What leadership qualities are needed now? Part 2 with Eva Karlsson | S2E3

We welcome Eva Karlsson, CEO of Houdini, a Swedish outdoor brand. Eva has led Houdini since 2001 and is a recognised and award winning leader in sustainability and the circular economy.  

She shares how sustainability is "lived" in the company and talks about the value of being bold and uncompromising while never giving up on being curious and open to learn new things.

This is part 2 of the COP26 episode where we explore the leadership qualities that are needed now. 

If you enjoyed this, please also listen to part 1 with a live panel discussion from COP26 together with Eva, Prof Christine Wamsler from Lund University and Clara de la Torre, Deputy Director-General for the DG for Climate Action in the European Commission.

About Eva Karlsson
You can find out more about Eva in this article about winning the NMC sustainable leadership  award. Eva also wrote a remarkable article on corporate sustainability at Houdini on ISPO.

About the Inner Green Deal:
The Inner Green Deal podcast, a podcast for exploring compassionate and sustainable leadership is an effort of Awaris and the Inner Green Deal initiative. If you would like to support or start a dialogue with us, please reach out to us here.

Reflective questions for this episode:

We would like to share the intriguing question that Mark Aink raised during the COP26 event in the session chat but which did not make it into the life stream due to time constraints:

"If transformation means we will have to change our culture, and we change the paradigm of separation to inter-being, what is the no.1 value that is the most important to you ?"

More practical questions can be found at Houdini´s designer checklist:

• Does this product deserve existence?
• Will it last long enough?
• Is it versatile enough?
• Will it age with beauty?
• Nothing added that isn’t needed, right?
• Will it be easy to repair?
• Is it durable enough for our rental program?
• Do we have an ”end-of-life” solution?

Resources:

Houdini:

• Here you find more on Houdini´s Open Source campaign, which we talk about in the beginning. 
• The values of Houdini are written down in their manifesto.

Friluftsliv - Skandinavian way of deep connection to nature:

• Article on National Geographic on Friluftsliv

The frameworks, Eva talks about are:

• Planetary boundaries framework at the Stockholm Resilience Centre
• Donot Economics at Donot Econo mics Action Lab (also mentioned in Episod 2 by Dutch Climate Envoy, Marcel Beukeboom)
• Deep Ecology on intrinsic value of nature, founded by Nils Faarlund, Sigmund Kva løy Setreng, and Arne Næss.

Credits
Intro song "the Inner Green Deal" by WayUpNorth. Made with compassion and active hope. From Brussels, Cologne and Hamburg, your team of the Inner Green Deal podcast.

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