Juliette Clarkin
What Mimosa Taught Me About Giving Back
From Marketing Director to Charity Co-Founder on the French Riviera
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" Living the dream isn't about what we receive from a place, it's about what we give back to it."
Registering an Association in France
Turning an informal gesture into an official French association was its own education in bureaucracy. Under the Loi 1905, Mimosa had real obligations: AGMs, annual minutes, financial oversight. The harder fight was accreditation as an "association of general interest," needed so donors could claim tax relief. French administration, Juliette says, genuinely struggled to understand why a group of expat women would raise money simply to give it away to other associations.
From the Boardroom to the South of France
Juliette was as a marketing director in Dublin: a boardroom seat, international travel, a career that looked, by any measure, successful. The cost was a family life reduced to red-eye flights and missed evenings, what she calls being "ships in the night" with her own husband and children.
A string of family losses to cancer, most of them on the French side of her family, changed the calculation. When her husband, already working in the south of France, asked her one more time to try living there, she said yes. Her employer offered a sabbatical rather than a resignation, so the move began as a trial, with every intention of going back.
A Dog Walk That Became a Charity
Juliette didn't plan a second career. It found her on a dog walk, in a conversation with another school mother about a mutual friend's brother going through cancer treatment. What started as one gala evening, organised almost overnight over coffee with a few girlfriends, became Mimosa: a charity, and more than that, a community.
Thirteen years on, Mimosa has raised close to a million euros for cancer support on the Riviera, built around a committee of women who, like Juliette, left corporate careers behind and found a new use for the same skills.
Photos and visuals courtesy of Mimosa. All rights reserved.
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Twelve Years, Then Stepping Back
Running Mimosa became, in practice, a second full-time role, unpaid, and often prioritised over her own consultancy work, to the point that Juliette admits she'll default to Mimosa before her own work. After twelve years as president, including events with a thousand people on site and the legal responsibility that comes with it, she made the decision to step back and hand the presidency to her successor, Camilla, while staying on the committee. It took her months to decide it was time to let go.
She's equally honest about what a title like that costs to give up: leaving a marketing director role in Dublin, she says, came with its own loss of identity. What she found instead, running Mimosa and later stepping back from it, was a different way of measuring success altogether, one rooted in impact rather than a title.
"Had I not moved to France, the hamster wheel would have continued.."
" We started as acquaintances. Now I call them my 4am friends.”
Giving Back - Mimosa
Thirteen years ago, a dog walk and a conversation
about a friend in need became Mimosa, a charity
created by a group of women who had made the French Riviera
their home and wanted to give back to their local community.
Today, Mimosa has raised close to a million euros for cancer support in the region, and built a community for women far from their own families.
Website: www.mimosamatters.org
Donate: www.mimosamatters.org/donate/
Instagram: @mimosa_matters
Facebook: facebook.com/mimosamatters
" This is our new home. This is where we want to grow old.
About Juliette
Juliette Clarkin is a former marketing director who relocated from Ireland to the South of France with her husband and two children. While trying to reinvent her own career on the Riviera, she co-founded Mimosa, a charity and community that has raised close to a million euros for cancer support in the region over thirteen years. She served as president of Mimosa for twelve years before stepping back to focus on her own marketing consultancy, and remains on the committee today.
A full transcript of Cecile's conversation with Juliette is available here.
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More Women Who Left Corporate Life Behind
If Juliette’s journey from corporate marketing to building a life with purpose on the French Riviera resonates with you, you may also enjoy Ariana’s move from corporate life to food blogging, local markets and eventually a successful homemade granola business, Helen’s decision to rethink her ambitions after experiencing 9/11 in New York, Jo’s move away from a demanding corporate career and her unexpected reinvention in real estate, Luus’s journey from serious illness to helping others through coaching and therapy, and Mel’s story of leaving corporate life and eventually creating her own Pilates studio on the Riviera.
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