I DIDN’T SET OUT TO BE A MENOPAUSE CONSULTANT !
I spent more than 25 years building my career in the agricultural industry, progressing from Account Manager to Sales Manager and for the final 11 years, Managing Director.
I know what it feels like to be responsible for a business, sales and marketing, finance, logistics, procurement, a team, customers, targets and results. I understand commercial pressure, competing priorities, difficult conversations and the responsibility that comes with making decisions that affect both a business and the people within it.
I also know what it is like to experience menopause while trying to be all of those things.
WHEN I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO ME!
My experience of perimenopause wasn’t something I recognised at the time.
In 2018, I had a miscarriage while trying for another baby. My periods became increasingly sporadic afterwards, but I didn’t consider that I might be entering perimenopause. I associated the changes with the miscarriage, my age and the fact that I was still trying to conceive.
Looking back, there were other signs too. I simply didn’t have enough awareness of the breadth of perimenopause symptoms to join the dots.
For several years, I didn’t feel like myself.
My emotions could feel completely disproportionate. My confidence deteriorated, my memory wasn’t as reliable as it had been, I wasn’t sleeping properly and my anxiety increased significantly particularly around business performance and whether I was still doing my job well enough. At my lowest point, I experienced severe depression.
Rather than recognising what was happening and that I might need support, I responded in the way I knew best.
I WORKED HARDER!
I regularly worked more than 50 hours a week, trying to prove my worth perhaps as much to myself as to anyone else.
Despite more than two decades of commercial experience and years of successfully leading a business, I began to feel inadequate. I questioned capabilities I had spent years building and became increasingly fearful that I wasn’t performing well enough. I was paranoid that I was going to lose my job. Menopause hadn’t taken away my experience, knowledge or ability but for a time, it made me believe that it had.
THE POLICY I THOUGHT I WAS ENOUGH!
My last period was in March 2020, aged 45, just as the UK entered its first Covid lockdown. Professionally, I was leading a business through an extraordinary period of uncertainty. Personally, I was reaching the end of a transition that I still hadn’t fully understood I was going through. There is an irony in my story that has become fundamental to the work I do today.
In 2018, as a Managing Director, I had introduced a workplace menopause policy because I genuinely believed it was the right thing to do. I was proud that we had one.
Yet at around the same time, I wasn’t even recognising perimenopause in myself.
Looking back now, I understand something I couldn’t fully appreciate then: having a menopause policy and creating a workplace where someone understands what they are experiencing, feels able to talk about it, knows where to turn for support and trusts that they will be treated fairly are very different things.
A POLICY IS IMPORTANT. BUT A POLICY ALONE DOESN’T CHANGE CULTURE, PEOPLE DO!
That experience changed my perspective.
Awareness matters. Education matters. Conversation matters. Support matters. Culture matters.
Because if we don’t understand what menopause can look and feel like, we may not recognise it in ourselves, our colleagues or the people we manage. And by the time we do, confidence, wellbeing, careers and valuable experience may already have been affected.
THE DECISION THAT CREATED ET VOILÀ!
Eventually, I made two incredibly difficult decisions. I left my role as an employed Managing Director and stepped away from the industry in which I had spent more than 25 years building my career. Then I made a third decision and that is the one that matters most. I decided to take everything those years had taught me about business, leadership, people, culture and menopause and use it to help organisations do things differently. I am commercially minded and people focused. I believe organisations can be ambitious about performance while treating people with fairness, dignity and respect. Supporting people and achieving commercial success are not mutually exclusive.
I don’t believe women experiencing menopause suddenly become less capable, and I don’t believe employers need another beautifully written policy that sits in a folder and changes very little. I believe in practical change better conversations, confident managers, accessible support and workplace cultures where people feel heard, understood and valued. I’ve sat on both sides of the table: as a Managing Director responsible for budgets, targets, performance and difficult people decisions, and as a woman who lost confidence in her own capability despite everything she had achieved.
That combination of commercial leadership and lived experience is what I bring to Et Voilà Consultancy.
WHY ET VOILÀ?
The name Et Voilà has been part of my life for much longer than the business.
When I was young, my father bought a gîte in Brittany where we spent many family holidays. His French was limited, but one phrase he used constantly was “Et voilà!” It stayed with me long after we lost him in 2011, and somewhere along the way, I found myself saying it too.
Years later, a good friend gave me a wooden Et Voilà! sign, which still hangs in my kitchen today.
So when it came to naming the business, Et Voilà felt instinctive. It carries a personal connection to my father, but it also captures something about the way I want to work: there it is !, there you have it ! taking something that can feel complicated and turning it into something clear, practical and achievable.
MY GOAL!
My goal is to help create inclusive workplaces where menopause is understood, employees feel heard, valued and supported, and organisations retain the experience, talent and knowledge they cannot afford to lose.
I want women to be able to continue contributing, progressing and succeeding through menopause without feeling that this stage of their life has somehow diminished their professional value.
And I want employers to have the understanding, confidence and practical tools to make that possible.
