Conscious Leaders with Ruth Farenga

Riham, Co-founder and CEO of MeVitae, grew up in a close-knit family and she brings that style into her community-style leadership. She seeks to get to know really how her employees are doing and get beyond the superficial or work-y answers and into the realness of the relationship. She cares a huge amount about the people that work with her. Riham talks to the recent shifts in US policy around DE...

Tom has a history of creating engagement – he has a background as a primary school teacher and brings learning from this career into how you create participatory environments at work. He tunes into his employees, like he would the children, to gauge the levels of engagement and if he needs to switch up his style. His style is humble and subtle and it is hard to find his ego. He also quirky and fun...

This highlights episode (which marks 5 years of the podcast!) gives you a taster of this with some of the best bits from 2024! You will find clips from great people leaders who are also driving commercial success - proving it possible to do both. It is tempting to say that 2024 was another ‘turbulent year’ but, as we know, is just par for the course now. However, these leaders do share what it is...

Megan has a long history of working at the cutting edge of leadership development and marks a departure from the usual guest on this podcast. She is a deep thinker and researcher around how leaders need to behave in what she calls a ‘pathologically busy’ workplace. This interview explores how our society has an over focus on the short-term, the to do list which leads to rampant busyness. This is n...

This episode is recorded webinar between host of this podcast, Ruth Farenga and Adam Lacey, Founder of Assemble You. It's a fireside chat talking about how to be a successful leader in 2024 illustrated through: Stories - from the best people leaders Ruth can find, many of whom are featured on the Conscious Leaders Podcast and in the Next Level Leadership book. Global research - pulling out key dat...

Marina brings an infectious level of vibrancy and dynamism with a successful background in television. But this is a world she stepped out of because she wanted to work in an environment with more safety. Something she focuses on building as a leader. Everything Marina does as a leader is about communication and putting her metaphorical arm around others - creating those safe spaces. For her, open...

This revisit episode brings back the impressive but understated, Ciaron Dunne who has elevated his role in his group of companies, Genie Ventures, to Executive Chair. He has brought in three CEOs and is setting up structures to allow good governance, giving them enough control. He puts this down to trust and, largely, giving up decision-making. But things have not always been full of growth, three...

This special bonus episode gives you an enhanced short talk from the launch of the 2024 State of Leadership in Technology research. For the research, Conscious Leaders set out to find out what leaders think of their own leadership capacity. We invited over 200 leaders in tech to self-assess against these vital leadership traits. Furthermore, we ran two leadership roundtables with participants in L...

Jonathan (or JP) is a clear leader in ways of working and structures that bring safety and enjoyment at work. They have clear frameworks at AND Digital which helps people use the same language and develop systems in meetings, for example, which allow for inclusion, productivity and belonging. He discusses the agreements that need making in a team to make things clear e.g. when do we come into the...

Darren has a background in sport which means he brings a rallying, motivational energy but one that is inclusive – he wants people to be involved and aligned so they can move as a team. He shares about his successes as well as his own darker period out of which he developed a meditation practice (prompted by his wife who booked him on a course without his knowledge!) Mindset and mental wellness ar...

Quite often family businesses do not make big leaps but my interviewee Harry Singer bucks the trend with Singer Instruments. Harry grew up with business deeply in his upbringing as the 3rd generation to run his business. His family holidays were usually centred around a scientific conference and he thrived being ale to take part in his father’s work from the age of 6. What comes across strongly is...

Emily comes across as a very calm, measured, and humble CEO – one that does not feel that we need unnecessary pressure. She is committed to connecting with employees and organically growing their business in sustainable ways. She attributes a lot of stability in her childhood to the resilience of her mother who always worked full time, did a PhD part-time and travelled around the world sharing her...

Welcome to the 2023 Conscious Leaders Podcast Highlights Episode. If you don’t know me already, I’m your host, Founder of Conscious Leaders, Ruth Farenga. Quite apparently to us all, 2023 has been a year where all the implications have joined into a perfect storm. A year when we desperately need great leaders to look up to and help us navigate a path. And, leaders have continued to step up - and I...

Melanie has always been an achiever. She rose through the ranks of young innovative companies and then to a big role at Google before arriving at LinkedIn as a Senior Product Director. Her story is full of highs and lows. When COVID hit she went through her own burnout, realising that her own striving was a way of finding her own safety (having experienced a lack of safety for part of her childhoo...

Tom Hall has had a host of leadership roles in publishing and education and now works as GM at Lego International Education where he is a stand out leader in corporate. He is a huge advocate of cultivating more presence in his leadership and he explains how he consciously works on that through strong intention, meditation, and exercise. He is also keen to open himself up to his team and did that q...

At 24, is wise beyond his years. He has built software development company that places students in organisations – Hatless studios. He is passionate about human psychology (our function and dysfunction), the ‘stories we tell ourselves’ and finding our purpose. He thinks very deeply about people and how we can more connected at work. He reads widely particularly around philosophy including stoicism...

Flavilla was raised in the ghetto of Paris – starting in a 2-bed flat with her single parent mum and 4 other siblings, it was a difficult start. But she evolved through education, self-teaching and commitment a vision of something better moving through careers in events, fashion and into branding and marketing. It became clear to her quite quickly that she wanted to run her own show so her agency,...

Abb-d has a fascinating back-story which covers a basketball and music career before going into the design and advertising world. He experienced a lot of bias both conscious and unconscious coming from a non-traditional background with a different sounding name – his Dad is Bengali and Mum is German. But this only spurred him on as he was so determined to work in design. Nothing was going to hold...

In Daniel’s revisit interview (his first is episode 3), Daniel opens up his large brain to us again! He describes his journey of being bought by a bigger company. He founded Satalia, a now 120 person AI consultancy and it was recently bought by WPP and he is still CEO. Daniel struggled initially to understand how funding or a buyout was the right route. He is a big proponent of decentralisation an...

Adam’s career started out the way everyone expected. His father was a Partner at one of the big consulting firms and this was his path. Indeed, it was as Adam accelerated up the promotion ladder to Partner at Accenture and then onto PwC. But brewing in the background were Adam’s mental health issues. Despite his success, he noticed issues dating back to when he was at university. Looking back, he...

Tom Tapper is back on the podcast and this time we dive right in and talk about the forward-thinking policies they have been implementing at creative agency, Nice and Serious, where he is Co-Founder. Tom describes being part of ‘a race to the top’ with progressive policies for employees He compares it to redecorating a house – if you start painting one wall with a fresh coat of paint then other th...

Tim Williams took over Onalytica with a mandate to run it as if it was his own start-up. He had come in, disliked the original set up and resigned. However, the investors wanted him to stay so he was asked to rebuild the company as he saw fit.

Renee Watson is Founder of Watson Consulting and the Curiosity Box (as well as a head coach in women’s touch rugby!). She is fantastic at tuning into her team and finding out what makes them tick and shares her specific methods for doing so.

This podcast’s purpose is to open up honest conversations. Ones that get under the surface and tell us what leadership and life are really like. When leaders share something personal or deep with us, we learn tangible and practical things.  We also connect as human beings. In hearing others’ challenges, we feel connected and validated as fellow imperfect humans.

Dominic was brought up to go for big goals but to do so in a way that was considerate to those around him. This is reflective in his company, which seems to build community as much as actual business.