Today's guest is Stephanie Matthews. Steph has worked her way up in the marketing and communications industry, starting out in advertising research at Channel 4 and gaining experience at a myriad of companies from ITV to News Australia: working in the UK and Australia to hone her skills. She recently moved to join Virgin as a Senior Campaign manager in London. Steph talks about how Virgin is a company that strongly aligns with her personal values.

In her spare time she is the President of the Women's network Bloom. Bloom strives to ensure women have equal opportunity in the communications industry. They work to future-proof women's careers, drive industry change and also run a mentoring programme to pay it forward to the next generation of women.

In today's episode we cover a number of topics which are common themes to lots of women. We have a very open and honest chat about the importance of not comparing yourself to others, understanding your values and scripting in family time to enable better work-life balance.

Read more about Bloom: https://www.bloomuk.org

Steph nominates Jane Evans: https://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/jane-evans-return-invisible-women

More about Shine Theory: https://www.shinetheory.com

Backing music: by "RSPN" by Blank and Kytt courtesy of Free Music Archive http://freemusicarchive.org

This week my guest is the amazing Lyndsay Morgan the operations director at Climb online, a digital marketing agency. She is an absolute force of energy, ideas and organisation. Only last week she was instrumental in coordinating an event for the Marketing Acadedy Foundation which raised £26k to assist young people from challenging backgrounds to get into marketing.

We talk about life in a start up, learning on the job and cindy gallops reassuring words that developing experience and confidence takes time!

Lyndsay recommends:

Mentoring moments - for mentoring and advice from afar: https://www.forbes.com/podcasts/mentoring-moments/#7eb6389776e3

Anything from the brilliant Cindy Gallop: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/dont-stop-us-now/e/56411199

And a fact check - there IS a word for the love of dogs!

The technical term for those who love dogs is Cynophilist. And the love for a dog is called Canophilia. But, I think this term is too technical and is less used. It is better to call them as 'Dog Lovers' as this word depicts that the persons love dogs. 🐕❤️🐶

More about Shine Theory: https://www.shinetheory.com

Backing music: by "RSPN" by Blank and Kytt courtesy of Free Music Archive http://freemusicarchive.org

My first guest is Amy Kean, Head of Strategic Innovation at the media agency Starcom and the author of The Little Girl Who Gave Zero Fucks (amongst other short stories and poems). We has an absolute delight of a chat, we talking about imposter syndrome, confidence, keeping control of your emotions and creating and self-publishing a book.

My mission when I set out to create this podcast was first and foremost to showcase collaboration and support! In particular, as someone who is interested in gender equality and seeing women portrayed more accurately in the media and a greater presence of women in leadership positions, I wanted to start with shining a light on collaborative, creative and inspiring women.

A term that sums up the sentiment and mission of this podcast perfectly is 'shine theory', coined by Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow. It's based on the simple premise that "I don't shine if you don't shine" and how having powerful friends and being inspired by rather than jealous of the successes of other people can only be a good thing!

So for these series of interviews, I will be surrounding myself with wonderful, shiny, clever people who in turn shine a light an inspiring women they know at the end of each interview. Podcast pay it forward.

More about Shine Theory: https://www.shinetheory.com

Backing music: by "RSPN" by Blank and Kytt courtesy of Free Music Archive http://freemusicarchive.org