Isabel Mohan

Isabel joined HELLO! In December 2025 as Editor of Second Act, our vibrant hub and community for midlife women — but she hasn't stopped writing since her early teens, when she had over 100 penpals and published a music fanzine called Magic Baby, which covered both obscure indie bands and soap star crushes.

Isabel officially started out in journalism at Heat magazine in 2003, which explains my encyclopaedic knowledge of early ‘00s reality shows. Since then, she has worked as a writer and editor on titles including Us Weekly, The Telegraph and Grazia as well as spending a few years working as Head of Content at two community-centric apps.

Isabel loves writing features, opinion pieces, live blogs and first person overshares related to health, fitness, body image, pop culture and relationships, but most of all she Ioves shining a spotlight on women doing amazing, unexpected things.

Isabel's own unexpected thing — and one of the defining events of her own “second acts” so far — was taking up running during the pandemic after a lifetime of only breaking a sweat when the barman called last orders. She has since run tons of half marathons, hundreds of parkruns and even conquered London Marathon in 2024 (verdict: great for attention, but it’s a bit far).

Isabel also runs a successful Substack newsletter, Keep It Up Fatty!, where she fights back against the obnoxious words some men in a white van shouted at her when she first got into running. It’s all part of Isabel's mission to make women feel more confident in everything they do — and why she believes communities like Second Act matter so much, bringing us together through shared life stages and experiences.

Isabel lives in south east London with her son, daughter and ginger cat, Bobby and, as well as all that running, she spends a lot of time lifting weights, reading, scrolling her phone past her bedtime, painting her house in garish shades and trying to persuade her friends to do karaoke.