Why Me?

Adelle Martin coaching women in business

I do not stand outside the room studying women.

I sit in the room with them.

This Happened To Me

I reflected

I Reaslised

The Learning

Adelle Martin speaking on the BBC about menopause.

I have not studied disruption.

I have lived it.

While running a business, leading teams, and building a career, I was also navigating some of the most destabilising experiences a woman can face, often more than one at a time.

Motherhood - Divorce - Early Menopause - Myeloma - Melanoma - Caregiving - Grief

From the outside, life could appear business as usual. On the inside, it felt entirely different. I was making decisions, leading others, maintaining income, all whilst my capacity, confidence and energy were being tested in ways I had never anticipated.

Nobody tells you what to do when the diagnosis arrives, and the diary is still full. Nobody prepares you for the moment your body changes beyond recognition, whilst your clients still need answers. I had to figure it out as I went.

I Reflected

I reflected

I Reaslised

The Learning

Adelle Martin coaching a business woman with Cancer

The support that existed wasn't built for this.

I looked for frameworks that could help me keep going. I found plenty of advice on pushing through, staying positive, and building a resilient mindset. What I could not find was a structured, practical system that recognised resilience as something you build, not something you summon.

The wellness industry told me to breathe. The business world told me to perform. Neither asked what I actually needed to keep leading, whilst life felt so difficult.

So I started building it myself. Not from a textbook. From the daily decisions, habits, relationships and leadership choices that actually kept me in the room when everything in me just wanted to leave the room!

I Realised

I reflected

I Reaslised

The Learning

Adelle Martin coaching a business woman through menopause

I was not alone. And neither are you.

As I began to share my experience through coaching, speaking and writing, something happened. Women would stop me mid-sentence and say: That is exactly what I am going through.

Not because our stories were identical. Because the experience of trying to keep leading when life is disrupting everything, that experience is shared. The invisible weight of it. The way it quietly changes how you show up. The exhaustion of performing steadiness when everything underneath feels uncertain.

Recognition came before education. Connection came before theory. That became the principle at the heart of everything I now do.

The Learning

I reflected

I Reaslised

The Learning

Resilience is not a personality trait. It is infrastructure.

What I built and what I now help other Business Women build is the StrongHER Resilience System™. A structured, embodied framework designed to strengthen the body, mind, relationships, and leadership capacity you need before the storm arrives.

I am currently developing this into a formal academic model: the Embodied Resilience Infrastructure Model (ERIM). Because this is not just a personal experience. It is an emerging contribution to our understanding of resilience as a business-critical capability and not a wellbeing concept.

I do not write as someone who has all the answers. I write as someone who is still living the questions. And that is precisely why I can sit in the room with you.

I do not write as someone who has all the answers. I write as someone who is still living the questions.

Adelle Martin - The Golden Rule, Stay In The Room™

Experience & Expertise

Experience first. Credentials second.

The framework comes from lived experience. The qualifications exist to formalise and extend that knowledge, not replace it.

Academic

MBA with Distinction|Leadership & Resilience
Kent Business School, University of Kent

Guest Lecturer, MSc Human Resource Management · MBA Council Member

Corporate & Business Leadership

30+ years across Lloyds Banking Group, Schroders Personal Wealth, and senior leadership roles including Executive HR Strategic Business Partner, Programme Director, and Board-level delivery.

Social Impact

Co-Founder|Stronger Together Through Cancer CIC
Supporting Kent business owners to remain economically active during cancer. Working with Macmillan, hospitals, councils and business networks.

Media & Voice

BBC TV & Radio contributor on menopause and business impact. National menopause awareness campaigns (2021). Podcast host and co-host. Speaker across business networks, councils and leadership forums.

Why Is This Different?

Not a researcher looking in.

A woman sitting alongside.

There are plenty of experts who study resilience. There are fewer who have built a resilience system whilst managing a myeloma diagnosis, navigating menopause, and running a business simultaneously.

That is the difference. My work is grounded in real systems that supported real leadership under real constraints. Not theory applied to practice. Practice that became theory.

And I am still in it. Still leading, still learning, still living the questions I write about. That is not a limitation, it is the source of everything useful I have to offer.

Lived before it was learned

The framework emerged from navigating disruption in real time, not from academic observation.

Business-critical, not wellness-adjacent

Resilience positioned as infrastructure — a leadership capability, not a self-care practice.

Structured, not inspirational

A four-pillar system you can build before you need it. Not a mindset to summon when crisis arrives.

Recognition before education

The work begins with helping women feel seen and understood — before offering any framework or theory.

Still in the room

Not writing from a place of resolution. Writing as someone still navigating — and still leading through it.

Let's Talk

Because No Woman Should Have To Choose Between Her Wellbeing And Her Livelihood.

If any part of this felt like recognition — that is where we begin.

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