Boss ladies wrapping the year & going dark
Merry Christmas!
Happy Sunday,
With just over 5 days to go before Christmas, many of us are grappling with the myriad of chores and fun the holiday season brings. Some of us will be dealing with children home from school, others with all the little things we need to do to close out the year. There’s also the inevitable last minute gift buying and wrapping, and of course seeing our family and friends before Omicron leads to time away from everyone we care about. (A must read before you deep dive into the Christmas break is the latest research on Omicron and vaccine immunity from Imperial College researchers).
I’m going to take this break as an opportunity to spend more time with my family and friends until life emerges from the holiday bubble. That means The Chief Brief will be going dark till January 9th.
Merry Christmas and stay safe and well, till we meet again in 2022!
If you find yourself with a little time during this break, I do have some good cheer to spread — some that stem from what’s happened this week, and others from moments that have been the highlights I’ve most enjoyed writing about in The Chief Brief this year!
The week that was
Fashionable to be ‘Boss-lady’
Leena Nair became the youngest and first female CEO of iconic fashion house Chanel. Lenna was Unilever’s first Asian, first Indian-born, first female and youngest ever chief HR officer, where she was responsible for about 150,000 people across more than 100 countries. She was also the boss of every diversity and inclusion strategy (and they’ve been huge successes) at the consumer goods giant. With her appointment, Chanel is sending two clear messages: a) that it is entering a period of profound change — diversity is going to be key to its brand value and one that flags the industry is changing its worldview (considering fashion’s difficult relationship with racial disparity).
b) that this luxury goods company is about to start looking at economically diverse consumers, outside its current comfort zone. As a private luxury company, you don’t just go and hire a publically listed Unilever star for no reason!
On a personal note, to this Indian-born global citizen, this is a massive moment. For some reason, we still seem stuck in the colonial mentality of equating success in the west, as somehow a greater achievement than any in the rest of the world. For example, we’ve been inundated this year with awestruck commentary about how a slew of Indian-born men are taking the helm at tech companies in the U.S. But life is different for an Indian (or any non-western) born woman working in the developed world. I remember bonding with Indra Nooyi at a Fortune Most Powerful Women summit a few years ago, about people underestimating women of colour — even more so if they aren’t born, brought up and influenced by a western upbringing. It sometimes feels like the world doesn’t understand how we are the way we are, how taken aback people are at our level of ambition and capability considering the country we were brought up in (I’ve never understood this one), the struggle to break stereotypes, and let me not forget the microaggressions about our “surprising accents and grasp of the english language”. It is somehow underscored by even those that look like us but are truly western, that perhaps even they expected us to somehow be less than, or not fit in. It is always so very satisfying when you prove the naysayers wrong.
So raise a glass this holiday season to Leena Nair for being one more glass ceiling breaker, who will make the path of women just like her, a little more well-traveled.
Also taking the top job
Sheikha Dana Nasser Sabah Al Ahmad has become the CEO of Kuwait Projects Co (KIPCO). It is one of the leading holding companies in the Middle East and North Africa with interests in financial services, media, real estate, manufacturing and education, with operations in 24 countries and consolidated assets of over $30 billion.
Sheikha Al-Ahmad is also the Founder and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Kuwait (AUK) and the Chairperson of United Education Company. She was formerly the CEO of Al Futtooh Holding Company and has been a KIPCO Board Member since 2020. She holds Board positions in Gulf Insurance Group, OSN and Kamco Invest.
With board composition rules in the Middle East now requiring at least one woman, 2021 has seen a lot of high profile appointments. For example: Rania Nashar, a former chief executive of Samba Financial Group, was made head of compliance and governance at one of the world’s largest and most prominent sovereign wealth funds ($450 billion AUM) — Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) in June. In January, First Abu Dhabi Bank, the nation’s biggest lender, appointed a woman, Hana Al Rostamani as its CEO
In the pipeline
U.K. grocery store and retail giant Marks & Spencer needs a new boss soon to replace Steve Rowe. He's not leaving anytime soon, but the succession hunt has been kicked off by the M&S board. They’ve hired MWM Consulting, a leading search firm, to help benchmark the top three contenders to replace him.
In the running are three internal candidates, with the front runner being a woman. Who are they? Katie Bickerstaffe and Stuart Machin, the company's joint chief operating officers, and Eoin Tonge, who joined 18 months ago as chief financial officer.
Sky News has reported that one source claims Katie is probably regarded by many inside the business as the likeliest successor to Steve. But take that with a pinch of salt. Board choices and favorites tend to change quicker than English weather.
The Chief Brief’s 2021 Highlights
These were my favorite newsletters and stories of the year. If you get a moment this Christmas break, and missed any of these — do have a read! I’ve embedded them into this newsletter to make them easy to access!
With last year’s post-Christmas lockdown looking likely to be repeated in a few weeks around the world, I’ve been reminded of how sat in that lockdown last year how inspired I was by 22-year-old poet Amanda Gorman at the U.S. Presidential inauguration in January 2021. Her poem ‘The hill we climb’ is as amazing to listen to in December 2021 as it was back in January!
Sarah Everard’s murder in the spring of 2021 struck a chord with me, and a whole lot of women in the UK. And that chord was one of anger. Violence against women isn’t a problem that’s going away, but perhaps it is an issue that we can keep center stage in 2022.
Belarus has become a focal point in the relations between Russia and the rest of the world in the months since Alexander Lukashenko hijacked a European flight. As we go into the Christmas holidays, Russia is amassing its armies at the border of Ukraine. The fog of war is a real one. But while the Ryanair hijacking was a wake up call for the west, how to deal with Russia now, is a strategy NATO is still grappling with.
Over the summer, I put a call out for who inspires this community, and you spoke up! And you couldn’t have been clearer!
There is so much rhetoric about female leaders - women’s groups, mandates for board seats, endless conferences celebrating the same 50 faces that made it to the top and how they did it, and the constant refrain about the lack of a “pipeline.” So, I dug a little deeper, beyond celebrating powerful women - How do you remove the bottlenecks and create a healthy pipeline? Turns out what is being practiced is still as archaic as it was in the 1970s.
The trend for 2022 is pretty clear. Companies and governments have woken up to their obligations to the planet and want to be the change they have only paid lip service to, till now. COP26 was an eye-opener and being able to give you a seat at the table, both in the Blue Zone with negotiators and in the Innovation Zone with corporates was an honour. These key points are ones you will hear about and be impacted by, in coming months and years!
Going dark over Christmas is going to do my soul a world of good. It will allow me to give my family the TLC it needs after a devastating loss. We may not be celebrating Christmas this year in our normal over the top way. But we will be celebrating the life of a woman who has influenced so many in our family. If you or someone close to you has suffered loss, take this time to be with the ones you love and show them how much you care.
Life is short! Take each moment you’ve got and share it with those around you with an open heart!