The Unlock Moment: The Inner Shift That Changes How You Lead

There’s a particular kind of certainty that comes from a traditional career. You have the training, the title, you know what good looks like. Starting a business feels like stepping off solid ground onto a rollercoaster you’re still building as it moves. Recorded live at Climb 26, this is a conversation with Eve Hanks, founder and CEO of veterinary diagnostics company MI:RNA. Eve spent years as a vet and scientist before a midlife moment when she sat with her finger hovering over the “incorporate a company” button, worked out she had roughly two thousand working Mondays left, and decided that wasn’t a lot. So she packed up boxes, drove to France, renovated a house and launched a business ... during COVID ... because it had become more terrifying to stay than it was scary to go. We get into the science that made it possible: microRNAs, a control system in the body we didn’t even know existed until recently, and how a process that once took six months now takes an afternoon. We talk about pitching a technology so new that investors asked her what a dairy cow was, what resilience actually looks like (pitching, getting no traction, crying in the bath, and getting up to do it again), and why she tells every scientist she mentors that they’re the one holding all the cards. A conversation about counting your Mondays, betting on yourself, and turning brilliant science into something real. Find out more at mirna.tech.

Most great things don’t start with a perfect plan. They start with a moment. Recorded live at Climb 26, this is the story of how Tayo Adebisi turned a £5,000 investment into a business turning over £5 million. Tayo didn’t come from retail, or business, or money. She came to e-commerce at rock bottom, needing something to pull her forward, and she began with a single secondhand ukulele that she bought on a bargain and sold at a profit. From there it was £2,500 recycled at a time, car boots full of stock bought between nursery runs, and relentless research into what people were actually buying. We talk about the night three masked men tried to load her stock into a van, and the split-second decision that followed: “we’re getting a warehouse, now.” We discuss the COVID year that ended in a loss, and why that was the moment she stopped selling other people’s brands and built her own. And we get into the thing underneath it all, learned the hard way: knowing that no one is coming to save you, and that if you can’t take a risk, you stay stagnant. A conversation about beginning before you feel ready, learning faster than the world expects, and carrying other people with you as you grow.

Jennifer McCollum spent twenty-five years climbing toward a seat she wasn't sure she'd ever reach. Then a single phone call changed everything by telling her exactly what she didn't want. Jennifer is President and CEO of Catalyst, the global nonprofit working with many of the world's most powerful companies to build workplaces that work for women, and only the sixth leader in its sixty-year history. She's the author of In Her Own Voice and, most recently, Men at Work: The Road Map to Gender Partnership, launched this year at the New York Stock Exchange, and a member of Marshall Goldsmith's 100 Coaches community. In this episode, she shares the Unlock Moment that redirected her career, and why clarity of action begins with a harder question than "what do I do next?" We cover the scrappy childhood that shaped her drive, the two layoffs and the sabbatical that made her stop and reassess, and why getting clear on what she didn't want freed her to find the work she was made for. We also get into the heart of Men at Work: why workplaces were never designed for women, why they aren't serving men especially well either, and what it really takes to build organisations that work for everyone. A conversation about ambition, clarity, and the choices leaders can make right now rather than waiting for the culture to catch up.

Some moments don’t arrive gently. They shake you awake and force you to see the world differently. For Professor Arad Reisberg, that clarity began in childhood, sitting on “whites only” benches in apartheid-era South Africa and feeling, long before he had language for it, that something was deeply wrong. Growing up openly gay, Jewish and a migrant, he learned early what it meant to move through the world as both insider and outsider. Years later, a quiet moment at home changed everything. His husband, a cardiologist, listened to his chest, paused, and said the words that led to a life-altering diagnosis and open-heart surgery. Recovery brought its own lessons - about invisible struggles, misplaced expectations and the humanity we all rely on but rarely talk about. Emerging from that experience, Arad found a clarity he hadn’t had before. A sharper sense of what matters, what doesn’t, and why lived experience is often the most powerful form of leadership. And he understood that real change, whether in education, healthcare or society, starts with empathy, courage and the willingness to truly listen. This conversation is a reminder that purpose isn’t discovered in titles or achievements … but in the moments that break the script and show us who we really are.

In a time when companies talk about culture but struggle to live it, one truth stands out: culture doesn’t happen by accident … it happens by design. Father and daughter James and Krista White have spent their careers on opposite ends of the leadership spectrum - James in the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, Krista in the world of purpose-driven strategy and social impact. Together, they’ve written Culture by Design, a blueprint for building organisations that are high-performing, human and intentional. We talk about leading across generations, the role of empathy as a true leadership skill, and how to close the gap between what companies say they value and what people actually experience every day. Their story is a powerful reminder that great culture isn’t inherited … it’s created, moment by moment, choice by choice, by leaders who dare to design it.

We all carry an inner fear of failure ... of getting it wrong, falling short, or not becoming who we thought we should be. But what if the moments you label as “failure” are actually the turning points that reveal who you truly are? In this Box of Keys episode, I explore the quiet power of failure - not as the opposite of success, but as the path that shapes it. I share the story of Retail Trust CEO Chris Brook-Carter, who experienced a career-shaking setback that ultimately transformed his leadership. And I reflect on my own moment of feeling like I’d failed when I stepped away from medicine … only to discover, years later, that leaving was the most important Unlock Moment of my life. Failure doesn’t diminish you. It redirects you. It teaches you who you are, where you thrive, and what matters most. If you’ve been holding on to a moment you wish had gone differently, this key is for you ... because the part of your story you’re most reluctant to revisit might just be the chapter that changed everything.