Carly Ryan spent seven years as a clinical exercise physiologist before a job assessing accreditation applications took her somewhere she never pictured. That was thirteen years, five roles and an executive seat ago, and she now leads the regulatory function at Exercise & Sports Science Australia (ESSA). She says she fell into every one of those roles.

If you're an allied health professional around the seven-year mark, wondering where your clinical skills fit beyond treatment, Carly's move from EP into healthcare leadership shows what a career transition into regulation and professional standards actually involves. That includes the move to a desk job, the trade-offs of stepping back from hands-on work, and the introvert's dread of networking.

Great for folks interested in professional association work, professional standards, strategy and quality and safety workstreams.

• How Carly went from assessing accreditation applications to leading ESSA's regulatory function
• How Carly gets career advice as a self-confessed introvert who dreads the cold open
• How to see the transferable skills in your clinical work, using the lens Carly applies to professional standards
• How Carly uses the goal-setting skills from clinical practice to get buy-in for system-level change
• The trade-off Carly made moving from doing the work to leading it

Timestamps

01:54 Why Carly Chose a Career in Exercise Physiology

03:11 Building Confidence and Value in the EP Profession

14:24 Career Pivots: Moving Beyond Clinical Practice

18:58 Mentors, Networking and Creating Career Opportunities

24:51 From Clinical EP to Regulation and Professional Standards

28:45 Transferable Skills for Health Professionals

32:22 Transitioning from Clinical Work to Leadership

39:36 Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement and Listening

49:40 The Future of Exercise Physiology Career Pathways

54:47 Values, Burnout and Knowing When to Move On

59:00 Ethical Practice, Client Feedback and Better Healthcare

65:00 Career Mapping Support for Health Professionals 

About Carly Ryan

Carly Ryan is an exercise physiologist and executive at ESSA, leading professional standards, university program accreditation, and ethics and disciplinary work. She is also a board director of the National Alliance of Self Regulating Health Professions (NASRHP). Seven years of clinical work in lifestyle programs, education and group exercise give her a practitioner's view of what regulation looks like on the ground.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carly-ryan-a4482192/
• ESSA: https://www.essa.org.au
• NASRHP: https://nasrhp.org.au

Carly's roles only made sense once she was in them. StreamAhead maps where your interests and experience sit across the wider spectrum of healthcare work, so you can see your options before you fall into them. https://careercliniq.com/streamahead

What's a role you only understood once you were in it? Connect with Ruth on LinkedIn or Instagram.

Ten years of clinical seniority, and Clare Batkin still chose to start again on a junior wage in a sector she knew very little about.

Clare Batkin is an occupational therapist and founder of Your OT Tutor. She and Ruth explore the decisions that have taken Clare from the ideal part-time job share Clinical Educator role in a hospital to what can be seen as starting all over again. We get underneath the drivers for running your own business and what helps you avoid the traps of comparing whether you are doing enough.

This one's for any health professional who has a strong interest in the education workstream but needs to hear the less traditional ways you can apply your skills to help clients and patient's get the best service. Press play if you're weighing up a move that looks illogical on paper.

• Why do some OTs thrive on hospital structure while others feel boxed in by it?
• What made trading a decade of seniority for a new grad wage feel like the safe option, not the risky one?
• At what point does unpaid, after-hours work stop being generosity and start being a business plan?
• How do you know your business is "enough" when you're the only one deciding what that means?
• Why team up with the OT teaching the exact same course as you?

00:42 Introduction to Clare Batkin's career journey

02:42 Finding your path in OT

06:43 Choosing the right early-career role

13:11 Career experimentation and self-awareness

17:02 From hospital clinician to educator

20:08 A move that changed the career path

26:48 Starting a solo education business

31:14 Finding a niche in OT education

37:37 Building a healthcare education business on your own terms

44:40 Helping OTs build lasting careers

Clare Batkin is an occupational therapist and the founder of Your OT Tutor, an education business supporting OTs working across Australia's hospital, private practice and NDIS sectors. After close to two decades spanning hospital rotations, senior clinical roles and university teaching, she now runs webinars, memberships and clinical education resources focused on the transferable OT skills that hold up across any setting, alongside a growing podcast library.

• Connect with Clare on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clare-batkin/
• Join Clare’s free Learning Library: https://yott.au/learninglibrary
• Become a Your OT Tutor Connector or Alliance member: https://yott.au/membership
• Listen to the “How to be a better OT” podcast: https://yott.au/podcast or on your favourite podcast platform

If this episode has you questioning whether your current role still fits, the StreamAhead Assessment is a good place to start figuring out what would actually suit you better. Learn more about StreamAhead HERE

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drruthvo

Instagram: instagram.com/drruthvo

Plenty of capable people learn to lead by copying whoever's already in charge. It works for a while, right up until it leaves you running on someone else's fuel and still not quite yourself.

Ruth Andermatt is a Canadian self-leadership coach who has spent more than two decades working with executives and emerging leaders, most of them introverts. She was often the only woman in the room, and she has thought hard about what it costs to keep conforming to a style that was never going to fit.

If you're in a non-titled role wishing you had more influence, or eyeing a step into management because it looks like the only way to have impact, this conversation is for you. Ruth draws a clean line between managing people and leading them, and she begins where most leadership advice skips ahead: how you lead yourself. Expect plenty on holding your ground without conforming, guiding the people above you, and what to do when the version of success you've been chasing quietly stops fitting.

• Why conforming to get into leadership tends to run out of road
• The difference between managing people and actually leading them
• Leading the people above you, not only the ones who report to you
• What self-leadership asks of you long before any title arrives
• The cost of staying in survival mode and calling it dedication

Timestamps

01:15 Being the only woman in the room and the pull to conform

05:45 Masculine and feminine leadership, and why most workplaces pick one

08:48 The exhaustion of dancing to someone else's tune just to get hired

13:40 Why a title doesn't make you a leader, and what self-leadership actually means

16:44 Hitting a plateau and shifting your perspective instead of walking away

29:05 The blind spot that holds capable people back, women especially

33:08 Leading the people above you, not just the ones who report to you

41:25 Survival worn as a badge of honour, and the price every choice carries

45:09 Untangling your identity from how you got here and redefining success

55:48 Outgrowing your manager and repositioning without burning the bridge

Ruth Andermatt is a self-leadership coach and consultant and the founder of Andermatt Consulting Experience (A.C.E. Inc) in Canada. A former national-level paddler and UBC graduate, she has coached executives, business owners and emerging leaders for more than twenty years, with a particular focus on women and introverts who lead quietly but effectively. Her view, useful for anyone in a hierarchical field like healthcare, is that leading yourself is the foundation everything else is built on, title or no title.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachruth/
• Website: https://andermattconsulting.com

Career Cliniq Resources

If this conversation has you wondering where your influence and interests actually sit, the StreamAhead Assessment maps your experience across the full spectrum of healthcare work, not just the path you trained for: https://careercliniq.com/streamahead

Connect with Ruth on LinkedIn or Instagram

Bree Murray has never seen a patient. She'll still put "dietitian" on every form she fills in.

She's spent 15 years in professional associations, food industry, health profession regulation, and a job-shared CEO role and has never once questioned whether that makes her a real dietitian. This conversation is for anyone who has.

• Building a dietitian career entirely outside clinical practice
• What personal life seasons reveal about what you actually value
• How a project officer becomes a job-sharing CEO
• The real cost of a portfolio career when you've come from a for-purpose background
• The difference between a career compass and a career plan

Bree Murray is an Australian dietitian with over 15 years of experience spanning professional association work, food industry consulting, health profession regulation, and executive leadership. She currently serves as executive officer for a Council of Deans of Nutrition and Dietetics, supports governance work with self-regulating health professions, and sits on the National Alliance of Self-Regulating Health Professions board. Her career has been built through relationships, referrals, and a consistent willingness to move into unfamiliar territory when the fit is right.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bree-murray-44193528/

If this conversation got you thinking about what's actually guiding your career decisions, the StreamAhead Assessment maps your interests and experience across the full spectrum of healthcare work - not just the path you trained for. 👉 Take the StreamAhead Assessment

What's the moment you realised the shape of your days didn't match what you actually cared about? I'd love to hear it. LinkedIn | Instagram

You're halfway through a degree or deep into a career you're not sure you'll stay in and the loudest fear isn't about what's next. It's that everything you've already invested might be wasted. Keagen Hadley finished an entire OT doctorate he wasn't sure he'd use and it was the very thing that gave him room to build a completely different career.

Keagen Hadley is a regulatory medical writer for a large biotech company. He holds a doctorate in occupational therapy and has spent over a decade in the biotech and pharmaceutical space.

We Explore

• How geographic limitation can become a catalyst for unconventional experience
• Why the financial variable in career decisions deserves more honesty in the helping professions
• How your cognitive wiring reveals itself early and what to do when it doesn't match the clinical path
• Why "regulatory medical writer" misrepresents the actual work of the role
• How credibility gets built in an industry where your healthcare credential doesn't automatically count

Chapters

00:00 Meet Keagen Hadley - regulatory medical writer and OT

03:22 How a small-town CRO in North Dakota opened the door to biotech

08:50 $96K in student loans and the decision to finish anyway

14:14 The lecture that reframed scale and patient impact

19:25 Remote work, flexibility, and family life in biotech

24:48 Starting before you feel ready and selling yourself as a novice

35:56 Why recruiters matter more than applications in this field

45:10 Wrangling physicians who disagree

47:28 AI and regulatory writing

57:25 Why clinicians won't say the money part out loud

Connect with Keagen

• LinkedIn: Keagen Hadley
• Newsletter:  https://cliniciansguide.substack.com/
• What Regulatory Writers Actually Make - https://thecliniciansguide.myflodesk.com/uegisjcpq9
• 6-Month Roadmap to Becoming a Regulatory Medical Writer - https://thecliniciansguide.myflodesk.com/nx48w16db8

Career Cliniq Resources

If you're trying to get clearer on what actually drives your next step, the StreamAhead Assessment will map your interests within healthcare.

👉 Take the StreamAhead Assessment

Connect with Ruth on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Most health professionals spend years building toward a role they're told is the destination. What happens when you get there and realise you're still evolving?

Kristen Hicks-Roof is a registered dietitian and PhD researcher who built a full academic career - tenure, grants, research agendas, and chose to leave it to lead human nutrition at the US National Pork Board, a role that didn't exist before she took it.

This conversation gets into what it's like to be a high performer navigating competitive dynamics, the identity reckoning that happens when your career and your motherhood collide on the same timeline, and what it actually looks like to take clinical skills into an industry most dietitians are taught to distrust. If you've ever felt like you outgrew a role you genuinely valued, or wondered whether the skills you built in practice could belong somewhere completely different, this one will sit with you.

• The fight to prove nutrition's value and why it follows you no matter what setting you're in
• What happens when your drive and the culture around you aren't well matched
• The identity shift from "mother scholar" to something with no established name
• How a 2am LinkedIn scroll during maternity leave became a career turning point
• What dietitians and clinicians misunderstand about working in the food industry

Chapters

• 00:00 Unexpected Career Paths
• 06:31 The Role of Nutrition Professionals
• 17:08 Academia and Career Transition
• 28:26 The Decision to Leave Academia
• 34:01 Navigating Tension in Academia
• 42:46 The Impact of Motherhood on Career
• 49:29 Role in Nutrition Research
• 59:12 Building Connections and Following Passions

Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD is the Director of Human Nutrition at the US National Pork Board, where she oversees research investment and science communication across stakeholder groups from farmers to federal policymakers. A former associate professor with promotion and tenure, her academic research focused on integrating nutrition across healthcare teams and the lived experience of mother scholars in academia. She also hosts the Nutrition Connection podcast.

• LinkedIn: Kristen Hicks-Roof
• Podcast: Nutrition Connection

Wondering where your clinical skills could actually take you? The StreamAhead Assessment helps you map what you've built and where it could go next. 👉 Take the StreamAhead Assessment

Have you ever been in a role where your drive worked against you? Tell us about it. Find us on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Emily Kelly chose physical therapy because a torn ACL at 14 showed her what one-on-one care could do. She found her dream clinic, treated patients for an hour each, and loved the work. Then a new grad started questioning what she believed about pain, and the clinical identity she had spent years building started to come apart.

Emily is now a product manager at Prompt, a health tech company building software for rehabilitation providers in the US.

This conversation covers what it actually took to get from one to the other. A pay structure that punished the qualification it demanded. The emotional cost of being the clinician who takes everything home. A healthcare innovation conference that lit something up. And a series of deliberate, unglamorous decisions that most career transition stories skip over entirely. If you are a health professional who knows something needs to shift but cannot see the steps from where you are, this episode lays them out honestly.

We explore:

• What pain science does to a clinician's sense of who they are in the room
• The emotional cost of clinical empathy that no one talks about at university
• A pay structure that punishes the qualification it demands
• What hiring managers actually notice when a clinician interviews for a non-clinical role
• The unglamorous middle of moving from physical therapy to health tech product management

About Emily Kelly

Emily Kelly is a physical therapist and product manager at Prompt, a health tech company building practice management software for rehabilitation providers. Based in Denver, Colorado, she spent eight years in outpatient physical therapy before moving through customer success and leadership into product.

• LinkedIn: Emily Kelly
• Mentioned: Meredith Caston / The Non-Clinical PT, Lorimer Moseley (pain science researcher), Peter O'Sullivan, Adriaan Louw

Career Cliniq Resources

If this episode has you wondering where else your clinical expertise could take you, the StreamAhead Assessment maps your interests across eight healthcare work streams and shows you options you might not have considered yet.

Take StreamAhead HERE!

Connect with Ruth

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drruthvo/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drruthvo/

The boxes we're handed in healthcare are well-meaning. Your title, your scope, your place in the hierarchy - they exist for good reasons. But they can also become the edges of what you think is possible.

Melissa Gunstone is a Canadian Registered Kinesiologist who graduated, hit the wall most new grads hit, and built her way out of it - not by leaving healthcare, but by refusing to stay inside the box it handed her. What followed is a ground-level account of private practice niching, a team to lead, and a product invented because it didn't exist.

If you're a health professional navigating the gap between your training and what's actually possible - this conversation covers territory your degree never did.

We Explore

• The gap between your credential and what the world does with it
• Why your professional title can work against you
• What more schooling won't give you
• Operating on the periphery of the healthcare system
• Finding your real market by listening, not assuming
• The cost of building a team when you're the only one who cares as much as you do
• Whether your business success can open doors for others in your profession
• How entrepreneurship can arrive before you're ready for the word

About Melissa Gunstone

Melissa Gunstone is a registered kinesiologist based in Ontario, Canada. She is the founder of Home Stretch (in-home kinesiology for seniors) and creator of Sturdey Fall Prevention Tools. She also employs and mentors kinesiologists through her business - making career development as much a part of her mission as client care.

Connect with Melissa

Home Stretch - In-Home Kinesiology for Seniors: https://www.homestretch4seniors.ca

Sturdey Fall Prevention Tools: https://sturdey.com/collections/tools-to-stay-sturdy YouTube - The Fall Prevention Coach: https://youtube.com/@melissathefallpreventioncoach Melissa's marketing guy, Miles at Wondering Concierge: https://wonderingconcierge.com/

Career Cliniq Resources

Wondering which direction your healthcare career could take? The StreamAhead Assessment helps you identify which work streams align with your strengths right now.

👉 https://careercliniq.com/streamahead

When someone says "you need to network," what's your gut reaction? If it's dread mixed with a side of ick, Kaylee Johnson gets it. She's an occupational therapist who's worked across clinical care, health tech, and leadership roles in the US, and we sat down to unpack what networking actually looks like when you're an introvert who'd rather do anything else. We also had some fun comparing Australian and US takes on networking.

This conversation cuts through the schmoozing stereotype to explore networking as something more human: leading with curiosity, asking questions because you genuinely want to know, and figuring out how you can help someone solve a problem. Kaylee shares how she flopped hard in early attempts but eventually landed roles through authentic connections and why LinkedIn doesn't have to feel like performing.

If you've been avoiding networking because it feels transactional, or you're job hunting but worried about word getting back to your current workplace, this episode offers practical reframes and the courage you'll need to step outside your healthcare bubble.

We Explore

• Why networking conversations feel transactional and how to reframe them
• The courage required to network outside your professional comfort zone
• Cultural differences in networking expectations between Australia and the US
• Strategic use of LinkedIn without the performance anxiety
• How to de-risk job search networking when you're worried about your current employer finding out
• How networking plays a role in preventing career and performance stagnation

About Kaylee Johnson

Kaylee Johnson is an Occupational Therapist with 15 years of experience across clinical practice, health tech, and leadership roles in the northeast United States. As a self-described introvert, Kaylee has navigated multiple career transitions and now brings insights about authentic networking, cross-functional collaboration, and career evolution for healthcare professionals who want to explore beyond traditional clinical pathways.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaylee-m-johnson/

Career Cliniq Resources

If this conversation has you thinking about what else might be possible in your healthcare career, the StreamAhead Assessment can help you identify which work streams align with your current interests and strengths. Sometimes clarity starts with simply knowing what's out there.

Access the StreamAhead Assessment: https://careercliniq.com/streamahead

What's your biggest networking challenge right now? Drop me a message and let me know.

Connect with me:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drruthvo/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drruthvo/

What becomes possible when you stop waiting to feel ready enough?

Dr Anum Ali's undergraduate transcript didn't predict where she'd land. After six years as a crisis counsellor, she doubted graduate schools would take a chance on her, until a mentor told her that her GPA didn't tell her whole story. An adult ADHD diagnosis during her master's reframed years of academic struggle as a brain that works differently, and she built a career that uses how she thinks rather than fighting it: VP of Clinical at a health tech startup, university professor, clinical supervisor, private practice therapist, and founder of a youth mental health non-profit. Her PhD research on South Asian parents and digital wellness grew out of her own childhood experience of online bullying.

We Explore

• Navigating healthcare as an immigrant and first-generation student
• What happens when a mentor sees beyond your transcript
• Getting an adult ADHD diagnosis and rebuilding your career narrative
• Saying yes and walking into rooms where you're not sure you belong
• Turning painful experiences into meaningful research
• Protecting your compassion when burnout threatens to erode it

About Dr Anum Ali

Dr Anum Ali is a licensed professional counsellor and clinical mental health researcher working across several healthcare sectors at once: VP of Clinical at a digital wellness startup building AI-powered parental guidance tools, a master's-level counselling educator and clinical supervisor, and a private practitioner specialising in culturally responsive therapy for South Asian communities. She founded DigiWell Foundation, a Texas non-profit focused on youth mental health and digital wellbeing, and her PhD examined how South Asian parents navigate adolescent social media use and mental health stigma. She's the first woman from her village in Pakistan to earn a PhD.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alianumtx/
• DigiWell Foundation: https://www.digiwellfoundation.org/
• TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfsNvFt--iI

Ready to explore what else might be possible? The StreamAhead Assessment helps you see which work streams align with how you actually work best.

What room are you not walking into because you're waiting to feel like you belong there?
Find me on LinkedIn or Instagram.