Some conversations change what a room is willing to see.
I speak about women, midlife, identity, ambition, leadership and what happens when the life you've spent years building begins asking something different of you.
My talks combine founder experience, lived experience and the voices of women participating in my ongoing midlife research.
I speak in rooms ranging from leadership conferences and industry events to women's events, founder communities and conversations about wellbeing, identity and what's next.
The aim isn't simply to create awareness.
It's to change what people notice when they leave the room.
Why some of your most experienced women are questioning everything, and what workplaces keep getting wrong.
Midlife can arrive in a woman's career at precisely the moment organisations expect her to be at the height of her professional certainty.
- She has experience.
- Capability.
- Relationships.
- Judgement.
- Leadership.
She may begin questioning:
- How she works.
- Why she works.
- The cost of leadership.
- What ambition means now.
- What she is prepared to tolerate.
- Who she has spent decades becoming.
- And whether the workplace she succeeded inside still fits.
From the outside, organisations may interpret this as disengagement.
- Loss of confidence.
- Burnout.
- Reduced ambition.
- Or simply an employee who has “changed.”
This keynote asks a different question:
What if the woman hasn't become less capable?
What if she has become less willing to abandon herself in order to succeed?
The keynote explores:
- The realities women are describing in midlife.
- Why this stage is bigger than a menopause conversation.
- Identity shifts and their relationship to work.
- The tension between capability and capacity.
- Why traditional markers of ambition can change.
- What organisations commonly misread.
- The implications for leadership and retention.
- How organisations can respond with greater intelligence and humanity.
Who it's for:
- Leadership conferences.
- Corporate events.
- People & Culture programs.
- Women's leadership events.
- Industry conferences.
- Executive forums.
- International Women's Day programming.
- Women's networks.
- Organisations focused on retention and workforce culture.
What the room leaves with:
- A broader understanding of midlife.
- Language for conversations many people struggle to have.
- Insight into why experienced women may begin reconsidering work.
- A stronger understanding of what retention requires beyond policy.
- Practical questions leaders can take back into their organisations.
A more human understanding of what may be happening to the woman sitting beside them.
Beyond the keynote
Who Olivia is in the room
After 20+ years building businesses and brands, Olivia began an ongoing body of conversations with women about what was changing in the middle of their lives.
Her speaking brings together founder experience, original qualitative research and the lived reality of women navigating ambition, identity, work and change.
She is equally at home in a leadership room, on a conference stage, in a founder conversation or speaking directly to women about what comes next.