BEYOND BANKING: Your skills are valuable and versatile

It is now nearly a year since I left banking and I have spent the past nine months looking in on the City from the outside for the first time in my working life.

In my last role I was managing director and head of US equities for Europe at Bank of America. Although the world at that time was still in reasonable shape, Ken Lewis had already started finding life in investment banking was not as much fun as he had thought it would be.

I chose to leave when I did for a combination of reasons. First, the environment was souring and the attendant outlook for bonuses was poor. I was expensive to keep in the bonus pool. A negotiated exit could make everyone happier.

Second, I had promised myself for several years that I would leave before my children were too old to appreciate my being around. As my oldest was rapidly approaching the teens, time was running out.

And finally, because I had the financial security of some savings and a working husband to act as a breadwinner.

There have been two big surprises so far. The first was how my sense of identity had to shift when I stopped being "a banker" - or even more, "a full time working banker and mother." Now, I am "wife of x," or "mother of y and z."

The second surprise has been the interest I've received from potential employers and potential business partners. The skills built up during a career in the City are valuable and versatile. The ability to analyze scenarios, set a strategy to meet them, and communicate your goals is in demand and in short supply - despite what you might read in the press.

I am not planning on returning to the City. But, spurred on by the desire to develop my new life, and encouraged by the collapse in the value of the breadwinner's investment banking stock, I do plan to take advantage of everything I have learned in the City and start my next career.

Diana Godding worked in Institutional Markets for several large investment banks before retiring from the business in April 2008. She established her consultancy firm, Robinson Godding Associates late last year and is currently writing a book, Anglophilia, or London as the Zeitgeist of the Noughties, to be published in late 2009.