Over the course of our lives and careers, many of us have to redefine our relationship with ambition several times.

Early on, ambition can feel relatively straightforward. It's about progression. Learning. Promotion. More responsibility. Bigger challenges. The next rung on the ladder.

But somewhere in mid-career leadership, the questions start to shift.

You've got some experience. Maybe you're an expert in something. You've achieved things your younger self wouldn't have believed possible. And suddenly the question isn't simply "What's next?" but "What do *I* want next?" Or perhaps more fundamentally: "What does ambition even mean to me now?"

That question sat at the heart of WIN LDN's latest Senior Salon, where we brought together a group of senior women across innovation, strategy, insight and venture building to explore what happens when the traditional markers of success stop providing clear answers.

The event was inspired by conversations I'd been having with peers and friends, and by questions I was wrestling with myself. After more than a decade in innovation consulting, I'm increasingly aware that ambition doesn't disappear as we get older. It evolves. The challenge is learning to recognise what it's evolving into.

One of the most striking themes of the morning was how few of us had followed the careers we originally imagined for ourselves.

WIN London Co-Lead, Chloe Williams, described herself as "career promiscuous" – moving intentionally across disciplines from product design and engineering to co-creation, strategy and insight in pursuit of new skills and perspectives. What emerged wasn't a conventional career ladder but something broader: a body of experience built through curiosity. Today, that curiosity is taking her into fiction and non-fiction writing, angel investing and advisory work as she begins to think about what a portfolio career might look like.

That idea of broadening rather than climbing surfaced repeatedly throughout the discussion.

Grace Hamza, Chief Customer Officer at Nurole, shared insights from having overseen more than 4,000 board appointments throughout her career. She challenged the assumption that board careers are only for a select few or only become relevant at the very end of an executive career. Instead, she argued that boards can be powerful spaces for learning, contribution and influence, particularly for women whose expertise is often broader and more valuable than they realise.

One idea that particularly resonated was Grace's concept of identifying your "spike" – the thing you bring that is uniquely valuable. For many innovation leaders, that might be the role she describes as the futurist: someone who helps organisations look beyond today's challenges and prepare for what's coming next.

The conversation then turned to the question of how we navigate moments of change when we don't yet know what the destination looks like.

Eleanor Ford shared the story of her own nonlinear career spanning anthropology, documentary filmmaking, entrepreneurship, venture building and coaching before introducing the framework she developed through Zinc's Inflection programme. Rather than treating career transitions as decisions that need to be made upfront, Eleanor encourages people to approach them through exploration and experimentation. The goal isn't necessarily to have a perfect plan. It's to gather evidence.

Two ideas stood out.

The first was the concept of a listening tour: a deliberate series of conversations with people whose experiences, perspectives or careers might illuminate possible futures. Not networking in the traditional sense, but curiosity-led exploration.

The second was the role of community. Career inflection points can be surprisingly lonely. The people closest to us are often invested in the version of us they already know. Sometimes we need new conversations, new perspectives and new communities to help us imagine who we might become next.

Over the course of the breakfast, it became clear to me that so many of us were grappling with similar questions.

Questions about impact rather than status.

Questions about breadth versus depth.

Questions about contribution, energy, purpose and possibility.

Questions about how we want to spend the next decade, not just the next year.

Perhaps that's why these conversations matter. Not because they give us a roadmap, but because they remind us we're not the only ones trying to draw one.