The Phoenix Conversations

In this episode, I’m joined by Baiju Solanki, psychologist, entrepreneur and leadership expert, for a rich conversation about reinvention, identity and what it means to stay human in an AI-driven world. As the founder of EnSpirit Global and EnSpirit AI Technologies, and the author of Human First and other influential books, Baiju helps individuals and organisations build human-first cultures roote...

In this episode, I’m doing something a little different and taking you behind the scenes of a very special day, receiving my MBE at Windsor Castle. After sharing a little of the story online, so many people wanted to know what the day was actually like, from the build-up and the nerves to the ceremony itself, that I thought I’d sit down and tell the full story properly. I talk about the campaign t...

In this episode, I’m joined by Susan Payton, who discovered the power of storytelling after sharing what she thought was a very ordinary story with 1,500 business owners in 2015. The response changed everything. That one moment reshaped her business and her life, and set her on the path to becoming the founder of The Business of Stories, an international bestselling author, podcast host, and trust...

When Safaraz Ali MBE failed every one of his GCSEs, he thought the factory floor was his future. What followed was a journey that took him from inner city Birmingham into financial services, then into social care, and ultimately into building businesses that now employ more than 1,300 people across the UK. In this conversation, Saf shares how a calculated commercial move into the care sector becam...

In this episode, I’m joined by Jude Jennison, Founder of Leaders by Nature, who empowers leadership teams to drive business growth and navigate change with confidence. After 17 years at IBM, where she managed a $1 billion budget and led UK, European and global teams, Jude stepped into a very different kind of leadership work. Today, she partners with blue chip companies and fast growing entreprene...

In this episode, I’m joined by Adam Witty, founder of Advantage Media, which he launched in 2005 from the spare bedroom of his home. What began as a done for you publishing system for busy business leaders has grown into a global authority building company serving thousands of clients across 50 US states and 13 countries. We explore how Adam’s innovative approach attracted Forbes, leading to the l...

In this episode, I’m joined by Heather Pownall, founder of Heather’s Media Hub, a purpose led digital strategy and communications consultancy working across healthcare, research, technology, cybersecurity and membership organisations. After nearly two decades in publishing, including 15 years in senior medical publishing roles, Heather made the bold decision in 2018 to leave corporate security and...

This conversation with David Horne is one of those episodes that stays with you. David is an award winning entrepreneur, founder of Add Then Multiply, and a former CFO who has raised over £120 million and bought or sold more than 30 companies. He’s also a bestselling author and advocate for fairer funding, particularly for female and underrepresented founders. But this episode isn’t about titles o...

This episode is a deeply moving conversation with Anne Whitehouse, a former Cambridge scientist turned power alchemist. Anne shares how burnout ended her career in university engineering and became the doorway into a completely different way of understanding health, power, and identity. We talk about subconscious conditioning, inherited patterns, and why burnout and self-silencing are not personal...

This conversation fascinated me. Joseph McGuire has spent decades studying how we read people, not just through words, but through faces, bodies and behaviour. He’s taught the ancient Chinese art of face reading and body language since the 1980s, blending it with modern negotiation and interrogation skills to help leaders make better decisions and avoid costly mistakes. We talk reinvention, intuit...

I’m joined by Dayna Byfield, a burnout prevention strategist and keynote speaker, to talk about the kind of burnout that hides in plain sight. The “I’m fine” burnout, where you keep performing, adapting, and carrying everyone else until there’s nothing left. Dayna shares how being visibly different as a kid shaped her drive, her resilience, and her default setting of becoming whoever the room need...

I’m joined by Lee Chambers, Founder and CEO of Male Allies UK, and honestly, his story is a masterclass in reinvention. We go all the way back to growing up on a council estate in Bolton, being the kid who couldn’t stand unfairness, and how that same “I’ll step in” energy shaped everything that came after. After a career spanning corporate finance and building and exiting a tech company, Lee now h...

In this episode, I’m chatting with the brilliant Jane Duncan Rogers, coach, author, former corporate HR high-flyer, accidental pioneer, and someone who has reinvented herself more times than most of us change phone contracts. Jane grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, learned to switch on confidence on purpose, and followed her curiosity through therapy, community living, travel, and bu...

This final episode of 2025 is one of the most meaningful I have ever recorded. I share the moment I learned I had been awarded an MBE for services to publishing and diversity, and the wave of disbelief, emotion and gratitude that followed. This honour is not only mine, it belongs to every woman who has ever stepped into authorship, every writer whose voice was once quiet, and every person who beli...

This festive episode is a little different, because it is just me, sitting with the spirit of the season and reflecting on a year that has been full of growth, surprises and reinvention.  I share what it has meant to navigate a year where life and work wove together in the most unexpected ways, and how moments of challenge, celebration and stillness have shaped my path. From the highs of book...

This conversation with Paul Avins is a remarkable look at what reinvention truly means when life hands you challenge after challenge.  Paul is one of the UK’s most sought after scale up strategists and business coaches, known for helping founders grow multi million pound companies with practical, battle tested insight. Across more than 20 years, he has supported over 1000 clients to break the...

In this conversation, Lisette and I travel through the many reinventions that shaped her life, from a spiritually attuned child who learned early to hide parts of herself, to a woman who rebuilt, rewrote and reclaimed her identity again and again.  Lisette Schuitemaker is the author of seven books, a pioneering impact investor, and a respected board director and chair. She has worked across c...

Talking to Tony Robinson OBE felt like sitting down with someone who has lived nine different lives, each one shaped by courage, curiosity and a refusal to settle for anything that does not feel true.  Tony is a multi business owner, speaker and author of nine books across entrepreneurship, fiction, satire and poetry. He chairs Yorkshire in Business, runs its Yorkshire Coast Workshops subsidi...

I loved this conversation with Penny Hopkinson. She has one of those careers that looks like a straight line only in hindsight.  From being the lone woman in technical journalism in the late 60s to becoming the Queen of Operations Manuals, her story is full of grit, curiosity, and a brilliant refusal to be boxed in.  Penny shows that reinvention is not a single moment but a lifetime of c...

In this episode, I talk with Michael Serwa, one of the UK’s most in-demand coaches.  Michael coaches the elite using his signature no-bullshit approach. Since 2011, he has built the most successful personal coaching practice in the UK. He is the author of From Good to Amazing and has been featured in numerous media outlets, including GQ, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, BBC, and Sky. M...

This week, I sit down with the brilliant Sapna Pieroux - brand consultant, author, speaker, and self-proclaimed karaoke queen.  Sapna shares her extraordinary story of reinvention, from postnatal depression to a cancer diagnosis and through the loss of her father, to rediscovering herself through joy, creativity, and community. We talk about what it means to rebuild your life after the unthin...

Before sharing other people’s stories of second chances and fresh starts, I wanted to begin with my own. At 40, everything I thought I was fell apart - my marriage, my career, my sense of identity.  What followed wasn’t just survival, it was a masterclass in starting again. In this first episode, I open up about how I rebuilt my life piece by piece and discovered that reinvention isn’t a one-...

Life doesn’t always go to plan, but reinvention is where the real magic happens. I’m Lucy McCarraher- author, entrepreneur, and serial reinventor, and in The Phoenix Conversations , I talk to people who’ve turned collapse into courage and setbacks into spectacular comebacks. From rebuilding careers and relationships to rediscovering purpose and passion, these are stories of second chances and powe...