Episode #24
Unstoppable Women S2 E24: Mary Ryan - Rebuilding Her Brain, Her Career and Her Next Chapter.
One missed step changed Mary Ryan’s life. In 2013, Mary fell down a flight of stairs at work. She suffered multiple injuries and a brain injury that left her without much of her mid-to-long-term memory and around 70% of her vocabulary. She knew the knowledge was still there. She just had to find a way back to it. So Mary started experimenting. Music. Singing. Scrabble. Reading. Community. Curiosity. Rather than simply asking, “Why has this happened to me?”, she became fascinated by how her brain was working - and what she could do to rebuild it. In this episode of Unstoppable Women , Mary and I talk about recovery, resilience and what happens when something completely unexpected forces you to rebuild. We also explore Mary’s extraordinary career in medical technology. Over almost 30 years she has helped bring safe and effective medical devices to market around the world and, during the pandemic, helped support the delivery of 11,683 ventilators to the NHS. Now she is making another major change. After nearly 14 years with one company, Mary has handed in her notice and is launching her own consultancy - taking decades of expertise, relationships and experience and using them to build something of her own. We talk about: • Rebuilding after something changes your life in a split second • Why curiosity became such an important part of Mary’s recovery • Music, memory and finding her words again • Building a life around trauma rather than allowing it to become your whole story • Recognising the value of decades of experience • Leaving a successful career to create something of your own • Why letting your light shine can give someone else permission to do the same There’s a beautiful idea from Mary in this conversation: difficult experiences don’t necessarily disappear. But as you build more life around them, they no longer have to be the biggest part of the circle. About Unstoppable Women & Unstoppable by Design I'm Julie Tague, founder of Unstoppable by Design. After experiencing profound personal loss, rebuilding my life as a widowed mum and creating a successful career in the public sector, I came to realise something that now underpins everything I do: No woman is as stuck as she thinks she is. I work alongside women at turning points to help them build what's next - step by step. Together we prioritise, make decisions, create momentum and manage the practical project of designing a new life. This isn't coaching; it's strategic partnership. I'm your project manager for change - helping you make the hard decisions, holding you to account and turning good intentions into meaningful action. Every episode of Unstoppable Women shares the story of a woman who has navigated change, challenged expectations and rewritten her future - not because life was easy, but because she chose to keep moving. If Mary’s story makes you think differently about what might be possible in your own next chapter, follow Unstoppable Women and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it.
