The Leap 100: Olympic Ambition: Tales of a Rio gold

At our second Leap event of 2016 Kate Richardson-Walsh, former Captain of the Team GB women's hockey team, shared her experiences from the Rio Olympics along with her thoughts on ambition, leadership and the importance of fostering a healthy team culture - as told to Jo Coburn, journalist and political correspondent for BBC News.

Kate and Jo were also joined by a panel of Leap companies who had a lively discussion on the importance of these themes in the business world.

Transcript

The Leap 100: Olympic Ambition: Tales of a Rio gold medallist

Kate Richardson-Walsh
Former Captain of Team GB Women’s Hockey Team

I am really excited to be here today at Mishcon de Reya to talk about ambition and to share my journey of starting off being a 12 year old little girl playing hockey for the very first time all the way up to being 36 and standing up on the podium in Rio with a gold medal around my neck.

Jo Coburn
BBC Political Correspondent

There are quite a few similarities in terms of what you can do to build success in sport and in business and Kate talked about some of the parallels.

Kate Richardson-Walsh
Former Captain of Team GB Women’s Hockey Team

Having been to the World Cup two years previous as England and finished 11^th out of 12, to turn that around within kind of 18 months to be standing on top of the podium in Rio was a real mark of the culture, of the coach, of the leadership and the strength of the team.

Jo Coburn
BBC Political Correspondent

So you reached your ambition?

Kate Richardson-Walsh
Former Captain of Team GB Women’s Hockey Team

Yeah it was a fairy tale ending in every sense just to finally have achieved what you have been striving for since you were a little girl, it still makes me emotional now and I think it will make me emotional for the rest of my life.

Jo Coburn
BBC Political Correspondent

There were four panellists, each running fast growing businesses, leaders in their own individual worlds and these sorts of discussions tease out some of the individual problems and issues that businesses have and how they can relate back to someone like Kate Richardson-Walsh in her area of sport.

Richard Peters
Co-founder of Decoded

It was interesting talking about how everybody kind of works together in that sense of one team one goal and how we juggle between individuals having an individual passion and how that builds into the sort of collective ambition of the business.

It’s about forming that vision together and owning it together.

Richard Peters
Co-founder of Decoded

I think everybody kind of passionately expressed their views on how they thought culture and kind of team work came to play in business and sport.

Juliette Denny
Managing Director, Growth Engineering

Life is all about the company you keep right? And when I look around, you know, were I was on the panel, I was like, yeah this is definitely the kind of company I would like to keep, so yeah a great learning experience and absolutely fabulous.

Michael Hayman MBE
Co-finder of Seven Hills
Chair of The Leap 100 Advisory Board

I think events like tonight are absolutely brilliant, I think they are really important opportunities to bring people together to discuss the issues that matter.

Elliott Moss
Director of Business Development, Mishcon de Reya

Tonight’s theme was ambition and ambition means you’ve got a great idea and then you do one thing that most people with great ideas don’t do, you do something about it, you bring it to life.

Mishcon The Leap

To find out more about the Leap go to mishcon.com/the_leap