Leaders need to confront that everything might need to change
Better World Leaders – Episode 6 with Victoria Foster of FutureWomenX
This week’s guest is Victoria Foster, who shares her transformational journey of listening to calling, discovering purpose and championing female leadership.
Her path traverses an upbringing in Chicago, extensive travel and ‘global citizenship’ and early career in global investment banking. Sometime into this successful profession she reached a critical juncture, when a courageous conversation with her future child led her to choose a different road, a new path, one that took her into international development and global innovation, and leads her to into the conversation with us today.
What drives Victoria is how she can contribute to a more inclusive world. She is an executive coach, strategic advisor, and guide to senior women leaders, as well as men, dedicating her life to “paying-it-forward” to other courageous leaders who feel the calling to do more and to BE more in building more sustainable, inclusive futures.
Today as Co-Founder & Chief Catalyst, Victoria elevates, challenges, and guides a global tribe of women leaders to unleash their un-lived potential and be meaningful FutureMakers. Women who dare to take the lead in architecting their own careers and lives and who also commit to elevating other women and using their unique capabilities, experience, and skills to create more seats at the table to catalyse a more sustainable and equitable world.
Victoria works across the world leading curated small-group Personal Boards, immersive expeditions, and Impact Accelerators with organisational partners on the stickiest issues and impact themes such as gender finance and climate change.
What drives Victoria is how she can contribute to a more inclusive world. She is an executive coach, strategic advisor, and guide to senior women leaders, as well as men who want to take the lead in building more inclusive futures. She dedicates her life to “paying-it-forward” to other courageous leaders who dare to explore their un-lived potential and be FutureMakers.
Today as Co-Founder & Chief Catalyst, Victoria leads FutureWomenX, committed to creating transformative impact on key issues, one of which is gender finance. She’s led expeditions in New York, the African continent and Europe bringing international women in finance to work alongside entrepreneurs to bridge worlds and dive into the critical issue
Key messages from this conversation…
– That you need a peer group who will hold you accountable to achieving your potential
– That for many leaders, especially those with young children, the notion of ‘balance’ is unhelpful. Try focusing on achieving flow between work and life, making the transitional periods as smooth as possible and the time on each side as productive as possible and can actually be generative for the other.
– That in this age of radical disruption, we need leaders who are willing to confront that everything might need to change
– To challenge yourself to make a shift and pursue your purpose, imagine a conversation with your future child. Would they want you to earn more or have more? Or to have made a choice that allows you to make a greater impact and do more good through your work.
– Leaders cannot afford to be addicted to the want to want to change. Leaders need to want and are ready to do the change work, to become the change.
– To sustain ourselves as leaders, we all need reminders of what’s important and what we are doing collectively to make the world better.
– To be a great leader, you first need to go for it, get curious, and share what you’re doing.
To find out more about Victoria’s work, you can message her via Linkedin (profile here) or explore the FutureWomenX website or enquire about joining the tribe here
