THE ONES WHO DARED
THE ONES WHO DARED PODCAST Elevating stories of courage. You can listen to some of the most interesting stories of courage, powerful life lessons, and aha moments. Featuring interviews with leaders, pioneers and people who have done hard things. I hope these stories help pave the path for you to live out your courageous life.
THE ONES WHO DARED
From Shipwreck to Oxford: A Fight for Freedom and Education | Suzanne Heywood
In this inspiring conversation, Suzanne Heywood now the COO of one of Europe’s largest holding companies, opens up about her unbelievable childhood journey.
When Suzanne Heywood was seven, her father announced their family would sail around the world. What was supposed to be a three-year adventure following Captain Cook's route turned into a ten-year struggle for survival and Suzanne's future.
Suzanne recounts her childhood on a cramped sailboat, facing danger and lacking formal education. After a near-fatal storm in the Indian Ocean, she pursued correspondence courses, seeing education as her escape and hope for a better future.
At sixteen, left in New Zealand while her parents sailed on, Suzanne took control—writing to elite universities, picking kiwi fruit to fund her passage to England, and eventually reaching Oxford.
Now the COO of Exor, a board member of major companies, and a mother of three, Suzanne's journey from sea isolation to leadership in Europe is a testament to resilience and determination. Her memoir, Wavewalker, challenges her parents' narrative and explores the power of reclaiming one’s life.
In addition to 'Wavewalker,' Suzanne has authored a bestselling biography of her late husband, Jeremy Heywood, who served under various UK Prime Ministers. Titled 'What Does Jeremy Think?', this book narrates his story and reflects a question often asked in Whitehall.
The World Woman Foundation has awarded Suzanne the prestigious World Woman Hero Award, acknowledging her efforts to expand access to education and enhance global equality. This accolade is part of the World Woman Davos Agenda event, which takes place concurrently with the World Economic Forum.
Suzanne Heywood chairs CNH Industrial, Iveco Group, and Shang Xia, and sits on the boards of The Economist and Christian Louboutin.
Episode Highlights
- Growing up on a boat for ten years, without formal schooling
- Being left in New Zealand at 16, and finding the courage to apply to universities around the world
- How she made it to Oxford without formal education—and the culture shock that followed
- Why she wrote Wavewalker, and what it means to finally tell her own story
- The leadership skills her unusual upbringing gave her—and how they shape her work today
Guest link:
suzanneheywood.com
-Links-
https://www.svetkapopov.com/
https://www.instagram.com/svetka_popov/
Hey friends, welcome to the Ones who Dared podcast, where stories of courage are elevated. I'm your host, vekka, and every other week you'll hear interviews from inspiring people. My hope is that you will leave encouraged. I'm so glad you're here. Today's guest has lived a life that reads like an epic novel, except it's all true.
Speaker 1:When Suzanne Haywood was just seven years old, she set sail with her family on what was meant to be a three-year journey around the world. Instead, she spent a decade at sea, surviving a shipwreck in the Indian Ocean and fighting for an education while living on a sailboat. Suzanne's memoir Waywalker became an international bestseller, and it's easy to see why Her story is as intense as it is inspiring. But her journey didn't stop there. She went on to study at Oxford and earn a PhD from Cambridge, before rising through the ranks of the UK Treasury and McKinsey to now serve as a COO of Exor, one of Europe's largest holding companies. She also chairs major global boards and sits on the Economist Board.
Speaker 1:In this episode, suzanne shares what it's like to survive a shipwreck, push against impossible odds for education and lead some of the most powerful boardrooms in the world. This is more than just a story of survival. It's a story of reinvention, resilience and redefining what's possible. I cannot wait to introduce you to Suzanne Haywood, an extraordinary woman. Suzanne Haywood, welcome to the Once you Dare podcast. It is such an honor to have you all the way from England.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Well, it's a huge honor to be here as well.
Speaker 1:Your story is quite remarkable and your book that just came out, waywalker, was really hard to put down. It is a page turner for sure, well written, I'm sure, a memoir that was hard to relive as you wrote it, and your story begins in a seemingly ordinary childhood a school, a home and the rhythm of a familiar life. Then came a promise of an exciting voyage, an adventure that most children, I feel like, only read in books. Can you take us back to the moment before Waywalkers set sail, and what did life look like? And how did your dad present this three year journey to you and why was this such an important voyage for him?
Speaker 2:So you're right, my childhood felt incredibly normal. I was going to school with my younger brother, who was a year younger. We had a dog, a water spaniel called Rusty. I had my favorite toys, particularly a doll's house that my father had bought secondhand and repainted for me. I had my best friend, Sarah. You know all the normal parts of a childhood that many, many people will relate to. And then suddenly my father sat us down and said I want to sail around the world. And his rationale for sailing around the world was that he wanted to follow Captain Cook around the world. And I should explain that my maiden name is Cook, although I've since discovered that we're not actually related to Captain Cook, which maybe is a first inkling of how this story starts to unravel. But, as presented to me, this was all about Captain Cook. Captain Cook was a big hero of my father's, he said, and he wanted to do something to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Captain Cook's third voyage around the world, and we would set sail on exactly the same date as Captain Cook.
Speaker 1:Wow. And so you set sail. And what were some of the emotions that you experienced when this was presented to you? Because I'm sure there was a mix of excitement, but also uncertainty about what is to come. What was going through your mind as this was presented to you?
Speaker 2:As you say, it was very mixed, because I had my dog and my doll's house and my best friend and I actually loved going to school. I was quite a studious little girl, um, and that comes up and comes back, uh, later as well. On the other hand, I adored like many little girls do. I adored my father. I thought he could. You know, he was this incredible adventurer who could do anything, and if he wanted me to go on this adventure with him, of course I was going to go on this adventure with him and he promised me it was going to be three years and then we would come back and everything would go back to normal. I would go back to school, rusty would be waiting for me, my friends would be waiting for me. So this was an adventure. I would see the world and then I would come back and my life would go back to normal.
Speaker 1:At this point you were seven years old, right, and your adventure was went from three years to 10 years, so you started sailing at seven and really the end was when you were 17.
Speaker 2:at what point did you sense that sense that, um, this wasn't a thrilling adventure after all, but something different and even dangerous so the first indication came almost immediately when we went to sea, because it became very apparent that my mother became very seasick and actually hated sailing and withdrew into her cabin for the first few days at sea. So I guess that was my first indication, because my brother and I and I was seven and he was six were left on our own pretty much for several days, we may do eating a fruitcake that had been given to us before we set sail. But then there were wonderful moments. We saw whales and dolphins and flying fish and sunsets and stars and all of those sorts of things. But it all started to turn much darker when we set off from South Africa to cross the Southern Indian Ocean. And I should explain that by following Captain Cook's third voyage we were actually sailing the wrong way around the world. So most people who sail around the world, they sail from west to east, and if you sail from west to east you can go around the world near the equator, through the Panama Canal, through the Suez Canal, and you've pretty much got the wind behind you. But we were following Captain Cook and he went the other way and that meant going very, very far south to catch the wind. So we'd covered, we'd gone across the southern Atlantic Ocean, which was very rough and very unpleasant voyage, and then we crossed the southern Indian Ocean and on that voyage we were hit by an enormous wave my father later estimated it to be 90 foot high, about as high as our main mast and half as high again crashed through the middle of the deck, out through the side of the boat, knocked the boat onto her side, knocked my father overboard. He got flung back on deck, but I was the most seriously injured. I ended up with a fractured skull, broken nose and a kind of huge blood clot on my brain. And we were very lucky to find a tiny atoll in the middle of the ocean. Had we not found that atoll, we almost certainly would have sunk because the boat was so badly damaged, we wouldn't have made it all the way to Australia. And on that atoll was a very small French base, um which, where there was a doctor and he operated on me. So I ended up having seven operations on my head, but unfortunately with no anesthetic. Wow, so that was the point I mean mean.
Speaker 2:At that point I knew I'd learned a number of things. I'd learned that the sea was a dangerous friend. It could be a very beautiful friend, but it could be a very dangerous friend. And I never lost that fear. I learned that my father was not invincible, despite what he'd said, and our boat was not invincible either. And I'd also learned that I was often on my own. So when I went through those operations on Arle Amsterdam, I had to do them on my own. My mother refused to come in because she didn't like the sight of blood, so those operations were all done on my own scientific blood. So so those operations were all done on my own, and that really changed the whole voyage for me, because from then on I was quite a scared little girl and I was much more alone than I'd been when we set off yeah, wow, that.
Speaker 1:I just can't imagine what you must have felt in the ship and also after the wreckage, and it was days after your injury correct the swelling in the ship. And also after the wreckage, and it was days after your injury correct the swelling in the brain that was going on, which we know how dangerous that is if we don't take care of that as soon as possible. So it was days before you reached an island for the multiple operations and to be alone in such a crucial time of physical pain but also just uncertainty and all of this going on, that must have been really, really hard.
Speaker 2:It was. It definitely was. And what's been amazing actually about writing the book is that various people from my past have been coming forward. And very recently, literally in the last two weeks, uh, I was approached by somebody called Pierre, who's mentioned in the book, um, and he was actually on our Amsterdam and he was in the room when those operations took place. And every time I meet somebody else from my past who comes forward, I tried to find as many people as I could when I was writing, obviously, but some people I was unable to find, so some of them are now finding me.
Speaker 2:I mean, he told me how serious this operation was. Actually, not only was the kind of pressure on my brain, but I was liable to lose my eye as well because of the extent of the damage. So that was really when the voyage changed for me, and I didn't think it ever really went back to what it was. And the first part of the book, I think, is a much more kind of innocent part of just enjoying the adventure of being at sea. Then, after this, you know, really, my view of it changes quite a lot, even though I'm still relatively young. Yeah, and yeah, it is very clear because in changes quite quite a lot, even though I'm still relatively young.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and yeah it's. It is very clear because in the beginning you write about it, you could see that your dad is your hero in some ways and he's this invincible character who just does incredible things. He's got all these adventures and, you know, it seems like you have a really good relationship with him, have a really good relationship with him, and then in that point, when you have that shipwreck, there's a Reader's Digest as well that writes about that I'm okay to die if we die together, which is something that your brother said in the middle of that really difficult period.
Speaker 2:No-transcript that's right. I mean, certainly, my brother and I, and we were lying in these bunks in a cabin, uh, we, we both thought we were going to die, um, and I don't remember my brother ever saying that phrase. I mean, it's quite possible I've forgotten it because I was very young, but my father, as you say, wrote this article and the article, and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book.
Speaker 2:You know, the article is very much written from the perspective of the hero in the story you know, I'm the captain of the boat and I fight against the storm and I kind of managed to find the island, and you know, and all that is right I mean he but there's a very different story to be told.
Speaker 2:If you're the little girl who was standing down below when the wave hit and you're seriously injured Because I never chose to be there, and certainly my brother may have said that he was not afraid to die, but I was very afraid to die.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to die, I wanted to live my life, um, and I wasn't there through a choice of my own. Uh, this was like a father's choice, to kind of put us there. So one of the reasons for writing the book was I wanted to tell the story through my eyes, and a lot of it is a less about you know what version of the story is correct or not correct, but it's important to kind of see how a story looks through somebody else's eyes. And when parents take children on an adventure, particularly an adventure that puts their lives at risk and takes them away from schooling and friendships and all the sorts of normal things that a child could have, that's a very different decision that they're making for a child than a decision that they're making for themselves, and that, I think, is something that you know often gets overlooked when we admire people who do these kind of crazy adventures.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because from another perspective, your dad did look like a hero. He went on this adventure and he accomplished all these things. And it was like when you asked Owen in the book of, why are we encountering so many storms? And he said because you guys are going the wrong way, you're going towards the wind or end. And you said but if it's achievable, it would be quite the achievement. So that in itself was something that you could tell was a big drive for your dad.
Speaker 1:I am really in awe of your drive to get an education. So you were denied the proper education during those very formative years, yet you ended up with a PhD from Oxford. I'm curious to what fueled your inner drive to learn against all the odds that were against you, especially that you didn't live in the time that we lived, where you could have access to internet, to correspondence. It was very different being in the middle of nowhere, and take us there At the Once For A Year podcast. Giving back is part of our mission, which is why we proudly sponsor Midwest Food Bank. Here's why Midwest Food Bank Pennsylvania distributes over $25 million worth of food annually completely free of charge, to over 200 nonprofit partners across PA, new York and New Jersey, reaching more than 330,000 people in need. Through their volunteer-driven model and innovative food rescue programs, they turn every single dollar donated into $30 worth of food. Now, that's amazing. Join us in supporting this cause To learn more or to give. Go to MidwestFoodBankorg slash Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2:So what happened after the shipwreck is, we repaired the boat, which took about a year year, and then we sailed all the way up to Hawaii. And that should have been where the voyage ended, because in Hawaii Captain Cook was killed and we were due to come back through the Panama Canal and back to the UK and, as my father had promised at the beginning, my life was going to go back to normal. But what happened was we had a family vote and I voted to come back, as did my brother, and my parents voted to keep sailing. And I voted to come back because by that point I was desperate for an education. I'm now 12 years old. I'm not getting any education, but also I don't have any friends. I'm living on a boat and my relationship, in particular with my mother, is deteriorating. Boat and my relationship, in particular with my mother is deteriorating.
Speaker 2:You know, I always stayed friends with my father, although my father's obsession was was sailing. But I always stayed friends with my father. But my relationship with my mother became increasingly difficult. So I wanted to come home. I wanted to come home to be able to go to school and have friends and see Rusty and find the doll's house and everything else. I had a full electrification plan for the doll's house, by the way that I'd kind of written up, but that's a side story anyway.
Speaker 2:But my dad overrode the boat and he said no, I'm the captain, I decide and we're going to keep sailing. So we did and I realized that I had no way to escape from this boat. I didn't have a passport. I didn't have a passport, I didn't have any money, I had no education, I was uneducated. I was increasingly expected to work on the boat because we had no money as a family and so what we were doing is taking paying crew on board and effectively turning the boat into a hotel to try and earn money to keep sailing. So this was not a glamorous trip for anyone kind of listening who was thinking this is a very kind of. It was not. We were often hungry, the boat was becoming increasingly disheveled over time and we only had one head working toilet on the boat. So you know, by this point we start to have six, seven, eight crew, eight crew on board, mainly men, and you're a teenage girl. So that's kind of tricky. I'm sharing my cabin with kind of crew, so all of the kind of difficulties arising from that and I decide I have to escape or I'm going to spend my life in this situation. I'm going to be stuck in boat yards, stuck on this boat with my parents, with no friends, for the whole of my life.
Speaker 2:And I discovered that I, one way or another, I can educate myself. It's not easy, but if I managed to register myself on a correspondence course and then if I could post off the lessons when we got to a port, and if I could get my father to tell me where we were going next which he wouldn't always tell me, but if I could get him to tell me where we were going next which he wouldn't always tell me, but if I could get him to tell me where we were going to go next, I could get them to send the lessons back, and at least some of them I got back. And then if I could find moments to study when I wasn't expected to work on the boat and I'd often do that by hiding from my mother I could. I could study, I could work my way through these textbooks. And your question is where do I find the motivation? And it's a really difficult question because I don't really quite know now, as an adult looking back. But I think there were two things. One is I thought it was a lifeline. I didn't know if it would work, but I thought it was a lifeline and it was the only one that I had. And the second thing was that in a world where I could control nothing I couldn't even control where we were going we once sailed past the only part of Australia where I had friends, because we'd stopped there for a little while.
Speaker 2:At one point, uh, malula Bar and I remember that the local radio station came on, the, the kind of the, the kind of top, you know the kind of top 10 radio station came on. It was the local Malula Bar radio station and all of my friends were there and we were going past and I was begging my father in tears can we just stop? Can we just stop for the weekend? I haven't seen my friends for almost a year and you know, just the weekend I'll see them. And he said no, no, no, no, we're too busy, we've got to keep going. And the radio station came on and I had it for about two hours and then the radio station went away and it was another year before I saw my friends again. And that was the world I was living in. I mean effectively kind of kept hostage on this boat. So that's what drove me. I thought if I get an education I can get, eventually get control of my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then the next part, too, is tell us about a time where you and your brother were left in New Zealand. Where you were there. He was there to get an education. You were assigned to watch over him per se, without your parents being there.
Speaker 2:Well, unfortunately, in my world there was quite a lot of gender difference on the boat. So, uh, my brother, my father, once said to me you know, if I could only afford one of you to get an education, it will have to be your brother, because he's a boy and he'll have to grow up and look after a family, which I remember being shocked by as a, as a child, even though that sort of view was a bit more prevalent then but I was still shocked by that and I absolutely disagreed with it. Uh, there was nothing I could do. My father was not the sort of man that you could argue with right or reason with. You absolutely couldn't, but I completely disagreed with him. Um, and then on the boat, it was very gendered.
Speaker 2:My brother was allowed to work on deck. In fact, he had the only set of safety equipment child size that would enable you to work on deck. I wasn't given one because I was expected to cook and clean down below because I was a girl. So my parents decided to keep sailing, but they were worried about my brother's education, so they left the two of us in New Zealand me, as you say, to look after him and him to go to school. Uh, we at the time were seven, uh, 15 and 16. I was 16, he was 15, we turned 17 and 16.
Speaker 2:While we were there, I kept on doing my correspondence, whilst looking after him, whilst cooking and cleaning for him, which I was expected to do, and I became, well, first of all, ever more determined. I was going to kind of get myself out of this and escape, but also and when you read the book, that's almost the most difficult chapters of the book, because the wave was a very physically dangerous moment when I almost died. I now understand, or certainly was kind of permanently, just could have been permanently disabled. But New Zealand was where I got really very depressed because I was left on my own as a 16 year old, didn't know any adults in New Zealand, apart from one person who I knew in Auckland, but she was too far away to visit and she never came to kind of visit me until right at the end, the last two weeks where I went up to Auckland to sit my exams.
Speaker 2:So I was just, yeah, and I just felt completely out of my depth. I I just couldn't cope with being there. But eventually I pulled myself together one way or another. I kind of pulled myself together and thought I've just got to kind of get through this. You know I can't change the circumstance that I'm in, so I've just got to kind of get through this. You know I can't change the circumstance that I'm in, so I've just got to work my way through it. And I did and eventually went up to Auckland, took those exams and managed to get myself a kind of interview at university and that was a kind of door into a very different life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I just think it's so incredible that you did manage to get an interview at Oxford, and how did you come about getting that interview, because I'm sure that was not an easy feat.
Speaker 2:It's very funny. I look back now and I still don't quite understand how it happened. I mean, so what I did sitting in this hut because my parents didn't really rent a proper house for us, what I did sitting in this hut because my parents didn't really rent a proper house for us, we were living in this hut, uh, about an hour out of the nearest, outside of the nearest town, rotorua, and so I was sitting in this hut thinking I'm going to go to university, I'm going to see if I can possibly go to university. That's what I'm going to do. And I should say, nobody in my family had been to university before and I wasn't going to a school. So I didn't have anyone to advise me. But I thought, okay, so I'm going to write to every university I've heard of in the world. But I didn't have the addresses, so I made them up. So I wrote to Oxford University, oxford, england, and I wrote to Auckland University, auckland, new Zealand, and Harvard University, harvard, america, and so on and so on.
Speaker 2:You can see from this list I was writing to quite a lot of the very elite universities which is not because I thought I was elite, but they were the only ones I knew, because somehow, even on a boat in the South Pacific, you've heard of these universities Sydney University, sydney, australia I wrote to London University, london, england, which doesn't really exist, so I don't know where that one went. Anyway, what then happened is most of them wrote back and said, no, well, quite a lot never wrote back at all. Harvard never wrote back and I now realize that Harvard is not in Harvard, so that was a bit unfortunate. Maybe they never got my letter. Um, a lot of them wrote back and said, no, you're just too strange, you don't have kind of proper qualifications, we won't consider you. But incredibly, oxford wrote back and said okay, write us a couple of essays and we'll think about it. And then, working with my correspondence teacher, who was amazing, he and I came up with a couple of topics and we were deliberately trying to pick topics which were a bit. He and I came up with a couple of topics and we were deliberately trying to pick topics which were a bit unusual. And I wrote these two essays and he gave me some advice on them and I sent them to Oxford. And then Oxford wrote back and said okay, so you can either sit an exam or you can come for the interview. And I thought I have no chance sitting an exam because I've never really been to school properly and I'm trying to do six subjects through the Australian system and that, you know, folks in the UK only do three. So how can I compete? So I thought I've got to get to England and do an interview. That's my only chance. My only chance is I've got to get to England.
Speaker 2:So then I went out picking kiwi fruit, which was, I mean, it's quite difficult to get a job because I didn't have a proper visa. In fact New Zealand kept on trying to deport me, so I didn't have the sort of visa we could go and get a job. So the thing with fruit picking is you can. Often they don't check. So I was able to go and do kiwi fruit picking horrible job owned enough money with a small contribution from my father to get a very convoluted ticket all the way back to the UK, got on a plane and came back on my own, which was also incredibly frightening because I was on my own coming back. I'd never been back to England for a decade. I left when I was seven, I didn't know what I was going to find at the other end. I only had a one-way ticket and I didn't have a plan B. There was no plan B. Plan A was getting to Oxford. Yes, plan B was to be worked out at a later point, but couldn't really contemplate what plan B was going to be.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's incredible. And just getting on that plane by yourself, going for it, and I think sometimes, when you don't have a plan B, you put all the eggs into that one basket, right, and you're just. This is it? This is all I got. I'm going to give it 100% and 110% of everything in order to make it happen.
Speaker 1:And I just I just look at your story and there's so much resilience, so much courage that it took for you to stand up for yourself and to say, hey, this is what I want, I'm not going to be controlled by my circumstances, which is really hard to do when so much of it is outside of your control. And then you do get into Oxford which is a miracle in itself, right Without having the formal education. They give you a shot. And I'm curious too, how, after such an unconventional childhood, how did you adjust to the institutional life, the everyday life at Oxford and then going on to McKinsey? How was that for you, that transition? Because I'm sure it was not a typical childhood that you had, so you weren't socialized like the rest of the kids. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2:So I thought when I got into Oxford which was just an incredible, I mean I couldn't. I mean I remember the letter went to my aunt and I was in London at the time because I went down to London to try and earn some money because I had no money letter has arrived and she opened it up and she said well, I think there must be some mistake, because they made you an offer, a 2e offer, which is like the lowest grade. They don't do that. They must be a must be the same. And it wasn't a mistake. They had just taken a bet on me. I think they just decided okay, we just need to make a bet. You know we're either going to say no or we're going to say yes, and that's just it and we'll see what happens. So I thought when I went to Oxford, this was going to be socially amazing after 10 years of being desperate for friendships.
Speaker 2:You know, desperate to do all the things that kids normally do. You know, go to parties, hang out, you know, go to the pub I, I don't know all the things that you know most people would see as utterly trivial. I was desperate to go and do and then I was petrified about the academics. I thought, you know, they've let me in but they really don't understand the gaps that I know are in my education. I never learned my times tables. I have no foreign language. I hadn't learned chemistry, which was a prerequisite for my course. I'd been let in to study zoology, so I was petrified about the academics.
Speaker 2:When I got there, the opposite happened, because what I found was, academically, I had to work hard. But the one thing I had learned on that boat was how to work hard. I knew how to be disciplined about teaching myself and suddenly I had access to be disciplined about teaching myself and suddenly I had access to libraries and lectures and books. It was incredible. And so, taking that determination and an application that I already had and suddenly having resources available to me, that turned out to be okay. I just worked and said, socially it was a disaster. It was really really much worse than I expected and looking back I realize that it was. It was both me and it was the other. You know, it was the other students. It was a problem for all of us because and probably more me than them by by some I had very limited social skills and they had no experience of somebody who was so far out of the norm, because they were also very young, you know, and they'd only encountered people who were, you know, within a certain kind of bound of normality and we had nothing in common to talk about. I didn't know how to do small talk. They had no interest in sailing boats or coups in Fiji or Wales or all these other things. So I was very isolated to start with. And then it was made more difficult by the fact that my parents, true to form, completely disowned me in my second term at Oxford. So I was poverty stricken and I didn't qualify for a grant because I'd been overseas for so long. So it was really very difficult. But it then ended much in a much, much happier place because after about a year I started kind of figuring out the social skills. I started meeting friends.
Speaker 2:I eventually went to my college and explained to them that I was poverty stricken. I put it off for a very long time because I thought Oxford would throw me out if they realized I was poverty stricken. And in fact they didn't. Uh, what they did was they said of course, we'll help you. You should have come and told us ages ago, you know, sitting in your room worrying about how you were going to eat. I mean how ridiculous. You should have come and told us. But of course you know. Uh, so I had some money. Eventually I got a grant, in fact. In fact, eventually I won the battle and got a grant. Um, I started to make friends.
Speaker 2:I went on to Cambridge, did my PhD, by which point you know I'm actually quite normal. You know, at least superficially, you know I'm, I have a normal grant, I have friends, I'm having. You know, at least superficially, you know I'm, I have a normal run, I have friends, I'm having. You know I'm having a fun time. And I put a lot of what happened on the boat behind me and then I went on from there into the UK government and then from there to McKinsey and then from there to where I am now, where I kind of work, you know running, helping to kind of run different companies. And it was only when I came back to read, to write Wavewalker that I really had to confront all of it. And the real shock, when I sat down to write it and I opened my diaries in particular, and my mother's diaries, is having to confront what it really was, because I'd really, you know, left it unpacked for such a long time. It was incredibly cathartic to do that, but very difficult to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure it was hard to revisit some of those parts and seeing actually how because I think when you're living in the moment we tend to minimize right, because you're in survival mode, you're trying to make ends meet and figure out how to deal with the situation You're not thinking, wow, this was actually really out of character for a child to be in this position, and so on and so forth and then looking back and reading your mom's diary even when she describes how, when you had that accident in your head and how in pain you were and how swollen all the things were, was it was pretty bad, it was not. Um, yeah, I think that must have been super hard for you to go back to that it was.
Speaker 2:It was very hard and, and the way in which my parents dealt with it is, they always had their version of the story and their version of the story was my father was a hero and we had a fantastic adventure and it all worked out well anyway, and that was it they.
Speaker 2:You were not allowed to challenge that version of the story and of course there's elements of that version which are correct, um, but there's a lot that's not said in that and I needed to go back and uncover that and to kind of face into what really happened and really dig into it.
Speaker 2:Um, and there's all sorts of kind of phrases that I now understand. I mean, there was a lot of what we now call kind of gaslighting, where stuff would happen and then my parents would pretend it hadn't happened. You know, we once almost went to ground near Melbourne in Australia and I remember I I kind of um, I didn't write about it in my diary, but one of the crew on board wrote about it in his diary, so I remembered it and he wrote about it in his diary. It's missing from my father's logbooks and my father denied that it happened. And so the other really strange thing about a child growing up in that environment is you begin to become quite dislocated from reality because you don't know what's true and what's not true so what was really, really helpful about writing the book for me personally is I was able to get all the facts clear.
Speaker 2:I've never been allowed to discuss the wave. It was a banned topic on WaveWalker because it would upset my mother. So it was the first time in my life I'd ever looked back at the wave and tried to figure out what happened. How badly had I been injured? I had nightmares about it for many years afterwards but I didn't know the facts of it. About it for many years afterwards, but I didn't know the facts of it. So I'm really glad that I did it and, of course, even happier that so many people have found it such an interesting thing to read.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this book reminds me of. I feel like it's a marriage between the story Wild and Educated. I just think it's remarkable too, because today you lead some of the Europe's most powerful companies and I'm curious to what values have guided your leadership today.
Speaker 2:So I actually think that, having escaped from WaveWalker and I do think I was very lucky to escape from WaveWalker, because I would not recommend this childhood to anybody, but I do think I do think that, having escaped from it, it has given me some strengths which I do value, and one of them and it's a term that's kind of massively overused it is the resilient resilience term. So when I face a challenge in my life and sadly, you know, like many of us, I've faced a lot of challenges, including losing my husband, who passed away in 2018. I'm able to keep myself calm because of that experience that I went through as a child, and because I can keep myself calm, I can then be thoughtful about how I behave in order to kind of help the people around me. So I had to step in and be the CEO of one of the big companies that we look after Case New Holland, that makes agriculture equipment through the COVID crisis and that ability to stay calm and to listen to people around me and to have a kind of relatively low ego, um, it's really, really important, because what I found is I often don't know the answer to something, but almost inevitably there's somebody there who does, but somebody has to make a decision and hopefully the person who makes a decision is going to be calm enough and thoughtful enough to listen and then, when they have as many facts as they can reasonably get and, by the way, you can't normally get as many facts as you might like they can make a decision. So I think that resilience, that ability to be calm in a crisis and the ability to teach myself I I still teach myself.
Speaker 2:I still I love teaching myself. I think that's something I kind of learned and learned to kind of enjoy as a child. So I now teach myself all sorts of stuff useful stuff, not useful stuff. I just have a kind of I enjoy educating myself. I think I do just somehow that's a habit. Those things are real strengths that came out of my childhood and I'm really thankful for those. I think I paid far too higher costs for them, but they're still there as things that I value in myself yeah, that's really remarkable.
Speaker 1:What is your perspective on the importance of women in executive leadership and how can more of us break into that space?
Speaker 2:so I think it's really important. I mean, I'm a I'm very passionate about trying to get leadership to represent the biggest breadth of different views and backgrounds and perspectives as possible, because and for me, it's not just about gender and it's not just about kind of racial background, it's as much about kind of educational background and social background. And the reason why it's important is that my observation throughout my career is that when you get a group of people who bring different perspectives, they tend to come to a much more interesting decision, because otherwise you have an echo chamber.
Speaker 2:You know you have person number one who you know, maybe the same gender as everybody echo chamber. You know, you have person number one who you know, maybe the same gender as everybody else, but you know comes from the same schooling system as everybody else and has had the same life experiences as somebody else. They say we should do this and everybody says, well, that's a great idea, right? You get a bunch of people who come from different places and have done different things and, as you say, different genders, all sorts of different things, and they'll challenge each other in a much more, you know, much more interesting way and they'll come up with a better answer. That's my observation.
Speaker 2:I really do strongly believe that I've always been kind of cautious on targets, but I've always been very passionate about trying to get teams to be as diverse as possible, but defining diversity in quite a broad way, because I think we can become over obsessed with one dimension or another and actually it's about diverse thinking and I've sometimes found that the most diverse thinker in the room this happened once or twice actually has been uh, dare I said the white, middle-aged man. Sometimes they are the most diverse thinker in the room and that's what you have to ask yourself as a leader. Do I have people in this room who are going to challenge me or do, and they're going to bring a different perspective to my own? Or do I have a bunch of people who are, you know, all coming from a similar background and they're they're going to bring a different perspective to my own? Or do I have a bunch of people who are all coming from a similar background and they're not going to challenge me at all?
Speaker 2:Wow, that's such a very I was just going to say, but I am very lucky to have to work with a lot of very, very talented kind of both male and female leaders in the companies I work with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you make a really valid point. It's not so much about the way that a person looks per se right, because we can say diversity is having an African American person in the room or an Asian or whatever that may be, but it's about do we all think the same right and having that diversity is such an important key, so I love that you brought that up as a point. Looking back now, what do you wish your younger self aboard in that ship? Knew, yeah.
Speaker 2:I wish that as a little girl I knew the contact details of my relatives. It's kind of as simple as that, because if I'd known the contact details of my relatives at some point I would have reached out to them and said I need to get off this boat. You know you need to. You know, can you find a way to help me get off this boat? You know you need to. You know, can you find a way to help me get off this boat?
Speaker 2:And I've now met a lot of other children who had, or adults who had, extraordinary childhoods, and many of them did escape by being able to reach out to a family member to kind of do that. But unfortunately in my case because it was so, because we left when I was so young, I didn't have relationships really with my relatives and they didn't keep in touch, Certainly not with me. I think my mother occasionally had letters from her father who sadly passed away while we were at sea. So I didn't see him again after we left the UK. After we left the UK. But that's what I wish I'd known. I wish I'd known the contact details and I wish I'd been able to reach out to them Now. Would I have done that, I don't know, because it's very hard for a child to walk out of the family unit, no matter how bad that situation is. It's really really hard to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is why a lot of kids stay stuck until you become an adult and then you make you know, rectify that you built such a legacy that defies the odds. What does success mean to you today? I'm incredibly selective about the supplements I choose for me and my family, and SourSup Nutrition Gummies by BeMe Beyond Medicine have become a family favorite, thank you. Expertly formulated with Soursop, elderberry and Echinacea, designed to enhance your well-being, experience the benefits of soothing inflammation, balancing blood sugars, relieving stress and anxiety and strengthening your immune system. Use my code.
Speaker 2:Svetka that's S-V-E-T-K-A on SoursopNutritioncom and get 5% off today. Success for me is absolutely being in a position in the world where I can make my own decisions. Now, when I say that, I kind of pause slightly, because I'm now lucky enough to have three children of my own and so, of course, when I take my decisions, I do try to reflect their needs, although they are now all young adults of their own, so increasingly that they're going off and making their own decisions. But that for me is really important. Having the ability to kind of make my own decisions or to be with people who care about me, with whom I can make decisions, and we will kind of reflect each other's needs. That's really really, really important.
Speaker 2:I think the other elements of success is there are things that I feel really passionate about in the world, certain kind of things that I want to achieve. So, on the back of WaveWalker, the message I want to get out is about the importance of education and how education can change your life, and I've been doing a lot of talking to schools and talking to young people about that. I think it's really important. I'm also trying to get the message across about, you know, when you take a child out of society, whether it's home schooling or, you know, I'm going to go and live on a beach in Indonesia or I'm going to go in a camper van across, you know, africa. Whatever it is, it can be fantastic, but you need to think about it from the point of view of the child, not just the point of view of the adult. And if you start to hear that the child is not getting what they need in terms of education, and so don't ignore that, you know that you've got to kind of listen to them, because they're not in a position to make that decision, you're making that decision for them.
Speaker 2:So that's the second thing. And then I do think that you know I love what I do kind of work-wise, and it enables me both, hopefully, to help these companies to be more successful and employ more people and all of those good things that come from it. And I'm also trying to kind of keep alive my husband's legacy. He was a very senior civil servant here in the UK and he was very passionate about public policy. So I do quite a lot of work on that side. But if you add all of that up, what's incredible is that, you know, I'm now in a position where I can fulfill these goals in my life, or at least try to fulfill those goals in my life. And how amazing is that, how exciting is that from you know, feeling like I had no autonomy and no ability to do anything, to be able to now make a difference in my own way?
Speaker 1:yeah, at this point, you can go speak and create an impact through the books that you're writing, and you wrote one on your husband's life as well. Um, what are you most proud of?
Speaker 2:wow, um, that's very hard. I'm very proud of my kids, but obviously any parent you kind of start there, um. But I think you know I'm still very proud of the little me and by the time you get to kind of my age, you know I'm still very proud of the little me and by the time you get to kind of my age, it's almost like the little me is now almost a separate individual. It was so long ago. But I do look back at that girl and think, wow, okay, that was impressive what you did. And I almost think that now, given everything I now know about the world and the risk of it all failing, I don't know if I would have the courage to do it in that sort of way again.
Speaker 2:So I am very proud of the kind of younger me that I did that. But I suppose overall I'm proud that I've been able to kind of create a life that I feel is meaningful, where I have that kind of autonomy. Yeah, I'm proud of the book and lots of things have gone wrong, don't get me wrong. I mean, you know, like everybody, I can kind of list all the things that have kind of gone wrong in my life, but overall I have a lot of things that I'm very grateful for and a lot of things that I'm proud of yeah, it probably hasn't been smooth sailing since getting off that boat, right?
Speaker 1:I mean, life is hard and we all face challenges in all the different areas. What is next for you, and are there any future projects that you're excited about?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, my friends and family always say to me you know, know, that I tend to kind of run at a kind of thousand miles an hour and I'm never quite sure why that is. I think it maybe it's a kind of reaction to kind of being trapped on that boat for a decade and now I'm trying to make up right. But yes, so much. I mean, I'm writing another book, uh, which is about other children who had extraordinary childhoods and they all end in different ways. So it's really interesting, these, these.
Speaker 2:I've got five different stories that I've chosen from almost a hundred stories that I now know. So I'm very excited about that. Wavewalker is due to become a mini-series, which is very exciting. On the work side, you know, lots of interesting, lots and lots of interesting things are happening kind of there and in this kind of foundation which I've set up and, of course, I'm the mum of three young adults. So the wonderful thing about that is you get to, you know, go through all the kind of ups and heartbreaks and downs of that. But you know, I'm very excited about the future for them and the fact that I'm able to help them in a way that I wasn't helped.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they have that safety net that you didn't have growing up.
Speaker 2:That's right and I think if you, if you haven't, if you always have that safety net, it's very hard to appreciate what it's like not to have it.
Speaker 2:I don't think you ever grow out of the feeling that there is no safety net, and I'm so happy that my children have that safety net. I don't even think it would occur to them to imagine a life where that safety net didn't exist. And even though they are now young adults, when something goes wrong they still ring me up and that's wonderful. And when they do that luckily it's not all the time anymore, but when they do that I often think how wonderful that you've got a parent where you think, okay, I'm now in a kind of desperate strait of some sort or other sometimes. Sometimes the desperate strait is not as big as it might be. Sometimes it's really just missing the Netflix password or some other. Sometimes it's major, but they know that they can ring me up and I will do my best to sort it out, and that's kind of wonderful. I wonder if I can kind of give that to them.
Speaker 1:And that's beautiful, that it shows the relationship that you have stewarded with your children, that they know they can call you and they have the relationship, or they want to hear from you and want your advice, which says a lot about you and the way that you intentionally parented.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right. I mean, they like their time away from me as well. I have to say so, but that is all.
Speaker 1:Exactly as it should be. That's right. Well, you being an avid reader, I ask all my guests on the show what are three books that impacted your life, and I'm really curious to hear yours, since you've read so much.
Speaker 2:Wow, where do I start? So the two that I mentioned that I read as a child and in a way they're very obvious because I didn't have access to very big libraries. But one was the autobiography by Helen Keller, who grew up deaf and blind, and that had a huge impact on me as a child because it made me put my own life in perspective. I mean, what, what an extraordinary woman. And the other one, which I have to say I always feel embarrassed to say, is the diary of Anne Frank, because, again, it gave me humility about my position, even though I could see bits of myself in her experience. But it kind of gave me humility in a in a really important, uh, important way. I mean, that was the extraordinary thing on the boat, by the way, if you're in that sort of situation, when you open up a book, it is like opening up a door into another universe.
Speaker 2:Um, and a lot of the books that I read on wavewalker were deeply age inappropriate because because they literally were what my mother kind of found in the, you know, in the um, in the secondhand bookshop as we went along. And I also loved, but yeah, I love things like Lord of the Rings and there was a fabulous series I read as a child, duncton Wood but. But I still read very avidly. At the moment I'm reading lots and lots and lots of books about sailing. In fact I'm getting a lot of grief from my family because the books about sailing are kind of piling up and threatening to become a bit, a little bit of a health habit oh, I love that.
Speaker 1:What is the best piece of advice that someone gave you?
Speaker 2:the best piece of advice is absolutely to kind of, you know, not be afraid of doing something and not to listen when everybody tells you you can't do something.
Speaker 2:And that really has been a little bit of a a mantra through my life. Sometimes it hasn't served me well, because sometimes I've tried to do something and realize actually they were completely correct and, yeah, realized. And it's amazing how many times somebody has told me I shouldn't or couldn't or you know mustn't, or you know it would be, you know it would be, kind of you know, too much of a stretch for me to do something. And then I've done it and I thought actually I could do that. And and one of the wonderful things actually about my background is I am a little less constrained than some people because I grew up outside of society. So although I've now been back in society for all of you know, most of my adult life, I still have an ability to be a little bit of a rebel and that that's rather good. I can sometimes go against convention or go against the advice that I'm given, and that has often served me very well.
Speaker 1:I love that because they say often the thing that people regret at the end of their life has a lot less to do what they did wrong than to do of the things they wish they could have tried and dared to step forward and do something in action. So I love that so much. Well, Suzanne, thank you so much for your time. It's been such a treat talking to you across the world. And where can people find you?
Speaker 2:Just put my name into Google. There's a website, suzanne Haywood. They'll also find me on LinkedIn social media. I'm very easy to find and I really hope people enjoy the book.
Speaker 1:Yes, I do too. It is a page turner. I highly recommend you guys get it, because this is a book that's going to inspire you, encourage you and also will really take you into a whole other world, which is beautiful. Thank you so much, Suzanne. Thank you for listening to the Ones who Dare podcast. It is an honor to share these encouraging stories with you. If you enjoy the show, I would love for you to tell your friends. Leave us a reviewer rating and subscribe to wherever you listen to podcasts, because this helps others discover the show. You can find me on my website, speckhopawcom.