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‘Meaningful work is the key to career satisfaction and longevity’

Midway through her legal career, Jennifer Mulheron pivoted from private practice merger and acquisition, where she let go of the “holy grail” of partnership and embarked on a new career that, for her, gave a deeper sense of purpose.

user iconJess Feyder 13 September 2022 Big Law
‘Meaningful work is the key to career satisfaction and longevity’
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Now, she’s an in-house lawyer for a tech company aiming to revolutionise health care across the globe, harrison.ai. 

“I had no safety net, no plans, I just quit,” Ms Mulheron told Jerome Doraisamy on The Corporate Counsel Show.

“Rather than continuing on the journey of what I could see as the natural progression — partnership opportunities — I started to feel a deep urge to find something that resonated more with me and felt meaningful and gave me more of a sense of purpose,” she said. 

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“At the time, it was frightening making that decision.

“When I realised that the world didn’t end when I quit my job and this holy grail of partnership, that big law firm, wasn’t going to crystallise for me any longer — when I decided to move away from that, my world didn’t end.

“It was incredibly liberating and quite empowering,” she said. 

“What my key takeaways from that pivotal, and very recent, moment in my career was that I had to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

“It was a godsend for me giving myself permission to have space, to pause and to think, and to really work out what was important to me professionally and personally.

“It became very clear to me that to have longevity in my career and be proud of what I was doing and building, I had to be doing work that resonated with me.”

When Ms Mulheron began her new career at harrison.ai, she found a deep sense of personal fulfilment due to the mission of the company.

The mission of harrison.ai is very bold but very simple, Ms Mulheron explained. 

“They are a healthcare artificial intelligence company that seeks to make healthcare better for a million patients around the world every single day. The harrison.ai platform is focused on scaling the global healthcare system, which for many decades now has been under incredible strain — from skill shortages, pandemic-related backlogs, and an ever-increasing demand for healthcare around the world,” she said. 

“They pioneered a very unique, but proven model to rapidly develop, commercialise and deploy clinically effective AI tools that support clinical diagnosis in different medical areas. By marrying deep artificial intelligence expertise and methodology with the clinical expertise and data of our medical partners, the path to market for new healthcare AI applications is significantly shortened.”

The genesis of harrison.ai came from the desire of the company’s founders, who are two Vietnamese brothers, to help more patients than one doctor physically ever could.

“As Vietnamese immigrants, they had firsthand experience of seeing the dire situation that the healthcare system is in around the world, and how much potential there was for technology like AI to really scale equitable healthcare treatment,” Ms Mulheron added. 

“Whatever work I do, whatever small, small part I play, I am contributing to that broader mission. I loved what the tech industry represented — to me, it is the forefront of change and innovation for the world.

“It’s where most of the problem solving for the big issues are coming about. On a personal level, it is really important to me to feel that I am leaving a legacy for my daughter that she can be proud of — and I’m incredibly proud of this.

“There are long hours and there are obviously frustrations with every role and all of that stuff, but the journey is made much more worthwhile.”

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