1. What have you found most challenging as a leader of a small or medium enterprise?

Time management is the hardest aspect of being a co-founder and director as you have to cover so much and flick between tasks. Being structured and sticking to the task at hand is vital.

2. How did you become a leader of an SME? Can you please briefly tell the story?

At school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I felt lost. Little did I know that an introduction to scuba diving whilst abroad would change my perspective forever. A conversation with my teacher opened up the possibility of exploring Marine Biology, due to my passion for diving. This moment stuck with me as I realised how this experience shaped my career and is one of the many reasons why I'm so passionate about educating students on the countless opportunities available to them.

After university and a great deal of travel, I knew how important these experiences were and knew that I could do it better.

I knew that there had to be a better way to teach young people about the world they live in, a better way to connect them with their planet and a better way to engage communities in driving real, impactful change.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

Training is a big part of my day and I like to get up and train early. Healthy body = healthy mind = healthy body. It's not a one way street, it's a cycle that keeps positively feeding itself. The rest of my working day/week is split between different areas of the business and different tasks. This varies seasonally due to working in the education sector, so I'm very mindful of planning periods and selling periods.

4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?

Things change constantly and plans rarely go to plan. So plan for the worst and hope for the best.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

The Present by Spencer Johnson. We can often get caught up in what we should have done, or live in the future but the here and now is all we can work with so focus on that.

6. How do you build leadership capacity in an SME?

Constantly check in with our goals and aligned values and give time to reflect and review to see how we could improve as well as space for creativity.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader of an SME so far?

Being in the travel industry during COVID has thrown many challenges but when you truly love what you do, failure isn't an option.