THE AGE OF DISCONTENT

The woman – let’s call her Client A – had done everything right. She studied international relations and economics at university in the US, interned for a senator (a Kennedy, no less), graduated cum laude and secured a job at a nonprofit nurturing future Hispanic leaders. She started her own publishing imprint, shining a spotlight on writers from her community in the Bronx. In the evenings, she worked as a bartender to support her family. She was intelligent and driven and at 27, a woman with her entire life ahead of her. But she was also lost, plagued with feelings of ‘what if’ and ‘what next’, wondering why she felt so disconnected from her own trajectory.

So she decided to sign up for a professional development workshop in New York overseen by Megan Hellerer, who calls herself the conscious career coach. The year was 2016, and even though Hellerer’s coaching practice had only just celebrated its first birthday, she had met several women like Client A – women who were so clearly extraordinary but were struggling to articulate their purpose. Women she would later christen “under-fulfilled overachievers”. Women, it turns out, like herself. Hellerer launched her business after quitting a high-powered job at Google that paid six figures with all the trimmings but was causing her so much anxiety that she would feel nauseous every morning on the bus to work. Hellerer knew what it felt like to finally have everything you thought you wanted but for those things to leave you cold. She relished the opportunity to work with these women,