It was shortly before dawn one morning when a rugged up Lisa Leong stepped towards a large locked door and pressed the buzzer.

Leong had braced the bitter cold and showering sleet to travel to Liberty Radio’s office on the outskirts of London. It was the year 2000 and she was there to ask a stranger a question she hoped would lead to more than a dry place to shelter.

“I pressed the doorbell and he answered,” Leong, now an ABC Radio Melbourne and ABC Radio National broadcaster and author, recalls to FW. 

“And I was thinking ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’ I thought ‘oh well, he could call the police but then I’d just run away’. I said, ‘Hello, my name is Lisa Leong. I’m a radio DJ. Can I make you a cup of coffee this morning? And he buzzed me in.’”

Lisa Leong began her professional life as a lawyer before following her passion into radio.

The man who answered the door that morning was Liberty Radio’s then-program director. Leong had banked on him being there. She was after a radio gig. For weeks she’d sent out demo tapes to producers all over London. Yet, as the rejection letters piled up she knew she needed to change tact. She needed a bold plan.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that sense of ‘maybe I wasn’t meant to do this’, like ‘who am I kidding?’ I was thinking, ‘the people who make decisions are really, really busy. Maybe they didn’t even listen to my demo tape’. And that’s what brought me to the outskirts of London,” she says.

“So I made a cup of coffee. We had a chat and then the next weekend I did exactly the same thing. I buzzed the door and said ‘Lisa Leong, here to make your morning cup of coffee. He lets me in. I do it every weekend until he gave me my own show.”

It took Leong close to a month of pre-dawn station visits before she achieved her goal. What makes her feat more remarkable is that back then Leong’s day job was a mid-level technology lawyer on a career path towards senior associate. 

Bhupinder Kent pauses, considers the question before smiling.

“I always find it a funny story,” Kent tells FW. 

“I didn’t know what I wanted to study at university. I was looking at everything from maths to American Studies. But I particularly like the idea of doing a degree where you could spend a year living and working overseas or studying overseas.” 

It was a suggestion that left her parents dismayed.

“Having good Indian parents they were like ‘well, we’d really like it if you became a doctor or a lawyer’. So medicine was out, I wasn’t studying the right subjects and I was far too squeamish, but I started to look at law degrees and discovered that you could study law and languages as a dual degree,” she says. 

Bhupinder Kent, left her high power job with investment banks for a more meaningful career.

Kent, who grew up in the UK, chose an Italian university in Parma, south of Milan, for her law studies. It suited her adventurous spirit.

“Not a lot of studying happened. But my language skills improved vastly, which was kind of the goal anyway. But I really didn’t care much for the law side of my degree and swore blind I was never going to become a lawyer,” she says.

Fast forward a few years of travel and Kent did become a lawyer. She joined a large law firm based in London, working as a derivatives and structured finance lawyer before switching to working with investment banks. As she closed in on her 10 year career milestone as a lawyer, Kent tired of the acrid work culture around her.

“I sort of put it in these terms that I was waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and then I realised sometimes you have to tap yourself on the shoulder.”

“I’ve often described it [as] you’re working in a male dominated environment, with men who seem to think the way to get what they want is to throw their toys out the pram,” she says. 

“There’s something about when you have your own kids and you understand that babies and young kids do that because they’re babies and young kids. But when you’re working in that environment, you kind of go, you start to question, ‘what are you doing?’”

Leong and Kent both left their high-profile jobs as lawyers to embrace a second act in their career. It is a decision millions of people make each year.

In the 12 months to February 2023, 1.3 million people changed jobs in Australia, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics found. This equates to 9.5 per cent of all employed people in Australia changing jobs during the year.

This figure remains unchanged from 2022 which marked the highest rate of job change in the country since February 2012. Back then it was 10.5 per cent.

“I think it’s definitely worth… if you’re not happy where you are, moving towards something that you are happy with, whatever career you’re in,” Dr Lisa Pryor tells FW.

Pryor has experience on the subject. In an interview with FW founder Helen McCabe she details her early career as a lawyer, a move into journalism before a night in a hospital emergency department put her on a path to medicine and now psychiatry. 

“It looks like I chop and change, but I’ve never started a degree I haven’t finished,”  the former columnist and opinions page editor with The Sydney Morning Herald told the FW Leadership Series podcast. 

“I really enjoyed being a journalist. I didn’t leave because I didn’t enjoy it. 

Dr Lisa Pryor has never shied away from a career change, the former lawyer, journalist and doctor is now training to become a psychiatrist.

“One thing I always noticed about being a journalist is often you’re in rooms with people who knew more about something than you do. You were the person talking to experts about things you didn’t really understand and you had to work really hard to become an instant expert in a day or two on these topics that other people had genuine expertise in. I think I got a bit tired of that.”

Leong was sitting alone in a windowless office in her London law firm when her thoughts drifted to a work life outside the law. She recalls feeling a sense of inertia in that moment.

“It was that inertia where I think it had just been building that, you know, you work really hard and then you’re too tired to think about anything to give yourself the space,” she says. 

“So it was actually not until that airless windowless office where I had a bit of time and it was because the internet bubble broke, you know, like it busted really, and I kind of got shifted from the day pattern. Sometimes you need a bit of a disruption.

“I had a feeling that I was waiting for someone to tell me ‘Lisa, you’re not meant to be a lawyer. You were meant to be dot, dot dot, right? And, I sort of put it in these terms that I was waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and then I realised sometimes you have to tap yourself on the shoulder.”

She took stock and after hearing from a friend that her nearby hospital in Charing Cross was looking for volunteers for their in-house radio station. She was intrigued.

She joined the hospital’s Monday night bingo broadcast and learned as much as she could during her volunteer time. After banking enough hours behind the audio decks Leong was given her own show – Thursday night therapy, an interview style show.

The show soon gained popularity. It was her ‘tap on the shoulder moment’. It was time to leave the law. 

She took two months leave and immersed herself in the radio industry, visiting other hospital radio stations and paying attention to how other presenters honed their skills. She joined the UK’s Hospital Broadcasting Association and networked before her charisma and talent opened the door at Liberty Radio. She was given a Sunday morning show where she and co-host Zoe Mack played non stop number one hits.

Yet, the reality of finding work in London in radio was tough. Leong applied to study radio at AFTRS in Australia and after being accepted she returned home.

“When I look back I think, you know, it seems brave, but actually there were just a number of steps that I did, that made the transition kind of not so crazy,” she says. 

“I think as the kids got older, I was really like, ‘well, okay, I really, I don’t necessarily want that big, high powered career in the same way again, but I want something more than just working from home’.”

Kent was on maternity leave in the late 2000s when she pondered her career. She realised her job was making wealthy banks and bankers richer. It wasn’t where she wanted to be. Change was needed. Then the global financial crisis hit.

“I realised that it was more insidious than that, that really a lot of that type of work, and those types of deals, had really done a lot of damage, like on a grand scale,” she says. 

“I ended up not going back to that after maternity leave and we ended up moving countries. Then sort of three international moves, two kids later, I arrived in Australia. I thought I would take a year to settle the family and think about what I was going to do. I thought about getting back into law, but discovered that wasn’t really possible here. I ended up having this 10 year career break, which was not the plan.”

For Kent, as a temporary resident, securing work in Australia proved difficult. Without access to the nation’s childcare rebate Kent and her family faced $1000 a week for daycare. She persisted, taking on freelance proofreading work.

“That was a very kind of ‘time and place’ career change. It was ‘what can I do that can fit in with the needs of my wider life’? So at that point, the consideration was much more around. I’ve got young kids, I need flexibility, and I need to do something that can fit in with that life,” she says. 

“Then I think as the kids got older, I was really like, ‘well, okay, I really, I don’t necessarily want that big, high powered career in the same way again, but I want something more than just working from home’.”

Kent was among millions of Aussies in the same situation. These individuals are known as “potential workers” by the public service beancounters.

ABS data found in February 2023 potential workers in Australia numbered at 1.8 million. Of this number 1.4 million were without a job.

A breakdown of the 1.8 million potential workers found 467,800 had looked for work, 356,400 had a job to go to, or return to, and 980,500 did not look for work.

“Over three-quarters of those who wanted to work, but did not look for work, were available to start in the previous week or within the next four weeks,” the ABS said in a statement.

After standing out as a participant in the pilot program of FW Jobs Academy, Kent joined FW as a senior relationship manager, in July 2022. A year later she was promoted to the position of Specialist (Memberships and Partnerships). 

“I’ve loved doing something that really aligns with my values that I’m getting a chance to give back and support other women to get back to work and being able to put my experiences to good use, really,” she says.

“I think one of the risks of me talking about my experience is that it makes it look too easy… and actually puts pressure on other people to feel like they need to work that hard or do that many things and you don’t need to.”

For Leong, her biggest learning from her career change has been two-fold.

“I think the thing that I learned in doing my big shift is not to do the big shift,” she says. 

“You know, get as much information as possible, and if you can, get into the environment, like I did volunteering, or meet the people who are doing it.”

Pryor has been a doctor now for eight years. She’s spent seven of those years working as a psychiatry registrar. She’s training to be a psychiatrist. 

“I think one of the risks of me talking about my experience is that it makes it look too easy,” she says. 

“I think my career, when you put it in a nutshell, can just sound really obnoxious and actually puts pressure on other people to feel like they need to work that hard or do that many things and you don’t need to.”

She admits looking back on her career it looks like a long and tiring road. Yet, it’s been a satisfying journey. 

“I think it’s about doing what’s right for you at the time,” she says.

Kent agrees.

“When you are no longer comfortable in what you’re doing, when you know there will be things telling you that you’re not enjoying your work anymore, it’s not fulfilling anymore, there isn’t the progression or you end up losing your job you know, you will start to feel you are not inhabiting your world in the way you want to be,” she says. 

“This is the time to reassess. To think about what you want and what isn’t working for you. Taking a moment and considering ‘who do I want to be? What do I want? What do I want my whole life to look like?’”

She says the easiest thing sometimes can be just to follow your same career path but in a different company or location. 

“But sometimes it’s a really good opportunity to carry out a more fulsome audit of self,” she says.

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