092: Lorna Davis - Corporate Social Impact, Leadership Values and Vision

Mar 17, 2020

38:26

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Guest Overview

Born in South Africa in the age of Apartheid, her education, parental guidance, curiosity, and worldly ambitions set her on the path to a stellar career in international business and marketing and finally leading Danone to become the first billion-dollar entity to become a public benefit corporation - welcome this week’s guest Lorna Davis.

Lorna Davis is a transformational thinker, leader, and visionary for why and how organizations can combine social, and environmental priorities with their financial imperatives to deliver improved business performance. As a highly respected coach, international speaker Lorna also serves on a number of boards to help them embrace meaning and purpose.

In Part One of this two-parter, we cover Lorna’s early life in South Africa, her parent’s influence, how her education and her Pollyanna-ish optimistic view of the world helped carve a successful career. We discuss Lorna’s social purpose epiphany when working in China in 2006. Lorna explains how she left China changed, and ultimately returned to Danone with a mission to help them become a purpose-driven company. Lorna recounts the practical realities of Danone’s evolution to a B Corp under her leadership in the US as Chief Manifesto Catalyst.

We also discuss how Lorna became an evangelist for the B Corp movement, the tools available for all businesses and her advisory role with organizations on their sustainability strategies.

I hope you’re inspired by the leadership values and vision of Lorna Davis.

What We Discuss

Her parental impact

We discuss her upbringing in apartheid South Africa

Lorna’s sense of abundance the opportunity the world offered

Her single-sex high school

Her sports focus

Learning routine discipline and order working for her at school

Studying psychology and anthropology

Breaking into Unilever

Her social purpose epiphany in China

Understanding that she could not continue to walk away from her responsibilities as a leader