The Compassionate Leadership Interview

Rayek Rizek is Author of the book The Anteater and the Jaguar, former mayor of Neve Shalom/Wahat Assalam, and owner of Café Ahlan in that community. Born in 1955 in Nazareth to a Palestinian Christian family, he has been living in the Jewish-Palestinian village of Wahat Assalam (Arabic)/Neve Shalom (Hebrew)/ Oasis of Peace (English) since 1984.   The community is unique because it is the only...

Michael is Founder and Executive Director of the Youth Voices Center, New York, motivational speaker, and author of the book Be Encouraged! He was a social worker and counsellor for 22 year before starting his own business. Michael likens his personal journey to that of a donkey who falls into a well. Unable to lift him out, his owner decides to bury him right there, but as he is shovelling the la...

Sunny Dhadley FRSA is a consultant, coach and motivational speaker. For 10 years he was programme lead for the Wolverhampton Service User Involvement Team, in connection with which he was shortlisted for Public Servant of the Year 2018. Sunny was initially brought up in a multicultural area until he was six or seven. Then he moved to a predominantly white council estate. Nonetheless he felt at hom...

Laura and Evan run The Center for Compassionate Leadership in New York ( www.centerforcompassionateleadership.org ). The Center is the culmination of Laura’s life’s work. For 40 years, she worked for tech and media companies in both the commercial and non-profit world. For the first 20 years she had a traditional career path and chased the American Dream. It was a personal trauma in 2000 that caus...

If you aspire to being part of the impending revolution in public services, don’t miss out on this podcast. Professor Donna Hall CBE is Chair of Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, and also Integrated Care System Advisor to NHS England, Chair of the New Local Government Network (NLGN) think tank, Professor of Politics at Manchester University, and former Wigan Chief Executive. You can find her on Twitter...

If you’re looking for inspiration about making a difference in today’s society, look no further. Dame Julia Unwin was Chair of the Inquiry into Civil Society Futures, which published in 2018. In the same year she wrote a report on The Role of Kindness in Public Policy for the Carnegie Trust. For ten years she was chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, where she was the driving force be...

Mark Michaux Brown is a coach, and author of the book ‘Outward Bound Lessons to Live a Life of Leadership’, former director of corporate potential at Grappone Automotive Group and before that course director at Voyageur Outward Bound School. His is a fascinating story, because he has used the transformative potential of Outward Bound to change his own life as well as that of others. Mark spent 22...

This is Chris’s second podcast with Sarah. In the first, which is episode seven of this series, you can hear her backstory, some of her work-related achievements, and her approach to learning and to self-care. They gave this podcast the somewhat ambitious title of “the leader as philosopher, learner and listener” and imagined that it might be more of a conversation than an interview. Sarah has sai...

Dr Nate Regier is a trained clinical psychologist who has built a business on a beautiful idea. Diversity is a fundamental characteristic of the human race and an inevitable consequence of that diversity is conflict. He discovered in the work of Michael Meade that compassion is the mechanism that transforms conflict from a destructive force into a creative force. Nate is Founder and CEO of Next El...

Marie Cooper is Chief Executive of engineering business CBE Plus Group. Right now she finds herself stalking Jenson Button on Twitter with a view to him participating in a Get up to Speed with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths) event. CBE Plus Group was assembled in 2016 by Marie and Chris Brown, her chief operating officer, who provides the technical expertise behind the organisat...

Professor Rob Copeland is Director of The Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC) in Sheffield and Professor of Physical Activity and Health at Sheffield Hallam University. Rob is a keen cyclist. He says “if it’s going to be a good day, it’ll start with a bike ride…” He arrived at the studio having just played host to Andy Anson, the new CEO of the British Olympic Association. That meeting focus...

Lara Bundock is founder and chief executive of The Snowdrop Project, a charity that supports survivors of human trafficking. Her Twitter page describes her as a “speaker, adventurer, actress, human rights advocate – embracing a life of faith, expecting the unexpected.” So far ‘the unexpected’ has included advising the government of Turmenistan on how they can support the NGOs in their country to a...

Michael West is professor of work and organisational psychology at Lancaster University and visiting fellow to the King’s Fund, the NHS think tank. How did he come to those appointments? He observes that careers often unfold rather than are preplanned. After university he worked in a coalmine for a year. There safety and mutual support were prominent features of the culture. When he returned to un...

Tracy Allen is Chief Executive of Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust (DCHS), a primary care trust with 4,000 staff. Tracy was recruited to the NHS Management Scheme straight out of university and, apart from a brief spell in academia, has worked for the NHS throughout her career, close to 30 years. For the first 20 years she worked mainly for secondary (acute) trusts but for...

Lisa Leighton is joint Managing Partner of BHP Accountants, who have 350 staff in five offices across Yorkshire. They are the only Sheffield business named in The Sunday Times Best 100 Middle-Sized Companies to Work For. They have tripled in size in the last ten years. They act primarily for SMEs, but also in the healthcare sector, and for charities and not-for-profit organisations. Their strap li...

Tony Stacey is Chief Executive of South Yorkshire Housing Association, who own over 6,000 homes in the Sheffield travel to work area. There are around 1,000 housing associations in the country. SYHA is a standout: the social housing regulator has made a case study of it on account of the scope and impact of the initiatives that it has taken in service of its tenants. They answer their ‘why’ questi...

Nancy Fielder is editor of The Star, Sheffield Telegraph and Doncaster Free Press. She is the first woman to edit a newspaper in Sheffield. If you check out her social media feeds, football, art and the built environment emerge as themes. Of these, it’s the built environment she is most passionate about – “the city really needs to move forwards but has got a lot worth protecting.” She was nominate...

Hugh Facey OBE is Chairman of Gripple and of the Glide group. In 2014 Management Today ran an article on him entitled “Is Hugh Facey Britain’s best boss?” and he has appeared on BBC’s The One Show. His career started at Tinsley Wire. He set out on his own with Estate Wire in 1984 and then sold it five years later to fund Gripple, the wire connector that he invented. 30 years on, the Glide group th...

Sarah is Managing Director of Thrive Consulting Collaborative. She has a side hustle, Love Work More, with friend Richard Ferguson. Thrive is based on the premise that we all have enough time to prosper and works with organisations and leaders to achieve this. Love Work More provides people with tactics and strategies to find a working life that they love. Sarah originally qualified as a lawyer th...

In this show, Chris Whitehead turns the tables on Chris Hill. Chris regularly interviews young people in a ‘Dragons’ Den’ environment in his role as CEO of Element Society. Element Society is a charity that “empowers young people to make a positive change in their communities.” Over 2,700 young people have participated in the programme since its inception six years ago. Element Society facilitates...

As a child growing up overseas, Danyal Sattar witnessed destitution at first hand. It was a profound experience that has coloured his life’s work. Having worked for Joseph Rowntree and the Esme Fairbairn Foundation he now heads up Big Issue Invest, providing finance to small and medium sized social enterprises, all of which positively influence the lives of people across the UK. He is CEO of Big I...

Jodie started her own law firm, Thrive Law, at 29 and 15 months later she has 10 staff. Thrive Law is a specialist law firm, based in Leeds. The company specialises in employment law, with a focus on HR and mental health in the workplace. She graduated from Leeds Beckett in law in 2009, trained as a barrister and a solicitor, became qualified while working for Milners and at the same time started...

Adrian Brown wrote the foreword to the book Compassionate Leadership. After running a series of design agencies, he joined his father's medical devices business. He deployed his design skills to reinvent the business, putting an emphasis on clinician education and training. He has also deployed his communication skills internally, creating a culture that is open and engaging. His leadership style...

Laurie Cottam is director and owner of Race Cottam Architects (RCA). Before he was an architect he toured the world singing with Oxford a capella singing group 'Out of the Blue.' A comparatively young leader in terms of his profession he is learning his trade alongside running the practice. He worked in London for a number of years before moving north to work alongside his father, Dave, one of the...

Auriel Majumdar is a coach, thinker, speaker, teacher and poet. She is a regular broadcaster, recently featuring on the BBC's Naked Podcast. Formerly a senior manager with a local authority she gave up a well-paid secure corporate job to follow her heart and pursue a more satisfying portfolio vocation. She describes the pivotal event that catalysed the change. It was liberating, fabulous and traum...