Eileen Collins: The First Female Space Commander

Trailblazer Eileen Collins is a retired NASA astronaut and former Air Force Colonel. In 1995, she became the first woman to pilot a space shuttle and in 1999, she became the first woman to command a space shuttle mission. Eileen's final mission in 2005 was commanding the critical return to flight mission, the first since the space shuttle Columbia disaster. Her memoir Through The Glass Ceiling to the Stars, was published in 2021. 

Provocateurs hosts Des Dearlove and Steve Goldbach talk to Eileen about her remarkable journey from a young girl in small town Elmira, New York, who dreamed of flying, to breaking the glass ceiling at NASA. Addressing the challenges of spaceflight, she reveals the importance of relentless preparation, the power of mentorship, and her evolution from an autocratic to collaborative leader. She also shares her three fundamental elements of leadership:

1. Know your job
2. Get the right people in place
3. Integrity: honesty and trust

In a candid conversation, Eileen also reveals surprising moments of vulnerability, including a panic attack at a press event that contrasted sharply with her calm under life-threatening space emergencies. 

This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.

Leading in the Age of Outrage

Karthik Ramanna is a professor of business and public policy at the University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government and author of The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World – recently named one of Thinkers50's Best Management Books of 2025.

In this episode of The Provocateurs, Karthik identifies three distinctive forces shaping our current moment: profound uncertainty about the future driven by AI, climate change, and demographic shifts; deep distrust in institutions of governance that people feel have delivered a "raw deal"; and a shift away from global humanism toward economic and cultural nationalism.

Discover the tools and techniques leaders can adopt not only to manage outrage but to manage in the age of outrage, including:

• How to build an active listening network
• A 5-step framework for maintaining calm 
• Lessons from “temperate leadership”

Ideas, says Karthik, are everywhere, but implementation is everything.

This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.

Rajendra Pratap Gupta is a policymaker and author, a former advisor to the Health Minister of India, and a leading provocateur in digital health initiatives across the world. 

He is the founder of the Global Digital Health Summit, which aims to create the future of healthcare; global think-tank The Health Parliament, which collaborates with the world's leading organizations to make health and well-being accessible to all; and the International Patients Union, which is dedicated to empowering patients in policymaking. Rajendra also works to advance education in digital health at the Academy of Digital Health Sciences, which is now the largest provider of digital health courses globally.

In this episode, Rajendra draws on his extensive experience in private and public sectors to map out the future of healthcare. Discover: 

• How prioritising healthcare can win elections
• The critical role of preemptive care over preventive care
• How genetics and individual data is shifting healthcare “from bedside to website”

With the democratization of technology, Rajendra contends, patients will turn from being passive recipients of care to active participants. Technology will be more than a platform for the solution – it will be the solution itself.

This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.

The economic case for climate-smart transformation

Katie McGinty is the vice president and chief sustainability and external relations officer at Johnson Controls. In this episode she shares insights from her remarkable career spanning both public service – including as the first woman to chair the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President Clinton – and private sector leadership.

Challenging the persistent myth that environmental initiatives harm the bottom line, Katie explains how sustainability and economic success are not opposing forces but complementary strategies, demonstrating through real-world examples how Johnson Controls achieves significant carbon reductions while generating substantial cost savings for clients.

Key themes include:

• The importance of systems thinking in environmental solutions.
• How buildings can be transformed from climate problems to climate solutions.
• The power of technological innovation through efficiency, electrification, and digitalization. 

Drawing from her unique background in chemistry, policy, and business leadership, Katie illustrates how bringing diverse perspectives together catalyzes creativity and transforms environmental challenges into competitive advantages and economic opportunities. Sustainability, she contends, is becoming “strategy essential” for businesses.

This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.

A sustainable systems scientist, Weslynne Ashton is professor of environmental management and sustainability at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she also co-directs ID’s Food Systems Action Lab.

Here she discusses her work in industrial ecology and the circular economy, drawing from her experiences growing up in Trinidad. Weslynne argues that businesses need to adopt a more holistic view of value creation and regeneration, moving beyond purely financial metrics. 

Weslynne Ashton’s research, teaching, and practice are oriented around transitioning socio-ecological systems to create more sustainable and regenerative business practices and emphasizes the importance of expanding beyond traditional views of capital to include eight different types: natural, human, financial, manufactured, social, political, cultural, and digital. 

But how do we get these multiple capitals onto the balance sheet of business? Find out more in this conversation with hosts Geoff Tuff and Des Dearlove.

This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.

The 2024 Provocateurs series featured nine inspiring thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and business authors who challenged us to re-think conventional approaches to leadership and management. 

Neri Karra Sillaman shared her remarkable story from refugee to building a multi-million-dollar sustainable fashion brand; Marcus Collins explored the hidden power of cultural influence in consumer behaviour; Lisa McKnight revealed how she transformed Barbie into a cultural phenomenon and billion-dollar success; and Andrew Winston redefined the role of business to create a thriving “net positive world”. 

One of the key highlights of the 2024 series was recording live at New York Climate Week with Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, who delivered an emotional and unequivocal call to action to address the “moral vacuum” in global leadership. We must cultivate leaders, he says, who are equipped to embrace restorative, reparative, and regenerative practices and lead with purpose.

We also learnt leadership lessons from Amy Chang on becoming an AI entrepreneur; Jeff Wetzler on leveraging the wisdom of the people around you; Dane Jensen on harnessing the positive power of pressure; and Atif Rafiq on driving innovation and digital transformation in traditional, legacy companies.

In this episode, Steve Goldbach, Geoff Tuff, and Kulleni Gebreyes of Deloitte, join Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove of Thinkers50, to reflect on their key takeaways and thought-provoking insights from Provocateurs 2024.

This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.

Transforming Barbie

Executive vice president and chief brand officer of Mattel, Lisa McKnight is credited with leading the transformation of the Barbie brand. Under her leadership, Barbie became the number one global toy property in 2020 and 2021, and she redefined Barbie’s global social mission with the launch of the Dream Gap Project in 2018, a multi-year initiative which has positively impacted over 25 million girls.

In this conversation with Steve Goldbach, leader of Deloitte’s sustainability practice in the US, and Des Dearlove, co-founder of Thinkers50, Lisa explains what drew her to the world of toys, why the Barbie brand had fallen out of touch with its market, and how she and her team tackled the challenge of making Barbie relevant again.

Find out more about the importance of brands being consumer-centric and staying connected to culture, how Mattel overcame corporate reservations in the making of the Barbie movie, and why you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable when making decisions.

This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.

Recorded Live at Climate Week, New York

Paul Polman is a business leader, campaigner, and co-author (with Andrew Winston) of Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive By Giving More Than They Take, a Financial Times Business Book of the Year. Together with Andrew, Paul is ranked #3 on the Thinkers50 Ranking.

As CEO of Unilever (2009-2019), Paul demonstrated that business can profit through purpose, delivering shareholder returns of 290% while the company consistently ranked 1st in the world for sustainability. Today he works across a range of organisations to deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which he helped develop.

In New York for the 2024 Climate Week, Paul sat down with Thinkers50 co-founder, Des Dearlove, and Steve Goldbach, head of Deloitte’s Sustainability Practice in the US, to discuss how business can be a force for good, what it means to be ‘net positive,’ and how to develop the next generation of leaders. 

He identified a fundamental moral vacuum in our current approach to global challenges and emphasised that addressing this void requires more than systemic reforms – it demands a profound transformation in how we think and lead. A new leadership mindset is called for, he argues; one that focuses on restorative, reparative, and regenerative practices and places cooperation above competition.

This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.

The Courage to be Net Positive

Andrew Winston is one of the most widely read writers and thinkers on sustainable business. His books on sustainability strategy include Green to Gold, The Big Pivot, and most recently, Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, which he co-authored with Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever.

Andrew and Paul are ranked #3 in the Thinkers50 Ranking of top management thinkers and Net Positive featured on the Thinkers50 Best New Management Booklist in 2022.

In this Provocateurs podcast, Andrew joins Thinkers50 co-founder, Des Dearlove, and Kulleni Gebreyes, Deloitte US Consulting Life Sciences and Healthcare Industry Leader and US Chief Equity Officer. They address how leaders can stand up for their social and environmental values and overcome resistance from within and without their organisation.

How can a business become ‘net positive’ – one that thrives and profits by solving the world’s problems, not creating them? How do you align purpose and profit? Why are companies often expected to prove immediate ROI for sustainability initiatives and not others? Find out more about the prevalence of ‘green hushing,’ the positive impact of collective courage, and how younger millennials are driving change in corporate behaviour.

This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.

Atif Rafiq: Digital Disruptor

Provocateur of the C-Suite, Atif Rafiq has been disrupting companies for more than 25 years in Silicon Valley, the Fortune 500, and through a variety of his own startups. Having begun his career in digital native companies including AOL, Yahoo, and Amazon, Atif was named the first chief digital officer in the history of the Fortune 500 when he took on that role for McDonald's in 2013. He has overseen thousands of employees as a global P&L transformation and innovation leader in multiple companies and industries.

Today, over a half million people follow Atif’s ideas about management and leadership on LinkedIn, where he is a Top Voice, and his newsletter, Re:Wire, has attracted over 100,000 subscribers. Atif’s 2023 book, Decision Sprint: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action, is a Wall Street Journal bestseller. 

In this podcast, Atif talks with Geoff Tuff of Deloitte and Des Dearlove of Thinkers50 about the accidental metamorphoses along his career path and his latest venture and software tool, Ritual. He also discusses how to bring digital transformation to a traditional bricks-and-mortar business, and his methodical approach to innovation, which involves giving teams space for exploration, multiple input meetings before output, and the leader as calibrator rather than controller.

This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.