Hi. I’m Cecilia Poullain, and I'm here to help women in law and finance own their leadership.
Check out my free training to find out how.
Welcome.
You’re here because you’re a woman lawyer or a woman who works in finance and you’re ready:
to speak up and have great visibility at work
to be promoted to senior counsel, partner or a management position
to be paid appropriately for all your hard work.
Welcome.
You’re here because you’re a woman lawyer or a woman who works in finance and you’re ready:
to achieve your full potential - in a way that doesn’t leave you riddled with anxiety.
to enjoy your success and your work.
to get up each morning with a sense of ease and purpose.
This is how you’re feeling
You have worked so incredibly hard to get to where you are today - and the pressure is building up. Your family and friends are proud of you, and you are proud of your success - as you rightly should be. I see you, I hear you, I acknowledge you, because I know just how much it takes. You have done brilliantly well. And yet….
It’s not the way you thought it would be. Despite the outward success, something is not right. It doesn’t feel the way you thought it would. The more successful you are, the more anxious you feel.
You’re feeling scared
It’s not that you didn’t want this job - of course you did! It's just that you’re struggling to live with the anxiety that comes with it.
If you're honest with yourself, you are afraid of being found out. You’re worried about what people will think of you - your bosses, your peers, your clients. And the higher you go, the more exposed you feel.
You find yourself sitting quietly in meetings, whether with senior management or clients. Your stomach is tied in knots and your throat is tight. You hold yourself back from speaking. How can you be such a successful woman AND admit that you are too scared to say anything?
If you're honest with yourself, you are afraid of being found out. You’re worried about what people will think of you - your bosses, your peers, your clients. And the higher you go, the more exposed you feel.
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You’re feeling lost
You’ve been so busy following the path to partnership or management that you no longer know what you really want.
You’re wondering whether this is what you signed up for. That promotion is starting to feel like a heavy weight around your neck.
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You’re feeling lonely
You didn’t realize how lonely it would feel. Nobody seems to understand the pressures - and you are afraid to open up in case people think you aren’t up to it.
And there are SO many pressures: pressure from clients, pressure from above, pressure from below, pressure from your peers, pressure from your family.
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You’re feeling frustrated
You know you have to be more vocal. But when push comes to shove, you stay silent, over and over again.
And that is so frustrating, because your career is stalling as a result.
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You’re feeling angry
You’ve done everything you were told to do to achieve success - and you’ve discovered it’s not making you happy. You feel as though you’ve been lied to.
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You’re feeling fragile
You’re great at keeping up the facade. On the outside, you’ve got it all together. You look like a corporate lawyer or a woman in finance. But underneath it all, you’re feeling fragile. And that fragility is stifling you and preventing you from using your authentic voice.
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You’re feeling empty
The hours you work in law or finance take up a huge percentage of your life but you’re miserable and it’s having an impact on everything.
At this point, you’re thinking: what’s the point? Is this what it’s all about?
You are not alone.
There are so many women in law and finance who feel the same way. We are seeing an epidemic of successful professional women living half lives - and speaking with half voices. Our families put so much pressure on us.
Society puts so much pressure on us. We put so much pressure on ourselves. And it needs to change, because if it doesn’t, you risk burn-out or throwing in the towel. You risk not having an abundant, successful, satisfying life in which you achieve your full potential.
What will happen if you don’t do anything?
If you don’t address this, you will always be worrying about what other people think of you. You will always be wearing the mask. You will always keep your true voice silent.
And living a life that is not in integrity, that is not authentic, is a precursor to either burnout or resignation - or both. Not because the job is bad, but because of all the negative feelings that come along with it.
It doesn’t have to be that way
You are brilliant at achieving your goals - that’s never been an issue and it never will be.
It matters so much to you to be the best professional - and person - you possibly can be.
But now you want to achieve your professional goals in a way that doesn’t leave you riddled with anxiety. You want to truly enjoy your success and your work. You want to feel comfortable in your professional life and get up each morning with a sense of ease and purpose.
You’re ready to do it in a way that works for you. You want to start living in a way that is authentic. You want to be able to drop the mask and speak with your true voice without it feeling too vulnerable - and without hurting others.
You want to step confidently into a new role, or to become more confident in your current role, knowing that you have the emotional resilience to handle it. You want to be able to trust that you are enough.
You want to be happy at work, because you know that when you are happy, you will be even more professional, efficient and productive.
You know what you want - and you also know that you have already tried to get there on your own, and doing it solo isn’t working.
Your voice
What you say and how you say it is absolutely critical to your happiness and to your success.
If you’re feeling like an imposter, you don’t say anything because it feels too exposed - or bottle it up until it explodes. When you do speak up, it doesn’t come out the way you intended. It is difficult to use your voice effectively when you’re not feeling confident.
And when your confidence is low, you work harder and harder to make sure that everything is perfect. You put yourself under enormous pressure. You speak to yourself harshly - and find yourself speaking to others in the same way.
The key to professional success and happiness is to find your authentic voice.
It’s a virtuous spiral - once you have the skills to manage difficult conversations and to speak up, this will build your confidence. And when you feel confident, you will take more and more opportunities to speak, knowing that you can rely on your skills to do so.
I have helped many, many women, just like you, get clarity on their goals, build their confidence and speak up with their authentic voice. But don’t let me try to convince you - check out what my clients have to say.
My bio
Hi, I’m Cecilia Poullain.
I’m an international executive coach for women lawyers and for women who work in finance and I speak regularly on the place of women at work at top law firms and financial institutions such as Citibank, BBVA, Hogan Lovells and DLA Piper. I’m Australian and I’ve been living in Paris for thirty years.
For much of my career, I worked as a finance lawyer (I’m qualified in Australia, the UK and France) before structuring investment funds for an asset manager.
In the law firms and financial institutions in which I worked, I noticed that many of the highly competent women were not speaking up as much as they could - and as a result, weren’t achieving their full potential as people and as professionals.
So I started thinking about how I could combine my lived experience of the challenges of women in law firms and financial institutions with the skills I had developed as a singer, writer, actress, creator of one-woman shows, mediator and certified coach in order to help women in those industries to find their authentic voice.
Now, I work with them to develop crystal clear goals, to have the confidence and the skills to speak up and reach those goals, and to become visible and comfortable in their role as leaders.
I believe this work really matters. So many women lawyers and women in finance have jumped through all the hoops - and now they are feeling miserable or have burnt out or resigned. What a waste of all those years of study and work! And this is having a massive impact on them, on their families and on society.
I believe that the more women we have in leadership positions in those organisations, the more they can change the organisations from the inside to ensure that they work better for other women coming up behind them - and for everyone. This work matters.
It’s by digging deep into the specifics of a particular relationship, a particular meeting or a particular conversation that you can learn how to deal with stressful situations in order to become more assertive, more comfortable and more authentic.
Maybe you already have the promotion. Maybe you want the promotion. Either way, you know that your fear of speaking up authentically is standing in the way.
It’s your turn to find your authentic voice.
Learn more about my story here.
You deserve to feel more confident with who you are, and for your professional life to reflect your true talents.
TRAINING RECAP
How to own your leadership
Without stressing out or burning out
Missed our live training? Not a problem. Dive into the insights and empowering strategies shared during our "How to own your leadership" training session designed exclusively for successful women in law and finance. Watch the recorded session below and embark on a transformative journey to fulfil your professional potential without anxiety or stress.