Many strings to her racquet - Taylor Ng

The Left Turn

Welcome to the first episode of the Left Turn - a podcast about career change conversations. In this episode I talk to Taylor Ng, an American who started her post college career in the competitive world of investment banking before deciding to pick up her tennis racquet again and join the even more competitive world of women's professional tennis tour....just before COVID started.

Taylor shares how her love for tennis as a youngster, among a raft of other sports, propelled her to being an All-American Ivy league champion while at Dartmouth College, before using her economics and social anthropology double major (what a combo!) to take up an internship in investment banking. Coming to end of a successful 2 year internship at the bank, she decided it was now or never to give professional tennis a red hot go. After successfully climbing the rankings and winning singles titles in Mexico and Finland, Taylor talks about the uncertainty of life on the road, where best laid plans can be thrown in the air depending on whether you win or lose. After 4 years on the road, she has recently decided to make her next move and is studying software engineering and working out where that career path might take her.

Taylor reveals her "character" strengths she's leveraged across her careers so far, how important building and maintaining networks has been to supporting her career goals, and how its often "sliding doors" moments that can lead to new opportunities - you've just got to be ready to take them when they come.