🔍 What You’ll Learn:

• Why staying in academia isn’t the only way to make an impact in health and science
• How to recognize the warning signs that a traditional path might not be right for you
• What the “gender brain drain” is—and how women are disproportionately pushed out of research careers
• How to bootstrap a mission-led social enterprise while juggling a full-time job and kids
• What makes a sustainable business model work in the women-in-STEMM space and strategies to make your finance works
• Why you don’t need to start big to build something meaningful—you need consistency and clarity

🧠 About the Guest:

Dr. Melina Georgousakis is the founder of Franklin Women, a social enterprise and professional community working to keep women in health and medical research careers. Starting out as a vaccine scientist with a PhD, Melina transitioned into policy, then corporate healthcare—each move revealing more about the gaps in support and career progression for women in STEMM. With no business training but a clear mission, she built Franklin Women into a national initiative that offers mentoring, workshops, and ecosystem partnerships to support women’s long-term success in science.

📌 Episode Highlights:

00:00 The spark moment on a plane—realizing the gap for women in health

03:00 Why she left academia—and what she learned in the lab

08:00 Translating science into public health impact

11:00 Moving to corporate: navigating fears of “going to the dark side”

14:00 Spotting the systemic issues pushing women out of research

17:00 Designing Franklin Women: vision, values, and sustainable funding

22:00 Why she named it after Rosalind Franklin—and what it means today

25:00 Choosing social enterprise over charity: making women’s issues profitable

29:00 Growing a business on the side of a full-time job (and raising kids)

33:00 The leap: going full-time without a salary and what made it possible

36:00 Funding the mission: balancing impact and income with boundaries

40:00 Mapping out business models, pitches, and social enterprise growth

44:00 Overcoming self-doubt, feedback loops, and founder fatigue

47:00 Building events for real accessibility—and learning from flops

50:00 Reflecting on privilege, bias, and the importance of allyship

53:00 Owning your hard work while acknowledging structural advantage

55:00 Final thoughts on joy, purpose, and trusting your own evolution

🔗 Resources Mentioned:

• Franklin Women – Official Website
• Dr. Melina Georgousakis on LinkedIn
• Boosting Female Founders Grant (Aus)
• Rosalind Franklin – X-ray Crystallographer
• She Said That – Book of women’s speeches

🤔 Reflection Time:

• Are you on a path by design—or just following the default?
• What’s one thing you’d build to solve a gap you’ve personally experienced?
• What would it take to make your passion sustainable—not just inspiring?

Want to craft a career story that opens doors?

I help STEMM professionals speak with clarity, confidence, and purpose and show up as thought leaders —so the right opportunities find you.

📬 Let’s connect: angeliquegreco.com.au | LinkedIn 

⭐️ Help More People Reinvent Their Careers

If you enjoyed this episode, please:

• ✅ Leave a quick ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🙏
• ♻️ Share it with a friend who's questioning their path in STEM

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Overthinkers Beware!

Have you ever fallen into the rabbit hole? Thinking and thinking, stuck into analysis paralysis?

🔍 What You’ll Learn:

• What happens when a STEMM career path no longer fits—and how to pivot with purpose
• Why overthinking is one of the most overlooked barriers to career change and leadership
• How to leave a corporate job without a plan—and build a business from experimentation
• Practical tools to develop "audacity"—the mindset muscle that makes action possible
• Why quitting isn’t failure—and how to reframe sunk cost fallacy and reversibility
• How to create visibility and traction by building in public and gathering feedback early

🧠 About the Guest:

Lison Mage is a French-Australian author, keynote speaker, and high-performance coach who started her career in engineering and corporate tech, working at companies like Oracle and Salesforce. After feeling stuck and unfulfilled, she took a leap—leaving the corporate world to become a certified coach and eventually publishing her book Act Before You Overthink. Lison now helps professionals across Australia make confident decisions, overcome perfectionism, and lead more aligned, action-oriented lives.

📌 Episode Highlights:

00:00 Quitting corporate to “unbecome”—and rebuild from scratch

03:00 From childhood in France to over 33 countries and a STEMM degree

05:00 Trading electronics for human behavior: moving into sales

08:00 The slow realization that success ≠ happiness

10:00 How curiosity—not clarity—sparked a career pivot

13:00 Experimenting with coaching, retreats, and finding product-market fit

15:00 Why overthinking is often about too much convergent thinking

17:00 Finding mentors and navigating imposter syndrome

20:00 Blogging before book deals: building audience through newsletters

23:00 “I became an overthinker to write for overthinkers”

26:00 Decision reversibility: how to think about going back or changing lanes

30:00 Emotional support, shared responsibility, and building a personal success team

33:00 Pet-sitting, lifestyle downsizing, and creative financial strategies

36:00 How to ground confidence when you feel like the least experienced person in the room

38:00 Relevance over experience—and why that matters in entrepreneurship

40:00 Writing in a second language, using standing desks, and habit stacking

43:00 Flops, tears, and the value of being seen in your full humanity

45:00 Privilege, locus of control, and redefining what success looks like

🔗 Resources Mentioned:

• Lison Mage – Official Website
• Act Before You Overthink – Book

🤔 Reflection Time:

• Are you using overthinking to delay action—or gathering just enough data to move?
• If your current role no longer fits, what “audacious” step could you take this week?
• Do you have a team—mentors, supporters, challengers—that helps you move forward?

Want to craft a career story that opens doors?

I help STEMM professionals speak with clarity, confidence, and purpose and show up as thought leaders —so the right opportunities find you.

📬 Let’s connect: angeliquegreco.com.au | LinkedIn 

⭐️ Help More People Reinvent Their Careers

If you enjoyed this episode, please:

• ✅ Leave a quick ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🙏
• ♻️ Share it with a friend who's questioning their path in STEM

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

🎙️ From Science Journalist to STEM Media Entrepreneur: How Heather Catchpole Co-Founded Refraction Media to Transform STEM Storytelling

After a decade in science journalism, Heather Catchpole co-founded Refraction Media—now publishing 2 million magazines globally—proving there’s a scalable, sustainable business in making STEM visible, visual, and inspiring ( and recognized by Barack Obama for their impact).

🔍 What You’ll Learn:

• How to directly transfer your work experience into your own business
• How to be unapologetically ambitious ( and pull it off)
• Why knowing your audience inside out is the secret sauce to scaling sustainably
• Overcome the detractors
• How strategic partnerships (like Google) can take your startup global in under two years
• How to choose your growth model to fit the life you want

🧠 About the Guest:

Heather Catchpole is the co-founder of Refraction Media, an award-winning science media company creating high-impact STEM content for students, governments, and global tech companies. With a background in geoscience, a Master’s in science communication, and experience at CSIRO, ABC, and the Powerhouse Museum, Heather has built a powerhouse brand now delivering 2 million magazines a year and supporting 75,000 digital users per month.

📌 Episode Highlights:

00:00 Geoscience beginnings and discovering the joy of storytelling

04:00 Why she left the lab for a Master’s in Science Communication

07:00 ABC, CSIRO, and editing national journals as a freelance science writer

10:00 Career pivots, parenthood, and wearing “multiple hats” in media

12:00 How to tell science stories in ways that make people care

14:00 Founding Refraction Media: the story behind the name and mission

16:00 From virtual nuclear reactors to national school programs

18:00 Co-founding with Karen Taylor-Brown over a pub lunch

20:00 Bootstrapping, business modelling, and cash flow basics

22:00 The Google connection—and getting listed by Barack Obama

24:00 Why diverse teams matter in tech and science content

26:00 Growing fast vs. growing sustainably—and making the right choice

30:00 Hiring, managing, and why co-founding with the right person matters

33:00 Staying profitable, going global, and the power of reputation

35:00 Strategic mindset, managing risk, and trusting your gut

40:00 Burnout and resilience: how to recognize and manage both

44:00 Kids, guilt, and building a professional identity alongside parenthood

46:00 On privilege, imposter syndrome, and redefining success as a woman in STEMM

49:00 Gender gaps in STEM and how inclusive storytelling changes outcomes

51:00 Final reflections: team science, happy businesses, and brave leaps

🔗 Resources Mentioned:

• Refraction Media – Official Website
• Careers with STEM – Student & Teacher Platform
• Heather Catchpole on LinkedIn
• Book: I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong

🤔 Reflection Time:

• What’s your version of a “pub lunch idea”—a business that combines what you know with what the world needs?
• Are you clear on your audience? Could knowing them better be the key to growth or reinvention?
• What kind of business do you want to lead—a startup for scale or a sustainable niche you can love long-term?

Want to craft a career story that opens doors?

I help STEMM professionals speak with clarity, confidence, and purpose and show up as thought leaders —so the right opportunities find you.

📬 Let’s connect: angeliquegreco.com.au | LinkedIn 

⭐️ Help More People Reinvent Their Careers

If you enjoyed this episode, please:

• ✅ Leave a quick ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🙏
• ♻️ Share it with a friend who's questioning their path in STEM

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

STEMM entrepreneurs wannabe, listen up!

Have you ever thought that there was something more that you could bring?

Is it an idea or perhaps a change you want to see happen? For the last few months, I've bebusen meeting with some pretty amazing people who have done just that. If you want some inspiration, a little nudge or gold nuggets of wisdom from people who have taken the leap and created their own vison and their own business,

Listen to multiple hats. A show about STEMM professionals who have gone off script and carved their own path beyond the tracks that were set for them. Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Medicine. How they found they why and what it takes to make it happens!

Launching on March, 21st (2023)

Hey, if you like the show, please leave a review.

You can visit my website - angeliquegreco.com.au 

Want to craft a career story that opens doors?

I help STEMM professionals speak with clarity, confidence, and purpose and show up as thought leaders —so the right opportunities find you.

📬 Let’s connect: angeliquegreco.com.au | LinkedIn 

⭐️ Help More People Reinvent Their Careers

If you enjoyed this episode, please:

• ✅ Leave a quick ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🙏
• ♻️ Share it with a friend who's questioning their path in STEM

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.