BBC Journalist to Finance Leader: Danni Hewson on Menopause, Career Change and Money

The Wobbly Middle: Women's Career Crossroads In Midlife

Danni Hewson, a former BBC journalist with over two decades of experience, discusses her midlife career transition from broadcasting to financial analysis at AJ Bell following the onset of

Key takeaways

• Danni Hewson spent over 20 years as a BBC journalist before transitioning to Head of Financial Analysis at AJ Bell after experiencing severe perimenopausal symptoms in her late 30s.
• It took three years and multiple GP appointments for Danni to finally receive an HRT prescription, during which she suffered from debilitating brain fog that undermined her live TV reporting confidence.

Main topics

• Perimenopause and menopause in the workplace
• Career transition and transferable skills

Notable quotes

"I realized that my head could no longer contain all of that information in the way that it had. I was really struggling to deliver on it."

Conclusion

The episode provides actionable financial guidance while normalizing midlife career

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:02) Welcome to The Wobbly Middle, the show for women rethinking their careers in midlife. Today I'm talking with Dani Hewson. Dani spent over two decades as a BBC journalist, at a local radio in Hull and then on the telly for BBC Look North. But early menopause hit her hard. She was only in her 30s and had to really fight for help. Her GP said there was absolutely no way she was impairing menopause and it took several appointments for her to get a blood test. It took several years before a doctor finally said the word HRT. By then, her brain fog had made live television feel impossible. So she made a plan and moved to Radio 5 Live's Wake Up to Money. When COVID came and the BBC asked people to do even more for less, Dani finally made the call. She rang a regular guest on her program and asked whether he knew anywhere she might be a good fit. His boss immediately rang her back. Now Dani is head of financial analysis at AJ Bell, championing women's financial confidence at every turn. We talk about what it actually feels like when your confidence begins to erode at a job you're brilliant at and how to look differently at the skills you've built up. We also talk about not low-balling our worth and the very specific advice Dani was given when negotiating her salary. And on the subject of money, Dani gives us the push we need to finally open those pension envelopes sitting in the drawer. Here's Dani Hewson. Speaker 1 (1:35) This episode is presented by Read-O-Rama. Speaker 2 (1:38) If I had my way, reading on the sofa would be an Olympic sport and covering every surface with books considered the pinnacle of interior design. So you can imagine how delighted I am to partner with Read-O-Rama for this episode. Read-O-Rama is a second-hand books marketplace where the sellers are readers, the prices are genuinely good and every book you buy raises funds for schools, charities and reading initiatives across the UK. Give your books a second life and be part of something good. Find your next read at readorama.com. Speaker 1 (2:15) I absolutely did not have a very planned out corporate career path at all. In fact, I've only just recently started in financial services. I joined AJ Bell just over five years ago now. But before that, I was a journalist. Completely different career that I'd had for a quarter of a... century and then made the switch. Speaker 2 (2:45) Yes and you started your radio career after meeting someone in a restaurant. I did yes Speaker 1 (2:52) it's funny isn't it how serendipity plays a part in career choices sometimes and the one thing that I tell my kids all the time is that you need to be really aware of the signals that life sends you the opportunities that sort of arrive out of nowhere and I worked when I was a student at university, but all the time I was at university. And in fact, all the time I was doing my A-levels and my postgraduate as well. I was working in a Mexican restaurant in Leicester and a guy would come in on a Friday night late on. He was always the last person in. Sometimes he'd take food home with him, but most of the time he'd sit and eat. And he was a voiceover artist. But he would come in and we'd get chatting. And he said, where are you from? And I told him that I was from near Hull. And he said, oh, I've just been doing some work at a radio station in Hull. And when I went back home after I'd done my degree, having no clue what I wanted to do, I remembered that conversation and I got in touch with him and he put me in touch with the radio station and I went and... I volunteered over a very long summer when I was doing three different jobs, but I volunteered at a radio station there just to try and figure out what I wanted to do. And I was working in commercial production, so I was making adverts for the radio. And I didn't really get on with that, but I liked the guys working in news. So I thought... okay, that might be for me and went off and did a postgraduate and the rest is history up to a point. Speaker 2 (4:39) So you did a lot of work in local broadcasting, you did TV work. I'm interested in the role of local journalism, how that's changed and what we're missing now that there has been that change to more national broadcasting. Speaker 1 (4:56) I loved my time working in local journalism because when I started over 30 years ago, they had local radio stations, even the music stations would have their own news teams. So you were going out and you were covering local court cases, local council meetings. You were scrutinising what was going on. And a lot of that has fallen away. I worked for the BBC for an awful lot of years and I worked for a programme called Look North, which is based in Leeds, the 6.30 regional news programme. And that's still there, but they have fewer people on staff. And certainly the radio stations and the newspapers, a lot of that has changed dramatically. So there are far fewer people scrutinising these court cases, these council decisions. And I think that that means that... We're not holding some of those people to account sometimes. And that is massively important to be keeping tabs on your local area to make sure that the money that we pay in taxes is being spent right. You've spoken about Speaker 2 (6:07) some of the nitty gritty of your work and the glamour. And you've said how that journalism took you to places you never would have otherwise experienced. Speaker 1 (6:19) I have had an amazing opportunity through my career. So I've been down the UK's last deep coal mine and I saw the coal face. So you go down in a lift and then you get a train and the train takes you sort of 25 minutes to the coal face. And it's incredibly hot down there. And we did a whole load of filming and you've got to take certain kit and it's got to be checked out because down there you can't have anything that can cause an explosion. And talk to all the guys who were at the point of losing their job, which was just an incredibly sad experience. Speaker 1 (7:02) The only way to then get back up to the surface was to ride on the conveyor belt that took the coal up. And the ride back took about 15 minutes. So it was a lot quicker than the ride there. But yes, so I'm laying backwards holding this camera with my head resting on all the coal, which was incredibly glamorous. And I was washing coal dust off everything for... days after that. I've been on an oil rig off the coast of Scotland, I've helped make sausages, anywhere that you can imagine I've been. And at times it can be glamorous, sure, I mean people look at you on the TV and you're standing there in front of the camera and your hair and your makeup are done, but more often than not you're out in the middle of a field and it's raining and it's windy and there's no toilet and there's nowhere to get anything to eat, but... Speaker 2 (7:55) Yeah, I don't think I would have missed it for the world. No, many, many adventures. And I also totally loved my job and the way that I can hear you loved your job. And then it's very difficult when we begin to fall out of love with our jobs, when we get tired, when we get a little burnt out from the rigor. What was the change where you felt, I need something different now? Speaker 1 (8:23) For me, it was perimenopause and the menopause that just completely changed how I felt just about life in general. I found everything difficult, just the having to deal with making sure that you had all the sanitary products that you needed because you were in the car for hours. And if you were having a really heavy period, that was a massive issue. and I would always wear black trousers and it just became very difficult to deal with, particularly if you were then going to be on camera. But the breaking point for me came when I was doing a lot of live reporting. We were talking about a very controversial means of energy extraction called fracking and it was incredibly complicated and Both sides were watching like a hawk. You couldn't put a foot wrong. You had to make sure that everything you said was perfectly balanced and perfectly accurate. And I realized that my head could no longer contain all of that information in the way that it had. I was really struggling to deliver on it. I was having to use notes and I just didn't feel as confident as I had done. And for me then. it just felt like maybe it was time for a change and I was lucky because I was able to move out of television and an opportunity came up