Rewire Your Career: Emily Cook

Rewire Your Career is a new interview series that highlights the many routes people take into and through neuroscience. From moving between academia and industry to shifting across disciplines or starting in a completely different field, these stories show that there is no single path to building a career in science. Through sharing experiences, challenges and advice, we aim to showcase the flexibility and resilience of neuroscientists, while inspiring our community to explore the possibilities ahead.

Emily Cook, Founder of FOUND

We interviewed Emily Cook, Founder of FOUND and a performance coach, who integrates neuroscience into her work with senior leaders, high performers, and teams. Emily did not begin her career in neuroscience. She started in finance, worked her way up in a male-dominated environment, and only later discovered how brain science could transform performance, resilience, and culture. In this conversation, she talks us through that journey, from feeling like an outsider in finance, to founding her own practice, to teaching others how to work with (not against) their nervous system. She also reflects on inclusion, burnout culture, and why recovery is non-negotiable for achieving true high performance.

Career Journey and First Steps Toward Neuroscience

We asked Emily to tell us a bit about her background, her current work, and what first drew her toward neuroscience.

Emily began her career in finance and progressed quickly, but as she moved up, she became more aware of both the culture and the pace: “I spent five years at that same company, moved into a couple of different teams whilst I was there... And then I moved from investment banking into private equity in Amsterdam, for a desire for challenge, for change... in hope of having a better work life balance. Didn’t quite work out like that!”. That definition of success began to crack during what was supposed to be a holiday trip in the Mediterranean, and she had what she describes as a necessary wake-up moment: “Is this how I view success? Is this how I want to spend my life: that I spend it working so hard for these moments, that when I get them, I'm spending it doing more work?”. 

That reflection opened the door to coaching. “I reconnected with coaching and performance coaching” she told us. “And part of the way through that was when I came across Steven Kotler [American author, journalist, and entrepreneur]. When I came across his stuff, I was mind blown that it was not more widely known about, because the benefits that you would get from using the strategies, understanding the neuroscience of peak performance, would not only boost your performance - your productivity, your creative problem solving, your decision making, your speed of learning - but it could also help with reducing your stress and boosting your life satisfaction... I was thinking, wow, this would be so, so valuable, this would have been such a game changer for me.”

Emily is now a founder and coach. She works with individuals and teams on performance, energy management, leadership, and culture, and she does it through a neuroscience lens.

From Finance to Coaching: Inclusion, Identity and the Pressure to Fit In

Emily had spoken about gender and class dynamics in finance, but how did those experiences shape the work she does now?

Finance looked balanced on paper at junior levels - it was pretty much 50/50 men and women - but at the top, it was almost always men, with women directors to be counted on one hand.

Being in those rooms had a cost: “I would often be the only woman in the room, or one of a couple, but heavily outnumbered” she said. “I would say that being female probably did impact how I showed up in meetings. It was probably a combination of that and the fact that, especially in the beginning when you're relatively new, you naturally feel that way anyway.” She also raised that it wasn’t just gender, but the background: “It's also an industry where there's a lot of people that come from privately educated, very affluent backgrounds. And I didn't... I transformed my accent... I think they all just assumed... I was from a more affluent background because I speak well. But actually, that was something that I changed to fit in... And it wasn't until way too late that I realised the importance of actually owning that; that actually being different is something that you can use to your advantage”.

We asked whether she felt there was meaningful support for women, or for people who didn’t fit the dominant profile.

“I think it's so important to have role models…and people sharing their backgrounds... It makes them feel more human... people around them start to think, “oh, well, I’m not alone with that”... it really opens up these conversations.

There are statements about inclusion, and then there are behaviours. You can’t just say ‘we’re inclusive’ and then have decision-making rooms that all look the same. Companies need to actually change how opportunities are distributed, what gets funded, who’s visible, and who gets listened to.”

Integrating Neuroscience Into Coaching

So, how does she bring neuroscience into her work with clients?

Emily’s approach to coaching is helping people understand what’s actually happening in their nervous system and how to regulate their nervous system better. “Most people are exhausted. They are not sleeping well. They're prioritising their work over sleep. They're not taking any breaks during the daytime. A lot of them are burning themselves out. They have chronic stress. It's become maladaptive that now their body doesn't recover in the usual way.” She teaches clients energy management, stress regulation, and tools for efficiency, productivity, and focus.

“So a very valuable tool that I see works well is breathwork... making them aware of how they can activate that parasympathetic part of the nervous system more quickly and easily. The tools [that I teach]... can be effective in as little as two minutes... on the way to their meeting, on their commute, or whilst they have their morning coffee.”

We asked her what kinds of patterns she sees most often.

“High performers who are exhausted,” she answered. “People who are ‘on’ all day, flip-flopping between meetings, multitasking; they have their phone in their eye line.” And at the same time, they’re not allowing true recovery. They feel guilty taking breaks. But neurologically, no recovery means you’re not accessing high-quality focus in the first place.

This is where Emily also applies the concept of flow state. (To find out more take a look at our blog piece:“The Essence of Flow: Understanding Your Brain's Potential to Reach Peak Performance”)

We asked her to explain, in her own words, what “flow” is.

“It’s that deep focus state of being really in the zone, where you’re so immersed in what you’re doing that time flies by and everything else just melts into the background. And then the important bit is that we know that when you’re in this state, that performance is significantly amplified.”

She’s careful to stress that flow isn’t only about work: “People usually associate it more with fitness, maybe when they're running or cycling or doing something creative. It’s very rare, when I ask people when they experience it, that they tell me that it's something work related.”

We asked what tends to stop people from reaching that state.

She outlined two main blockers. One is distraction - constant context switching, constant digital interruption. The second is the belief that rest is unproductive. But in reality, skipping recovery is what kills your access to flow. If you never downshift, you never enter the phase that allows you to get to deep focus. Not taking breaks is actually counterproductive.

This is closely aligned with what neuroscience describes as the flow cycle. Emily teaches her clients to locate themselves within that cycle. When people understand which stage they’re in, “that is often one of the ‘aha!’ light bulb moments for people, because they start to realise how they're limiting themselves. They realise it's not that they're bad at focusing, it's that they're not giving their brain the conditions it needs to get there.”

Advice for Women Early in Their Careers

We moved on to ask her what advice she would give to women at the early stages of their careers, especially those considering leaving a traditional path or moving toward something more values-driven.

First, protect your boundaries. You can love ambitious work and still refuse to make it your entire identity. “I think that a lot of people have that nagging voice... Be bold, be brave, and go for it,” she said. But do it in a way that’s thought through, and crunch the numbers.

Second: don’t wait for permission to pivot. You don’t need a ‘perfect background’ to move into something new. You can learn. You can build expertise. You can surround yourself with people who are already doing it. “...we live for a really long time, we work for a really long time... it’s never too late.” A non-linear path is not a liability; it’s an advantage if you’re intentional about it.

Future Directions

We were interested in what was next for her.

Emily is clear that her work is bigger than one-to-one coaching, it’s about cultural shifts: “I want to change the way that the finance sector thinks about and embodies high performance”. She is interested in bringing neuroscience-informed tools to organisations at scale with workshops, panels, collaborative projects, and podcasts. She wants this knowledge to be practical and accessible, not something you only hear if you’re already in elite spaces. “But ultimately, I would love to be a part of helping people to think, feel, and perform at their best consistently, so that they can achieve their bold goals, but also be happy, healthy, and do work that feels meaningful for them.”

Closing Thoughts

Our conversation with Emily Cook reminds us that neuroscience is not only for labs and clinics. It can also be a language for changing how we work (in any field), how we lead, and how we sustain ourselves.

For Emily, “rewiring your career” didn’t mean abandoning ambition, it meant redefining it. It meant asking what kind of success is actually liveable. It meant building something where high performance and nervous system health are not in conflict.

Her path shows that neuroscience-informed work can come from outside the traditional academic route, and that leadership can look like creating the culture you wish you’d had.

This interview is part of our ongoing Rewire Your Career series at Women in Neuroscience UK. Stay tuned for upcoming profiles of women using neuroscience to build careers in coaching, policy, communication, tech, finance, and beyond.

To get into contact with Emily, you can find her here:

• LinkedIn: Emily Cook

• FOUND

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This interview was conducted by Ginevra Sperandio and Rebecca Pope and edited by Rebecca Pope, with graphics produced by Suzana Sultan and Ginevra Sperandio. If you enjoyed this article, be the first to be notified about new posts by signing up to become a WiNUK member (top right of this page)! Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch.