Guest Author Blog - The Power of a Story by Claire Harbour Lyell

I'm thrilled to have Claire as my guest author blogger.

Not only is Claire an author, a mother and a successful business woman but she speaks many languages, fluently.

She's been a CEO, a strategy consultant, a headhunter, a startup and small business manager; she has worked in China, India, Italy, Brazil, France, USA and more.

Claire has helped over a thousand professionals in search of the next great challenge!

I know you will enjoy this captivating read.

It took me decades to realize how much I love people and their stories! Or at least to verbalize it…

All through my childhood, I wrote stories, inspired by little weird events in my life. I also told rather tall tales, when given the opportunity by circumstances of anonymity, as demonstrated by when I had a whole train compartment believing I was the orphan of a Jewish Russian ballerina, exiled to Siberia…

The fascination with story and communication are probably what led to my learning numerous languages, along with the fact that my parents were generous enough to give me the chance of growing up trilingual (both roots and emigration took care of that!). By the time I had graduated from university, I spoke five languages, and had big plans to become the next Christiane Amanpour the great CNN storyteller-from-faraway places. However, a moment of clarity reminded me of how I cry upon seeing strangers saying goodbye at stations, and this hardly seemed compatible with reporting from war zones and refugee camps…

But I digress… so what happened was that I made an unconscious shift from telling other people’s stories to creating my own. And my story contains a few dramas, which are not the point here and now, but suffice to say that they include early career peaks, latter career frustrations and disappointments; big money and no money; marriage, four children in five years and divorce; and life and travel through 17 countries, 4 continents and 8 languages. And, I believe,