Change Makers: Leadership, Good Business, Ideas and Innovation

Michael speaks to Romi Savova, the founder and CEO of PensionBee, the company bringing pensions into the 21st century.

Romi’s story is one that begins in Bulgaria and has taken her to the London Stock Exchange, via South Africa and the US, with stops at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the road to entrepreneurial success.

Founded in 2015 to provide savers with a low-cost, easy-to-use and transparent pension plan, PensionBee today serves 800,000 customers, helping them to be pension confident and put their money towards a better future.

Michael is joined by Tom McGillycuddy, co-founder of CIRCA5000, describing itself as “the investment platform of the human future.”

With a vision of a thriving planet in the year 5000, the company asks us to question whether people will be included in that future. And the answer to a certain human future? Impact investing. 

CIRCA5000 offers its customers the chance to invest in the sustainable businesses enriching the planet. Launched in 2019 as tickr, alongside business partner Matt Latham, the company now has more than 150,000 investors and has had its own purposeful credentials recognised through B Corp status.

Joining Michael this week is Greg Hoffman, the legendary former Global Chief Marketing Officer of Nike.

During almost 30 years with the company, Greg led three Olympic campaigns and worked with global superstars from LeBron James to Serena Williams.

He described his approach to brand building as seeking out the day dreamers and taking them seriously, recognising that visionary ideas come not only from ingenious individuals but from whole cultures of innovation.

It’s an approach that drove the ideas behind some of the most famous marketing campaigns in history and a story that is told in Greg’s new book, Emotion By Design, described by BT Sport’s Jake Humphrey as “the ultimate playbook to unleashing creativity.”

In 1947, as the then HRH Princess Elizabeth celebrated her 21st birthday, she said: "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service." 75 years later – an unprecedented 70 of which have been spent on the throne – Her Majesty has left an indelible mark as the defining figure of the United Kingdom's modern history.

In June, we will be celebrating that legacy and a lifetime of service with the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. The centrepiece of this landmark moment is the People's Pageant, described as a "once in a lifetime, awe inspiring spectacle filled with wonder, warmth, wit and wow factor."

Rosanna Machado is a specialist in the coordination of large scale events and the CEO of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee pageant. She joins Michael on Change Makers to share how the pageant will bring to life iconic moments from the Queen's reign, as well as bringing people together from all over the country, as it showcases our changing society over the past 70 years.

Michael Hayman’s guest today believes we should all be more curious, not judgmental, and that confidence is silent while insecurities are loud. Advice from Milan Kocic, the head of Sixth Sense at Hexagon, which is on a mission to enable an autonomous and sustainable future. 
 
Milan joins Michael to discuss Sixth Sense, a new open innovation platform where ambitious scaling startups can connect with world class companies to solve some of humanity's biggest challenges – and it's a big opportunity. Hexagon’s technologies are used to manufacture 90% of aircraft, 75% of smartphones and 95% of every automobile produced worldwide. 

Host Michael Hayman is joined by Jan Büchsenschütz, co-founder and CMO of RIIICO, a software and AI business aiming to transform the manufacturing industry by delivering cutting edge interactive digital twins of production assets. 
 
A team of engineers, designers, and inventors of reality simulation software; RIIICO aims to set new standards in computer vision, while creating software that is fun to use and easy to work with. Its technology helps manufacturers to manage their factories and accelerate their digital transformation, and its cutting-edge technology is why it was chosen by Hexagon’s Sixth Sense open innovation platform as one of the members of its inaugural startup cohort. Through Sixth Sense, RIIICO has been provided with the tools to scale and roll out its vision to more companies around the world.

Albert Einstein, Whoopi Goldberg, Keira Knightly, Pablo Picasso, and Sir Richard Branson may be notable in their own right, but they also share the condition of dyslexia.

For years it’s been portrayed as an obstacle but for Michael’s guest, Kate Griggs, it presents the opportunity of a superpower for life.

Kate is a campaigner and the founder of Made by Dyslexia, a leading voice in global advocacy for what she calls the superpower of dyslexia, now in its fifth year. That means disrupting the world's thinking and campaigning for the unique and important skills of people with dyslexia.

It's a challenge that Kate has made a lifelong mission and is driven by her own experiences of growing up and the difference identifying a dyslexian made to her own education. With a TED talk that has garnered almost 400,000 views, and Kate’s latest book, This is Dyslexia, she aims to redefine and reshape how it's shaped our past and how harnessing its powers is vital to our future.

Joining Michael Hayman on Change Makers is Kim Polman, co-founder and chair of Reboot the Future, a fellow of the Aspen Institute and co-founder and chair of the Kilamanjaro Blind Trust. 

Reboot the Future is a foundation aimed at transforming how people connect to themselves, each other and the planet. Its work is powered by one golden rule; to treat others and the planet as you would wish to be treated. Kim describes this call to action as the only universal principle the world shares and uses it as a roadmap for the conversations and campaigns that will lead to a more sustainable world. 

It is this ethos that inspired the book she co-curated Imaginal Cells: Visions of Transformation, a collection of essays from thought leaders and change agents including, Al Gore, Muhammad Yunus and her husband, Paul Polman.

Joining Michael Hayman on Change Makers is Gina Badenoch, the social entrepreneur with a dream to enable social and economic mobility, to build a more inclusive society. 

With a primary focus on fostering equality for the visually impaired, through the companies she has founded – Capaxia and Ojos Que Sienten (Sight of Emotion – she creates experiences that change mindsets, to overcome the prejudices that exist between talent, potential and companies. 

It is an approach that has seen Gina recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and an Ashoka Fellow, with a changemaking ethic inspired by her quote for life: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Jenny Costa is the founder and CEO of Rubies in the Rubble, the food business that sees wonder where others see waste. Since launching in 2012, Rubies in the Rubble with Jenny at the helm has become one of the pioneering voices in food sustainability, with an award-winning range of “gooder” condiments created from products that would otherwise go to waste.

With a brand that is now stocked nationwide, in just a decade the company has saved more than 350,000 individual pieces of fruit and vegetables from the bin, taking food diamonds in the rough and turning them from rubble into rubies.