Mambition

They were babies yesterday. And yet this September our boys are both heading into Year One. Which means the baby years, the toddler years, the defining early childhood years that felt simultaneously endless and impossibly fast — are behind us. In this episode Alex and I sit with that for a moment. We also talk about where we both are with work right now — and how our ambition has quietly shifted....

My 3 year old experienced five separate, genuine injustices this week. The discovery that her brother was carried in my tummy first. The milk poured without permission. In her mind, every single one was a devastating betrayal. I laugh and cry in equal measure. But I know she is not wrong to feel it. She just does not have the capacity to regulate those feelings yet. That is not her job right now....

To be brave enough to admit that climbing the right ladder still feels like the wrong life?! Not for the faint hearted. Anne Welsh is a clinical psychologist, executive coach, working parent consultant and author of Ambitious Mother. She has spent years sitting with high achieving women who look completely fine on the outside and are quietly drowning on the inside. She has a name for what they are...

A request for a Nigerian volunteer in my son's reception class. I put my hand up immediately. But that "yes" was years in the making — built on flexible work, grandparents already looking after my daughter that exact same morning, and a version of me I have been slowly becoming since long before this moment. In this episode: → What actually had to be true behind the scenes for that y...

Two friends, £500 each and a market stall. A decade later, that market stall is a six figure business. Lisa Shepherd and Saskia Roskam co-founded The Biskery — a personalised biscuit business built on something genuinely refreshing to hear. A clear set of values that meant refusing to chase growth that would cost them their families. Saskia went from studying languages and working in digital marke...

I am not the fun parent. I am the one who checks the stair gate twice and has read the entire homework folder before dinner. Their dad is not like this. Bedtime when he has them involves a game called Goon, which is essentially him chasing them round the house at full volume while nobody winds down for sleep. I used to think that made me the careful parent and him the less careful one. Now I think...

The Sunday scaries. The dread that starts at 4pm. The countdown to Monday. Mel Goodman knows them too. She spent fifteen years in high pressure leadership making decisions in her sleep. Then she had children — and the woman who used to handle everything effortlessly suddenly found those same things keeping her up at night. We talk about the very specific hell of returning to work after kids, postp...

Nobody wrote the poem for the ambitious mother. The one who had the dreams and then had the baby and then stood in the mirror wondering what happened to the person she used to be. So I wrote it myself. Oh, Someone's Mum is a poem for the mother who loves fiercely and still has something in her that will not be quiet. Who is building something in the margins. Who refuses to choose between her c...

You can read every book about boundaries. You can know exactly what you should say. And still find yourself saying yes when you meant no — again. That is not a willpower problem. That is a belief system problem. Meshali Chotai spent fifteen years as a Big 4 Actuarial Director watching high achieving women — herself included — run on empty while looking completely put together. Now she coaches thos...

The past nine months have been the hardest of my life. My children had no idea what I was carrying. And yet somehow they were part of how I got through it. We spend so much energy trying to protect our children from the hard things. But in doing so we sometimes miss what they have to offer us in those same seasons. That is what this episode is about. In this episode:→ Why children's empathy is...

When your motherhood journey starts with a sweep, caring what people think stops being an option. 😂 Something about caring for a tiny human, the early days, the lack of sleep, the urgency of time — it quietly strips away everything that was never really yours to carry. The status games. The performing. The exhausting social choreography of trying to be liked, to fit in, to be seen in the right wa...

I planned to be productive on a 5 hour delayed train journey from Nottingham. The wifi had other ideas. Three different tickets, two platform changes and a completely different train to the one I booked. Just a standard Monday on the British rail network. 😂 And then an older lady sat down next to me and commented on the delays. She is a retired teacher who recently survived cancer. And what follo...

Most of us know the science of early childhood development exists. We just have no idea what to do with it in the middle of a Tuesday meltdown. Suhali Vyas spent ten years building technology products in fast growing companies. Then she turned that same curiosity, the same systems thinking, the same obsession with understanding how things actually work — to the most complex product she had ever en...

In what feels like a blink of an eye, my son is 5 and becoming more independent . And I have had to sit with the fact that my job is quietly changing. This episode is about the shift nobody prepares you for — when your child stops needing you the same way and your role becomes less about doing and more about trusting. Less about protecting and more about letting go. In this episode:→ The grief of...

Nothing quite like having your parents visit to make you reflect on your own childhood. My dad came from Nigeria with one goal — give his children the best opportunities. Education. Hard work. Good grades. Everything rooted in love. But the world has changed. Hard work and good grades alone no longer guarantee anything. So I am doing things differently. In this episode:→ The foundation my dad buil...

We celebrate the ambitious mother. The one building something, showing up, chasing big goals alongside raising children. But we rarely talk about what is actually holding her up. This episode is about the missing conversation in motherhood — maternal support. The village, the structure, the people behind the scenes who make it all possible. And why pretending it is just discipline and hustle is do...

118 episodes. 75+ women. In this special milestone episode Alex gets personal — about what it actually took to build Mambition, the partnership that made consistency possible and what this podcast has genuinely meant for her own life. It started as a platform. It became something more. A way back to herself after a career that knocked her sideways. Two years in, here is what she knows: → Ambition...

We spend so much time thinking about what we teach our children. This episode flips that entirely. My 3 year old daughter and 5 year old son have quietly, consistently and completely without knowing it been teaching me things I spent years trying to learn. About confidence, curiosity, forgiveness, presence, friendship and joy. In this episode I share 10 things my children do better than me — and w...

In the 1990s she lied about working from home. Not because she was ashamed. Because working from home as a young mother wasn't considered real work. Thirty years later — her kids are grown, she has four grandchildren, and she is just getting started on her next chapter. Adrian Miller is a writer, Content Alchemist and grandmother who has lived the full arc of ambitious motherhood. And what she...

This is the episode I almost didn't record. Because life has been full lately. Really full. And sometimes showing up feels like one thing too many. But that's exactly why I did. Because Mambition isn't something I do when I have capacity. It's something that gives me capacity. And there's a difference. In this episode I talk honestly about the never ending juggle — and what act...

She was the only girl on her rugby team. And twenty five years on a pitch became one of the most important foundations of her life. Not because of the sport itself. But because of what it built. The ability to receive feedback pragmatically. Without making it personal. To extract what's useful and leave the rest. To show up regardless. Laura Jenkins is a commercial litigation partner at Stewar...

I did these things before I had children. At the time I had no idea how much they would matter. The solo trips. The career risks. The financial discipline. The comfort I built with my own company. None of it felt like preparation. It just felt like living. But on the other side of becoming a mother — I understand something I couldn't have understood then. Everything I built before my children...

She didn't know she had ADHD until she became a mother. Not because motherhood caused it. Because motherhood exposed it. The sleepless nights, the relentlessness, the sheer volume of what is required — all of it revealed something that had always been there but never had anywhere to hide. So she went looking. And what she found changed everything — for her and for her children. In this episode...

Nobody tells you that motherhood will make you more yourself. Not less. More confident. More direct. Less embarrassed. Less interested in wasting time on things that don't matter. More willing to lie down on a stranger's picnic blanket — metaphorically speaking. My 3 year old does it literally. This episode is about the growth that sneaks up on you. The version of yourself that motherhood quietly...

Rashi Kakkar started Decks and Diapers when she first became a mother. Not because she had time. She didn't. Because something in her needed to make sense of what was happening. The identity shift. The career tension. The feeling that motherhood and ambition were supposed to be opposites and yet somehow she couldn't accept that. She is a global leader at McKinsey & Company, a mum of tw...