Mambition

When I was dating I was filtering for career ambition and drive above almost everything else. Nobody told me that the game changes completely when you have children. Because it turns out that what actually determines how you show up as a mother — whether you can work, build something, stay fit, stay sane — is not your own ability. It is your capacity. And capacity is shaped mainly by the support a...

It is not a holiday when you go away with small children. It is a change of location. The chaos comes with you! But our first all inclusive family holiday was actually memorable for the right reasons. It was nice to be somewhere designed for exactly the chaos you are carrying. On the plane my daughter was an official flight attendant helper. She made friends with the family sitting next to her bef...

My 3 year old daughter had a mean girl experience on holiday this week. Every instinct in me wanted to swoop in and fix it. But instead I stepped in gently, with humour, and tried to show her something more useful. As we walked away I told her that sometimes people will be mean. And we practised her stern voice together so she is ready for next time. In this episode: → Fighting the immediate paren...

You tried the sleep method and it did not work. That is not your fault. Nicole Ratcliffe knows this better than most. Chronic sleep deprivation after having her child derailed a high-earning career, led to redundancy, and forced her into the most difficult period of her life. What came out of it was a complete reinvention — and a mission to change the way we treat sleep at every level. Because sle...

The passport arrived. One day before we left. 😅 Living on the edge or what? Maybe the passport situation was not just a stressful logistical nightmare. Maybe it was a lesson I clearly still needed. Because the truth is, parenting humbles you constantly. Even with the best plan in place, things will go wrong. And the only way to actually enjoy this season — really enjoy it, not just survive it — i...

She fled war as a child. Fast forward to today. Zahra Mohamed is the founder of Alcyone Law, a specialist UK immigration law firm, a British Muslim woman, and a mother of three including five year old twins. She has spent 14 years navigating a legal system that was not always designed to welcome her — as a client, as a woman, or as a mother. In this episode: → Fleeing war as a child and how that s...

Two passport blunders. One recovering perfectionist. And a lot of learning to laugh at myself. This episode is about what sits underneath both of those moments. The version of me who used to ruminate for days over a mistake and who took everything seriously. Motherhood is the chaos that humbles you. It is also the thing that quietly teaches you that perfection is a myth. That even the best laid pl...

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...