The Daisy Chain

I was sitting in the audience at an Albright event in March when a room full of women started cheering. Not politely. Properly. Eliana Sydes had just told them that at 60 she was invited to join a board as the only non-founder executive director. And every woman in that room understood exactly what that meant - because most of us have quietly absorbed the idea that if it hasn't happened by 30, it...

Corinna Tolan grew up listening to business being discussed at the dinner table. Her parents were entrepreneurs. So were both sets of grandparents. Her mother opened one of the first skin clinics in Dublin at a time when nobody's mum in 1980s Ireland worked or drove - and built it specifically as a place where women could feel safe. Corinna has been in that industry for thirty years now. She runs...

Most of the women we assume have it together are carrying things we can't see. They show up, they lead, they put their makeup on and walk into the room looking like someone who has never doubted herself. This week's guest is one of those women. She came on this show to tell you what's behind the front. Jaclyn Lauder has worked alongside Daisy for nearly five years. She is a leader, a mother, someo...

Nancy Blair was 70 when she started posting videos online, sharing creativity, dancing and what she's learned about starting again later in life. She wasn't building a platform. She was dancing in her living room every morning, the way she has for decades, and thought other people might like to see a woman her age still moving. Then she posted something about creativity, it went viral, and at 78 s...

Most of the wisdom we consume comes from people who have arrived. People with titles, platforms, track records. People who have packaged up what they know and presented it as a formula. This finale has none of that. What it has instead is something rarer — a host sitting with everything she has built, trying to make sense of what it actually means. This is the season one finale of The Daisy Chain....

Most of the wisdom we consume comes from people who have arrived. People with titles, platforms, track records. People who have packaged up what they know and presented it as a formula. This week's guest has none of that. What she has instead is a life, fully, bravely, extraordinarily lived. Sue Cook is not a public figure. She is my neighbor. One of my mother's closest friends. One of the women w...

We are consuming more than ever and feeling less equipped than ever. More advice, more opinions, more noise. And somewhere in all of that, the signal gets lost. This week's guest has spent most of her career asking herself exactly what she lets in, and why it matters more than most people realise. Joanna Christie is the CMO of Moonfare and one of the most compelling leaders I have ever had the pri...

Most of us have had someone tell us - a parent, a teacher, someone who should have known better - that the thing we love most isn't a real thing. Not a real career. Not a direction worth following. That moment doesn't leave you quickly. The question it plants - am I allowed to trust this? - can follow you for a very long time. Colette Woods is a painter and ceramicist living and working in Bruton,...

Grief has a way of finding you twice. Once when it happens- and again, years later, when you're standing in your twenties and you just want to pick up the phone. Ruby Jenkins is a hairdresser and entrepreneur who lost her mum suddenly at fifteen, there one day, gone the next. Daisy lost hers at fourteen, after years of watching cancer take hold. They met three years ago over a bad blow dry, two we...

Some of the most important things anyone ever told you about creativity, confidence and finding your way weren't said in a classroom or a therapy room. They were said in a kitchen, at a piano, in the middle of an ordinary afternoon by someone who had already figured it out the hard way. Natalie is an actress with decades of BBC productions, theatre and film behind her - Calendar Girls, Pride and P...

There's a particular weight to the moment you realise you've been distracting yourself from your own head — filling every gap with plans and people and things to do, just to avoid sitting in the quiet with yourself. If that sounds familiar, this conversation was made for you. Jonnie Godfrey has known Daisy for twenty years. She's a psychotherapist, a coach, and a mother who raised two remarkable c...

There's a version of confidence that looks like having it all together from the outside, and then there's what it actually feels like on the inside. If you've ever walked into a room certain that today is the day it all comes unstuck - this one is for you. Doulla Croft has known Daisy since the day she was born. She built a career spanning decades at some of the world's biggest companies, managed...

There's a podcast for the glowy skin, perfect morning, collagen-in-the-coffee version of you. This isn't it. The Daisy Chain was born out of two of the most defining moments of host Daisy's life - losing her mum at 14 and finding herself lost in a spiral of self-improvement content in the run up to her wedding. Both times she was looking for the same thing: not more information, not another how-to...

Adulthood is overwhelming. There's so much noise telling you how your life should look, and very little space to put your hand up and say, honestly, this is a lot. The Daisy Chain is that space. A weekly podcast for anyone figuring out life without a conventional support network - whether you've lost a parent young, never had someone to turn to, or simply find yourself navigating careers, relation...