Christine Armstrong

Christine is a writer and consultant specialising in the future of work, workplaces, leadership, and company communication. She is the author of The Mother of All Jobs: How to Have Children and a Career and Stay Sane(ish). She also cofounded the communications consultancy Jericho Chambers and now leads her own consultancy Armstrong & Partners, which helps businesses to operate in an uncertain, disrupted world. Christine looks at how the workplace has evolved over the last twenty years and the pressures it has brought with it. She covers the successes and failures of diversity and inclusion strategies, workplace culture (including the myth of flexible hours and attitudes towards paternity leave), maintaining social networks, and understanding the demands and stresses of being a working parent. She looks at what employees demand from their companies, and how to respond in order to attract and retain the best talent. With the rise in demand for a balance between working from home and being in the office (especially in a post-Covid-19 world), she considers the complex factors employers now have to manage, from the cost of running an office to differing personal and professional priorities amongst different age groups and personality types. In her book, The Mother of All Jobs, Christine looks at the social and economic pressures of being a working-mother, the cost of childcare and how parenting and work compete with each other. She draws on her own experience, extensive research, and personal accounts of women in senior executive positions. The book debunks some of the myths around motherhood and family-work-life-balance and reveals the culturally ingrained hostility towards mothers in the corporate world. As well as the future of work and work-life balance, Christine also writes and speaks about communication, and the circular economy, drawing together many aspects of her experience to analyse key shifts in the business world. She is a contributing editor at Management Today and has written for The Sunday Times, The Times, The Telegraph and Grazia, and has appeared on Radio 4’s Women’s Hour.