Margaret shares how she successfully transitioned into a new career as a result of the challenges she met with in her working life experiences and against many odds. Here is another ‘Everyday Black Woman’ Restored and Empowered. We celebrate her Achievement and hope you’re inspired today. Margaret shares key learnings that others can benefit from under our themes Restore, Empower and Achieve.
“If it reaches a point where you can’t stand it, think about whether you might be able to change it ..”It doesn’t matter how old you are – just take the first step to asking that big question; what do I really want to do with my life right now? Get the help and support you need. Rest and seek wise counsel before making permanent or life-changing decisions.”
margaret ochieng
BACK STORY TO MARGARET’S CAREER CHANGE
Kenyan born Margaret Ochieng is an organisational psychologist, and the founding director of the Inclusive Village, a management consultancy specialising in inclusive people, talent and culture solutions. She is married with 2 children, her son age 9 and her daughter age 5.
Margaret’s track record on equality, inclusion and diversity consulting, training and research spans various industries from financial services to the legal, public, SMEs and non-profit sectors. She is a visiting lecturer at Birbeck University of London where she is undertaking her PhD in Organisational Psychology exploring the development of anti-racism practice in UK organisations.
Margaret is also a talent assessor for the civil service, a career coach, speaker and panellist for corporate events. She currently sits on the Advisory Board of Lloyds Banking Group on engaging with UK Black entrepreneurs.
Margaret says, “I arrived in the UK from Kenya, full of optimism and hope”, and she begins by telling us “this bit of my story started 12 years ago”.
Having overcome many huddles and challenges to get to where I was given I came from a fairly modest background by Kenyan standards. So navigating class to have a successful career start in my early 20s had already equipped me with more tools and resilience than I ever thought I would need.
Arriving in the UK, I thought I had no concept of race or racism as something that shapes once life or career experience.
I was sure I had the concepts of discrimination and prejudice but I wasn’t sure I had the concept of racial discrimination. Yet, I very quickly started to feel very much like what I was or what I was supposed to be, what I was supposed to say, or do as a Black woman with a foreign accent had already been predetermined by certain rules that I just didn’t understand. I began to think perhaps it’s just certain organisations or occupational settings.
I tried changing jobs more frequently than I felt was normal. The main thing I could put my finger on even at this early stage was how easily my opinions were patronised or dismissed. How people could acknowledge I had great ideas, but not be willing to support my ideas under the sense that “but how does she know all this stuff?” – Reading between the lines, it felt like my ideas had to undergo additional scrutiny, because “people like me” were not expected to have the best ideas.
This regardless of the fact that while working in international development, I had grown up in the kind of places where the aid projects I was talking about were being channelled. I could see the mistakes the sector was making because they had no idea what the reality of people in the Global South really was like – all they had was what the text book said and a few other bits they observed or saw when they went on the usual “poverty tourism”.
This stuff just made me sicker and sicker by the day.
