Cynthia Hansen, Managing Director of the Innovation Foundation at Adecco Group: Honoring the Past While Leading the Future

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hi, I'm Shannon, Lucas, co-CEO of catalyst constellations which is dedicated to empowering catalyst to create bold, powerful change in the world.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: This is our podcast, move, fast, break ship, burnout, where we speak with catalyst executives, about ways to successfully lead transformation in large organizations. And today, I am super excited to get time with Cynthia Hansen. I've already told her we need to hang out over wine because I just want to talk with her for hours. But welcome, Cynthia.

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cynthia.hansen: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Cynthia focuses on driving and scaling social impact across business, civil society, and public-private partnerships. She joined the Adeco group in 2017 to establish the company's 1st global foundation, the Innovation foundation operating as a social innovation lab. Her areas of expertise include strategy, change, management and partnerships

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: previously, and her career is fantastic. You need to go look up the whole thing online. But she held senior roles at the World Economic Forum Action Planning World Affair Council of Washington and the Amity Institute.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: She served on corporate and nonprofit boards and advised a startup. She was also a global leadership fellow for the World Economic Forum, all right. So that's the part that we can look at. But I would love to hear through your lens, about your catalytic journey, maybe sharing a few career highlights that help us see your catalytic nature.

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cynthia.hansen: Thank you so much. So it's really been a nonlinear journey. And this is what I often tell people, you know, when I'm doing career. Coaching or advising is that you know

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cynthia.hansen: it's actually the nonlinear nature of that that makes it really interesting. And what I've liked to do is to look back and figure out what the red thread is. So I had started out in international education. I then went into high, level professional exchange. But the link. There was that idea of citizen diplomacy.

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cynthia.hansen: And then I went from there into looking more broadly at civil society. And this was actually through my graduate work and looking at what are the common things across nonprofit organizations? And then what do they have in common with for profit organizations? And then how do you actually harness all of that goodness and all of those assets to look at what sits at the nexus of government, business.

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cynthia.hansen: civil society, academia. And then that was really what led me to the World Economic Forum, which was a gigantic leap because it was the 1st time that really all those strands were coming together, and I think that was one of those truly catalytic moments for me and my career, and just in my learning and development, as well.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: When people saw I totally appreciate it. It's funny, because when you look at Linkedin with a high level of fidelity, you can often tell if someone is likely a catalyst. I'm wondering what people around you said as you were doing this nonlinear thing and how you like, how you made the decisions to take that next nonlinear step. It's not always easy and can feel risky sometimes.

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cynthia.hansen: Absolutely so. Actually.

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cynthia.hansen: one of those really pivotal moments, I think, was when I was at the World Economic Forum. So I joined originally as their civil society expert, and that made sense. That was where I was coming from. I'd come from not only being in the nonprofit sector, but then being in consulting for the nonprofit sector. And then that was this natural segue into the World Economic Forum. And then a couple of years in.

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cynthia.hansen: And I was actually about to go on maternity leave, and then I was approached and asked if I would like to take over a team that was managing the relationships with a slice of the top level partner organizations

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cynthia.hansen: in financial services.

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cynthia.hansen: And I thought, Oh, I don't know anything about financial services.

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cynthia.hansen: And then my my second gut instinct was.

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cynthia.hansen: that's the wrong side of the fence. That's not what I do. I'm civil society. I don't do financial services. And and so I actually spent some good time talking to mentors and people that I really trusted to say is this.

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cynthia.hansen: is this a good thing for me? And what do I bring to the table. And you know, what perspective am I going to bring to these conversations that maybe people hadn't heard before? And so I decided to take the leap and actually move into that new role. Actually, when, as I came back from maternity leave, and

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cynthia.hansen: to then figure out what a civil society person and a management consultant, and someone who had done public-private partnership would actually bring to this new role. And actually, that was one of the best learning opportunities because it was a chance to see financial services from the inside. It was fairly shortly after the financial crash, when financial services were trying to reinvent themselves

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cynthia.hansen: to also figure out how they would be good corporate citizens. And so it was really the perfect time to go into that. But that was actually a really scary move, and it was something for which I am utterly and forever thankful to the boss who gave me that opportunity. So that was Piers Cumberledge, who, I still say, is the best boss I've ever had, because he gave me that opportunity, and then gave me the space to just make it mine.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Why do you think he he picked you? Or how did that happen.

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cynthia.hansen: That's a great question. I should ask him that, and I think it was because he saw what I had done in civil society, which was to really come in and map it out, figure out what was working what was not working. See how it sat within the ecosystem of the World Economic Forum, and then figure out how it could be different. So when I came to the Forum there was already the narrative of public private partnership and collaboration, but when you would hear it explained, it was primarily government and business.

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cynthia.hansen: and so civil society was sort of off to the side.

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cynthia.hansen: And so my challenge at that point was to insert civil society into that narrative. And then, now, when you hear the Forum talk about it, it's government, business, civil Society Academia. It's much more broad based.

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cynthia.hansen: But that narrative changed over, say, the last 15 years. So I think it was looking at the change that I had been able to drive in a short amount of time in that 1st role in the Forum, and then looking at how Peers wanted to actually change the structure and the approach to the strategic partnership aspect of what the Forum did. So he's looking at and kind of collecting people who would then join his senior team and then help him drive that change.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It sounds like he saw the essence of you as a catalyst, honestly in terms of your systems, thinking and your ability to drive, change and connect the dots and all of that. I'm wondering like, how do you relate to the concept of catalyst, and maybe bringing those 2 things together? How might you articulate the value of a catalyst leader to organizations or other leaders?

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cynthia.hansen: So I was really pleased to read about the catalyst leader, and that theory behind it, because it kind of gave a name to things that I've seen, and these recurring patterns and the types of people that I've seen. And and

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cynthia.hansen: I think it's really important that people can understand what the role of that catalyst leader is within a bigger ecosystem, and that not everybody needs to be a catalyst leader. You don't want a whole room full of people. And I actually.

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cynthia.hansen: early on, I was featured in one of the recruitment videos of the World Economic Forum. And they were asking me about leadership and about fit, and all this. And and I said, just kind of spur of the moment, not everybody fits here. This isn't for everybody which I think is really true. But I think that's not specific to the World Economic Forum. I think that's true of any organization. Not everybody fits. And you need to figure out.

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cynthia.hansen: do you fit? Do you add value? Do you take away value? And if you don't, maybe it's not the right fit. So I think that's 1 of the other important points about catalyst leaders is that catalyst leaders can be incredibly powerful and incredibly impactful in the right situation, but in other places can can flounder or can be wasted, or can be destructive. And so it's really about fit.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So how would you articulate the value of a catalyst leader.

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cynthia.hansen: I think the value of a catalyst leader is to be able to really identify the change that needs to be made. Have that North Star. Set up the guardrails for how you get there, pull other people along, and then give them places and space to play

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cynthia.hansen: in between, because if it's a command and control like this is my way, and you're going to do it and just go and execute. Then that's not being a catalyst leader, and that's not in that case the most effective kind of leadership, and but at the same time just giving people, you know, free range and say, Go out and do something and figure it out then, for most people that won't be effective either. So I think the catalyst leader is someone who can actually balance a bit of both and also flex depending on who you're trying to mobilize and what you're trying to achieve.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, I hear a lot of sensing capabilities under that, too.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I want to go back to. So you're like, Look, any organization that has too many catalysts is not a good idea. We totally agree with that. You mentioned that you had mentors earlier on, and I'm wondering how you think about like, do you think in retrospect your mentors were largely catalysts. Was it a balance, maybe? What advice would you have for catalysts thinking about who they should get on their Personal Advisory Board.

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cynthia.hansen: So I actually was kind of resistant for a long time to having mentors. And then over time, there were just people I really resonated with, and some of them were kind of more formal mentors. Most of them were informal mentors, and I found that what worked well was just to go to different people at different times, depending on what I needed or what I wanted to achieve.

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cynthia.hansen: rather than to set up a formal mentorship where you have to meet once a month, so I do some of those as a mentor as well, and they can be great. But for me it didn't work so well in that way. It was more to find people of whom there were certain aspects that I really liked or appreciated. So I had had a mentor, who was particularly good at

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cynthia.hansen: political maneuvering, and like being very true to, you know, to ethics and to the purpose, but actually being able to definitely move through conversations and bring people along. And I've had other mentors who are great at seeing talent and then developing talent. So it all depends on what you're trying to achieve. I think.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah. And I love the invitation there to like, be really intentional like, what do I need right now? And it may be that some people sort of like, roll off your Personal Advisory Board or your mentorship, because you're like this is over. Here's the thing that I need to focus on.

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cynthia.hansen: Develop.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Right now, going back to you, stepping into that role where it wasn't obvious the word that came to mind as I was listening to you. It's actually phrase is imposter syndrome, because we often, as catalysts, get invited to do these things that are so, what feels like outside of our scope and domain expertise when other people see the value that we might bring? I guess 2 part question, did that? Does that resonate with you the imposter syndrome. And how do you navigate around it?

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cynthia.hansen: Yeah, I think everybody has a bit of imposter syndrome. But I think there's also, if you've done enough of these things, that kind of trial by fire. You don't have imposter syndrome anymore. You just have the. I'm just going to get in and do it. And I think part of it was. I grew up doing all kinds of competition as a kid. So I did musical competition. I did sports competition. I did. You know public performance. I did public speaking. I did all these different things.

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cynthia.hansen: you know, that were really scary, but you just kind of get over the stage fright, and you just do it a lot, and I think that was helpful. And then

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cynthia.hansen: being thrown into other things like suddenly becoming a backpacking leader for this orientation program for my university, or when I went into management consulting, it's like, you know, you are going to now create an onboarding

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cynthia.hansen: program for the Global Board of this organization, or you're going to lead. You know this discussion with the chairman and the CEO of that organization whom you've never met before, and just being able to go into any room, any situation, and create the rapport, create the conversation, you know, have done the homework and come in prepared, but not be overly scripted, and basically

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cynthia.hansen: figure out how to navigate and how to move the conversation or move the experience or the engagement in a way that's going to be useful.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah. And the the

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: early experience of what ends up being a growth mindset like you put a lot of work in. You're not going to be number one every single time. And so the you know, building that capacity to handle the failure, I think you know, early on really helps us as catalyst be like. Look, here's the risk. But there's a lot of upside potentially. If I if if we don't, if we try this thing

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I'm curious what some of the challenges, the biggest challenges you've experienced as a catalyst exec, and maybe how you've overcome them overcome them. And we also love to hear stories like if there's a fail that helps you learn. Those can be super insightful as well.

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cynthia.hansen: Sure. So actually coming into the job that I have now was another big big challenge. So when I was ready to leave the World economic forum. I wanted to go into something that I could really build from scratch and kind of experiment with. So when I saw this role advertised with the Adeco group to set up the global foundation from scratch.

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cynthia.hansen: My 1st thought was, I better test this out and see how much latitude there is to actually build something. So I spoke to some people I knew in the company, went ahead and applied. Had that conversation. Then when I interviewed with the CEO,

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cynthia.hansen: is this something where you're looking for an implementer to come in? And just do you know the pieces that have been given as building blocks? Or is there scope to actually do something really unique and really different? And the answer I got was a bit of both. It was, yes, you can have space to play as long as you also take care of these building blocks, at least in the beginning, you know, because that's what you've been brought in to do. And so that was an interesting place to start, because then it was

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cynthia.hansen: stitch together. These building blocks make them better professionalize them all of those good things, and I've got the sandbox over here to play with. And so that was also kind of a 1st challenge of working in a very big multinational, which I had not done before, figuring out how to navigate that at a very senior level.

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cynthia.hansen: figuring out how to keep the kind of the daily work, the normal stuff going in a way that was positive, and the way that was professionalizing that was moving things forward and then also be able to build something on the side. So it was this kind of ultimate ambidexterity exercise that was really really fun. But it was extremely challenging, because they were almost like 2 different roles, and therefore kind of 2 different skill sets that I needed to be

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cynthia.hansen: doing at the same time, and and what I found worked really well was to

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cynthia.hansen: really embrace the building blocks, the things that I had inherited that had actually been brought over from the group and into the foundation not feel limited by those, but actually look at those as basically the the seed around which to scaffold all the stuff that I wanted to build.

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cynthia.hansen: So it was, make those excellent

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cynthia.hansen: and use them to experiment around the sides. Okay, how could you take something that, for example, we inherited the relationship

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cynthia.hansen: with the Lucerne festival.

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cynthia.hansen: which is great, but had been a corporate sponsorship relationship. So now that it was in the foundation, I wanted to take that build it into something that would be basically a nascent version of the social innovation lab and the social innovation projects. So take that and then figure out, how do we scaffold around that? Okay? So you've got musicians. You have the Academy. What do musicians have? And what do they not have that lets them navigate the world of work.

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cynthia.hansen: So then we dug into that. We did design thinking workshops. We talked to alumni. We talked to staff and figured, okay, what can you do that we can't do. And what can we bring to the table that you can't do? So? In that case we ended up building a program that would help musicians understand what they had as musicians that was really innate to them. That would make them really good at being a musician or being a lot of other things in the world. And then we built that out as a program.

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cynthia.hansen: And then the idea was to potentially hand that over into the Lucerne festival or find another home for it. So at this point it it likely will end up in a university. But that was basically something that had been a very traditional

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cynthia.hansen: thing that actually the previous chairman loved. That was kind of his baby. He had actually been a sponsor of the Lucerne festival for a long, long time, and this was a way to take that and pay tribute to it, because it was really good, and then morph it into something else. So I think that was the way I was able to kind of do this dance with not just that with with a bunch of other programs similar to that, take something that was good.

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cynthia.hansen: and then make it even better, but make it different in a way that actually moved me towards setting up the Social Innovation Lab, which is what ultimately became the Innovation foundation.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So cool. I love that your your personal music connection came back full circle. There. It sounds like I'm curious, though. I mean you. You were like, Okay, the chairman really loved this, and you made it sound really easy. And maybe it was. But what we know is, people get attached to the way things are the status quo or their pet projects, and as we try and sort of morph it, and bring it along to the next iteration we can encounter resistance.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: How did you overcome, I mean, especially with someone as senior as the chairman.

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cynthia.hansen: So a lot of it was to to give comfort

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cynthia.hansen: that we we weren't throwing things out. We were actually looking at what was really good, and what could be even better. And so I think that idea of we're not fighting against you. We're not saying that this program is bad. We're saying, actually, this program has immense potential to be something even better was how I was able to get the buy-in and then to get the buy-in of the whole board. And then, I think, what actually was the tipping point was the change of chairman.

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cynthia.hansen: So we changed chairman in 2020, and the new chairman coming in actually also loved the Lucerne festival, also continued with that. But because he didn't have the legacy of that relationship with the organization was more flexible about being able to build something else and build something, you know, quite, quite different.

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cynthia.hansen: And so that actually became the bridge into okay, if we can do that with the Lucerne festival. We can do that with a bunch of other things that we have. So we did a similar process with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Then we started building our own projects, and we were able to show, hey, we've done this in a hybrid way, scaffolding around these other programs.

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cynthia.hansen: Let's try it out purely from scratch.

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cynthia.hansen: Let's see how that works. And then we were able to kind of wean away from the legacy pieces, and then build a whole pipeline of things that we were building purely from scratch, but always with the ability to then go back and kind of pay tribute to all the good things that had come first.st And it was that kind of step by step, making everybody comfortable, building also the ability to measure the impact at the same time that allowed people the comfort to then step back and say, Hey, we'll give you a bit more space.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's it's so critical. And it I mean again, myself included. We can get so excited about the forward vision, or like you talked about the sandbox for the place, and it's like remembering the brass tacks of you have to be able to show the impact step by step, in order to get the

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: permission, the leeway to to help you realize the larger vision. I'm wondering if you have any advice around how to do that, but also just managing your own energy of like, I really want to go do that other thing.

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cynthia.hansen: So I think part of it was making sure that I had the right team in place. So actually, when I when I arrived, I inherited a team of 10,

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cynthia.hansen: and they were all people who were used to just running those programs. And that was great. So I was able to keep people in place, scaffold around them as well. Then, as we built up those programs and ultimately spun them off. Then people had a place to go, and then I could keep moving and like adding new people with new skills as well. So I think what made it really possible and made me patient

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cynthia.hansen: was the ability to change out the people as we were changing out the ways of working and the day to day programs that we were running and actually move away from programs and into projects. And so we did this kind of little by little, between 2017 and 2020. And it was really the change of chairman in 2020 that changed everything. So at that point we were running about 10 different things, and it had all kind of

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cynthia.hansen: morphed into, you know, good things, but they were pulling in a lot of different directions. We had a bit of humanitarian, a bit of sport, a bit of youth, a bit of women music. And

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cynthia.hansen: so when the new chairman came in and I briefed him in and showed him all the things we're doing and how they fit together, and what that red thread was, and said, actually, this is a really good moment to stop. Take stock, figure out what we want to do. We could either keep running on essentially these parallel tracks. We could go just and back to running the legacy stuff, or we could actually go forward just as the Social innovation lab.

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cynthia.hansen: And so you know much to his credit, he said. This is great. We'll do a review proper review with the board. And so we did that, and by the end of 2020 the Board landed on the decision, which is what I had hoped, which was to actually run as the Social Innovation lab.

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cynthia.hansen: So they decided that we would run only as the Social Innovation lab. So therefore, we would actually off board all of the legacy pieces and rehouse them in places where they could thrive. At the same time they agreed that we would change the name and the brand.

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cynthia.hansen: and at the same time, because in order to suit that new vehicle, then, we needed to change the governance and the composition of the board, we needed to also change the operating model and the staff. So basically, all of that change happened in 2021, which was also during Covid.

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cynthia.hansen: and which was crazy, but at the same time, maybe even slightly easier to do it during Covid, because everything was kind of out of kilter during Covid, so that then, by the beginning of 2022, we were 100% clean as the innovation foundation. And on this new model of just the social innovation lab, so it gave us time

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cynthia.hansen: to like really carefully rehouse things so that they would be successful and build up the methodology, build up the pipeline of projects, build up

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cynthia.hansen: the pipeline of partners as well, because we work in partnership at every stage

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cynthia.hansen: that basically gave us the really good footing we needed. By the beginning of 2022 to really be operating essentially as a new organization.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It sounds to me, Cynthia, like you have some pretty insane sensing capabilities. You talked earlier about like, you know, knowing when it's a fit, and and when it's not a fit which is super important, and that comes down to sensing. You also have the sensing about like where the team is combined, and and how to get them to come along on the journey. But there's also the sensing of

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: the timing, right? It's like, by the time the new chairman came in. You had enough data to present some options, but you were sensitive to maybe there's 3 paths, even though you had your favorite, and just sensing the landscape with the partnerships and and places to offboard them.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: How have you developed your sensing, your amazing sensing capabilities?

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cynthia.hansen: I think

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cynthia.hansen: I think some of it is inherited. I think some of it you just kind of have, but I think also I grew up in a family that has, I think, really high emotional intelligence. And so that was kind of part of the the nurture part. So actually, I'm I'm adopted. So there's also this whole kind of

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cynthia.hansen: question about nature as well. But I think I think some of it is innate. I think a lot of it is learned. I think a lot of it is environmental. And

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cynthia.hansen: and I think a lot of it also is working in many different settings. So working in different languages, in different cultures, in different settings, having to adapt quickly and kind of drop into a place and get the lay of the land. Figure out how things work. Who are the decision makers? What are the relationships with them? And all of that was really at the core of systems, thinking

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cynthia.hansen: as well. So I think that all of the

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cynthia.hansen: all of those experiences basically lend themselves to creating someone who's super adaptable, but also like really good at sensing, because in order to survive and thrive, you have to be able to sense really, really quickly.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, and there's such a great invitation there, like, yes, and before we hit record, we are talking about the nature versus nurture thing. And while there's, you know, people can maybe naturally have a little bit more empathy. There's skills and things that you can do to cultivate it like you were saying like, put yourself in in culturally diverse things, try different jobs in different roles, like the more that you have to sense in order to be successful, the more you can develop those sensing muscles which I think is

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: absolutely critical, as we're helping organizations thrive apt

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: any other final challenges you've had as a catalyst exec that you want to share.

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cynthia.hansen: I think one of the toughest challenges. And we've been talking about this. A lot is with a small light team. You can't take in all the great people that you might like, so trying to figure out how to pick and choose and hedge a bit like, what's the mix that I need? Are there people that I can grow into roles? Are there people who actually may not grow into roles? And that's okay, too. And how do you set up

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cynthia.hansen: kind of a revolving door, though that sounds negative, right? But this ability to take people in kind of train them into our ways of working, and then send them out into the world

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cynthia.hansen: as their own type of catalyst, as their own type of ambassadors, of what we do, and that the fact that you don't stay forever and ever is a good thing. Nobody should stay forever and ever, but to figure out what the culture of that is, so that people feel that it's a positive thing to come in and learn, and then go someplace else, and.

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cynthia.hansen: you know, go forward and spread the word rather than this sense of I really like it here. I want to stay forever because you shouldn't. Nobody should stay forever.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So how do you operationalize that commitment to diversity on your team?

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cynthia.hansen: So a couple of things, we we actually have come up with our own grid of of the skills and competencies and also representation that we want. We use the same grid actually for the board and for the staff. So that's kind of just one tool

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cynthia.hansen: cool because it

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cynthia.hansen: know it's it's more art than science, but it it lets you have the conversation. So we're looking for people who have vastly diverse backgrounds. This is not just gender geography language. It's you know.

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cynthia.hansen: Where did you come from? Where have you worked? What kind of mindset do you bring? What kind of socioeconomic background do you come from what shapes your worldview. And so I think this is incredibly important, and that's what true diversity is. So when you look across my team, yes, we've got lots of diversity in terms of gender, sexual orientation.

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cynthia.hansen: language groups, things like that where people are based. But more than that, it's about, you know where? Where do people come from? So here's a little example.

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cynthia.hansen: We actually had done an end user video. We've got this great program. And the project in Mexico called youth at risk. And so this was actually the 1st one that was. It was done from scratch on our scan build scale methodology. So this one is to help young mothers in Mexico

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cynthia.hansen: see a way into work

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cynthia.hansen: and then reflect on skills and competencies they have from their lived experience, and then be able to move toward employment. So we actually did an end user video. We had a bunch of interviews with these young women.

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cynthia.hansen: and we looked at the 1st version of this, and it looked great. It shows the young women it has them talking. It has all of this interactive. It's lively. It's Buzzy, and we showed this to a couple of my colleagues, and one of them

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cynthia.hansen: is from Brazil, and the 1st thing she saw was with these women. You've got images of their kids.

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cynthia.hansen: Second, they're wearing a T-shirt that has the name of that of that program that they're in. 3, rd you've just said their full names. And she said, basically that guy who wants to come find that woman and her child has all the information that he needs

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cynthia.hansen: and the agency that had created that video

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cynthia.hansen: hadn't thought about that at all. So we need those checks. We need those balances. We need the ability to challenge each other and say, Hey, we shouldn't be doing that, or that's not appropriate. Or have you thought about this lens? And so that's why that level of diversity of thought is crucial to my team, and what we do.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Such a powerful example, because it's not theoretical right? Like the decision that we're making in a lot of these contexts can have very real consequences.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And I. And I think there's an interesting invitation. You know. I also my last corporate role, had this big spreadsheet about all of the things that you're talking about. And I think just having artifacts and an intentionality around. It is the commitment that we need to make. It doesn't mean that you're always going to check all of the boxes and all of the grids, but that we need to like have it top of mind.

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cynthia.hansen: Yeah, exactly. It's tools. It's tools. They're not formulas.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: That's right.

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cynthia.hansen: To spur you to think about these things.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing. All right, as we wrap up. I would love to hear about your favorite catalyst, past or present, who inspires you, and why do they stand out to you?

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cynthia.hansen: I was thinking about this, I had the pleasure to meet lots of really, really inspiring people. But I was thinking recently about Shereen Abadi because she actually had surfaced in the news recently. So she's quite a famous Nobel Prize winner from Iran, 1st woman judge in Iran. Amazing human rights lawyer, and I had the pleasure long ago, when I was at the World Economic Forum, to spend a whole day with her.

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cynthia.hansen: and was just in awe of what she had done. But what really astounded me was, how personable she was, how open she was to having a conversation, how she asked me questions about me and my work and my life.

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cynthia.hansen: She talked about her kids, she talked about her, her family, she talked about what was hard and and what she was proud of, and I just found

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cynthia.hansen: that combination of being really human and accessible, but incredibly steely and powerful and effective, so inspiring.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Bad ass. I hadn't heard about her before, but I'm totally gonna look her up. Thank you so much.

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cynthia.hansen: Correct.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Getting my horizon. Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Cynthia, this was amazing. I can't wait to have a wine and talk with you for hours, but thank you for the starting conversation.

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cynthia.hansen: My pleasure. Thank you so much.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: To our listening audience. Thanks so much for joining us, if you'd like. If you'd like to learn more about how to create bold, powerful change in the world. Be sure to check out our book, move fast, break ship, burnout, or check out our website at catalystconstellations.com. If you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Please take 10 seconds to rate it on itunes. Spotify stitcher wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you have catalysts in your life, hit the share button and send a link their way. Thanks again.