Finding resilience: A personal story for early ops professionals
This session is part of our cONference online spin-off series: five events on the theme of resilience, each exploring it from a different angle.
Resilience isn’t just about pushing through - sometimes it means learning to let go. For early-career operations professionals, the pressure to prove yourself and keep pace in fast-moving environments can make it difficult to balance external responsibilities with internal wellbeing.
Join us for a candid, story-driven webinar with Maria Madni, an operations and finance professional, as we explore how resilience is built not only by persevering through challenges, but also by releasing unrealistic expectations and finding ways to adapt when self-doubt or imposter syndrome takes hold.
Through personal stories and professional lessons, Maria will share what resilience has looked like in her own journey - and how you can apply these insights and practical tools to thrive in your own career.
By the end of this session, you’ll walk away with:
💡 A lived perspective on resilience - drawing from Maria’s personal journey to see how setbacks and transitions can shape new ways of moving forward in both personal and professional contexts
🔎 Awareness of common blockers - like self-doubt, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome, and how they can quietly undermine recovery and confidence.
🛠️ Practical coping strategies you can apply right away - from using timers and gratitude practices to reframing wins and losses in everyday life.
🌍 Ways to navigate professional challenges in ops including shifting tech, time zone pressures, and the unique feedback loops of distributed teams.
🌱 A deeper connection between personal and professional resilience - recognising how inner stability strengthens your impact and effectiveness in operations roles.
You should join us if you’re…
✅ An early-career operations professional (1–4 years of experience) looking to strengthen your foundation.
✅ Wrestling with internal pressures - like self-doubt, perfectionism, or imposter syndrome - and wanting practical ways to move through them.
✅ Looking for a grounding reminder of what resilience really means, and how to bring it into both work and life.
✅ Looking for candid, lived experiences and relatable stories - not academic theory or clinical frameworks.
✅ Navigating the challenges of remote or distributed teams, shifting tech, or cross–time zone collaboration.
You’re unlikely to benefit if…
🚫 A senior operations professional - this session’s stories lean more towards early-career experiences and practical, personal takeaways.
🚫 Looking for advanced frameworks, research, or expert-led methodologies - or seeking formal psychological or clinical approaches to resilience.
🚫 Already confident in managing imposter syndrome, perfectionism, or self-doubt.
🚫 Not interested in reflecting on resilience in the context of work and personal growth.
Agenda
Welcome & speaker intro
Setting the scene
Part 1: Personal resilience - stories, lessons, strategies
Part 2: Professional resilience in ops - remote teams, tech shifts, boundaries
Q&A & discussion
This session will be recorded, including the Q&A. If you'd prefer any part of your question or comment to be kept off the recording, just let us know (either during or right after the session) and we’ll make sure it’s edited out.
Meet the host 👋
Maria Madni
Maria brings a diverse background in operations and finance, having previously worked as an Accountant and later as an Operations Associate at Odetta, a specialised outsourcing company recognised on Forbes’s America’s Best Startup Employers list multiple times since 2021. She is also a member of 100 Women in Finance, an organisation advancing gender equity in the industry, and this year contributed as an Operations volunteer with ALLFED, a nonprofit focused on resilience to global catastrophic food system failures.
Currently completing the final stage of her Chartered Accountancy (ACCA UK) qualification, Maria combines her professional expertise in accounting and operations with a passion for creativity. From illustration and design to perfumery and language learning, she brings curiosity and a multidisciplinary approach to everything she does.
Fluent in English, Urdu, and Punjabi (and a beginner in Arabic and Korean), Maria believes resilience is as much about building inner strength as it is about supporting systems and organisations. And in her downtime? She’s happiest gazing at mountains for hours on end.