About Lauren Murrell

At 23, I had my whole future planned. Then, weeks away from my final law exams, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia and given a 20% chance of survival.

My sister, Sarah, became my stem-cell donor and saved my life. I spent months in protective isolation, undergoing multiple rounds of chemotherapy and total body irradiation.

I turned my hospital room into a portal to the future I still believed in. Posters of New York and the Caribbean covered the walls, and a Nordic cross-trainer mimicked the early-morning runs I used to take around my local park, only now I was squeaking out my reps tethered to an IV pole.

I was tested to my limits during two years of intense treatment, spending 300 days in hospital, but I never lost my determination to finish what I'd started. I mustered all the strength I had and went back to law school to finish my degree, then built a career at Cleary Gottlieb in London and New York.

With life feeling full of possibility again, I followed my wanderlust to the British Virgin Islands, where I continued my legal career.

Then Hurricane Irma tore through the island and paradise collapsed around me. I felt the full force of the most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history. The BBC described the aftermath as looking like it had been hit by the blast wave of a bomb. I was eventually rescued and evacuated.

Back in the UK, it was time to start again and build from the rubble.

I left law to become an entrepreneur, launching By Sarah with my sister. The skincare she'd originally created to soothe my cancer-ravaged skin is now an award-winning brand stocked by Ocado, Soho House, Planet Organic and Macmillan Cancer Support.

I've had to start again more times than I ever expected. What I know for sure is that the confidence to back yourself after a setback, and the energy to perform under pressure, make the difference between getting stuck and moving forward.

That's what I write and speak about today. Every week, I share practical resilience tools and insights with 80,000+ people across email and social:

→ Confidence after a setback or rejection
→ Energy to think clearly under pressure
→ Boundaries to protect your time & stress levels

If you're ambitious about where you're going, but want to get there without burning yourself out along the way, I'd love to have you with me.