Career Break Strategist, Speaker & Coach
Not realizing that she had "committed career suicide" by extending her leave beyond the 12 weeks alloted under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), Barbara, like many professional women who step-out faced an uphill battle upon re-entry. She found herself re-entering at a lower lever and feeling nearly invisible in the organization she had previously contributed so much.
Although she had helped over 5,000 job seekers enter the workforce successfully in her previous role as a senior workforce development trainer at Temple University -- Barbara felt helpless in her own situation to re-engage successfully. She now had to figure a way to resurrect her own dying career.
Feeling both stunted and stigmatized, Barbara opted-out a second time... 2 years later ...and 9-months pregnant with her only daughter. But, this time she would leave with a plan, 'a plan NOT to return', but to continue growing her young family and to achieve work-life balance on her own terms.
Barbara had always dreamed of speaking professionally. So in 2004, after the birth of her fourth child, she decided to pursue her passion and launched the Philadelphia Speakers Bureau. The bureau would allow her to do 3 things:
1) work from home
2) spend more quality time with her young family and
3) position herself in the multi-billion dollar self-help industry to learn first-hand from world renouned speakers, leading authorities and other experts.
Barbara had already tasted entrepreneurial success as a young adult when she opened her own specialty boutique and image consulting firm in an upscale community in Society Hill, Philadelphia at the age of 19. She had also launched a popular charm and etiquette program for tween and teen girls in her local community that earned her third party media endorsements, a feature story in The Philadelphia Tribune and several radio interviews.
With a solid plan now in place and nothing standing in her way, Barbara was well on her way to achieving the work-life balance and quality of life she so desparately desired.
But just then she hit an emotional brick-wall when her husband a native West African experienced an unexpected bout of depression which led to his decision to marry a second wife 'back-home' subjecting her to a polygamous marriage... or a divorce!
Barbara Bamba is the Founder & CEO of the Women On Career Break Network, producer of the Practice Makes Perfect: Mock Skills Training Clinics and creator of the Career Break-Through Tele-Series. She's a Career Break Strategy Speaker who shares her story of comeback from The 7-Year Hiatus from HE*L and the mindset and principles she used to eliminate her self-doubt and resurrect her career when her confidence and self-esteem was at an all time low.
