Career Relaunch®
Joseph Liu
Podcast
Episodes
Listen, download, subscribe
Knowing Yourself with Sally Chamley
Have you ever fallen out of love with your job, even one you initially enjoyed? All of our careers go through ups and downs, and sometimes, we go on much-needed detours to clarify who we are and what we want our professional experiences to be. On Career Relaunch® podcast episode 105, Sally Chamley shares her journey of professional reinvention, going from a primary school teacher to a business school program coordinator. She shares the emotional challenges of leaving a beloved teaching career behind, the dynamics the transitioning into a new sector, and developing new skills along the way. We discuss how our work environments can have a huge impact on career satisfaction and the importance of recognizing when your job no longer aligns with your true self. During the Mental Fuel® segment, I also share practical advice about how to figure out if your job still aligns with who you are and who you want to be. 💡 Key Career Insights When you start to dislike my weekdays or if you feel unfulfilled and disconnected from yourself, it may be a sign you’re misplaced in your career. If you’re not engaged in professional activities or behaviors you feel align with who you are, at some point, you have to ask yourself how long you can continue living that way. You may feel your skills are not transferrable when transitioning into a new sector, but you will only know if this is true by trying out new things. You may be surprised how much your past experiences help you in seemingly unrelated roles. 💪🏼 Listener Challenge For this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I’d challenge you to take a moment to assess your current professional situation. Find a few minutes to consider how energized you feel by your work. Consider how happy you are with who you are. Decide whether you still feel like yourself. Take stock of where things stand right now. Consider whether your responses are satisfactory to you. If they are, great, you’re in good shape. But if your responses leave you feeling like you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time in your professional journey right now, consider exploring what else is out there. 📖 Episode Chapters 00:00:00 Overview 00:01:07 Introduction 00:02:44 Chat with Sally 00:38:57 Mental Fuel 00:45:29 Listener Challenge 00:46:27 Wrap Up 👤 About Sally Chamley Sally Chamley, originally from a Ohakune, New Zealand. After completing her Master’s degree at the Victoria University of Wellington, she spent six rewarding years as a primary school teacher. She eventually moved to London, inspired by the city’s opportunities and eager to expand her horizons. She initially continued teaching, but soon felt the pull to explore something else. Since 2024, she’s been working as a Programme Coordinator in the Finance suite at Imperial College Business School, where we first crossed paths. 👍🏻 Let Us Know If You Enjoyed This Episode Review: I’d also love for you to leave a positive review and rating for the podcast on Apple Podcasts, which helps my show reach more people who want to relaunch their careers. Follow: Be sure to follow the Career Relaunch® podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or Android so you can automatically get each new episode on your device. Full instructions. Stay in touch: Follow the Career Relaunch® podcast on Facebook and LinkedIn. You can also follow host Joseph on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Bluesky. 💬 Comments, Suggestions, or Questions? If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered in future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners! Leave Joseph a Voicemail You can also leave a comment below. Thanks! Thanks to Vista Social for Supporting the Career Relaunch® podcast Vista Social is a versatile, time-saving tool to manage all your social media accounts in one place. You can easily create, schedule, optimise, and publish content directly to multiple social media profiles from one simple dashboard. I actually use it myself to manage all my online profiles. Try Vista Social out for free right now at careerrelaunch.net/vista. 📄 Episode Transcript 03:05 Sally’s Current Role at Imperial Business School 05:05 Sally’s Background and Teaching Journey 08:01 Challenges and Rewards of Teaching 21:00 Transition to the UK 21:57 Starting a Teaching Career in the UK 22:40 Challenges of Being a Supply Teacher 26:17 Career Struggles and Realizations 28:45 Transitioning Out of Teaching 33:25 Landing a New Role at Imperial 34:41 Lessons Learned and Advice 38:53 Mental Fuel: Recognizing Who You Are [00:02:53] Sally: Morning. Thank you so much for having me. [00:02:56] Joseph: Well, let’s just start by talking about what’s happening in your world right now. What have you been focused on recently in your work and your life? Sally’s Current Role at Imperial Business School [00:03:05] Sally: So I’m currently working at Imperial Business School in the finance suite. I’m a program coordinator for the risk. management and financial engineering master’s program. So I have 170 students and I’m essentially the logistical expert for that master’s program. I look after those students and guide them through their degrees. I liaise with the module leaders and the teaching assistants and just make sure that all the classes are running smoothly, that students have guidance on their careers and that they’re getting their grades and their assignments all running smoothly. [00:03:40] Joseph: I guess we should say that we’re recording this toward the end of 2024 and so you’ve been in your role for a few months. How have things been going for you in terms of just your day-to-day life? How are you enjoying the role? [00:03:55] Sally: Yeah, really enjoying it. Imperial is such a great place to be working. I’m just constantly surrounded by real critical thinkers who are just developing their fields. It’s a really fast paced job with different times of the year creating different types of work and learning. We welcomed our new cohort of students in September. So that was full of first week of uni and different welcome days and team-building activities. So it’s been really special to bring on a new group of students. They’re currently in the autumn term and starting to get ready for exams. So you’re really into the workload at the moment and really busy with that. So it’s just constantly changing depending on the time of the year and what’s happening for those students. Personal Life and Travel [00:04:39] Joseph: What about you personally right now in your life that you’re devoting your energies to outside of work when you can find the time for it? [00:04:48] Sally: Well, I’m over in London and here for such a short amount of time, a couple of years. So travel is so big on the list. It’s how many countries can I hit before I have to go home? I’m off to Ireland next weekend. So really looking forward to that and just keep adding holidays. [00:05:05] Joseph: You haven’t always been a program coordinator at Imperial College Business School, Sally, and I should probably say upfront that you and I actually first crossed paths a few months ago. Because your team invited me to speak at a welcome event for your incoming students and we were chatting before I went up on stage and that’s when I first learned that before you joined Imperial, you used to be a primary school teacher. Sally’s Teaching Journey [00:05:28] Joseph: I want to hear all about that and go back to that chapter in your career. But before we talk about your time as a teacher, can you tell me a little bit about where you’re from? You mentioned home there. And also where you grew up. [00:05:40] Sally: I’m from New Zealand. I’m from a little town called Ohakune, which is in the middle of the North Island. Small town, 900 people of permanent residents there. And I wanted to be a teacher. I went to university to be a teacher. I did my undergrad and my Master’s degree to become a teacher. And then I was a teacher in Wellington for 6 years. For generally 5 and 6 year olds. [00:06:06] Joseph: It sounds like you very quickly decided you wanted to become a teacher. Childhood and Inspiration to Teach [00:06:10] Joseph: What do you remember about your childhood? And I’d be specifically interested to hear about what you used to enjoy doing as a child. Was teaching something that you I guess liked from a very early age? [00:06:22] Sally: Yeah, absolutely. I had some fantastic teachers growing up and being in such a small community. They were teachers that I knew outside of school as well. You know, they were my parents’ friends. And so they just provided such great relationships and really were able to build you up, not only through your English and your maths, but also through who you were as a person and how it provides so many life skills for you. And that was so inspiring as a child, knowing that. You can help me with my spelling, but also help me learn kindness and patience. And that’s something that I wanted to be able to do when I was growing up. [00:06:58] Joseph: At what point did you feel like you officially began your journey toward becoming a teacher? Was it actually when you began your studies, or did it occur to you earlier on when you were a child that, hey, this is what I want to do professionally? I know I like what teachers do, but this is what I actually want to become. [00:07:17] Sally: Probably in high school when you taking different subjects. I always took dance and being able to start leading different groups and being the person, I guess, in charge and empowering others became something really special. And so I knew at that point I wanted to go into some sort of teaching and it wasn’t until. My last year of high school that it was okay. Actually, I want to do primary scho
Career Relaunch® RSS Feed
