work ethic and a hunger for achievement. I climbed the corporate ladder fast, and kept climbing. By 28, I was one of the youngest leaders heading up a marketing department at Diageo globally. I flew all over the world. I had the title, the lifestyle, the beautiful home. Everything I'd worked for.
The breaking point
At 32, I quit. Completely burnt out.
I was on a broadening assignment in Chile when it happened. A difficult new boss. Confidence I'd spent years building, quietly eroded. I wasn't sleeping. My wheels were spinning, working weekends to try to catch up, never catching up.
When it caused my relationship of four years to fall apart, I left. The relief was extraordinary.
I took 12 months off. Travelled Central America. Did a lot of meditation and breathwork, before that was a thing.
"The relief of leaving was extraordinary. But within months I knew: I didn't actually want to quit corporate."
Going back
I returned. But this time, differently.
I'd invested too much to walk away. I was good at it. It was paying for a quality of life I valued. So I went back, but this time, I was much clearer about what I wanted and what I wasn't willing to sacrifice.
I had a vision. My work-life balance was good. I was achieving extraordinary things. I grew my team from a standing start to 60+ people across Latin America. Four years later, I had my son.
Everything shifted again. The clarity I'd built on my career suddenly felt less certain. My priorities changed. I decided to step back. But I also had shares vesting. So I stayed another ten months.
The counterintuitive bit
I got promoted while preparing to leave.
Leaving gave me permission. Permission to say no. To stop jumping into every meeting. To stop fighting every battle. To stop holding unrelenting standards of perfection for everything my team touched.
I focused only on the highest-impact projects. Everything else? Delegated, deferred, or dropped.
And then I got promoted, while actively preparing to leave. I'd stepped back, focused only on the essentials, built capability in my team so they could take over. That was exactly what made the difference.
“What this showed me was that I could achieve so much more by being ruthlessly focused on what drove impact instead of trying to do it all, for everyone.”
Building the method
Was it just me?
In 2024 I interviewed 50 women in senior corporate leadership across three groups: those on the edge of burnout, those who'd survived it like me, and the rare few who seemed to be thriving with their boundaries intact. Women from law, tech, FMCG, retail, finance.
The patterns were remarkably consistent.
The consistency of those insights gave me the confidence to codify a solution: a method to get off the road to burnout and back into a place of genuinely enjoying the work.
And so Vibrant Leader was born.