In this episode of Fired Up, host Paulette Rowe sits down with Sophie Wade — founder of Flex Network, author of Empathy Works, and a leading voice on the future of work — to unpack why human-centric leadership might be the real competitive advantage in the age of AI.
Tune in for a conversation about trust, empathy, and what it really takes to lead an organization through what might be the most impactful technological shift of our lifetimes.
Guest: Sophie Wade
Sophie helps business leaders with work/workforce innovation and human-AI integration as AI accelerates the transformation of business models, operations, work, careers, and the shift from jobs to skills and projects. She enables companies to adapt to dynamic work and workforce needs in alignment with business needs during unpredictable conditions.
As the founder of Flexcel Network, international keynote speaker and author of The Work In Progress Report newsletter, Sophie writes and speaks regularly about modern work: human-centric leadership, AI-driven work and workforce evolution, distributed teams, empathy at work, the Future of Work, talent mobility and self-directed careers. She has authored many articles including in MIT Sloan Management, Fast Company, and Fortune and two books about the Future of Work "Embracing Progress: Next Steps for the Future of Work" and "Empathy Works: The Key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work”.
Host: Paulette Rowe
One of The Financial Technology Report's Top 25 Payments Executives of 2025, Paulette Rowe has spent her career leading transformation in complex, tech-intensive businesses across global markets. Her roles span GE Capital, Meta and NatWest, where she led a 20,000-person retail banking network. At Barclays, she led the merchant acquiring business processing one in three UK card payments.
More recently, she has taken on scaling high-growth, PE-backed companies. As CEO of fintech unicorn Stax Payments, she transformed the business,strengthening its financial performance, building it into a full-stack processor, and driving an AI rollout that helped deliver award winning customer service.
Across every role and boardroom seat, her approach has been the same: invest in culture not as a soft add-on, but as the foundation of P&L performance. Now, as AI reshapes how every company operates, she’s putting that belief to the test with some of the most admired leaders in fintech and beyond - probing the question every leader needs to consider: how much does culture really drive success, and does AI change that equation?
