EP16: So what do you do?

In this episode Philippa Waller is talking with Anna Melville-James about portfolio identity, or rather the ‘what do you do’ question.Anna Melville-James has been a travel writer for 20 years, writing and editing on national papers and magazines. She also helped to set up the Daily Mail’s first ever travel website in 2001. These days she is also...a podcaster on women in business, a journalist with particular interest in later life, environmental issues and the English countryside, a copywriter for luxury brands and a professional face painter. Just to make things *really* confusing when she tries to explain what she does for a living. The question “What do you do?” has basically become synonymous with “Who are you?”  And it can be helpful way of quickly giving others a snapshot of who we are and what we do. But there’s also a dark side to introducing ourselves with this kind of shorthand: because labels can  lead to stereotypes.