Jamila Rizvi had woken to her alarm at 3.15am. She’d stood outside a newsagent in Canberra – in minus five degrees, during winter – to buy a dozen newspapers so she could get across the headlines and brief a Prime Minister. All before 6am.

She was 22. It was her first real job. “I don’t think I knew how abnormal it was,” she says.

By the time she knew better, she’d spent years inside the Gillard Government, worked her way up to acting chief of staff for minister Kate Ellis, and made a call that would define how she approaches every major career decision since.

Jamila left before she had anywhere to go.

Speaking on the latest season of FW’s award-winning podcast Too Much: The Switch, the FW Deputy Managing Director traces her working history from the Prime Minister’s office to a media empire, freelancing to authoring books and advocating for gender equality. She also shares what she’s learned about the gap between having a plan and actually moving.

Jamila with Julia Gillard, Former Prime Minister of Australia, and later as managing editor at Mamamia

“A lot of the time you don’t have to know exactly what’s coming next,” Jamila tells host Brianna Blackett. “You just have to know that what you are doing is no longer right.”

Jamila didn’t know what she’d do after politics – but she could see an election loss coming. One that would make her one of 1,200 unemployed people with the same skill set. So she moved first. And then she scrolled across a tweet.

Lisa Wilkinson, then host of The Today Show, had posted a line from The Devil Wears Prada – “a million girls would kill for this job” – with a link. The role was managing editor at independent women’s media company, Mamamia.

Jamila had met Mamamia founder, Mia Freedman, several times before. So she tried to get in touch before applying.

“I called and emailed a few times and she didn’t answer or reply,” she recalls.

“Finally, on the last day, I was, like, I’ll just submit the application anyway. She called me 15 minutes later saying, ‘Oh, I thought you were ringing to pitch me some awful government story. I didn’t realise you were interested’.”

She got the job. Then, eight weeks in, she tried to quit it.

“I was used to being good at stuff,” says Jamila, recalling how Mia met her resignation with: “what part of you thought you’d be good at this in eight weeks?”

“You don’t need to wait for perfect clarity. Sometimes clarity comes from motion, from the doing and from the acting.”

She stayed. She found her feet. And in doing so, she came to understand something about herself. Jamila is, in her words, “a perennial number two”. Not a deputy by default – but by design.

Across three of the most meaningful roles in her career – with Kate, Mia and, eventually, FW’s Helen McCabe – Jamila has thrived in close collaboration with one other person. In jobs where her main responsibility is “backing in” one individual.

“I take immense pride in knowing that I’m making that person’s ability to do an incredible job easier,” she says. “I worry I would be quite lonely if I was at the very top.”

In a professional culture that equates ambition with, eventually, summiting a climb, staying put in second place goes against the grain.

“Comfortable isn’t always bad,” says Jamila. “I get to go to bed at night and close my eyes and go to sleep without thinking, oh my god, there are 55 people whose jobs rest on my shoulders alone.”

After having her son, departing Mamamia – again, with no solid next step – and freelancing for a couple of years, Jamila had two job offers on the table. One at a large mainstream media company, one at FW with Helen.

The following week, she was diagnosed with a rare brain tumour.

Jamila had to call both organisations and turn them down. The large media company sent flowers and hired someone else. Helen’s response was: “Well, when will you be better?”

“I said, ‘I don’t know if or when I’m going to be able to do this, if at all’,” Jamila recalls. “And she said,’Well, I don’t think we should be thinking like that’.”

Helen held the role open and, months later, Jamila came back with a new proposition. She wanted to work fewer hours, with less responsibility and from a different city.

Helen said: “We’re on”.

Jamila knows more than most that you can’t always see what’s coming. This is her advice for women who want to make a move – but aren’t certain what it looks like yet.

“You don’t need to wait for perfect clarity. Sometimes clarity comes from motion, from the doing and from the acting. The first step of a plan isn’t always the perfect one. You’ve got to give yourself a bit of space to be curious.”