Lara Pennington

I work with high-achieving professional women 40+ who have built impressive careers and reached a very specific point. “I cannot do another decade of this.” They’re not asking, Is this it? They already know the answer. This is the moment I work with. Not collapse. Not crisis. A line in the sand. Done with the politics. Done with managing egos. Done with being talked over by men who know less. Done with giving their best energy to work that no longer deserves it. From the outside, everything looks fine. Good role. Good money. Strong reputation. But inside, something has shifted. You don’t hate what you do. You’re just no longer willing to sacrifice your freedom, energy, or intelligence for it. I’m an ICF-credentialed Executive and Career Coach and the founder of Evolve & Thrive. Before coaching, I spent over 20 years in senior international marketing roles. Big brands. Big budgets. Big responsibility. Mostly male boardrooms and old boys’ networks. I was good at it. Very good. And I reached the point where I could see exactly how my life would look if I stayed. So I chose not to. I didn’t burn my career down. I didn’t disappear into woo. I went full Eat Pray Love and travelled the world with my son for a year. Not as an escape. As a pause. Space to strip everything back and decide how I actually wanted to work and live next. Then I rebuilt deliberately. I became a partner in a tech start-up. I lived and worked across Asia and Europe. I designed a career that fits who I am now, not who I was at 30. That’s why I do this work. Because this moment isn’t about escape. It’s about choice. About deciding deliberately how work fits into your life. EVOLVE EVOLVE is my 24-week programme for professional women 40+ who want to change how work fits into their life without torching their credibility or starting again from scratch. You don’t want to quit and disappear to Bali. You don’t want to burn your career down. And you’re done trying to cope better with so