Helping Ambitious Women Build Sustainable Careers – Exclusive Interview with Jessica Lindfield
- Brainz Magazine
- 10 hours ago
- 7 min read
Jess Lindfield is a career strategist, speaker, and author of Play the Game. She helps ambitious women build confidence, clarity, and sustainable success through practical frameworks, workshops, and speaking. Alongside her work with Embrace Her, she works in commercial enablement at the Financial Times and is Co-Chair of FT Women. Her work blends lived experience with strategic insight, supporting women to pursue big goals without burning themselves out.
Jessica Lindfield, Founder & Corporate Leader
Who is Jessica Lindfield? Introduce yourself, your hobbies, your favourites, you at home and in business, and tell us something interesting about yourself.
I’ve built a career that spans leadership, advocacy, and entrepreneurship, not because I couldn’t choose one path, but because each plays a distinct role in how I want to work and live.
I’m the founder of Embrace Her, which is home to my book Play the Game, my workshops and speaking work, and an Instagram community of almost 50,000 women. Through Embrace Her, I support ambitious women to build careers that are both successful and sustainable. Alongside this, I work in commercial enablement at the Financial Times, where I lead complex, high-impact global initiatives, and I’m the Co-Chair of FT Women, helping to shape strategy and advocacy for women across the organisation.
Rather than seeing these as separate lanes, I see them as an ecosystem. Each role informs the others, fills different parts of my life, and allows me to operate with clarity, impact, and alignment. It’s a model that reflects how I believe modern careers can be built, with intention, not exhaustion.
Outside of work, I’m grounded by simple routines, daily walks, movement, and time with my partner, family, and friends, but I’m also deeply energised by travel. Immersing myself in different cultures gives me perspective, stretches how I think, and fills my cup in a way very little else does. I value having the flexibility to say yes to experiences I want to have, without overthinking or second-guessing myself.
I thrive on structure, but I’ve learned to balance it with curiosity, rest, and play. Some of my clearest thinking happens away from my desk, when I give myself permission to step back. After all, as Brené Brown puts it, “It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.” That belief underpins how I live and work today.
Something that often surprises people is that confidence hasn’t always come naturally to me. Much of the work I do now is shaped by lived experience, learning how to advocate for myself, navigate rejection, and move away from patterns of overworking in environments that quietly reward it.
What inspired you to create Embrace Her, and what gap did you feel called to fill?
While my move to London in 2023 was the visible inflexion point, the foundations of Embrace Her were laid years earlier.
I joined an insurance company as a sales advisor at 21 and spent the next seven years building my career there. Over time, I worked across eight different roles, progressed quickly, and led teams of more than 45 people. My career focus at this time was exclusively on climbing the corporate ladder. I was ambitious, driven, and constantly moving forward, but I never paused to reflect.
Behind the scenes, the pace I was setting for myself was unsustainable. I worked long hours, pushed through exhaustion, and burned the candle at both ends (professionally and socially), trying to live up to an idea of having it all together. Eventually, that caught up with me. I began experiencing panic attacks in 2021, which forced me to confront something I’d been avoiding, the way I was working and living couldn’t continue.
That moment didn’t lead to an immediate change, but it did spark a quiet, persistent curiosity. There had to be a way to succeed without running myself into the ground. I started questioning long-held beliefs that success required constant overworking, that rest had to be earned, and that slowing down meant falling behind. Gradually, I began experimenting with different ways of showing up, both at work and in my life.
That internal shift is what gave me the courage to make a bigger move.
When I eventually left Australia, I was stepping away from a business that had grown into a billion-dollar organisation, a company I had basically grown up in and from a version of success that no longer fit. I didn’t just want a new role or a new country, I wanted a new relationship with ambition.
Arriving in England, I had a rare window of space between roles. For the first time in years, I stopped. I reflected on the wins I’d never celebrated, the lessons I’d rushed past, and the patterns I didn’t want to repeat. That pause brought clarity, not just about my next role, but about how I wanted to live and work going forward.
I began sharing those reflections on Instagram under the handle @embraceher.co. What started as personal processing quickly resonated with other women. As the community grew, it became clear that this wasn’t just content, it was a shared experience. That’s when Embrace Her became a calling.
How did this evolve into your book Play the Game?
As Embrace Her grew, I began turning the most impactful lessons into practical tools. Over time, those lessons became Play the Game, a career workbook designed to help women reflect, reposition, and move forward with clarity and confidence.
The book took almost two years to write and was launched in June 2025. It’s not theory-heavy or motivational fluff, it’s a practical manual built from lived experience, designed to help women navigate their careers strategically.
What gap are you now focused on filling?
What’s become very clear to me is that many ambitious women aren’t lacking talent, work ethic, or intelligence, they’re blocked by self-doubt, burnout, and outdated narratives about what success should look like.
Embrace Her exists to serve those women. My work helps women trust themselves, advocate for their careers, build confidence through action, and create success that doesn’t come at the expense of their wellbeing.
I don’t position myself as someone who has everything figured out. I position myself as someone who has walked the path, paused to reflect, and is committed to helping others move forward with intention.
How do you support women who feel overwhelmed or stuck in repeating patterns?
I’m naturally very pragmatic in my approach, I’m an “it’s not that deep” kind of person, and I say that with care, not dismissal. One of my strengths is helping women distinguish between what’s genuinely life-altering and what feels heavy in the moment but won’t matter in a week or a month.
We start by slowing things down and asking why, not to overanalyse, but to create clarity. Why does this feel so big? Why does the same pattern keep repeating? And does this require deep emotional work, or a practical adjustment in habits, beliefs, or boundaries?
One of my core mantras is that consistently good beats occasionally great. Most women don’t need a dramatic breakthrough, they need sustainable changes they can maintain. We focus on small, repeatable actions that rebuild self-trust over time.
The shift happens when women learn to respond rather than react, replacing spirals with grounded decision-making. The goal isn’t to bypass emotion, but to move through challenges without letting every moment feel defining.
Who is the ideal woman you love working with?
I love working with baddies, women who follow through.
Baddie (/ˈbad·ē/, noun): A woman who follows through on what she says she’ll do, even when it’s uncomfortable.
She’s capable, hardworking, and deeply committed to her growth. She doesn’t need convincing that she wants more, she already knows it. When she finds me, she’s often doing fine but can sense there’s another level available to her. She’s tired of second-guessing herself, carrying unnecessary pressure, or drifting without a clear strategy, and she’s ready to move forward intentionally.
My work is for women who want to elevate how they operate. I help them sharpen their thinking, build self-trust through action, and make clearer, more deliberate choices in their careers. This isn’t about fixing anything, it’s about unlocking what’s already there and learning how to use it well.
By the time women leave my world, they don’t just know they’re capable, they operate like it. Calm, clear, and self-assured.
What transformations do women typically experience after working with you?
The most consistent transformation I see is a shift from potential to ownership.
Greater clarity, discipline, and purpose. They stop relying on motivation alone and start building habits and systems that support long-term growth. They back themselves as credible A-players, holding boundaries, managing their time intentionally, and showing up with confidence.
They also lean into learning. Confidence without humility becomes arrogance, and sustainable success requires both. They refine their skills, seek feedback, and stay curious rather than defensive.
Perhaps most importantly, they gain clarity around their individual strengths, learning how to leverage what they’re already good at instead of trying to be everything to everyone.
Can you walk us through your signature framework and how it helps women operate with more clarity, confidence, and control in their careers?
My work is grounded in a framework I developed through personal experience, known as the DARE Method. Sometimes I name it directly, and other times I weave it in subtly, my priority is always meeting someone where they are.
DARE is a practical operating system designed to help you move out of reaction mode and into clarity, confidence, and control.
Discipline: showing up consistently and building momentum through repeatable actions.
Accountability: owning outcomes without spiralling into self-blame.
Responsibility: taking an active role in your career rather than waiting for permission.
Efficiency: cutting noise, focusing on high-impact actions, and protecting energy.
The framework is flexible and realistic. You can apply it to confidence challenges, career decisions, boundary conversations, or habits they’re building, without it feeling rigid or overwhelming.
How do your book, workshops, and speaking engagements support women in different ways?
Each offering meets women at different points in their journey, while supporting the same goal, help ambitious women operate with clarity, confidence, and control.
Play the Game is a self-guided playbook women can return to across different seasons. Workshops, particularly within organisations, are immersive and practical, creating shared language and immediate action. Speaking engagements and keynotes work at scale, shifting perspective and sparking momentum.
There’s no hierarchy in how someone engages with my work. It’s about what feels most relevant and accessible in the moment.
What message would you give to women who hesitate to take the first step?
You don’t need to hit breaking point to deserve support.
Waiting until you’re exhausted or doubting yourself isn’t ‘strength’, it’s unnecessary pressure. The women who make the biggest moves aren’t the ones who struggle silently, they’re the ones who know when to get perspective and structure.
You don’t need perfect confidence or a perfectly mapped-out plan. You just need to decide that you’re worth backing now. One intentional step is enough to shift momentum.
If you want more, trust that instinct. Acting on it is often the most powerful move you can make.
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