Have you ever felt like you need to pause and ask yourself: what do I really want my career to be about?

That's exactly what Holly O'Driscoll did during her fourth maternity leave — and it changed the course of her career.

Holly is an innovation strategist, facilitator, and founder of Ampersand Innovation. She spent over 20 years at Procter & Gamble in engineering, design, and innovation leadership before launching her own business.

During that pivotal maternity leave, she turned the design thinking tools she used with clients on herself and asked: what's my why?

Her answer — unleashing the potential of people AND ideas — became the north star that guided everything that followed, including the founding of her company.

In this episode, Holly shares her journey from engineering to design to entrepreneurship, and the principles she learned along the way about asking for what you want, prototyping your next chapter, and redefining success on your own terms.

Resources: Finding Your Why

1. Explore the approach Holly used
The book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans is a great starting point. You can explore their resources, including the Odyssey Plan framework, at Stanford University's Life Design Lab: https://lifedesignlab.stanford.edu/resources

2. Join me for a live online session
Free 75-minute Connect to Your Purpose session on 2 April at 8am CET. Move your purpose from concept to lived reality — we'll work with what you already know and go deeper, reconnecting to when you've felt most aligned and exploring what that tells you about who you are and the impact you have.
Register here: https://yourpathtosuccess.ch/events/

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