Series 5, Episode 3 - "Early, Ugly and Often". Sophy Norris in conversation with Sarah Thomas PhD, Group CMO and EVP Capgemini

This week's guest is Sarah Thomas PhD, Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Consultancy giant Capgemini. Sarah is an experienced B2B marketing and communications leader with a passion for innovation, creativity, and technology. She has spent her marketing career in global roles within the business services and technology sector.

Before her role at Capgemini, Sarah led the Brand-led Employee Experience practice for award-winning brand consulting, design and experience agency, Landor and spent a significant part of her career at Accenture, where she held senior Marketing and Communications leadership roles, including Chief Marketing & Communications Officer for the Accenture Operations business.

Sarah has a scientific background, gaining a PhD in molecular biology at Warwick Uni, becoming a virologist, and specialising in the HIV virus in the 90s, at the height of the epidemic, and fear. It is unsurprising that Sarah is a passionate advocate for STEM education for girls and is a champion for growing the next generation of innovators.

In this episode, we cover what it means to become and be a leader, and how to craft our own careers. Areas we discuss include:

• The importance of leaving every door open as we work our way up our careers
• Perusing our passions and leaning into intuition to discover what is right for us
• Proactively running towards something, instead of running away
• Why speed is as vital as perfection, "good enough" is so important
• Don't be all things to all people
• Learning by doing and curating mentorships
• Being curious, rolling our sleeves up, owning our careers
• Support bold decision-making and always have your team's back
• Why a low boredom threshold is a good thing
• Telling people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear
• Why hiring for mindset is important, and defines an ambitious career
• Why it's so important to be inspired, and the flywheel of work and hobbies
• Work should be fun
• The power of cheerleading

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsarahthomas/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophy-norris/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/capgemini/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-alligator-pi-agency

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryambanikarim/

TED Talk - Life's an obstacle course - here's how to navigate it

https://www.themessypartspodcast.com/

Instagram - @nickd_rebelcoach