How does your usual day look like?

Even if I loooooove sleeping, my kids usually wake me up around 7:30 am each day. After preparing them for school, the journey to work is a real compression / decompression chamber for me: I always listen to podcasts to learn new things and start the day with inspiration, and in the evening, it is a Netflix show to relax in the subway after my usual 12 meetings a day, hundreds of emails, all hands calls and hundreds of steps in the office stairs (the lift? noooo!!!!). Lunch is usually quick but I enjoy having one hour lunches, once every two weeks, with my team, my peers or mentors. When possible, I try to secure some time for my other priorities within InkLink (NGO, graphic arts for the better good) and FlyTheNest’s foundation (success assurance for start ups and scale ups) where I am board member as well. Evenings are for friends (sometimes) and family (most often). Sandman catches me at 11pm each night!

What are the things you like the most about your job?

Seeing people progressing personally and professionally!

What are some of the skills you utilise the most in your day-to-day at work?

Active listening and active understanding.

What was one of your happiest days in your career and why?

Every time I've resigned! always a feeling that I'm doing something crazy: leaving security for a new project (I resigned from 5 companies)

What was the toughest career decision you ever made?

Changing of employer and leaving teams literally breaks my heart each time (but I always seek for challenges, so status quo is not an option)

What is something you had to learn to become better at your work?

You will always face detractors. Be ready for it. Don’t make them happy, don’t listen to them, stick to what you want to achieve.

How did you get to become a Chief People Officer?

To make the long story short, I started with consulting and learnt through a lot of different, yet difficult, situations. When you’re a consultant, you’re not an active player… so I decided to move into the decision maker shoes.

What's the one piece of career advice you have for anyone interested in following your footsteps?

Don’t follow my footsteps, craft yours’

What's your number one productivity hack / when or how are you most effective?

Prep everything in advance, ask people to be prepped as well, any meeting should be less than 30 min