Fiona Callanan is a litigation lawyer who recently returned to the UK after many years working in Asia. As well as having a varied international legal career, Fiona is a yoga teacher and has taken part in a TEDx talk. She recently started her first assignment with Re:link.

Q.  Fiona, thank you for taking the time to speak to us. You recently joined the Re:link platform after moving back to the UK from Asia, and you’re now on your first Re:link assignment with a British multinational beverage company. Can you share what made you want to join Re:link?

A. The Re:link platform appealed to me as a way to help me re-establish myself in the UK legal market after living abroad for so many years. A huge advantage of Re:link is that I get to try different work environments and jobs, allowing me to work out what direction I want the next part of my career to take. So far, it’s been great from an upskilling perspective. I’m getting to use the skills I’ve built up over the past 20 years, but at same time, the role I’m in just now is different from what I did in Asia, which is great for learning.

Q. We’re glad to hear you’re enjoying your role. Taking it back to the very beginning; can you talk to us about how you ended up becoming a lawyer?

A. There are a lot of other lawyers in my family. In particular, I had a very inspiring aunt (my dad’s sister). My Auntie Pat had six children but when she met her husband, she had to give up work as in those days in Ireland married women weren’t allowed to have jobs. Auntie Pat’s husband became a successful lawyer and then after she had her sixth child at the age of forty-two, she decided she wanted to go back and study law too. So she did it. Auntie Pat went on to become a successful barrister.

There is an amazing black and white photo in her house that has always stuck in my mind, which shows her the day she qualified in the early 1980s. In the picture she has her barrister’s wig on, is smiling widely and is surrounded by all 6 of her children, my youngest cousin Edwina (never forgotten), still only an angelic looking toddler in her arms. I didn’t think much about that picture when I was younger as Auntie Pat had always made what she had done seem so graceful, effortless and ordinary, but now I know first-hand what it’s like to be a female lawyer and mum, I am in absolute awe of everything she did, especially back in the 1980s when there were definitely not the sorts of amazing female role models we see around so much today. 
The rest is history, I guess. Auntie Pat’s aplomb in carrying her barrister and mothering career off with such panache rubbed off on me, helped me to believe I could do it too, and here I am!

Q. What an inspiring woman! Can you talk us through what steps you took at the start of your career?

A. After University I went to Japan to do the JET program (Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme UK). JET is the Japanese Government's long-running international exchange and English-teaching programme.  I was placed into a village, which had only about 20,000 people in it. It was the year 2000, the internet was ropey, and I had a hard time using chop sticks! It was a tricky adjustment, and I was homesick at the start but overall, it was an amazing time, and I loved it, mostly because it really opened my eyes to different paths that could be open to me both career and life wise. After that year I came home and did the Law conversion course, with a better idea of the type of career I wanted. International!

Q. Sounds like it was quite an eye-opening experience for you. Where did you end up completing your training contract and starting your legal career?

A. I joined Watson, Farley & Williams because it was an international firm, and I knew I would have the opportunity to do a seat in a different country during the training contract then, in 2005, I qualified into the Litigation department. I loved Litigation, it made sense to me; people had problems and you helped them to fix them, and I got on well with the supervisor I had in my first litigation seat in London. Litigation was also the main focus of the work I did on my seat abroad in Bangkok, and I loved that too, especially one super exciting all-nighter I had to do which culminated in me having to fly to Kuala Lumpur the next morning to file some proceedings; I loved the adrenaline!

Unfortunately, the Bangkok chapter didn’t end too well.  At Christmas 2004 my boyfriend flew out to see me and we went on holiday together to Krabi where we got hit by the Asian Tsunami. I lost my leg that day but was extremely lucky to escape with my life, largely thanks to my colleagues from the Bangkok office of Watson, Farley who rescued me in a very dramatic fashion from Krabi hospital a few days later.  I’m incredibly grateful to them to this day.

Q. Thank you for sharing that. I can’t imagine what a challenging and frightening experience that was. I know you are incredibly active now. Can you speak to us a bit about how you used the experience to motivate you?

A. Once I’d recovered, I went back to work and qualified. I wanted to stay active and turn the experience into something positive. I got into cycling and did a few charity bike rides. One of the rides was to raise funds for a charity I found in the UK that trained prosthetists and orthotists in Cambodia. When I was pregnant with my second daughter, I also got into yoga. At the time I was working in Hong Kong for a bank, and I found yoga helped me to de-stress. Later, I became a yoga teacher after really falling in love with the practice.

Q. I know you’ve managed to keep up with your yoga whilst still progressing your legal career. Can you share with us some of the roles you took on and what brought you back to the UK?

A. I’ve loved having a variety of experiences working in different countries. After Watson, Farley & Williams I moved to Hong Kong to work at Freshfields for a few years before then moving on to Barclays in Singapore as their first ever litigation and investigations lawyer for Asia. I loved the in-house life and learned an incredible amount there but 4 years later a Head of Litigation role came up at Bank of America in Hong Kong and so in 2014 I moved back there. I stayed at Bank of America for nearly 5 years and then, after I gained my first Yoga teaching qualification, decided to move to McKinsey & Company to run their litigation and investigations team for Asia and to see what working in a different industry was like. 
I worked at McKinsey until 2023 when I moved back to London with my kids. It was a great 16 years in Asia but by that time it was even better to be home near our family and old friends.

Q. What amazing experiences. In addition to everything we’ve already covered, I know you also found the time to take part in a TEDx talk. Can you talk to us about this?

A. Sure. After the tsunami, I had made the very deliberate decision to try and live as ordinary a life as possible but then in 2017 a friend of mine, who was on the committee for a new TEDx women’s event, asked me if I would be interested in speaking at it. At first, not knowing much about TED events and having been so quiet about what had happened to me for so many years, I was hesitant. The tsunami was such an awful thing and so many people lost their lives that it felt like without a good reason I shouldn’t be exploiting my story without good reason, but my friend convinced me that doing this talk would be of value and interest for other people, so I did it.

The day turned out to be amazing, and actually, this is what prompted me to start my yoga teacher training. The TEDx talk was out of my comfort zone, and once I had done it I thought “okay I’ve done that, what’s next?” and I started to believe I could do a lot of other things too.  Life is a series of small steps after all, isn’t it?

Q. It absolutely is. Fiona, thank you so much for talking to us. We’re delighted to have you as part of Re:link.

You can find Fiona’s TEDx talk here: Living Life to the Fullest | Fiona Callanan-Thorsby | TEDxTinHauWomen and follow her Yoga goings on Instagram @bionic_rocket_woman.