Julie Kennedy learned to love design by walking the galleries of the V&A as a small child. She would walk around the galleries holding her granddad's hand, as he did his rounds as the Chief Warder. She went on to study sculpture, spend time dressing windows at Topshop during the IRA bombings, work at a tax office she hated, and eventually find her way to Yellow Pages, where she stayed for twelve years - by her own admission it was longer than she probably should have. Since then she has been the first UK designer hired by Amazon, helped build Betfair's design team, launched an e-commerce site for a 300-year-old building materials company that didn't believe builders wanted to shop online, and is now Associate Director of Product Design at PokerStars.

What this conversation is really about is the accumulation of a career built through instinct, circumstance, and a hard-won refusal to be small. We talk about what it costs to hide the most important parts of yourself in job interviews, about the difference between a role that looks right on paper and one that actually is, and about the very specific freedom that comes with age and experience of simply caring less what other people think. There is also a Robin that visits the garden every day, a daughter's handmade Mother's Day coaster still on the desk, and one piece of advice from a manager at Amazon that Julie has never forgotten.

If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes.

Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com and book a call.

I’d genuinely love to hear from you.

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