Inspirational Speakers
Ingeborg Gasser-Kriss (Board NED; Entrepreneur; Mondelez executive) leveraged on her passion for gardening and her decades of successful innovation in Fortune 500 firms to bring us surprisingly simple examples of how to make innovation happen, by addressing the corporate contradictions that so often slow progress down and may keep us stuck in the past: short- vs. long-term, expertise vs. curiosity, efficiency vs. flexibility, prediction vs. experimentation, planning obsession vs. growth obsession, and competition vs. collaboration.
Marit Roed Ødegaard (SVP Yara International; Board NED) advocated the importance of fun, to energise us and to help us cope with critical moments of uncertainty and crisis. Covering a broad range of examples, from the “happiest man alive” who survived concentration camp through friendship, to her own moments of happiness in discovering originality and creative disruption, and to the HI-POWER initiative that rocked the Yara establishment bringing up colour, smiles and untapped talents… Marit suggests to practice: awareness, gratitude, and … laughing … offering us also 5 minutes of “laughing yoga”.
Kavitha Varathan (Founder and CEO Expat Spouses Initiative, TED Talk Speaker) shared her own story as a refreshing example of entrepreneurial identity struggles. After giving up her successful architectural design career to follow her husband abroad, and not finding a suitable architect job in the new country, she launched a successful initiative to help other talented spouses get reintegrated in the job market. But the hardest part of it all was finding the courage to let go and to let the future emerge: “I could no longer attach my identity to the title of architect, had to accept to go off course, watching change unfold, to find my real identity beyond any titles, like the peace after the storm”
Sarbani Bhattacharya (Director ASML; KPMG; Unilever; Board NED) took us with witty humour through the breath-taking array of her passions and interests. Behind the deceptively simple title of “life is an ice-cream” we heard the story of the Indian girl who’s shrugging off biases and enjoys playing with boys, of the financial guru who’s daring to discount numbers and enjoys a tougher confrontation on values, of the transformational leader who’s shattering engrained habits and enjoys creating a Coalition of the Willing’s, and finally of the social advocate of sanitation (SDG #6) who’s on non-profit boards to help bring toilets to the 150 million people who defecate in the open, so that we can all enjoy a healthier planet. A true story of challenges, resilience and success, as promised in title!
Yimika (Oyieymika) Adeboye (CEO Mondelez West Africa; CCHBC; Board NED) presented her life story with amazing energy and humble tones. The first black woman to hold a CEO position at Mondelez and Cadbury, she is also a runner, a volunteer in several charitable organisations, and a dedicated mother of 4 (after adopting the 2 children of her deceased sister). Still, she did not boast her amazing successes, but gave us inspiring examples of learning and growing through hard work as well as leading and working with empathy and uncompromising ethics, including refusing positions meant just to tick boxes: an unforgettable story of leading with the heart and the head.
Hanne Leth Andersen (Rector Roskilde University; Board NED; Professor Copenhagen Business School and Århus University) held for us an interactive session to collectively reflect around the tricky subject of “female self-confidence” for which Hanne generously offered her own multicultural experience, specific examples from the academic field, and a wealth of well-researched documentation. Prejudice that belittles women is still deeply rooted and hard to eradicate, so Hanne advocated self-reflection and proactivity. Too often do women underestimate themselves, over-prepare and seek external approval; we can do and feel better if we focus on being more authentically and more disruptively ourselves.
Get in touch
info@grooa.comWe are always happy to hear from you, feel free to send us your comments, suggestions, or feedback. If you would like to receive some more information we are also happy to share some of our additional examples or arrange for an informal free and non-binding online chat.