By Agata Bloswick | March 2026
Forbes Poland published a feature on my decision to leave a Fortune 500 COO role. The article is in Polish. This is the English version of the story — including the parts that didn’t fit in 2,500 words.
The Headline Gets It Half Right
The Forbes piece is titled “Freedom instead of prestige” — and yes, that’s part of it.
After 20 years in Fortune 500 pharma — VP Global Head, 2,500 people, 60 countries, then COO — I walked away. Not into another executive role. Into full-time competitive sport.
But “freedom” implies I was escaping. I wasn’t. I was choosing something harder.
The Trap Nobody Warns You About at the Top
There’s a specific kind of stuck that happens at senior levels of corporate life. It’s not burnout. It’s the moment you realize you’re living a life you no longer want — but feel you have no right to leave, because the salary is high, the title is impressive, and everyone around you is telling you you’ve made it.
I call it the golden handcuffs problem. And it affects a lot more people than talk about it.
I was VP by 40 in a division where no non-English-speaking woman had held that position before. That comes with a specific weight — the FOD pressure. First. Only. Different. Everyone telling you: you’re blazing a trail, you open doors, you make us believe we can get here too.
Which means that if you leave, you’re not just leaving for yourself.
I stayed longer than I should have because of that pressure. And then my father died in 2022. And I realized I’d been delaying my actual life.
It Wasn’t Impulsive — And It Wasn’t the First Time I Tried to Leave
This is the part the Forbes article captures well, and I want English readers to understand it too: I didn’t make a clean, brave decision and walk out the door.
I left once — and went back.
After resigning from my VP role in late 2023, I took nine months off. The first two I spent on the couch, genuinely unable to think of anything to do. Then I started living: breakfast, coffee, training, presence. I joined a shooting club. Started running because I noticed I got breathless when I shot. Started lifting because holding a pistol properly requires it. Realized that when I wasn’t forcing myself, exercise felt effortless.
And then I took another C-level offer. COO, new company. I convinced myself I was ready.
I wasn’t. Within two months I knew it. Within seven months I’d negotiated my exit. The moment that clarified everything: I couldn’t finish work at 5pm and get to training. Something always came up. I was spending evenings at hotels and formal dinners instead of on what actually mattered. That’s when I said — clearly, finally — there is no amount of money that would make me do this again.
I left in mid-2025. That decision stuck.
What I’m Actually Doing Now
Today, when someone asks what I do, I tell them I’m an athlete.
I train five days a week in precision air pistol shooting. 260+ training days in 2025. I work with coaches. I study sport science. I’m in conversation with Olympians — learning what systematic excellence looks like at the highest level. I’ve completed my first international competitions.
Current score: 492. Olympic qualification range: 560. I know exactly how far I have to go.
I also advise pharmaceutical company boards — but a few hours a month. That’s the side project now.
An LSE coach once asked me a question I think about often: “What letter are you going to assign to leaving? Because you might do everything in Plans A, B, C, and D, and still be unhappy. At what point do you make the decision — not from the perspective of failure, but from the perspective of control over your own life?”
I assigned leaving the letter C. It took me two more years to actually get there. But I got there.
The “Slow Life” Paradox
The Forbes article touches on slow life and I want to be direct about what that means — and doesn’t mean.
My husband described his version of it perfectly: every day feels like Saturday. You can go do something — but you don’t have to. That’s not laziness. That’s the removal of manufactured urgency.
For me it looks like this: I wake up, have coffee, have breakfast, have a life. And then I train for two hours with a level of physical and mental precision that most people never apply to anything.
Slow life doesn’t mean low ambition. It means I stopped letting someone else’s quarterly calendar define what counted as urgent. The intensity is still there — I own it now.
My friends tell me I’ll get bored. I’m not worried.
Why I Document This Publicly
I share this journey for three specific audiences, and I want to name them clearly:
For FOD leaders — if you’re the first, the only, the different one in the room — you know the particular weight of feeling like you can’t leave without letting everyone down. This is proof that you can. That what’s on the other side isn’t smaller. Just different.
For boards and executives considering advisory work with me — the discipline that built a career across 60 countries and $500M P&L doesn’t disappear when you leave a title. It shows up in how I train, how I close gaps, how I execute against a long timeline with no external accountability. I bring that same rigor to the boards I work with. The athletic pursuit is not separate from my professional credibility — it is an extension of it.
For anyone in the middle of an impossible goal — I’m not sharing a success story. I’m documenting a pursuit, in real time. Because the honest version of “impossible goals are just well-executed plans” includes the part where the plan is still running.
What’s Next
2026 competition schedule is being built now.
The gap is there. The work is clear. That’s the only thing that matters.
Agata Bloswick is a former Fortune 500 VP/COO (Pfizer, IQVIA, Labcorp, Fortrea) turned competitive athlete. She advises boards in the pharmaceutical and biotech sector and speaks on leadership, impossible goals, and the discipline behind elite performance.
Read the Forbes Poland article (Polish) https://www.forbes.pl/praca/emerytura-przed-czterdziestka-kazdy-dzien-jest-jak-sobota/00t1487