Do you have a nagging feeling that you are not fulfilling your potential? That you have much more to offer but are unable to find out how to do this? That you have a sense of what matters to you but cannot express this? That you are torn between where you are and where you want to be? You are not alone. I've felt like this for much of my employed life. Even after making significant changes - doing (yet another) degree, joining (yet another) programme, and switching careers -

I left Poland as a teenager to obtain education, first in Germany and then the UK. I started my career in investment banking and consultancy

Before Onpartu, Italian born Anna could not find permanent full-time work and as such, was left juggling multiple jobs. The work she did ran

Joanna Sienkiewicz Onpartu Cohort: 2017 Mentor: Paulina Polak Education: Masters in Environmental Sciences Before Onpartu... Back in 2016 you may just have been served by Joanna at a London retail shop and not realised that the person assisting you had a master’s degree in science and 11 years of experience in administration, including with EU funding, data capture and geographic information systems. Joanna looks back with positivity at this period in her life when she first

Edita Grikpedyte Onpartu Cohort: 2017 Mentor: Valeria Ilies Education: Masters in Law and Management Before Onpartu... There is no question as to whether Edita really gave her original profession a chance; she both graduated from Law and Management and worked at Vilnius County Court as a full-time legal secretary. Once she sensed a stronger passion for wine, however, she did not sit around. Edita took herself to the south of France and Sicily in Italy, where her intuition was

Nana Boakye is a marketing professional who likes to learn, experiment and develop. As a foreign-born national she knows that an appreciation of cultural diversity goes hand-in-hand with a just and equitable society. In her spare time, she is a keen traveller who enjoys discovering hidden gems around the world that are worth the trek. My journey with Onpartu started... I came across Onpartu advert for a Social Media Executive on Escape the City website to promote awareness ab

Klaudia Pietrusiewicz Onpartu Cohort: 2015 Mentor: Paulina Polak Education: Masters in Administration and Finance Before Onpartu... Klaudia has been a confident individual for as long as she can remember. This quality helped her when 11 years ago she took the step to move from Poland to the UK in order to change her life and try something new. Yet once it came to her career abroad, Klaudia did not have high expectations. Nor did she take job researching very seriously. Happy

Giedre Janonyte Onpartu Cohort: 2016 Mentor: Natalia Garstecka Education: Masters in International Business Economy Before Onpartu... A successful Financial Analyst in Lithuania, Giedre moved to London and could only find a role as a housekeeper. Giedre’s English was beginner’s, but over the two years in the position she also didn’t get a chance to improve it much. She remembers that she “felt frozen” and had “no time to grow”; not least, it was a hard job physically. That di

Grammy award winning singer Adele’s latest album, 25, has sold more than 4.2 million copies in the U.S. and is officially the first album to ever sell one million copies for two weeks in a row. She is an extraordinarily successful singer and songwriter, yet surprisingly she admits to feeling crippling stage fright before her acclaimed stage performances. There is hope for anyone who is sometimes lacking in confidence if someone with that level of success can sometimes feel in

Migrant Voice (MV): Why do so many female migrants find it so hard to get the good jobs for which they are qualified? Paulina Polak – herself a migrant from Poland, via Germany – has been thinking about the problem for years, and she thinks she has the answer. “It’s about being able to sell yourself – to prospective employers, in life, to the world,” she says. She also decided that knowing the explanation was not enough and that she had to act to put the situation right, by s