Pete Maiden is the founder and CEO of CHEXS, a Hertfordshire-based charity that’s been making a quiet but powerful impact since 2011. His career began in the Royal Navy, where he developed the kind of discipline and leadership skills that would later shape his approach to community work. After leaving the military, Pete turned his attention to supporting young people and families, driven by a belief that small, consistent changes can lead to meaningful transformation. Through CHEXS, h...

Nicolas Trindade is a Senior Portfolio Manager at AXA Investment Managers, responsible for managing global and sterling credit portfolios running into hundreds of millions of pounds. If you're thinking "this is going to be a dry episode" - think again! It was a very rich (no pun intended) conversation, talking about: - Nic's immigrant background (his Portuguese parents were immigrants to France and Nic is a Frenchman living in London) and the values that come with that - his love for ...

David Brown is a life coach, a former Antarctic research scientist, and a martial arts instructor. David is also founder of the Institute of Sovereign Leadership. This is one of my favourite conversations to date. I loved David's thoughtful and articulate responses to my questions about his work around sovereign leadership, his journey as a leader, how he's overcome setbacks in life (including the death of his brother), and of course what his 'edge' is and how he's leaning into that. Watchi...

Amanda Craig is a British novelist, short-story writer and critic. Born in South Africa in 1959, she grew up in Italy, where her parents worked for the UN, and was educated at Bedales School and Clare College Cambridge. After a brief time in advertising and PR, she became a journalist for newspapers such as The Sunday Times, the Observer, The Daily Telegraph and the Independent, winning both the Young Journalist of the Year and the Catherine Pakenham Award. She still reviews children’s books...

Sometimes you meet someone in life who has such an extraordinary journey that you want to have them share it with you. Euphemia began life in a small village in Ghana and now leads the legal team for Kraft Heinz’s Northern Europe business, managing legal operations for a $1.2 billion revenue region. Her journey is characterised by courage, resilience and positivity and I'm thrilled to be able to share it here. Among other things, we talked about overcoming the challenges of bein...

Conor Gearty KC is a founder member of Matrix Chambers. His practice as a barrister is primarily in human rights law and in public law, together with work in the field of corporate social responsibility. Apart from his work as a barrister, Conor is Professor of Human Rights Law at the London School of Economics (LSE) where he has been Director of its Centre for the Study of Human Rights and LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs. Gearty is also a published author, with the acclaimed book on...

Madeleine Holt is a filmmaker, entrepreneur and campaigner in education. Formerly culture correspondent on BBC Newsnight, she makes films about innovative, community-minded comprehensive schools through her enterprise, Schools on Screen. She runs the pioneering Meet the Parents project in North London, encouraging all families to support their local, non-selective secondary schools. In 2019 she won the Fred and Anne Jarvis Award for education campaigning, subsequently won by Marcus Rashford. ...

Professor Mark Peters is Consultant Paediatric Intensivist at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), Professor of Paediatric Intensive Care at UCL Great Ormond St Institute of Child Health, and lead author in a landmark NHS study, which has found that reducing oxygen levels for critically ill children on mechanical ventilators in intensive care could save tens of young lives each year. Mark and I talked about the state of the NHS (of course!), what his version of leadership looks like, especia...

Andy Payne is without doubt one of the pre-eminent figures in the UK's video games industry. A 40 year (and counting career) has seen him, among many other things, run Mastertronic from 1988 – 2015, chaired trade body Ukie from 2005-2015, founded games industry charity, GamesAid, mobile and tablet specialist AppyNation, and Good Shepherd, which is the world’s first equity based crowdfunding platform for games and movies. Andy also founded simulation specialists Just Flight, where he i...

Stevie Griffiths started his working life in the boxing ring, turning professional at an early age. After retirement, he found a new passion in youth work and is now a social entrepreneur, bringing together communities in the King's Cross area of London. Stevie I began by talking about his boxing career, why he chose boxing over football and rugby, the fear that he used to feel in the changing room before fights and how the techniques he learnt to deal with fear help him in his career today....

Paula Keve is a PR powerhouse! She now owns and runs her own consultancy (Intra PR) and across her 20+ year career in PR has worked with well known brands such as Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, BNP Paribas, Headspace and Tinder. This is a must-watch for working parents (but I especially suspect working Mums who feel terrible guilt about the amount of time they're not spending with their kids). Paula and I also talked about insecurity - how having a high profile position in a big ...

Sydney Sam is an African entrepreneur on a mission to transform the continent, one creative solution at a time. He's a four times founder, a global speaker, an entrepreneurship educator, a brand/marketing leader and in 2019 made the Forbes 30 under 30 list. And he's as impressive in person as his bio suggests! But what made the conversation so special for me was its unexpected twists and turns, taking in Sydney's journey, the hammer blow that was his (now) wife's question "who are you outsid...

Mark Dowds is a serial entrepreneur, currently scaling the Belfast based RESPONSIBLE, a pioneering tech company in the resale industry. Mark was formerly a Church Minister, and brings a uniquely spiritual approach to business and to life. Mark's zest for life - and for what he calls 'wild' adventures - is inspirational to behold. Our conversation ranged from cancer survival, to business leadership, to his work in the Church (leading to him being told by the 26 Churches of Northern Ireland th...

Kitch is a 25 year old rapper from Walthamstow, East London. He was born with a speech impediment and it wasn’t until he found fluency in rap that his journey as a once frustrated young man, blossomed into that of an artist expressing his voice through music. Kitch uses a blend of Hip-Hop, UK Rap, and Grime to tell stories of life’s complexities, music that resonates with a wide and diverse audience. Can you imagine having a stammer and still having the courage to appear on a long-form conve...

Jeremy Crane is a consultant transplant and vascular surgeon based in London. His practice encompasses kidney and pancreas transplantation, dialysis access surgery, vascular surgery (including varicose vein surgery) and he has a specialist interest in treating chronic wounds. Jeremy and I discuss why some surgeons have a God complex, how the medical staff working in the NHS have lost a sense of belonging, how the NHS often wastes its vast resources, the future of organ transplantation and mu...

Sam Kukathas has pioneered a new approach in personal development and transformative guidance called Neuro Resonance Optimisation™️ - a revolutionary system using self-generated sound which helps leaders to break through the emotional, mental and energetic glass ceilings that holds them back from achieving the results they desire. Sam and I began the conversation talking about anxiety and how in his early 30s, having suffered from crippling anxiety since childhood, he was able to cure himsel...

Mucktaru Kargbo, or MK, as most people know him, is a multi-award winning, high-end barber, who is as skilled cutting European hair as he is cutting African hair. He's worked in salons, on TV, in film, for the catwalk, in session shoots and has taught extensively both in the UK and internationally. In this conversation, MK and I explored his journey from roots to tip (pun intended!) MK's approach to customer service makes a compelling watch and if you're in a sales or service role, wh...

For over 14 years, Richard Wain has been supporting local businesses and organisations to impact the world positively through their digital marketing activities and to connect with their clients through authentic storytelling as the founding director of Vu Online, a digital marketing agency based in the South West of England. Passionate about nature and regeneration, Richard co-founded the Positive Nature Network in 2022 to provide businesses with a space to pause, reflect, share knowledge a...

Frank Reeves is an entrepreneur and tech investor. He co-founded and was the CEO of avvio.com and allora.ai, until his exit in 2022. He is now the Founding Partner at Voyria, a fund investing in start-ups in the travel sector. Frank and I talked about how he turned Avvio around from technical insolvency, the importance of therapy, ADHD, finding purpose, how to create the DNA of a business, the reasons behind the sale of his business, and what he hopes to achieve with Voyria. Despite an emba...

Richard Morris was a pioneer in Silicon Valley, building the internet infrastructure and services we use as utilities today. After a successful exit and moving back to the UK, Richard wanted to focus more on social impact and co-founded and managed TheGivingMachine, a not-for-profit social enterprise that enables us all to shop and give for free to the causes of our choice, enabling over 1 million free donations to date, benefiting thousands of UK charities and schools. Richard ...