Leadership Recipes

What links a bauxite mine, a Jesuit elite school and a refugee camp? Today’s guest has led in all three, and the same belief in human potential runs through every move. Jean-Noël Dargnies spent 30 years in the aluminium industry before directing one of France’s most prestigious schools. After two mandates he transitioned to chairing a world top 10 NGO: Handicap International (Humanity and Inclusio...

Chris Rennoldson's journey to founding Pasta Evangelists was anything but linear:  from chemical engineering to the London Stock Exchange during its most dramatic takeover battles, to professional cookery school at Leiths. Each turn shaped how he thinks about leadership, teamwork and elevating the ordinary into something special. Now leading 400 people across 50 restaurants, Chris shares what Clar...

Welcome to Season 2 of Leadership Recipes! Ben Voyer’s story begins in Paris, where his grandfather’s fillet mignon with caramelised potatoes and onions became the defining dish of his childhood. It was simple, balanced and prepared with care. Qualities that stayed with him as he grew up, moved abroad and built a career studying how people think, lead and work together. Now a professor of behaviou...

For the final episode of Season 1 we have our first French leader: Thibault Laumonier.   Thibault manages the French division of cardboard packaging group DS Smith, a major actor in Europe’s circular economy. A former Paratrooper who studied finance in Paris, he worked his way up in industrial sales before taking up increasingly complex managing director roles for American, Australian and British...

Today’s guest is not just a social business leader, he is also a policy wonk, a tech entrepreneur, and a crossbench (non political) Peer.     Born and bred in Wakefield, Victor dropped out of school and worked as a road sweeper before branching into council housing management and getting his first CEO role aged 24. He ran increasingly complex social enterprises and joined the House of Lords where...

Today’s guest has spent her entire career dealing with leaders before becoming one herself. She joined Europe’s largest Executive Search firm straight from university, fell in love with the industry and never left. After 20 years at Egon Zehnder, where she ran the Research teams in London and India, she founded her own firm and now focuses on identifying diverse international talent. Shilpi shares...

On International Women’s Day we are delighted to welcome our first woman leader on the programme: Helen Steers, senior Partner at Pantheon, a global private equity firm based in London. Trained as an engineer, Helen fell into the world of finance via a detour in Canada.    We discuss her career as a leader in private equity and how she decided early on to fight for diversity of thinking as an esse...

For our third episode we travel from the near West (Dorset) and to South Asia (Sri Lanka).  Paul Oliver has left the big corporate life as well as the dreaming spires of Oxford to help make health and care for old people better. He sees food as an integral part of social bonding and a dignified later life.    Nothing destined Paul to appreciating and cooking Sri Lankan food, as he was brought up i...

In the run-up to the holiday season I thought it would be appropriate to have a spiritual leader...   Jim has one of the most interesting jobs at the LSE: formally he is the Chaplain, but he is also the director of the all-religions Faith Centre as well as a professor in the department of International Relations. Recently, his time has been consumed by the Gaza conflict, in a region where he has b...

Andy has been on a fascinating food journey: from working class Liverpool to meat-centred rugby playing, to systematically studying the science of food and health. This eventually took him to veganism, in a very reasoned way…   You could say Andy is a National Treasurer – he was the Group Treasurer at Nationwide Building Society for many years… He now plays the same role at merchant bank Close Bro...

Welcome to Leadership Recipes, my name is François Moscovici, and I'm a partner at leadership consultants, White Water Group. I spend most of my week working with leaders, their teams and their boards, but I have another passion - food. I trained as a professional chef and I have always been fascinated by all aspects of food, be it historical, scientific, artistic, or simply making it and eating i...