Series 1/Episode 8 - Virginie Zaghini

Carpe Disruption — Series 1: Transitioning is a Frame of Mind. Episode 8. Virginie Zaghini. Virginie Zaghini started her career testing blood compatibilities in a medical laboratory. The margin for error was zero. A patient at the end of the process was waiting for vital care. She now leads global talent acquisition across forty countries. The path between those two things involves a biology degree she walked away from, an au pair position she took because it was the smartest investment she could make with exactly the means she had, a leap to India at twenty three that her parents did not understand but could not talk her out of, and a chain of moves that deposited something in her from every environment she passed through. What she chose to keep from each one is the episode. In this conversation Virginie sits down with Jeremy Sholl and Alaina Schnipke to talk about what it actually means to move through very different professional cultures without losing yourself in any of them. The specific things each organisation deposited in her that she still carries. The things she had to unlearn. The boundaries she set on day one of every new role and never moved. And the moment she decided she was not going to let a career transition dictate her decision to have a child. This episode also covers the Paris Brest pastry, driving too fast, dishwashing, what happens when a meeting organiser says "so who wants to kick us off?", the Northern Lights, and a private pilot's license that is still on the list. Her philosophy in one line: you do not have to become the environment to survive it.