The Human Story Behind the Business & Brand - Debbie Key

This podcast partnership with Women Making it Work aligns with but slightly deviates from my The Human Behind the Career Brand podcast series. The Human Story Behind the Business and Brand delves into those poignant moments, experiences and life lessons that shaped these high-performing professional women into who they are today. It discusses their fates, flaws, feats, fears and all the other fabulous human elements that have driven them to perform so well in their professional and personal lives. As has been encapsulated in the Women Making it Work celebratory anthology entitled Beyond the Business – Stories of Women Who Dared.

My next guest for this podcast series is Debbie Key. One of the authors and storytellers in Women Making it Work’s Beyond the Business anthology, representing those women who have had the courage to pivot. Who walked away from corporate security, 40-year careers, and traditional definitions of success to build something aligned with their deeper calling and values.

Debbie had been a high performer in the corporate world as an award-winning learning strategist for many years, before setting up her own Success BOX consultancy in 2020 during the global pandemic. It’s a L&D service focused on supporting leader and team growth through purposeful, practical and human-centred learning. This was inspired by Debbie’s desire to go deeper and wider in terms of unlocking the potential in other people, to shake off the sense of hollowness that had continued to infiltrate throughout her corporate career.

Debbie acknowledges that there were moments of crippling self-doubt in establishing her own business. But that a louder internal voice shouting ‘what if it does work’ kept her going. Through her entrepreneurial journey she’s learned that success is deeply personal and that you’re allowed to redefine and redefine again your own version of business success. Debbie’s legacy is the belief that we all deserve to do work that lights us up and lifts others too.