Suzanne Heywood | From Shipwreck to Boardroom Leadership (SPARK20 - 133)

What does it take to turn extreme adversity into extraordinary leadership? Suzanne Heywood’s life reads like a novel—shipwrecked at seven, isolated at sea for a decade, forging her father’s signature to survive, and ultimately earning a place at Oxford through sheer determination. Today, she’s a top executive and investor, steering multi-billion-dollar companies with resilience, clarity, and innovation.

In this episode, Suzanne shares the defining moments that shaped her, the mindset that helped her thrive in crisis, and the leadership lessons she applies in business today. Whether you’re an investor, entrepreneur, or leader, this conversation will leave you inspired and armed with valuable insights:

• How to stay calm under extreme pressure and make clear decisions.
• Why resilience isn’t about being tough—but about perspective.
• How diversity fuels innovation and why biases hold companies back.
• The ‘Critical Friend’ approach to leadership and board dynamics.

At the heart of it all, Suzanne’s journey is a testament to perseverance and purpose. As she says:

"You’ll learn things from adversity that people with an easier life never will."

Timestamps & Topics

📌 (01:00) Overcoming Extreme Adversity – A childhood lost at sea, a future built from nothing.
📌 (03:43) Knowing Which Mountains Are Worth Climbing – How to distinguish real challenges from distractions.
📌 (06:05) Resilience Under Pressure – From shipwreck to boardroom calm.
📌 (07:51) The Dangers of Bias in Innovation – Why lack of diversity kills progress.
📌 (09:39) Creating Sustainable Innovation – What great leaders prioritize for long-term success.
📌 (13:48) The ‘Critical Friend’ in Leadership – Balancing support with hard truths.
📌 (16:43) Metallica Meets Electric Trucks – A masterclass in creative partnerships.
📌 (18:29) Education as the Ultimate Investment – How learning transformed her life.

Powerful Quotes

💡 (03:43) "I picked kiwifruit… earned enough for a one-way ticket—Oxford changed my life."
💡 (06:58) "Nobody's life is in danger—we will get this sorted out."
💡 (20:39) "You’ll learn things from adversity that people with an easier life never will."

This episode is more than an inspiring story—it’s a blueprint for navigating uncertainty, making tough decisions, and leading with conviction.

👉 Listen now, take notes, and if this sparks something in you, share it with someone who needs to hear it!

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:31:03

Christian Soschner

Here is a question for you. Have you ever faced an obstacle that felt impossible? Wondered how some people turn extreme adversity into an unstoppable success. Meet Susana Hayward, shipwrecked at age seven, isolated for a decade at sea. Yet she became a top executive and investor, leading multi-billion dollar companies. In the next 20 minutes.

00:00:31:08 - 00:01:07:03

Christian Soschner

Susana shares her resilience. Clear decision making and relentless innovation can turn setbacks into breakthroughs, especially for leaders, investors and policymakers. If this short version sparks your interest, I encourage you to explore the full episode. Please remember to like, follow, and share this podcast. It truly helps us reach my listeners like you. Now let's dive straight in. Starting with Susanna's extraordinary childhood journey that set everything in motion.

00:01:07:05 - 00:01:09:04

Christian Soschner

Happy listening.

00:01:09:04 - 00:01:35:06

Suzanne heywood

But you then have this contrast between these incredible locations and then what's happening on the boat, as you say, some extraordinary abilities, some of them life threatening. And then increasingly, if you go through the story, because I go on the boat when I'm seven years old and I'm trapped on the boat for ten years, basically, increasingly it becomes a story about how am I going to try and escape from despite how am I going to educate myself?

00:01:35:06 - 00:01:48:06

Suzanne heywood

How am I going to, you know, have friends, go to school, have a life? Given that I'm stuck on this boat and the relationships inside the family start to deteriorate, so it becomes a real family drama.

00:01:48:06 - 00:02:08:10

Suzanne heywood

My visa keeps on running out. They've left us in a very isolated place, very beautiful again, really beautiful place, but really isolated. And I describe in the book actually how I become incredibly depressed. I end up bringing up youth life, which is like a kind of, one of those phone lines that you ring when you're in desperate trouble.

00:02:08:12 - 00:02:19:17

Suzanne heywood

But one way or another, I get myself through that year, and that's the year when I write to every university I've ever heard of in the world, asking them if they will consider letting me come and study.

00:02:20:00 - 00:02:21:09

Christian Soschner

How did you survive? I mean,

00:02:21:09 - 00:02:22:12

Christian Soschner

no. No money?

00:02:22:12 - 00:02:22:22

Christian Soschner

No,

00:02:22:22 - 00:02:23:17

Christian Soschner

you don't you

00:02:23:17 - 00:02:24:18

Christian Soschner

yourself.

00:02:24:20 - 00:02:29:10

Suzanne heywood

Well, just my father. My father left a very small amount of money in a bank account.

00:02:29:18 - 00:02:31:01

Suzanne heywood

not his main money.

00:02:31:01 - 00:02:44:23

Suzanne heywood

he put a small amount of money in another account, which I could access by forging his signature because I was too young to have a bank account. But we didn't have very much money at all. We had a very old car which kept on breaking down.

00:02:45:00 - 00:03:08:05

Suzanne heywood

I think my looking back, the biggest risk was that I became incredibly depressed and I had nobody I didn't know anybody, no adults at all. And, it's an extraordinary position to leave a young girl and a young boy and then just abandon them and sail away, because, of course, I couldn't bring my parents when they were, when there were problems.

00:03:08:07 - 00:03:16:20

Suzanne heywood

but one way or another, I did get through it. I describe it in the book and it gets very dark. And then we get to the the darkest page.

00:03:16:20 - 00:03:31:20

Suzanne heywood

and then eventually it starts to turn around and I come back out of it. And that's the start of me actually escaping because when I write these letters off every university in the world, most of them write back and say that they won't consider me but one.

00:03:31:22 - 00:03:43:19

Suzanne heywood

Oxford amazingly writes back and says that they will. If I can get myself to Oxford, they'll give me an interview. And so I went and picked kiwifruit, which is, you know, national product of New Zealand,

00:03:43:19 - 00:03:48:03

Suzanne heywood

earned enough money for a one way ticket back to the UK.

00:03:48:03 - 00:03:48:12

Suzanne heywood

and did

00:03:48:12 - 00:03:52:07

Suzanne heywood

the interview. And incredibly, they let me in and that changed my life.

00:03:52:07 - 00:04:16:18

Suzanne heywood

Well, why do I feel like that? Is it that I'm not enjoying this immediate thing that I'm doing, but actually the idea of being an academic can have everything that comes with it. It's fine. Or is this a much more fundamental thing, which is this lifestyle is just not the lifestyle that I want. and you've got to kind of think about where sometimes short term obstacles are worth overcoming if long term that's what you want to do.

00:04:16:20 - 00:04:37:22

Suzanne heywood

you know, but there's no point in overcoming short term obstacles if you're continuing down a route which really isn't kind of working. and for me, in that case, I realized that I wanted a life style or a way of working, which was much more working with other people. You know, for me, the academic lifestyle was just too narrow and too isolated.

00:04:37:22 - 00:05:02:13

Suzanne heywood

I wanted to kind of I wanted to go and work in teams with other people and get kind of energy from that and kind of give energy from that. So I just realized it wasn't the right fit for me, and therefore I switched and I went into into government. so I think you need to ask yourself, when you hit an obstacle, is this an obstacle that is worse overcoming, or is this an obstacle that I'm just overcoming because it happens to be there?

00:05:02:13 - 00:05:03:14

Suzanne heywood

You know, lots of people,

00:05:03:14 - 00:05:08:20

Suzanne heywood

when you ask them whether why they climb a mountain, they say, because it's their fight.

00:05:08:22 - 00:05:11:24

Suzanne heywood

But, you know, mountains of work, you shouldn't just climb

00:05:11:24 - 00:05:32:09

Suzanne heywood

because the day you got to climb them, because you think it's a mountain worth climbing. So it's always worth pausing when you get into an obstacle to work out, whether you're just climbing that circle because it happens to be the thing that's in front of you, or whether you're climbing it because it really is worth getting over and there is no better way to do

00:05:32:09 - 00:05:32:16

Suzanne heywood

it.

00:05:32:22 - 00:05:53:16

Suzanne heywood

Yeah, and of course, we can see this all the time at what you know, you'll get, you know, partway into an I.T project and discover that it's much more complicated for whatever reason, than you thought it might be. It's always worth having that pause. There's a kind of there's a little example that people use, you know, kind of come up off the dance floor and go up onto the balcony.

00:05:53:17 - 00:06:09:12

Suzanne heywood

Just stop and think about it for a moment. You know, am I pursuing this because it really is worth it. But it's tough. Why am I pursuing it? Because it was the thing that I thought that I should be doing, or I was told that I should be doing it. Actually, there might be a much better way of achieving it.

00:06:09:12 - 00:06:13:01

Suzanne heywood

Well, I might actually decide that the golden I'm going for is not the right one.

00:06:13:01 - 00:06:35:19

Suzanne heywood

the first one, which I referred to before, is this point around resilience, which, and I know it's a word that some people kind of struggle with. and I should explain what I mean by it. What I mean is, I said, what I don't mean is that by being resilient, you're somehow impervious to, you know, you're not affected by things that happen to that are bad.

00:06:35:19 - 00:06:58:02

Suzanne heywood

I mean, we're all affected by things that happen to us which are bad. but what I have found coming from that background is that when something happens which is bad, I can put it in proportion because I know what really bad looks like. You know, really bad is being a little girl, seven years old, on a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean when we were shipwrecked.

00:06:58:04 - 00:07:18:08

Suzanne heywood

So when I face a problem and it sounds a little bit silly, but but literally my my brain works like this, but when I face a problem. So, for example, one of our companies is struggling and I need to go and help them. And people are getting very upset. I could put it in proportion because nobody's life is in danger.

00:07:18:10 - 00:07:37:03

Suzanne heywood

You know, we will get this sorted out. You know, the will be not necessarily a good course, but there will be a least bad course that we can take, which is going to be the best one, you know, under the circumstances. And and that ability to put things in proportion enables me to stay very calm when things are difficult.

00:07:37:05 - 00:08:00:04

Suzanne heywood

And I think if as a leader, you can stay very calm when things are difficult, you're much more able to be rational, you're much more able to listen to what people say, because normally there'll be somebody you know around who has a very good idea, even if you don't have one yourself. So that is a huge step. That kind of calmness, you know, that ability to put things into proportion, which is what I kind of call resilience.

00:08:00:05 - 00:08:27:18

Suzanne heywood

I mean, biases can be problematic in lots of different ways. First of all, as I say this, people biases. So most companies will have and even today many companies will have a certain sort of person who works in a particular sort of company, you know, whether that's, people from the industry or more men or more women or people from a particular nationality, or people from a particular type of educational background.

00:08:27:19 - 00:09:05:08

Suzanne heywood

You know, I've come across companies where virtually everybody has worked at a particular university. You know, maybe they've come out of MIT, or maybe they've come out of, you know, some other kind of university. and there is a bias because you've got a group of people who are similar to each other, they quite naturally begin to assume that people who don't come from that background, who, by the way, may therefore be less good at some of the things that they're good at, that those people are worse, like they could be ineffective, and that, I think, is a very dangerous way to think, because there's lots of evidence, actually, that when you have

00:09:05:08 - 00:09:27:22

Suzanne heywood

a group of people who actually come from very different backgrounds, they're more willing to challenge each other, you're less likely to have groupthink, you know, if you've got a bunch of people and they've all kind of been educated, you know, in engineering at MIT, they're all going to think in a certain sort of way. And then if you put somebody else into that group who comes from a very different kind of background, they're going to have different things that they're worried about.

00:09:27:22 - 00:09:50:02

Suzanne heywood

You know, maybe they're they're less worried about, you know, detailing the process and getting that very clear, which, by the way, is a very good thing to do, but they may actually come at it in a very different way and be much more worried about what the culture of an organization is or whatever. I don't know, I'm making wild assumptions here, but the point is that as you mix up these groups, generally you tend to get to better outcomes.

00:09:50:02 - 00:10:12:06

Christian Soschner

But what makes the difference in leadership? Why do some companies successfully implement the culture of innovation and can innovate and innovate and innovate to keep innovating and keep growing, like Apple, Amazon and VI to other companies? Facebook. What's the difference? Can you boil it down to a few simple rules?

00:10:12:08 - 00:10:14:05

Suzanne heywood

I don't know about simple rules. I mean, I sometimes

00:10:14:05 - 00:10:33:18

Suzanne heywood

call them kind of Phenix companies. You know, they kind of reemerge after the fire. You know, they they they reinvent themselves. I mean, at Excel, when we're looking for companies, we look at companies not just that perform well financially, but we also look for companies that are sustainable because that's important.

00:10:33:20 - 00:11:01:20

Suzanne heywood

but also companies that are innovative, you know, and that they have created, you know, a moat their distinctive. So they're distinctive and they're innovative. And I think if a company is going to be around for a long time as a culture, the management needs to put as much emphasis and reward, and attention on innovation and distinctiveness as they do on the kind of short term results.

00:11:01:22 - 00:11:25:05

Suzanne heywood

And the danger, of course, particularly if you're a public company where you're being kind of driven by quarterly earnings is what you're really worried about is what's the next lot of numbers that I'm going to present, by the way, that's not a bad decision. That's a good discipline. But where it can become dangerous is if that means that you're not putting emphasis on kind of innovation and distinctiveness and sustainability as well.

00:11:25:07 - 00:11:42:21

Suzanne heywood

and so one of the jobs, I think, for a CEO with a leadership team and for a board is to try to kind of make sure that the company is, you know, doing as much on those longer term issues as the shorter term issues. and it's the companies that lose sight of that, I think, that end up in trouble.

00:11:42:21 - 00:12:01:10

Suzanne heywood

I mean, I never kind of worked inside that at Apple, but I imagine I would hope, I'd be surprised, actually, if it wasn't the case of, you know, the conversations even at very senior level, as much about what they're developing for three years time as they are about, you know, what, the sales are all today and next month.

00:12:01:10 - 00:12:04:13

Suzanne heywood

And, you know, at the end of the quarter.

00:12:04:15 - 00:12:23:12

Christian Soschner

I think the apple is quite an interesting example. In 1987, it was close to bankruptcy. Then Steve Jobs came back. Tim Cook, I read his biography. Sometimes it's not very got the information. Tim Cook trained at Microsoft, interestingly invested in a plant. then they created this huge success story. And I think this is what a few important.

00:12:23:12 - 00:12:39:24

Christian Soschner

But I think it was a bystander a comes back to diversity. So when you have, people from diverse backgrounds in a company, you can look at problems completely differently than, when hiring just from one social group, from one gender group.

00:12:40:01 - 00:12:42:00

Suzanne heywood

Yeah, I agree, I agree. I think

00:12:42:00 - 00:12:46:21

Suzanne heywood

it makes a huge difference. and I do, you know, I do I do think that

00:12:46:21 - 00:12:50:22

Suzanne heywood

diversity helps a company to be kind of innovative. And also

00:12:50:22 - 00:13:00:16

Suzanne heywood

when you've got a more diverse group of people, I think people are more likely to ask the questions. You know, the uncomfortable questions. You know, it's all very well.

00:13:00:16 - 00:13:09:06

Suzanne heywood

We're doing fine. But I didn't see what we're going to be doing in three years time. You know? You know, how are we still going to be interesting in three years time?

00:13:09:08 - 00:13:29:10

Christian Soschner

Yeah. When I was at a fraternity, as a student in 96 plus mid-nineties, the uncomfortable question doesn't make your friends. And when I get my stats, I know the manager said you don't have to make friends. It's just. Yeah, it's just have to work together and have to make sure that the company thrives, and that's okay.

00:13:29:12 - 00:13:30:18

Christian Soschner

That's enough.

00:13:30:20 - 00:13:48:13

Suzanne heywood

Yeah, yeah. These things are not a popularity contest. You know, you need to look, you know, you need to. Yeah, you need to build relationships. And people need to trust you. And they need to, respect you. And you need to respond, respect them and trust them. But, you know, you don't. Fundamentally, this is not a it's not about kind of building friendships.

00:13:48:13 - 00:13:56:00

Suzanne heywood

It's about getting a company to work. And sometimes in order to do that, you've got to ask difficult questions and make yourself a bit unpopular.

00:13:56:00 - 00:14:18:21

Suzanne heywood

the ideal board member for us is a critical friend to the company. And I quite like this phrase critical friend because if you if you don't have those two elements, you know, only the one on its own is no good at all. Yeah. There's no point in being a board member if all you're going to do is criticize the company that you're trying to support.

00:14:18:23 - 00:14:42:03

Suzanne heywood

because what happens if you do that? And I've seen kind of board members do that is the company eventually becomes incredibly defensive, and loses kind of motivation. we'll stop sharing things with the board. You know, the dynamic between the board and the management kind of falls apart. likewise, having board members who are just friends, you just kind to turn up and say, this is fantastic.

00:14:42:03 - 00:15:04:24

Suzanne heywood

You know, what a great job. You know, it's all kind of going well. That's not very helpful either. so we actually talk about being critical friends and actually being more critical when things are good and a little bit more friendly sometimes when things are bad, because the temptation is that when a company is struggling a little bit, everybody kind of falls in, becomes even more critical.

00:15:04:24 - 00:15:10:07

Suzanne heywood

But that's actually not very helpful at all. And likewise, when things are good, everybody kind

00:15:10:07 - 00:15:30:23

Suzanne heywood

of, you know, kind of relaxes and says, well, this is all kind of great, but actually it's when things are good that you can really do something amazing. I mean, it was very interesting listening. I listened to the glass of Nvidia kind of call, which you probably did as well, you know, and they're talking about all the other things that they're now going to do as a company.

00:15:31:00 - 00:15:56:15

Suzanne heywood

You know, things are clearly very good for them, but they are thinking about doing all sorts of new things, which is interesting. So the company really needs to be challenged when things are good. so that's what I try to do as a board member. I try to be a kind of critical friend. So I'm not afraid to, ask a difficult question, even if I'm the only person on the board to ask the difficult question, I'll go happy to do that.

00:15:56:17 - 00:16:25:00

Suzanne heywood

I'll very rarely be. And that's I never I never aggressive or the the kind of, you know, kind of negative about the company. I will ask difficult questions. and when a company is really struggling, but through no fault of its own, I'll also be incredibly supportive, which I think is important as well. but that kind of boundary between being on the board and being in an executive role is a tricky one, and it is one that takes quite a lot of practice.

00:16:25:02 - 00:16:46:12

Suzanne heywood

and that's even though I now work on boards that are very different in terms of what the companies do, I do everything from tractors to high heeled shoes. that the ability to kind of be on a board and ask, ask a good question that hopefully leads into a kind of really productive conversation about what a company should do.

00:16:46:14 - 00:16:51:04

Suzanne heywood

That's a skill that's pretty transferable across different companies.

00:16:51:08 - 00:17:10:14

Suzanne heywood

It depends on in terms of what for what as it were. So I really like lots of different sorts of music, but it depends really on the, on the circumstance. so yeah, I love going to a kind of classical music concert, but I also quite enjoy kind of, you know, pop music as well. I don't mind that at all.

00:17:10:16 - 00:17:18:16

Suzanne heywood

I'm actually going if echo, which I chair, is doing a whole collaboration at the moment with Metallica.

00:17:18:18 - 00:17:19:13

Christian Soschner

Ready.

00:17:19:15 - 00:17:23:18

Suzanne heywood

Yeah. So I'm going to tell a good concert in, in a few weeks time.

00:17:24:00 - 00:17:38:20

Christian Soschner

May I ask? do you did anything? Is it one of your companies is doing a collaboration with Metallica? Hey, Metallica, the metal band. So I'm done. And, just as far, I think that's one of the records. Why?

00:17:38:23 - 00:17:43:22

Suzanne heywood

Oh, well, this is a vector, so that code sucks.

00:17:43:22 - 00:18:08:08

Suzanne heywood

so I think for them, you know, doing a collaboration with a heavy metal band, and then that company fits a lot of that. Truck drivers love Metallica. And actually, Metallica is also a very environmentally conscious group. And so we are providing Metallica with very environmentally conscious trucks, you know, kind of electric trucks.

00:18:08:08 - 00:18:08:14

Suzanne heywood

So

00:18:08:14 - 00:18:32:15

Suzanne heywood

we're supporting the band in their European tour. So, you know, we're providing them with trucks. You know, they are kind of, working with us in terms of, you know, the messaging around quality deco. So I think sometimes these kind of creative partnerships between a company and a, you know, an artistic, you know, group, in this case, kind of Metallica can be incredibly powerful.

00:18:32:19 - 00:18:38:18

Suzanne heywood

It's also very motivating for the the staff and the people in the company.

00:18:38:19 - 00:19:06:15

Christian Soschner

I think the best way would be to just stay Buddhist monk living frugally, and not being attached to anything badly. so this, you know, mask is a good example to think for that. when I look, at the book, they very often described the tea sleeps in factories and in this paper. Yes. And upgrading to that, it is not the best thing coming to the next question is, you faced a lot of adversity also in your life.

00:19:06:19 - 00:19:29:23

Christian Soschner

And many young people also still today struggling, in the West, not a part of the world, in Africa and Latin America, in Asian countries, no education, domestic violence, living in remote places like, you did. What's your advice to them when they managed to listen to such an episode?

00:19:30:01 - 00:19:52:23

Suzanne heywood

Well, my my fundamental advice is to try and get an education. I mean, that is the most important thing, and I'm not going to minimize how hard it can be to do that, particularly if you're in a situation where you're expected to work from an early age, which I was on the on the boat or you're very isolated or you're in a family situation, which is incredibly kind of dysfunctional.

00:19:53:00 - 00:20:17:15

Suzanne heywood

But one way or another, getting an education is the thing that can change your life. And, one thing that makes me very hopeful about the world at the moment, despite all of the things that we know, all the terrible things which are happening is that we have technology advancements that make education much easier to access. it's another reason why is one reason why they're excited about AI as well.

00:20:17:15 - 00:20:39:12

Suzanne heywood

I mean, AI is a huge enabler. I mean, if we could get to a world where no matter how poor you all, how isolated you are up, you can get access to many of the best teachers that anyone could access. Yeah, that would be incredible. Absolutely incredible. and I think the technologies that we have should increasingly do that.

00:20:39:12 - 00:21:13:03

Suzanne heywood

So that would be my advice to them is, you know, education is really worth it. It's incredibly hard. It's very easy to give out when it feels much harder. And then the second thing is that, as I kind of mentioned earlier, you know, those adversities that you're overcoming are terrible. And they are, you know, not something anyone would wish for, but you will get a benefit from, you know, if you managed to get through them, it is going to teach you a bunch of things that people have had a much easier time will never learn.

00:21:13:05 - 00:21:26:04

Suzanne heywood

So do kind of, you know, obviously nobody would wish anybody to be in those situations. But, you know, do bear in mind that, you know, you will learn something from this. You will come out a stronger person. if you can educate yourself.