Michelle Irving’s work focuses on how chronic illness reshapes career and leadership over time, and how individuals and organisations can respond with clarity rather than compromise.
The Work
Michelle Irving’s work operates through two distinct platforms, each addressing a different layer of how chronic illness and work intersect.
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Career & Chronic
Career & Chronic focuses on the lived experience of professional women navigating chronic illness over the course of a career. The work addresses identity, ambition, and capacity as they evolve over time, offering language and frameworks that help individuals make clear, self-directed decisions about work and leadership.
Explore Career & ChronicChronic Illness At Work
Chronic Illness At Work partners with organisations to address chronic illness as a core workforce reality rather than an exception. The work informs leadership capability, people strategy, and organisational practice, shaping how employers respond to chronic illness with clarity, responsibility, and long-term thinking.
Explore Chronic Illness At Workspeaking
Michelle Irving is a sought-after speaker and commentator on chronic illness, women’s health, work, leadership, and entrepreneurship, known for bringing clarity to conversations about capacity, ambition, and long-term sustainability.
Future Women Leadership Summit
Michelle shares real-world strategies for people leaders managing team members with chronic illness and for employees navigating work while living with it.
PurpleSpace – Global Leadership Series
Part of a global interview series sponsored by the London Stock Exchange Group. Michelle speaks with Purple Space Founder, Kate Nash about career design, capacity conversations, and leadership with chronic illness.
House of Wellness – National TV Interview
House of Wellness - national TV interview with Jo Stanley on Channel 10. Michelle discusses the lived experience of chronic illness and the power of emotional clarity and boundaries.
About Michelle
Michelle Irving is a founder, speaker, and writer working at the intersection of chronic illness, women’s health, work, and leadership. She is the founder of Career & Chronic, supporting professional women navigating chronic illness over the arc of a career, and Chronic Illness At Work, which partners with organisations to address chronic illness as a core workforce reality.
Over the past two decades, Michelle has developed a body of original work that explores how chronic illness shapes capacity, ambition, professional identity, and leadership over time. Her frameworks and approaches are used across individual, organisational, and leadership contexts to support clearer decision-making and more sustainable ways of working.
Her work is informed by both lived experience of chronic illness and formal training across somatic approaches, cancer survivorship, and women’s leadership. She is recognised for bringing clarity, rigour, and depth to conversations that are often oversimplified or avoided in professional settings.
Michelle’s work is referenced across media, leadership forums, and organisational contexts, and continues to shape how chronic illness is understood within contemporary conversations about work, leadership, and long-term sustainability.
