"You can only meet someone as deeply as you have met yourself..."

Where The Creative Industry Comes To Have The Conversations We Usually Avoid!

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I believe our greatest challenges can become the source of our greatest depth.

 

After more than 25 years working across advertising, production, new business, PR and marketing, I've learned that the most valuable thing we bring to the workplace isn't simply our professional expertise. It's our lived experience.

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I'm Athene Parker, Founder and Host of The emPOWER Breakfast®, Human Experience Curator & Strategist, and The Emotion Coach.

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What is The emPOWER Breakfast?

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Launched in March 2024, The emPOWER Breakfast® is an independent, industry-led mental wellbeing community for people working across advertising, media, production and the creative industries.

Our live events bring people together for something beyond traditional networking. Through intimate, honest conversations with extraordinary people, we explore triumph through challenge and the impactful experiences that shape us, creating a different approach to workplace wellbeing.

 

From grief, burnout and neurodivergence to identity, relationships, resilience and reinvention, we look at how life's experiences shape who we are and what we bring to our working lives.

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What Happens in the Room?

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If you've never been, you'll want to know what happens in the room.

It's a unique opportunity to hear remarkable human stories, meet people from across the industry and connect beyond job titles, building emotional intelligence, empathy and awareness of often unfamiliar experiences.

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Alongside our guest conversations, I share practical tools for emotional awareness, nervous system regulation and self-reflection that people can use in their personal lives and take back to their teams and colleagues.

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Our approach to authentic networking encourages genuine connections through shared experience and understanding, rather than simply exchanging contact details. It's an opportunity to reflect, develop greater empathy and leave with new perspectives on how we can bring our best selves to our roles, relationships and workplaces.

 

emPOWER is also a reset for the creative brain...

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Through shared experiences, authentic connection and practical nervous system regulation techniques, we create space to think differently, find perspective and rediscover our creative energy. Powering us up with renewed inspiration and the headspace for creative problem-solving and purposeful action.

 

Human Experience Curator & Strategist

My work through emPOWER as a Human Experience Curator & Strategist is woven through each year's programme.

From the guests I invite and the themes we explore to the stories we share across our events, podcast and social platforms, I curate experiences designed to take audiences on a journey through their own emotions.

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By intentionally creating moments of recognition through another person's lived experience, we can discover something about ourselves, challenge our assumptions and develop a deeper understanding of others.

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This is the real value of a story. Not simply what we learn about the person telling it, but what we discover about ourselves.

That understanding is what we can take back into our teams, our leadership and our everyday interactions.

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The Emotion Coach

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Alongside emPOWER, I work with individuals, leaders and professionals who want to better understand their emotional responses and the patterns influencing their behaviour.

Through coaching, emotional awareness and practical nervous system regulation techniques, I help people recognise what happens when they're under pressure, navigate overwhelm, self-doubt and change, and develop tools to access greater confidence in how they respond and elevate.

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My work encourages people to make space for difficult emotions, challenge the patterns that hold them back and develop greater emotional intelligence, empathy and choice in how they respond to themselves and others.

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The aim is to move towards a more regulated nervous system, greater clarity and confidence, and more conscious choices. Helping us become more empathetic leaders, supportive colleagues and resilient human beings.

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I also welcome opportunities to work with organisations looking to strengthen emotional awareness, communication and empathy across their teams.

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My work is informed by my experience of being the mother of a non-speaking autistic legend. Motherhood has profoundly shaped my understanding of resilience, advocacy, communication and the importance of being heard and supported. Through my support network, TheSENmumma, I advocate for neurodivergent children and their families.

My personal experiences inspire both my coaching and my belief in the importance of looking beyond behaviour, assumptions and professional identities to understand the human being underneath.

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The emPOWER Breakfast® is proudly independent and not affiliated with any other networking organisation or industry association. Our community is made possible through the support of our incredible sponsors, host partners and everyone who believes in creating a more human creative industry.

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Whether you'd like to attend an event, listen to the podcast, introduce your colleagues to emPOWER, explore sponsorship or enquire about coaching, I'd love to hear from you.

athene@theempowerbreakfast.co.uk

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To become part of the emPOWER Membership download the app on Apple or Google to watch interviews with inspirational leaders access nervous system regulation tips and join the community.