On Track

In this episode I talk to David Dessers, the Founder of Cresco Law Firm and author of the book “Innovate, Collaborate, Grow”. 

Cresco is an innovative, entrepreneurial and somewhat pioneering firm in the Belgian legal market. They mainly serve entrepreneurs, companies and investors.

I talked with David about his book, his routines to stay balanced and growth.

Our guest today is Theo Vaes, one of the most inspiring social entrepreneurs I know.

Theo is the founder and driving force behind ArmenTekort, which is a social organisation in my hometown, Antwerp, that focuses on multi-generational poverty. 
They believe self-esteem is key in solving this problem and therefore they launched a buddy network in which underprivileged people are matched with privileged people. 
The idea is that these buddy couples regularly spend time together, listening to each other’s stories and have fun which could slowly lead to a higher self-esteem. 
The privileged buddies are trained by professional trainers in order to be fully prepared for this experience. 

I know Armentekort because I have been a buddy myself for the past 2 years and I can say it has been one of the most enriching experiences in my life. 

A couple of weeks ago, we had the opportunity to interview Pablo Pantaleoni.

Pablo is the Vice President of Global Strategy & New Ventures at Headspace, the meditation app which has been downloaded more than 62 million times in 190 different countries. 

He has achieved many great things. 

Before he joined Headspace, he was the Senior Director of Health & Venture Design at IDEO. 
IDEO is a global design & innovation company, which is committed to creating positive impact. 

Besides this, he is also an entrepreneur. 
Pablo is the co-founder of Medtep, a digital health company which aims to support people in making lasting behavioural changes. It does this through its app, where doctors can make and share plans with patients. It helps the doctors keep track of whether their patients are actually doing what is expected. 

Because of his positive experience as an entrepreneur, he guides other start-ups in becoming successful.

Last but not least, Pablo was ranked in the Forbes ’30 under 30’ list in healthcare. An amazing achievement.

Sihame El Kaouakibi is thé power house of the Belgian political scene. Last year she was elected as member of the Flemish Parliament for the liberal party.  Before going into politics she was mainly known as a social entrepreneur. At age 22 she founded Let’s Go Urban, a social organisation that organises art and street culture workshops for urban youngsters in order to help them thrive in life. She is also the driving force behind WannaWork, WannaTaste, WannaChange, JJ House and WeLoveBXL, all initiatives that support a more inclusive society. For her work Sihame received numerous awards and nominations. She wrote a book, #Believe in which she promotes empowerment of urban youngsters. 

Pierre Marcolini is the founder of the so-called Maison Pierre Marcolini. At the age of 14 already Pierre knew he wanted to become a chocolatier and started his education. He did several internships with famous chocolate houses like Wittamer and Fouchon. In 1995 he won the World Patisserie Championship in Lyon after which he opened his first atelier in Belgium. 25 years later The Maison has 40 stores worldwide, of which more than 10 in Asia. Pierre Marcolini is known for the way he revolutionised the chocolate industry, with innovative tastes, new packaging and the way he integrated the entire chocolate making process from “bean to bar”. 

Raissa de Haas is one of the Dutch twin sisters behind Double Dutch, the immensely popular premium mixer brand. Both sisters studied economics at the University of Antwerp where they regularly threw parties for friends. Frustrated by the low excitement level and quality of the usual mixers that go along with spirits like Gin, they started making their own mixers. A hobby became a passion and a few years later after graduating at UCL in London, they launched Double Dutch, a company that makes premium mixers and tonics. In 2015 they won Virgin’s Foodpreneur award. And in 2019  the twins were recognised on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Europe list. In the meantime Double Dutch sells over 1m bottles per month, and are available in 26 countries. Earlier this year the Dutch beer giant Heineken took a minority share in the sisters’ company. 

In this podcast I talk to Pierre Gurdjian. I know Pierre from my previous job at McKinsey, where at that time he was the Managing Partner of the Belgium - Luxembourg offices. He also held international responsibility for McKinsey’s Human Capital practice in EMEA. In this capacity, he served his clients on building personal and institutional leadership capabilities. He was regularly involved in counseling CEO's and Chairpersons on governance matters and issues of cultural change and effectiveness of top teams. He was an active senior faculty member of several high profile client leadership forums 

Today he is the President of the Board of Directors of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), one of Belgium’s largest universities,  he is the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at UCB, a listed global biopharma company leader in immunology and neurology; a Member of the Board of Directors at Lhoist, a family-owned company world leader in limestone and dolomite production; and a Member of the Board of Governors of the United World College (UWC) in Dilijan in Armenia. 

Pierre is also Philanthropy and Strategy Partner of the IDeA Foundation, a global philanthropic organization that seeks to establish innovative and transformative ways to change the world through territory development, innovation in education and promotion of humanitarian values.

Pierre has a passion for human capital development and co-created the “Roots & Wings” platform that helps equip talented individuals who are on a journey to making the world better. He is also often invited to speak about leadership building, with a focus on wisdom, purpose, and legacy.

He is a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), and past President of YouthStart Belgium and the Harvard Club of Belgium. He teaches a graduate course on ‘The CEO Perspective’ at the Solvay Business School (ULB) and is involved in numerous humanitarian, philanthropic, and entrepreneurial initiatives in Europe.

Pierre holds a degree in Commercial Engineering from the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and a MBA from Harvard Business School.

Today we have the honour to have John Porter, the CEO of Telenet, as our guest. John has an incredible track record in the media & telco industry spanning more than 3 decades. In 1994 he was recruited to start Austar, a subscription television business in Australia. This turned out to become one of his most remarkable accomplishments as he led the company from a start-up to a $2.5b public company. When Austar got acquired by Foxtel in 2012, John took a gap year, before joining Telenet in 2013. 

Olivier Vanden Eynde is one of Belgian's most inspiring people in the sustainability scene. He was a Director at Deloitte in Sustainability Services but is foremost also the founder and managing director of Close The Gap. What started as a student project has evolved to an international social enterprise that aims to bridge the digital divide by offering high-quality, pre-owned computers donated by European companies to educational, medical and social projects in developing and emerging countries. Today, CTG has donated over 1M computers with over 3 million users worldwide. Last year Olivier and his family moved to Kenya to launch a computer recycling and manufacturing hub in Nairobi in order to better serve the local market. COVID-19 temporarily brought Olivier back to Belgium, where he is currently active as one of the key figures behind Digital For Youth. This organisation is providing refurbished laptops to children from less wealthy families in order to make sure they can continue lessons in times when homeschooling becomes the norm. 

In this eight’ episode we have a very special guest in our podcast. His name is Mo Gawdat.  After running Google’s offices in more than 50 countries, Mo served as the Chief Business Officer of Google [x] also known as “The Moonshot Factory”. At Google [x] he contributed significantly to the operation model, that is now considered as the golden standard in technology innovation around the world. But when in 2014 his 21 year old son Ali died during a routine surgery, things changed. 17 days after his death, Mo started writing about happiness, as a tribute to his beloved son, who was his happiness idol. The result was Solve For Happy, which became an international bestseller translated in 28 languages. Mo left Google in February 2018 to focus entirely on his new personal moonshot: #onebillionhappy. His dream was to start a global pandemic of joy, and spread his son’s message by doing so.