Riada talks to Sayo Ayodele on purposeful business, climate change, racism, ethical travel and more!

Dignified Resilience with Riada Akyol

Here is yet another conversation that flew by so fast while we were recording it, because it flowed beautifully and developed organically in ways that allowed us to carefully address so many important topics that many of us care about dearly. Sayo is a Partner at Leaders’ Quest (LQ), responsible for designing client programs, which she has delivered in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Sayo is passionate about strengthening the links between business and society, and cares deeply about sustainability and equality. In addition to her role at LQ, she sits on the advisory board of Greenwood Place, an accelerator that delivers strategic advice and execution for a community of entrepreneurial philanthropists. She is also on the advisory board of Drivers for Change, which inspires young leaders to lead positive change in their neighbourhoods. She previously ran Cooking with Mama, a social enterprise that trained migrant women to lead cookery classes for the local community. She is the founder of ethical travel company JourneyKind, a platform that makes it easy for anyone to discover, curate and book fantastic holidays that have a positive impact on local communities (and less of an impact on our environment). Considering Sayo's expertise with some of the most important leading companies in the world, we spoke about purposeful business, who and what drives the business change, and then we focused a bit more on climate change crisis. In fact, as part of the Countdown initiative, Leaders' Quest is collaborating with TED and our Future Stewards partners, Global Optimism and We Mean Business, to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. We then started our conversation about Sayo's commendable efforts on ethical travel through her own company, while she also graciously offered some truly important, intimate and essential observations on her personal experiences with racism, and shared some insights on how we should all reflect upon racism within our own communities, regardless of geographic location and with starting from most practical level in our immediate environments. Towards the end, we also talked about the ideas of home and exile, honored our families' brave (im)migration stories, and shared our appreciation for good friendships and listening to great world music, among many other things! This was an incredibly inspiring, beautiful conversation with one extraordinary, successful, talented woman who is inspiring me in so many ways. I am thankful she found the time for "Dignified Resilience" podcast and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Note: Source for Sayo's bio is the Leaders' Quest official website.