Skoll (well that week in Oxford) increasingly feels less like a conference, and more like an impact festival, especially if like me, you don't attend the main event.
Not because of the sessions.
Because of the conversations in between.
Coffee queues. Passing moments.
And the “we should catch up” that actually happens.
This year, a few themes stood out more clearly than anything else.
1. The work is the relationships
A year ago, I had just left Living Goods with a quiet concern:
that my identity and network might shrink.
The opposite happened.
By intentionally staying connected, I realised I knew more people this year than last.
And I showed up differently:
Not starting with “former CEO of …”
But:
“I support leaders and organisations at pivotal moments.”
That shift matters.
Because much of the real value of Skoll is not transactional:
- It is not just pipeline
- It is not just visibility
It is:
reconnection, energy, perspective.
For anyone working independently, that is not optional. It is fuel.
2. Portfolio careers are not the soft option
Co-hosting a session on portfolio careers brought a different layer of honesty.
As my co-host Kelsi Kriitmaa put it:
“We unpacked the freedom, independence, fears, and financial realities nobody talks about.”
The reality is both:
- Freedom and flexibility
- Loneliness and uncertainty
- Choice over your work
- Responsibility to create it
And a few truths that consistently surfaced:
- It is a business, not a side project
- Identity is often harder than the work
- You will get pricing wrong before you get it right
- You have to build your own structure and pipeline
For me, the biggest shift:
my impact has not reduced. It has changed shape.
Less direct delivery.
More amplifying impact through others.
3. Scaling with government is slower than we admit
One line captured the week:
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An agile social entrepreneur is like a jet ski.
Government systems are more like a tanker. |
Fast vs slow.
Adaptive vs risk-aware.
But the tanker is where scale lives.
What that means in practice:
- Fund the conditions for scale, not just the model
- Accept timelines measured in decades, not funding cycles
- Work with government, not around it
- Bring evidence, but stay solution agnostic
And critically:
do not make government look bad.
Not about optics.
About incentives and risk.
This is where many efforts stall.
4. Leadership is still a deeply human experience
Among the big system conversations, the quieter ones stood out most:
“Treat yourself the same way you care for your phone. Recharge.”
“The power of staying quiet.”
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Both simple. Neither easy.
Two patterns:
- We design for output, not recovery
- We speak to add value, rather than create space
But:
- Energy depletion erodes judgement
- Silence enables better thinking and ownership
These are not personal habits.
They are leadership disciplines.
5. Writing as a form of impact
The most unexpected takeaway was the response to writing.
People sharing these emails with their teams.
Referencing pieces before sessions.
Quietly saying, “this is exactly how it feels.”
It reinforced something I have been testing:
impact is not only what you build.
It is what you help others see more clearly.
That came home in a different way after Skoll.
When I saw my mum for dinner the Friday after the week, I told her that a big highlight for me had been the response to my writing.
It caught me slightly off guard saying it out loud.
She paused, then reflected on her own leadership career, in very different contexts, decades earlier.
Different systems. Same experience:
- isolation
- responsibility
- internal pressure
That continuity is hard to ignore.
Final thought
Across all of this, one pattern holds:
- The work takes longer than we want
- Leadership is harder than it looks
- And how we choose to work is changing
But also:
the need for connection, reflection, and shared experience has not changed.
If you have been reading, sharing, or forwarding these reflections, thank you.
And if something here resonates:
what has stayed with you from the past few months?
Thanks for being part of this next chapter with me.
Warmly,
Liz
Strategic Advisor | Former CEO | Founder, Volante
Based in Kenya, available globally
