The Wobbly Middle: Women's Careers In Midlife

Executive MBA, going back to study as a mature student, and finding your tribe in midlife with Urmi Dutta-Roy (CFO, The Folio Society) and Louise Welch (ex-PlayStation, now working fractionally) are executive MBA alumnae and good friends.
In this conversation they talk about the difficulty women have creating space to investing in themselves; about stepping away from the nine-to-five, and how "the 100 year life" changes our attitudes towards learning and the shape of our careers. They are honest about the trade-offs (financial, practical, emotional) and the rewards too of going back to study: community, confidence, a lens on the world that a job title alone will never give you.
If you are feeling a career plateau, wondering whether it's too late to go back to study, or simply looking for your tribe in the wobbly middle, listen listen listen.
Thank You to Our Sponsor — AJ Bell Money Matters
Thank you to AJ Bell Money Matters for supporting this episode. The AJ Bell Money Matters podcast is created for women by women, featuring news, information and inspiring interviews to help build your knowledge and confidence around finances. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Please click here to show your support and find out more about AJ Bell: https://www.ajbell.co.uk/investment/women-and-investing?utm_source=moneymatters&utm_medium=partnership&utm_campaign=wobblymiddle
Key Topics
Executive MBA for women — why Urmi and Louise did theirs, the financial and time trade-offs, and why women in their cohorts had to work harder to justify the space
Permission to succeed — the internal and external negotiation women do before investing in themselves, and why men in the same room didn't seem to need to
Going back to study as a mature student — the joy of learning for its own sake when you are no longer 19 and chasing a grade
Fractional working — what it looks like, why society struggles to classify it, and why "what do you do?" is a rubbish question we should start relishing
Identity beyond job title — Louise on the first day of her MBA cohort, watching everyone introduce themselves by job title, and realising she didn't want to
Women in male-dominated industries— Louise on gaming in the early 2000s, and the message younger women absorbed that to succeed you had to "be like a man"
Asking for help — Louise on unlearning the baby-boomer "keep your head down" mentality, and discovering that most people want to help
Links
- The Wobbly Middle on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wobbly-middle/id1767850643
- The Wobbly Middle on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YhwsBch8Q9vAOUBBfusIv
- Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep29-urmi-louise
- Find out more about The Wobbly Middle: https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com/about?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep29-urmi-louise
If You Enjoyed This Episode
You might also love Season 3 Episode 8 Shefaly Yogendra, another conversation about non-linear careers, portfolio working and the gatekeepers women meet in midlife. If this episode made you think about what your next chapter might look like beyond a traditional job title, Shefaly's boardroom journey is the natural next listen.
Help Us Grow
If this episode resonated with you, here are two ways you can make a real difference:
Leave a review here — it only takes a moment, and it's one of the best ways to help new listeners find the show. Every review counts.
Share this episode with a friend— if you know a woman thinking about an executive MBA, returning to study, or wondering whether to step off the nine-to-five, send her this one.
Thank you for listening and for supporting independent podcasts.

Non-linear careers, midlife career change and what it takes to walk into a boardroom. Shefaly Yogendra - engineer, Cambridge PhD, portfolio board director and author of Uncharted Spaces: Reset the Agenda. Reimagine the Boardroom - joins Patsy on her book’s launch day.
Curiosity and patience are the golden threads running through Shefaly's life, and in this episode they take us from beehives in rural Kenya to onion warehouses in India, by way of a black cab in London.
If you’re at a career crossroads, feeling returning ambition, or quietly reimagining what a second act looks like, listen as together they unpack metacognitive reflections that will help you carry your capabilities into the next chapter.
Thank you to our sponsor AJ BELL MONEY MATTERS
Thank you to AJ Bell Money Matters for supporting this episode. The AJ Bell Money Matters podcast is created for women by women featuring news, information and inspiring interviews to help build your knowledge and confidence around finances. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Please click here to show support of our podcast and to find out more about AJ Bell:
https://www.ajbell.co.uk/investment/women-and-investing?utm_source=moneymatters&utm_medium=partnership&utm_campaign=wobblymiddle
Listener Exercise — Channel Shefaly’s Curiosity
Over the next week or two, take something you’re chewing over — a challenge, a direction, a problem, a decision. Make a list of questions about it. Then drill down: what further questions do you need to ask to find the answers to those questions? In the next episode, we’ll think about what to do with them.
About Shefaly Yogendra
Shefaly studied engineering, earned an MBA from one of India’s most prestigious business schools, completed a PhD in decision making (and a Masters in Technology Policy) at Cambridge. Over the last decade she has served on the boards of several of the UK’s leading listed investment trusts, co-founded a luxury-tech startup, and been COO of an AI company. Her book Uncharted Spaces: Reset the Agenda. Reimagine the Boardroom publishes on 14 April 2026.
Key Topics
The non-linear career — why Shefaly’s path through engineering, MBA, Cambridge PhD, MIT, a luxury-tech startup, an AI COO role and a portfolio of board seats was never going to be a straight line
Returning ambition in midlife — the women who step away in their 30s and 40s and still carry their curiosity with them
Curiosity and patience — two qualities that don’t seem to sit together until they do
The board director career path — what non-execs actually do, how it differs from the executive suite, and why it isn’t a retirement gig or a “jolly”
How Shefaly broke in — spotting the Board Apprentice Programme in a Sunday newspaper in 2015, being coached by headhunter Carol Rosati, and the interview where her small talk about Uber became big talk
Metacognitive reflection — how to describe the higher-level capabilities that actually travel with you
The psychological shift — detaching your identity from a job title and a company name
Margaret Wanjiku’s Smart Hive — a young Kenyan engineer using IoT, solar panels and mobile phones to save collapsing beehives, and the ecosystem around them
Kalyani Shinde’s onion warehouses — IoT sensing to catch rot before anyone can smell it, in Asia’s largest onion trading hub
Belief as the biggest limiter — Sam Smith of Super Scalers on what holds women back from scaling, and why seeing other women do it matters
The road not taken — Robert Frost only offered two roads. Shefaly thinks there are many — and many more uncharted ones

📺 Also on YouTube
Want to see as well as hear? An extended version of this conversation will be available on The Wobbly Middle YouTube channel — including extra material that didn't make the podcast edit. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/vvifAdOQ2os?si=XnVjDhJhWDndrkYY
Help Us Grow
If this episode resonated with you, there are two simple ways you can make a real difference:
Leave a review here — it only takes a moment, and it's one of the best ways to help new listeners find the show. Every review counts.
Share this episode with a friend — if you know someone who might be in their own wobbly middle, send them this one. Sometimes knowing you're not alone is all it takes.

Want more from Patsy between episodes? Subscribe to the newsletter — it’s where the conversation continues:
https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep28-shefaly-yogendra

Want more from Patsy between episodes? Subscribe to the newsletter — it’s where the conversation continues:
https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep28-shefaly-yogendra

Thank you for listening and for supporting independent podcasts.

From behind the scenes at the world's biggest fashion shows to the science behind the gut microbiome - Catherine Hurley Arbibe shows us a new road to gut health.
Catherine read medicine at Oxford, modelled internationally gracing the covers of Vogue, Marie Claire and Cosmo, and is now the founder of NEWROAD30, a gut health supplement developed with scientists from Oxford, INRAE Paris and Queen's University Belfast. Catherine talks candidly about the reality of life as an international model, what motherhood changed, and how she found her way back to science.
Together with guest co-host and investigative wellness journalist Rebecca Newman, Catherine helps us cut through the noise on gut health supplements, the emerging research on microplastics and three clean living changes that actually make a difference - including the sunscreen question we all need answered.
This is an episode about returning to ours roots, career changes in our 40s, plant diversity, our beautiful brains and finding our way back to something that energises us.
Thank you to our sponsor AJ BELL MONEY MATTERS
Thank you to AJ Bell Money Matters for supporting this episode. The AJ Bell Money Matters podcast is created for women by women featuring news, information and inspiring interviews to help build your knowledge and confidence around finances. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Please click here to show support of our podcast and to find out more about AJ Bell:
https://www.ajbell.co.uk/investment/women-and-investing?utm_source=moneymatters&utm_medium=partnership&utm_campaign=wobblymiddle
📺 Also on YouTube
Want to see as well as hear? An extended version of this conversation is available on The Wobbly Middle YouTube channel — including extra material that didn't make the podcast edit. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/vvifAdOQ2os?si=XnVjDhJhWDndrkYY
Guest Co-Host: Rebecca Newman
Rebecca Newman is an investigative wellness journalist who has written for the Financial Times, The Guardian and GQ. She has a particular interest in the science of the gut microbiome, women's health and evidence-based wellness. She joined Patsy for The Wobbly Middle's vision board episode and is back this week to dig into the science with Catherine.
Key Topics
Career pivot in midlife — from medicine to modelling to founding a science-backed gut health supplement
The gut microbiome — why it matters more than we realised and how to support it
The American Gut Project — the research behind eating 30 different plants a week
Gut health supplements — what to look for, what to avoid, and why food state matters
Microplastics — the emerging research and what fibre has to do with it
The backstage reality — what life at the top of the modelling world was really like
Clean living edits — three practical changes Catherine has made at home
Women's health in midlife — plant diversity for a healthy gut

Links
NEWROAD30: https://newroad.life/?srsltid=AfmBOoo5nHDwZ8p4mpgOQDPPP_osOT6LynaaMgrt7pC48nSCMGHKu00Y
Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com/
Find out more about The Wobbly Middle: https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com/
The Wobbly Middle on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wobbly-middle/id1767850643
The Wobbly Middle on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YhwsBch8Q9vAOUBBfusIv

Time to make your action board
🎯 Time To Make Your Action Board
Before you leave — if this episode has you thinking about what you want your next chapter to look like, we have just the episode for you.
Do action boards actually work, or are they just arts and crafts with ambition? In our vision board episode, Rebecca Newman draws on the research of neuroscientist Dr Tara Swart, author of The Source, to explain what's really going on in our brains when we make an action board — and why it might be exactly the tool you need in your wobbly middle. Then theory meets practice as Patsy and Rebecca head to the craft room, where scissors and glue meet cork board, to make their own.
It turns out an action board isn't about magical thinking. It's a daily point of orientation — keeping you facing forward.
👉 Listen to the vision board episode here:
Help Us Grow
If this episode resonated with you, there are two simple ways you can make a real difference:
Leave a review here — it only takes a moment, and it's one of the best ways to help new listeners find the show. Every review counts.
Share this episode with a friend — if you know someone who might be in their own wobbly middle, send them this one. Sometimes knowing you're not alone is all it takes.

Thank you for listening and for supporting independent podcasters.

Women in midlife came of age between punk and the Spice Girls. That spirit doesn't leave you. If you're returning to work after a career break, rebuilding career confidence, or just need a shot of self-belief, Jacquie and Rebecca will have you powering up.
Jacquie Duckworth worked in the media on iconic brands ranging from Country Life to FHM, Grazia, and the Times before co-founding Visible Start, a free 10-week career returner programme. Rebecca Byrne is one of its graduates: a former actor and NCT trainer who now works in community health — and someone who had, as she puts it, "never worked in an office." Together, they bring verve, wit, and a fierce refusal to accept that midlife women should settle for invisibility.
This conversation crackles with energy. We talk about why ageism at work is a commercial own goal, why transferable skills from life outside the office are exactly what employers need, and why a midlife career pivot is not starting over — it's building forward. If you're navigating a career break, wondering whether you still have a place at the table, or simply need reminding that your best work may still be ahead of you — this one's for you.
Thank you to our sponsor AJ BELL MONEY MATTERS
Thank you to AJ Bell Money Matters for supporting this episode. The AJ Bell Money Matters podcast is created for women by women featuring news, information and inspiring interviews to help build your knowledge and confidence around finances. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Please click here to show support of our podcast and to find out more about AJ Bell:
https://www.ajbell.co.uk/investment/women-and-investing?utm_source=moneymatters&utm_medium=partnership&utm_campaign=wobblymiddle
Links
Visible Start: https://www.visiblestart.com
Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep26-jacquie-duckworth-rebecca-byrne
Find out more about The Wobbly Middle: https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com/about?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep26-jacquie-duckworth-rebecca-byrne
The Wobbly Middle on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wobbly-middle/id1767850643
The Wobbly Middle on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YhwsBch8Q9vAOUBBfusIv

If You Enjoyed This Episode
You might also love our conversation with Nina Van Schaick in Season 1, Episode 3. A midwife who witnessed firsthand the failures in maternal care — and decided to do something about it. With less than 2% of pharmaceutical R&D dedicated to maternal health, Nina didn't wait for permission. She took action herself. Another woman who saw a gap, backed herself, and built something. Sound familiar?
Help Us Grow
If this episode resonated with you, there are two simple ways you can make a real difference:
Leave a review here — it only takes a moment, and it's one of the best ways to help new listeners find the show. Every review counts.
Share this episode with a friend — if you know someone who might be in their own wobbly middle, send them this one. Sometimes knowing you're not alone is all it takes.

Thank you for listening and for supporting independent podcasters.

Comedy as a midlife career move — and why humour is one of the most powerful tools for change.
What if the thing that makes you funny is the same thing that makes you powerful? Journalist, author and activist, Lynn Harris, has spent three decades using comedy to drive cultural change. From co-creating the cult 1990s superhero Breakup Girl, Lynn has now founded Gold Comedy, an online comedy school where women in their 40s and 50s are bringing the most fire.
In this conversation, Lynn and Patsy talk about the gender gap in comedy; who gets to talk and who has to listen; why "exposure" doesn't pay the bills, and how your transferable skills are the Candyland board that will take you places.
Lynn's message: if you're curious about developing your sense of humor, you don't have to change who you are in order to be funny… Don't wait for yourself to turn into someone else, which you won't. You already have everything it takes.
Summary
Lynn Harris is a comedian, journalist, author, and activist who has spent her career proving that humour is a serious force for change. From co-creating the cult superhero Breakup Girl in the 1990s to founding Gold Comedy — a fully online comedy school and professional network for women and non-binary creators — Lynn has built a patchwork career that she describes as a "Candyland board": different-coloured squares, all on the same path. In this episode, she and Patsy explore why comedy is such a powerful vehicle for midlife reinvention, why women deserve to get paid properly for creative work, and why the gender gap in comedy has never been about talent.
About Lynn Harris
Lynn Harris is a comedian, journalist, author, activist, and founder of Gold Comedy, an online comedy school, professional network, and content studio for women and non-binary creators. She co-created the cult character Breakup Girl with illustrator Chris Kalb, which first appeared in her 1996 book He Loved Me, He Loves Me Not and became one of the first multiplatform internet success stories. Lynn has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Glamour, and Salon, and served as VP of Communications at Breakthrough, a global human rights organisation using pop culture and media to address gender-based violence. She is based in New York — and Gold Comedy is fully online, so her community spans continents.
Thank you to our sponsor AJ BELL MONEY MATTERS
Thank you to AJ Bell Money Matters for supporting this episode. The AJ Bell Money Matters podcast is created for women by women featuring news, information and inspiring interviews to help build your knowledge and confidence around finances. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Please click here to show support of our podcast and to find out more about AJ Bell:
https://www.ajbell.co.uk/investment/women-and-investing?utm_source=moneymatters&utm_medium=partnership&utm_campaign=wobblymiddle
Key Topics
Comedy as a vehicle for cultural change — humour as a "delivery system" for shifting norms and assumptions
The Candyland board career — transferring skills across a patchwork freelance life, where writing, comedy, activism, and campaigning are all different-coloured squares on the same path
The gender gap in comedy — not about talent, but about who gets the stage, the mic, the writers' room, and the power to decide what's funny
Women getting paid for creative work — the Cindy Gallop advice: "Say the largest amount you can without actually bursting into laughter"
Gold Comedy's Build and Pitch programme — taught by Ryan Cunningham, where women in their 40s and 50s consistently bring the biggest fire
"You don't have to change who you are to succeed" — or to be funny. Your unique perspective is all the raw material you need.

Links
Gold Comedy: https://goldcomedy.com
Breakup Girl: https://www.breakupgirl.net
Lynn Harris: https://www.lynnharris.net
The Wobbly Middle on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wobbly-middle/id1767850643
The Wobbly Middle on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YhwsBch8Q9vAOUBBfusIv
Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep25-lynn-harris
Find out more about The Wobbly Middle: https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com/about?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep25-lynn-harris

Where to Follow Lynn
Instagram: @goldcomedy
Twitter/X: @GOLDcomedy
Lynn on Instagram: @lynnharris
Lynn on Twitter/X: @harrislynn
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnharris1

---
If You Enjoyed This Episode
You might also love Episode 24: From Teacher's Desk to Therapist's Couch with Carri Simmons. Where Lynn describes the "Candyland board" of a patchwork career — transferring skills in unexpected directions — Carri tells the deeply personal story of leaving teaching and retraining as a psychologist in midlife.
---
Help Us Grow
If this episode resonated with you, here are two ways you can make a real difference:
Leave a review here — it only takes a moment, and it's one of the best ways to help new listeners find the show. Every review counts.
Share this episode with a friend — if you know someone who might be in their own wobbly middle, send them this one. Sometimes knowing you're not alone is all it takes.

Want more from Patsy between episodes? Subscribe to the newsletter — it's where the conversation continues: https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep25-lynn-harris
New to The Wobbly Middle? Find out what we're all about: https://thewobblymiddle.substack.com/about?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep25-lynn-harris
Thank you for listening and for supporting independent podcasts.
---