Building a Meaningful Career in Social Work with Clare Ennis (Social Worker)

From top-of-the-class student to front-line social worker, Clare Ennis has quietly built a career around something you’ll never see on a pay slip: dignity, advocacy, and deeply human care. In this episode, Clare traces her path from high-achieving “you-could-be-a-doctor” teen to working with young parents, students, and communities with high and complex needs.

We talk about what it was really like growing up with academic excellence as “the norm,” the pressure to choose prestige careers like medicine or law, and why chemistry became the early red flag that something wasn’t lining up.

Clare walks us through her gap year teaching English in Poland at seventeen, working at New World, and drifting through a BA in Wellington—nannying, fundraising at the children’s hospital, and realising she was pouring energy into everything except uni. Volunteering at Youthline becomes a turning point: she learns to listen, sits on the phones with young people in crisis, starts training new volunteers, and even meets her future husband there.

Finally, Clare reflects on boundaries, burnout, and why “caring a lot” is both her superpower and her ongoing challenge. She shares the importance of supervision and support networks, and the difference between “hard but right” work and the kind of misalignment that’s a sign you should quit. Her advice to her Year 12 self, and to any student who feels the weight of expectation or suspects they’re built for something more people-focused than pay-focused, is simple and powerful: learn about yourself, follow your values, don’t be afraid to leave what’s not working, and don’t overlook social work. The complexity, impact, and meaning are immense.

#socialwork #career #podcast #newzealand