Leadership NOW with Dan Pontefract

Charity Lumpa is an accomplished executive and leader with decades of working experience in the insurance, banking, tourism and telecommunications industries. She is the founder and managing director of an investment consultancy and a philanthropic foundation, and board chairperson of a leadership company focused on coaching leaders in Africa. In this Leadership NOW episode with Dan Pontefract, Charity and Dan discuss all things under the sun of leadership, culture, and purpose. Charity has previously held the positions of Managing Director of the Zambia National Tourism Board, Ecobank Zambia Limited and Airtel Networks Zambia Plc where she was the first female and Zambian to be appointed into the role. Amongst her many achievements is having successfully set up Ecobank Zambia Limited as a greenfield financial institution in 2008 and became its founding Managing Director. Charity is the first female Board Chairman of Zanaco Plc and of the St. Ignatius College of the Jesuits. She was member of the boards of Air Namibia, Livingstone International University of Tourism Excellence and Business Management, and the project board of the Women’s Bank Zambia Limited.

Roger Martin is a trusted strategy advisor to the CEOs of companies worldwide including Procter & Gamble, Lego and Ford. In 2017, he was named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers. In this engaging talk with Dan Pontefract, Roger discusses his newest book, "A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Managerial Effectiveness." Roger is a Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto where he served as Dean from 1998-2013, Academic Director of the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship from 2004-2019 and Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute from 2013-2019. In 2013, he was named global Dean of the Year by the leading business school website, Poets & Quants. He has written twelve other books including When More is Not Better, Creating Great Choices written with Jennifer Riel and Playing to Win written with A.G. Lafley, which won the award for Best Book of 2012-13 by the Thinkers50.

Tiffani Bova is the Chief Growth Evangelist at Salesforce, and author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book "GROWTH IQ." A celebrated keynote and member of the Thinkers50 list, Bova inspires people to think forward, be bold and take action. In this discussion with Dan Pontefract, the discussion centers around the customer and employee experience: are we getting it right? Bova was named one of 2020’s Top Virtual Keynote Speaker by Read Write and is a guest on Bloomberg, BNN, Cheddar, MSNBC, and Yahoo Finance, among others. She contributes her thinking to publications including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Diginomica, Quora, Thrive, Rotman School of Management and Duke Dialogue Review. Bova is a top Twitter influencer, was named one of Inc. Magazine’s 37 Sales Experts You Need to Follow on Twitter, a LinkedIn Top Sales Expert to follow, a Top 100 Women in Tech, and one of the most Powerful and Influential Women in California. Prior to working with Salesforce, she served as a Distinguished Analyst and Research Fellow for Gartner. There, she won the Thought Leadership award and earned accolades for her cutting-edge analysis and her skill at architecting bold new strategies for sales and growth. Bova’s experience, combined with candor, results in a unique perspective businesses need and people want to increase their GROWTH IQ.

Alan Mulally is the former president and CEO of The Ford Motor Company, serving as its most senior leader between 2006 and 2014. Before that and for over 30 years, Mulally held roles at Boeing, including executive vice president of the Boeing Company and president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. To say that Mulally has been at the helm of two of America's most important and prominent brands is wildly understated. In this discussion with Dan Pontefract, Alan outlines with precision and depth his "Working Together" management system. Alan delves into the various factors that help all stakeholders understand the mission and vision whilst using humanistic traits in which to do so. As an added bonus, Alan details how the "Working Together" system can also serve as a model for your life.

Arianna Huffington is the founder and CEO of Thrive, the founder of The Huffington Post, and the author of 15 books, including Thrive and The Sleep Revolution. In 2016, she launched Thrive, a leading behavior change tech company with the mission of changing the way we work and live by ending the collective delusion that burnout is the price we must pay for success. She has been named to Time Magazine's list of the world’s 100 most influential people and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union. In this conversation with Dan Pontefract, Arianna discusses the importance of empathy, as well as her two new empathy-based initiatives with SHRM (a mental wellness pledge) and Genesys with the launch of the "Thrive Reset for Genesys" tool to help curb workplace stress.

Kerry Brown is a strategist and thought leader on the future of work, change management, learning, workforce adoption, talent and organizational development helping organizations strategize and achieve organizational success and navigate the intersection of people and technology. Kerry has worked in senior roles at firms such as SAP, Coca-Cola, and CSR among others. Kerry possesses a track record of success leading change efforts, managing businesses and teams, building revenue and leading the creation of new products & services through a visionary leadership style. She is a strategic and creative thinker with strong analytical abilities who thrives on a challenge. Kerry has been recognized by Engagedly as one of its Top 100 HR Influencers. Nowadays she plies her wonderful talents as a leader at Celonis – the world’s first commercial process mining company.

Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration and the former unit head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. He is an expert on leadership in turbulent times, having studied and written about the topic for the past twenty-five years. Gulati’s latest book, Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies, shows how companies can embed purpose much more deeply than they currently do, delivering impressive performance benefits that reward customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and communities alike. In this conversation with Dan Pontefract, they discuss key concepts from the book including the four benefits of a deep purpose organization. Professor Gulati holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a Master’s Degree in Management from M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, and two Bachelor’s Degrees, in Computer Science and Economics, from Washington State University and St. Stephens College, New Delhi, respectively.

Eloise Skinner is an author, teacher, therapist, and the founder of two educational businesses: The Purpose Workshop and One Typical Day. Eloise was born in East London, studied at Cambridge and trained at Oxford. She started out in corporate law, spent a year training in a monastery community(!) and now focuses on education, social impact and integration by living with intention, integrity and purpose Eloise sits on the youth board of the UK’s national social mobility charity, and is an Enterprise Advisor for the Mayor of London’s education & careers strategy. Dan Pontefract sits down with Eloise to discuss not only her work in the purpose space, but how the choices she made with her career—all with a bend towards becoming purpose-driven—have led her to a richer and fuller life.

With over 27 years’ experience in the advertising, marketing and print industry, Geoff Josey is an overachiever. He has been an account executive, entrepreneur, sales manager, director and business development manager in various organizations, possessing a strong print/digital advertising media skillset. But Geoff recently had an epiphany. He desired more purpose in his life. Geoff set sail in early January 2022, taking a one-year professional sabbatical, to find more meaning and purpose in his life. He is literally travelling the world to do so. As his mom said to him three years ago before passing, “Geoffrey no one ever wishes on their deathbed that if only I had worked harder.” Geoff set out to sort that bit of his life out. Listen in as he and Dan Pontefract discuss his journey, what he's learned, and what else is to come with his life. It's an inspirational and insightful conversation.

The general state of society’s unhappiness appears to be growing, and there seems to be no end in sight. One question that continues to cause alarm is whether technology—and the use of smartphones in particular—is the cause of such mounting unhappiness. Dr. Kostadin Kushlev, an Assistant Professor and Researcher at Georgetown University, investigates how constant connectivity affects societal’s health and well-being. He is the Principle Investigator of the Digital Health and Happiness Lab, aka the Happy Tech Lab. In this conversation with Dan Pontefract, Kushlev discusses the pros and cons of technology, connectivity, and always being on when it comes to our happiness and well-being.