July 6, 2022

The Climb: Talia’s success story

In case you missed it, our Climb Membership is back better than ever in September! The Climb Membership is a carefully curated virtual six-month program designed to give women worldwide the tools, support, and confidence to climb the corporate ladder.

As we gear up for our launch, we wanted to share the experiences of our alumnae. So, we caught up with Talia Chirouf for a quick Q&A. If you’re keen to understand how The Climb can support you in achieving your career goals, read on. 

Get to know Talia 

Talia Chirouf is a Diversity & Inclusion Professional working in the legal sector. She focuses on designing and delivering innovative solutions to drive recruitment, retention, and progression of underrepresented groups across all diversity characteristics, specialising in Social Mobility. 

Talia has previously worked in the Third Sector, delivering workshops and managing internship placements for young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds who want to work in the city. She is passionate about the responsible business agenda and how companies can deliver increased benefits to their people and customers through sustainability, community outreach and building inclusive cultures internally. 

Career trajectory 

When asked if our Climb membership directly benefited her career trajectory, Talia told us, “Yes, it gave me the confidence and tools to think strategically about my next move, ultimately culminating in a promotion in my current organisation.”

Self-discovery & lessons learned 

A key element of our Climb membership is self-discovery. Sharing her learnings about herself during the program, Talia explained, “I learned that I really enjoy my current role! It was so interesting to hear from others who wanted to do something different than their current roles or change the area they were working in.”

She added, “the exercises we undertook to think about our values and how they align to our roles and organisations really showed me how much synergy there was for me, how much I enjoyed many aspects of my role and wanted to stay in the D&I space for at least the medium term.” 

Speaking on her most impactful learnings from the Climb membership, Talia shared, “There was so much great content packed into the programme, and the ability to go back over time to re-evaluate where you’re at.” 

She added, “I found it particularly useful to do the life and career audit at the beginning and then revisit it to see where I was progressing. I plan to continue this as part of a wider reflection on goal setting and achievement. I also found the creative ideas and prompts Vanessa shared to identify where you’re at and track progress very useful. Not being particularly creative myself, I tend to default to lists, but there were so many great ideas on exploring yourself and your journey in different ways.” 

Money talk 

We’re all about empowering our students in talking money and negotiating their terms. Talia explained how the Climb made her feel more empowered: “we had extremely open conversations within the community, which helped to see where you shared challenges with others, and what people had found worked for them. Vanessa also organised a fantastic speaker to share salary negotiation tips, which was an extremely powerful and motivating session!” 

Yours for the taking 

When asked if she’d received any new opportunities since completing the six-month program, Talia explained, “Yes! Although I ultimately decided to stay within my organisation, I received other opportunities, which helped me better understand where I’m at career-wise and where I can aim for in the future.” 

When asked to sum up the Climb membership in three words, Talia chose candid, supportive and worthwhile. 

If you’re ready to embark on a journey of self-discovery and climb the corporate ladder, find out more about the Climb here and join the waitlist.