How I protect my energy, money and visibility as a busy mum of three with five job titles
Your ambition doesn't need to get smaller. Your personal infrastructure needs to get stronger.
By June Angelides MBE - Founder of The Portfolio Method
Most people nearly faint when I tell them I have five job titles but one thriving career: investor, founder, board advisor, writer and public speaker.
What they do not always realise is that none of this works by accident. I have spent years developing my personal infrastructure. Now I am sharing it with the world.
I have built a portfolio career over the last 11 years, and at first it happened almost by accident. Like many ambitious women, I found myself being tapped for opportunities because I was good at my day job. Prestigious organisations. Interesting roles. Exciting projects.
But what I learned, often the hard way, is that the real risk is not simply saying yes too often. It is saying yes without doing a life audit of what that new commitment will mean for everything else you already carry.
One of the most visceral examples of this in my own life was when I sat on the board of a business I deeply admired. The time commitment I had been told to expect did not match what ended up being required. There were additional meetings, more asks, and more of me being needed than I had planned for. I was also in my season of yes.
There was one day in particular when I nearly passed out from pure exhaustion. That was the moment I knew I could not do it all. It was the moment I finally learned what my personal limit was.
That experience changed the way I think about ambition. I do not believe women need to aim lower. I believe we need better tools, better boundaries and better self-knowledge. That is the foundation of the Portfolio Method. We help women design careers that work around their energy levels, their natural way of working and their personal limit when it comes to taking on additional roles.
Start with your energy, not your ego
One of the biggest skills I have learned over the past 11 years is the power of no. But the power of no only works when you are clear on what deserves your yes.
For me, that clarity sharpened after I had my second child. I recognised that I felt most aligned when I was doing work that increased gender equality, improved access to finance and created better outcomes for women. That is what drives me. Once I became honest about that, decision-making became easier. If something fits, I lean in. If it does not, I can let it go.
This is why I always encourage women to do a life audit before they take on anything new. Not just, does this sound exciting? But what will this mean for my time, my family, my energy, my existing commitments and the goals I am actually trying to reach?
Ambitious women are often very used to being told they can do it all. I think the more important question is whether they should, and at what cost.
Build structure that protects your future self
I used to think the dream was flexibility. I thought going with the flow was freedom. In reality, a completely open diary is often an invitation for other people to fill your life for you.
I have a phrase for this. If your diary is too flexible, it is like leaving your front door open and allowing other people to come in and place their furniture wherever they want. You lose space to think. You lose space to strategise. You lose space to recover.
Structure has saved me.
One of the most practical things I do is block time to learn. I block a whole day for learning because staying sharp is part of the job. That could mean podcasts, books, journals, lectures or simply talking to people who have deep experience. The point is that I do not leave my development to chance.
The race is on. AI is getting smarter. We have a responsibility to keep growing too.
Protect your money by pricing the real cost
The second thing I protect is money.
Too many women hesitate to ask for the amount they are deserving of. Too many assume the offer in front of them is fixed. But if you have not done the life audit, you also have not priced the real cost of saying yes.
That is one of the key ideas we teach through the Portfolio Method. Before you take on an additional role, look at the full picture. What is the real scope? How many hours will this actually take? What will need to move in your week to make room for it? And are you being compensated properly for that reality?
Time is not abstract. Energy is not abstract. They are part of the cost.
In our work, 85 per cent of women who have taken our audit have told us they are underpricing. That tells me this is not simply a personal issue. It is a cultural one. There is still far too little transparency around what women should charge and what they should be paid.
That is why I believe we need to talk more openly about money. Ask your peers the uncomfortable question. What are they charging? What are they hearing? The more we say these things out loud, the less taboo they become.
Visibility matters more than women are often told
The third thing I protect is visibility.
I think many women are still taught to believe that if they do great work, people will notice. Sometimes they do. Often they do not.
You need to know what people pick up the phone to call you for. More than that, the people around you need to know it too. You should be at the tip of people’s tongues when it comes to your subject matter expertise.
That means being willing to talk about what you do, the outcomes you have achieved and the success you have created. Visibility is not vanity. It is clarity. It is how the right opportunities start finding you.
Key takeaway
The biggest mistake I see is burnout. Overcommitting. Not believing you are worthy of protecting your time. Not believing you are worthy of investing in yourself.
I do not think women need to shrink their ambition. I think we need to build better personal infrastructure around it.
For me, that means protecting my energy, my money and my visibility. For other women, the exact mix may look different. But the principle is the same: design a career that works with your life, your natural way of working and your actual capacity.
If this resonates, I would love to invite the Female Lead community to take our free audit and get clarity.
The MyPholyo Mapper is a free audit built around six quick questions to help you map where you are now and unlock where you could go next. It can reveal if the work you love most could be earning you more, if your value and visibility are out of sync, if a big opportunity may be hiding in plain sight, and if the vision you are building has the calendar time it deserves.
We are also building the first AI platform and career companion for portfolio professionals, and you can join the waitlist through the Portfolio Method website.
Born in London and raised in Lagos, June grew up watching women carry many roles at once. The idea that a career should narrow you down to one title never made sense to her.
She started at Silicon Valley Bank. On her second maternity leave, she founded Mums in Technology, the UK’s first child-friendly coding school, teaching hundreds of women to code with their babies in the room.
Today June is a mother of three with five job titles: investor, founder, board advisor, writer and public speaker. She is Venture Partner at Samos Investments and founder of Levare Ventures, backing deep tech, life sciences and healthtech across Europe and Africa. She sits on the boards of Ruka Hair, Jude and Code First Girls, and advises the UK government on high-growth women-led businesses. With her sister, she co-founded Mama’s Breakfast Club CIC, feeding children daily in the city where she grew up.
The Portfolio Method, used in over 20 countries, helps people building more than one income stream design careers that work around their energy, their time and their life.
LinkedIn Top Voice. FT Most Influential Tech Leaders. Computer Weekly Most Influential Women in Tech. IET Honorary Fellow. MBE for services to women in technology.
Non-linear is the new normal.
