Peggy Van de Plassche

Dinner party. Assigned seating. Luxury objects being passed around. Inventories compared. Photos shown. Colleagues' behaviors discussed—at length If this had been women with handbags, the verdict would have been immediate: vain, shallow, boring 🙄 But it wasn’t. It was men. With watches ⌚ So suddenly:  – it’s not vanity, it’s craftsmanship 🛠️  – not gossip, but “knowing the ecosystem” 🌐  –...

🎯 If you set only one career resolution for 2026, make it this. Stop treating LinkedIn like a photo album And start treating it like your own HBR 📖 Thought leadership isn’t about posting more. It’s about thinking better — and making that thinking visible 🧠 Writing regularly has: sharpened how I listen 👂 clarified how I think ✍️ elevated the conversations I have 💬 and, yes, quietly unlocked ca...

🚧 Career stalled? Before you panic — listen to this. Career slumps don’t mean you made bad choices.  More often, they mean the environment shifted , the market moved , expectations drifted , or something quietly stopped fitting . I’ve been through several versions of the career slump — sometimes forced, sometimes chosen, sometimes just confusing — and I’ve tested more remedies than I care to admi...

Ever feel like you’re managing an overconfident junior analyst — only this one costs $20/month and never sleeps? That’s been my relationship with ChatGPT-5 lately.  Brilliant at first glance, charming in tone, but when deadlines hit… it cheerfully tells you everything is “✅ On track” while the deliverables are nowhere to be found. I’ve done the homework — deep-dive courses, optimized prompts, fee...

What makes something valuable?  Its beauty , its rarity … or the story it tells? A few years ago, I met artist Abraham Reyes — heir to the world’s largest natural pearl, the Giga Pearl , appraised at $135 million. But instead of locking it away, he turned his inheritance into art . He uses real gems and wild pearls to create sculptures that question what value really means — in art, in markets, in...

For years, I was a model student of personal development — from the most structured to the most woo-woo . Therapy. Energy work. Coaching. Yoga. Breathwork. You name it — I did it.  And it worked. I’m calmer, more confident, and more grounded because of all that work, not despite it. But here’s the catch: at some point, all that “growth” starts getting in the way of life itself. You go from living...

💬 What’s the Best Career Advice You’ve Ever Given? Last week, I was speaking at the Club Canadien de Toronto during the Francophone Summit on Finance and Investment 2025 . The panel was about Power, Leadership, and Investment: Who Shapes the Finance of Tomorrow? But the moment that stayed with me came from the Q&A.  A young woman in the audience asked: “What advice would you give to someone l...

The most underrated form of personal development?   Reading someone else’s life. Not the polished business bios that read like PR exercises.  But the real ones — messy, contradictory, deeply human stories of artists, writers, and athletes who fail, doubt, reinvent, and rise again. Reading David Bowie makes you question how far you’d go to reinvent yourself. Jane Birkin teaches you what it takes to...

When I say invest in yourself , I don’t mean another AI course, eMBA, or leadership retreat in the Rockies. I mean literally: invest in your appearance, fitness, and energy. Why? Because ageism is alive and well — for both women and men. Pretending it doesn’t exist won’t make it go away. As a (very honest) friend working at a large bank told me: “I’m doing everything I can to look young. In my gro...

I’ve seen it too many times.  New tech emerges — blockchain, crypto, digital transformation — and companies rush headfirst into POCs, MVPs, and pilots … …forgetting to ask the most important question: 👉 Why? AI is no different. During my month in the Emirates, I attended several AI events and heard it all:  ✨ AI for Good. AI for the People. AI as an Enabler. Refreshing, compared to the ego-drive...

I spent a month in the UAE.  And I came back thinking — they’re doing what we in the West keep talking about… but with coherence and conviction. In the Emirates, economic development isn’t an afterthought — it’s a strategy. If you want to access sovereign wealth funds, the rule is simple:  💼 No local office, no money. Capital comes with purpose. You invest in the country, not just from it. The sa...

In North America, the first question is usually: “What can you do for me?” In the UAE, it’s more often: “Who are you? What are your values?” That simple difference reshapes everything—hiring, compensation, execution, even how time itself is perceived. 👉 Relationships come before résumés.  👉 Compensation is negotiated differently (and turnover is built into the system).  👉 Time runs on a more el...

✨ One week in Dubai and already noticing patterns in how people actually do business here. Networking feels… different. Meetings in days, not months Full attention , not 25 min with an Apple Watch buzzing Invites with no strings attached Expats who get it — building new lives, new careers, new networks A buoyant economy where expansion (not survival) drives behavior Of course, there are still the...

💸 In Dubai, inequality isn’t hidden. It’s right there: Lamborghinis next to labor buses. Nobody pretends it’s sad, nobody calls for change. It simply is. The pecking order is clear, unapologetic, and accepted. 😶 In the West, we play a different game. We polish inequality with layers of politeness. We don’t talk about money — it’s “unseemly.” We pretend everyone is equal. And by making inequality...

I’m pressing the reset button: 4 weeks, 2 cities, ~many coffees. Dubai Sep 10–20 → Abu Dhabi Sep 22–Oct 3 . Why? Because sometimes it’s riskier to stay put than to move. The UAE’s dynamism is a pull; today’s noise is a push. I’m here to learn fast, meet great people, and map real opportunities in PE/SWF/value creation. What’s inside the newsletter (playbook included): • Join communities early. Fre...

AI-proofing your career boils down to 2 moves : 1) Amplify everything AI can’t do (or doesn’t do well). 2) Double-down on your secret sauce. Why now? The IMF estimates ~40% of global jobs are exposed to AI— ~60% in advanced economies . If half of what you do is automatable, make the other half unmistakable . 🧭 Critical thinking is the operating system. Ask sharper questions, design the analysis,...

Ever had a perfectly normal coffee turn into a TED Talk on how cannibals run the world? Same. ☕🌀 My new newsletter is a field guide to the conspiracy slide—how a chat that starts with “sugar is bad” ends with “the lizard people are late to the meeting.” Inside the piece: The Black-Hole Effect: How five “wellness” videos become ten anti-vax rants and—boom—global cabal. (Scroll = rocket fuel.) Spo...

If you know me well, you know my tolerance for nonsense is… minimal.  If you don’t know me well, you probably think I’m endlessly calm and kind.  Both are true. The problem? We’re living in a world where public headphone-free playlists, table manners (or lack thereof), and casual disrespect have become the new normal . As a Frenchwoman in North America, I was raised with an intricate set of social...

👨‍🔧 “Let Me Talk to Your Husband.” Because apparently, you need a Y chromosome to understand drywall. If I had a dollar for every contractor who said that to me, I’d be sipping rosé in a manicured garden in Monaco—not fending off raccoons on my Toronto patio. But as ridiculous as it sounds, there’s more to this story than just misogyny. It’s also about sales psychology, social conditioning, and...

🚀 From VC to CEO — and Why Founders Are Rethinking Dilution What happens when a venture capitalist jumps into the trenches to run one of her portfolio companies? In this week’s podcast & newsletter, I sat down with the brilliant Melissa Widner—CEO of Lighter Capital and former head of NAB Ventures—to talk about:  💡 Why she left VC to become an operator again  ⚡️ The rise of revenue-based fi...

Between calendar invites for brunch, soft-circled plans, 20-text back-and-forths, and the ever-popular last-minute “doctor’s appointment” excuse… I’m starting to think we need a project manager just to have lunch. We used to meet at the movies in 1999 with no phones, no iCals, no text confirmations—and somehow, we made it . Today? Getting a friend to show up IRL feels like coordinating a G7 summit...

🚀 From Startup to Global HR Tech — and a Family Move to Dubai What does it take to build a 500-person company, raise three kids, and still prioritize culture over growth-at-all-costs? This week on the podcast, I sat down with Stéphanie Reniers , co-founder and CEO of Gentis , to talk about: 💡 The human problem in recruitment — and how Gentis set out to fix it  🤖 Why they built their own HR tech...

🚀 Success, Strategy & Staying Human A friend reached out recently—unhappy in her role and ready to make a move. We spoke about the job market (not great), office politics (they pass), and the uncomfortable truths of ageism and sexism (still real). She left the call with a new perspective. That conversation made me reflect on my own path—and how much of it I’ve shaped by design. Yes, I’ve made...

What does it really take to build and scale deep tech across borders? (Hint: It's not just capital or code.) Last week’s event The Humans Behind the Next Wave —co-hosted by La French Tech Toronto, AAGEF Ontario, and CDL Paris—was packed with lived experience and straight talk. No hype, just hard truths. Here are a few takeaways that stuck with me: 🔹 Startups are pain. Especially in AI and de...

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I’m a sucker for new frontiers. And lately, one signal keeps getting louder: a growing number of Canadians and Americans—myself included—are turning their attention to the UAE. Not just because the job market here feels uncertain. But because the Middle East, and the UAE specifically, still believes in building. Where the future isn’t something to fear—i...