Our guests this week are Andini Makosinski and Fatima Zibouh.

The expression renaissance leader might just stick. For women who reject the pressure to choose one or the other of binary options. Whether that’s what they do with their lives, or who they chose to be or how they choose to lead. Ann chose arts and science at school and inventing and filming in her career. Fatima is Moroccan and Belgian, and she is both a professor and an activist. And the advantage is that Ann and Fatima both connect up worlds by bridging the binary. Ann is convinced it’s going to be the super power of her generation. I hope it is.

Julia Middleton 0:28

Welcome, welcome, welcome. We have 10 days to go till the first gathering of the 24 women on the expedition. The 24 women who are members of the expedition. I am, you can in my voice, and I'm in a certain degree of overwhelm, terror. 10 days to go till I need to start leading this extraordinary group of women. I feel like my leadership is gonna get tested. We're going to be out there trying to find an approach to leadership that resonates with women so that more women say, 'if that's leadership I'm in'. That means that I'm going to be leading an expedition about leadership. And if that doesn't make you frightened, what would?

Julia Middleton 1:12

So, but, putting that aside... Putting those aside, this is a really interesting podcast. It's on an issue that matters to me an enormous amount. It's one that I've been fascinated by year for years. And one of the women who's on the expedition, who's going to be interviewed on this podcast, An, introduced me, she gave name to it, she used the expression, 'Renaissance leadership', and I think it's a really interesting expression. Come back to that.

Julia Middleton 1:44

So let me explain myself. I am well aware of the fact that in large parts of the world, women have no choices. I'm also well aware of the fact and frustrated by the fact that in some parts of the world, women are endlessly presented with choices, and they are binary choices. They are told to be one thing or another and certainly not both. I remember at school I was said, they usually used to say you can do math or languages, chemistry or history, physics or geography. And I couldn't... it made no sense to me. How could you possibly do physics unless you understood geography? How could you possibly do history unless you understood chemistry? How do maths and languages live as separate worlds? It made not sense, and I balked endlessly against it, and was no doubt a huge headache for all my teachers.

Julia Middleton 2:40

But this binary approach continued through life, in identity. You were told, yes, you're going to be a mother, or you're going to be a professional. Are you going to be rural, or are you going to be urban? Are you going to be a man? Or are you going to be a woman? Are you going to choose to live your life with a man or are you going to choose to live your life with a woman? Are you going to be French? Or are you going to be British? Are you going to be an activist? Or a bureaucrat? Are you going to operate in the public, the private or the NGO sector? The binary choices just piled and piled up and continued to make almost no sense to me. And they continued into leadership. Are you going to be a hard leader, a soft leader, a loving leader, or a firm leader, a rational leader, or an emotional leader? Are you going to lead on IQ? Are you going to lead on EQ? Are you going to make speeches, or are you going to write papers? Endless endless binary choices, and the pressure to force you to choose one. And my answer has always and consistently been both, if not all. Why? Because it's the reality. I am both. I'm not one or the other. And, and not only am I not, but I can do both, and succeed in both. And the second reason why is because I deeply believe that as a leader, if you want to have an impact, you have to be able to connect up worlds, you have to resist this binary pressure to belong in one world or another. If you're going to address the really messy problems in the world, that cross boundaries, that reject everything binary, they ooze, they squelch, they cross all boundaries, the problems we're dealing with, but leaders on the whole don't. They stay within their own worlds, which means to me they're not... they're doomed. Never to be able to really solve the complex problems. And I think the other reason why leaders have to resist this binary pressure is because leaders are managing diverse teams, diverse organisations, diverse groups, and if you insist on being binary, and staying binary, then I don't think you will be able to inspire or lead diverse groups, teams, organisations, countries, cities, whatever. And of course, it's so frustrating watching leaders who sort of impose those binary decisions on their own colleagues. And, and sometimes it's simply because they do not have the imagination to recognise that you can be both. Or even worse, you simply cannot stop judging people for refusing binary options. The binary option that has followed me through most of my life has been about whether you want to be a professional or a mother. And from the very beginning, my answer was, I'll be both, I won't get either perfect, but I will do both. Because that's who I am, I am both, and they, they feed each other.

Julia Middleton 6:08

What I've learned about leadership over the years, has come as much from being chief executive of an organisation, as it has by being the mother of a family. Both have taught me so much about leadership. And I remember making a promise to myself, many, many years ago, that as I made more speeches, I would never ever make a speech, least of all a speech about leadership, that didn't have stories about learning to lead through motherhood, or stories of being a mother that had illustrated an important leadership point to me. And it makes me smile, you know, people only ever remember my speeches for the stories about my children, usually, my, my failures.

Julia Middleton 7:01

I talk a lot about the need for leaders, not only to refuse the binary decisions, but to push themselves into worlds that are unfamiliar, and not to jump back into their own worlds, because they make mistakes in unfamiliar worlds. You have to push yourself and go into new places that will be unfamiliar to you. That's where you learn. That's where you figure out how to connect up the world. That's where you figure out how you're going to deal with these messy problems that cross worlds. And I've always illustrated this with a story of, of my August holidays with my children in Scotland. You know, we all used to head off to Scotland and my kids absolutely love sailing. They love the sea., they love sailing, they love small boats. And I loathe small boats, and I'm terrified of sailing. And quite a lot of time in August was going out into small boats, and I prefer dry land. And I remember going out once when you know... the weather in Scotland changes quite fast. We went out but it was pretty quickly clear that this was a bad decision. We shouldn't have gone out. And I remember sitting on this revolting little boat, big enough for all seven of us. But, it couldn't have taken any more. Small boat. And sitting there holding on to anything I could hold on to in terror. And then looking up and seeing Tom, who at the time was five, and had this huge grin all over his face. He was loving every minute as we crashed around. And then I heard my husband shouting to me, tie a rope to Tom. He had a life jacket on. But if we tied a rope to the life jacket, if he fell into the sea, we'd at least be able to pull him back into the boat. So I scrambled across this heaving and terrifying little boat that we were on and tied diligently a rope to Tom and then later on, we landed. And I remember my husband looking at me and saying, not the anchor rope. I had literally crossed the boat and tied Tom to the anchor rope. And the truth is that the temptation is to stay on dry land, not to go out at sea where I will, not through maliciousness, not through carelessness, but through absolute inability to figure out how you operate on a boat.

Julia Middleton 9:33

The temptation is to stay on dry land where I am reasonably competent, but if I did, I would miss my kids in August. And if I did, I would miss the few rare moments in Scotland in August where the sun is warm and beautiful and it's lovely being out on a small boat. And you have to keep pushing yourself out to sea, to push yourself into new spaces, to reject the binary options and to push yourself into all kinds of new places. So I always tell stories about family, merely, I think to illustrate that you can be a professional and a mother. And to remind that and to, to and you know, sometimes people say it's terribly unprofessional. All those stories you give Julia, and the answer, okay. If it's unprofessional, that's fine, but it does get the message across. And, and it recognises that I am not just the chief executive of an organisation. I am, I'm non binary.

So An introduced me to the expression renaissance leader or in French, 'renaissance leader', and I looked it up. It's a person with many talents or areas of knowledge. And I would add a person with many talents or areas of knowledge, who can cross worlds, who rejects the binary choices, and who connects up worlds. An introduced me to the concept. And, and she really introduced it to me, as, in her view, almost the defining characteristic of her generation. An is, I think, just a little bit more than a third of my age. And she deeply believes that leaders of her generation must be renaissance leaders. So I asked her how she got to this realisation. I did it in the form of a game. Sounds silly, a word game. But have a listen.

An, I've been looking to this interview for ages because I've got a game. Okay, a game. It is, if I say a word, then you tell me what it makes you think of. So my first word is insects.

Insects, that reminds me of when I was a kid. Insects in the backyard were kind of like free pets. So I would just kind of dig through our compost pile, and pick whichever beetles and worms I thought were the cutest and I would keep them in little containers and water and feed them every day before school until they eventually died. And I used to be obsessed with eating mealworms and crickets, as well. And I would go to the bug zoo every weekend and correct the tour guide because as a seven year old, I clearly knew more than them.

Ooh this is working. Bugs. No, no, no, no, not bugs, bones, bones.

Oh, I like we just did insects. Bones, bones makes me think of my fascination with just collecting bones since I was a kid. Whenever I saw them on the beach washed up, I just thought it was the most fascinating thing. And to think that this helped carry the structure of a living animal was just fascinating to me. And so now, especially after my trip to the Arctic, I was able to take back some bones and skulls that I found of like seals and you know, things, foxes, things like that. But yes, I just think they're fascinating and very, very cool.

So next time I find a bone, I need to put it in the post and send it to you.

If it's remarkable, yes, I would love that.

Okay, I'll try. Wildlife.

Wildlife reminds me of growing up, I wasn't allowed to watch most conventional TV channels at all, except for the Nature Channel and watching nature documentaries, which is where I think my fascination with just exploring the world and seeing all the different kinds of animals and insects and birds and everything that lived around us. And that was completely different everywhere. It was just fascinating. And I obviously have a big passion for helping these... helping wildlife survive in their natural environments, which has been so affected due to global warming. So yes, it's a complicated thing. But I think in an alternative life, I'd love to just be in a forest and film and study wildlife.

In Canada?

I would love to actually in Canada in the Arctic, but also all around the world. Yeah.

Next word, archaeology.

Archaeology also reminds me when I was growing up, I wanted to be a palaeontologist or an archaeologist. Until I found out, I think being in archaeology is one of the lowest unemployment, sorry the highest unemployment rates ever. So I was like, okay, maybe not. But I just think sitting over a piece of dust or dirt in some random country and digging up bones very slowly, meticulously sounds like something I would love to do, especially since I have a passion for cleaning and organising. So I feel like digging up bones, I would actually find very satisfying and peaceful. But yeah, I think it's fascinating to uncover history and see who has lived before us and what kinds of lives they had. All of that is just so fascinating.

Black and white films.

Black and white films. I was raised on silent films. Well, my first film actually was a silent film. It was Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky and I became so obsessed with the knight, Alexander Nevsky, that I dressed up as him for Halloween, which was an interesting choice for my kindergarten costume because nobody knew who I was. But yes, and I've always just loved Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, 1930s musicals, pre code films, all these things, and it's such a huge influence on my life. You can see behind me lots of photos of dead people that I love. But yeah, I really credit, silent film and sound film, you know, until the 1970s, or 80s, of really shaping who I am and how I carry myself and who I aspire to be.

Tell me more there — black and white films. What's the attraction of silent black and white films over colourful speaking films?

I think silent films, if you really sit down without your phone and you watch a Charlie Chaplin film, like The Kid, or City Lights or The Circus, I personally get moved to tears watching these films. I don't know if I can explain why. But there's something so simplistically beautiful in the storytelling and the fact that it is told through just actions and emotions you see on someone's face and the occasional title card with text on it, of what they're talking about. And it was really the first time people were really telling stories through moving image. So there was all this room to experiment within the constraints that they had, which was no sound. And it's just beautiful. And also Charlie Chaplin scores accompanying the music are just breathtakingly, again, beautiful. Sorry, my adjectives this morning are not on fire. And I think there's just something so lost about that era that we just don't really have any more. And the idea of not having any technology and just calling someone when we need to call someone and no computers, nothing. So perhaps there's some nostalgia interwrapped with that. But I think the stories particularly that Charlie Chaplin told, and Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd's characters were equally different. Charlie Chaplin's character of the tramp really was so resilient, and always so inventive, of trying to find ways to fix a problem when something occurred in his life that caused discomfort or he saw someone else struggling. And so perhaps in some ways, Charlie Chaplin's inventiveness could have inspired me in my own creating as well, which is something I just thought of. Never thought about it like that. But it is true.

It's true. The next word is entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur, very interesting word, at least in my life, because I feel like when I was still finding out my identity, and who I was, right around 17 and 18 years old, I really got swept up with this sort of young entrepreneur movement, and how cool it was to be one and having your own company and like hopefully having a startup and all of that. And I still think it's really fascinating. And a lot of my friends do embark in that role. But I discovered after a few experiences, that perhaps being just an entrepreneur was not for me. And I think I am more of an inventor, who is someone who has an idea and makes it into something physical in front of them, and they're lucky to make some money off of it. And then an entrepreneur takes these physical prototypes and makes them marketable and earns much more money, usually than an inventor. But you know, I've had a lot of experiences where people have tried to take advantage of me in the business world, which also kind of turned me off from it. I'm sure one day in the future, I'll kind of embark more seriously into that world. But for now, I really just do enjoy the creative part of making an idea.

So all of those bugs and bones and films, what was the thread? What's the common...is there a common thread? Does it matter if there is one or not? You used an expression to me once of a renaissance woman. What did you mean when you used it?

I like the term renaissance woman, or man or whomever to refer to kind of a large percentage, and I think a growing percentage of people my age, in their 20s and younger, which is that we're going to have all these different skills in all these different areas of art and science. And we may only be like an expert in one of two of them. But we are also going to become okay with the fact that we have all these different skills in different areas. And we're not like the best at it. But we're, you know, functional, we're mediocre at all these skills. And I really think that the best inventions happen when we bring together all these different areas of our lives and see how we can uniquely combine them to create something really quite novel. And so every renaissance man or woman is someone who has many talents, a jack of all trades, and that's kind of how I see myself. I have all these different interests. And I remember when I was choosing my university degree in grade 12, I wanted a degree where I could like specialise and study in like two or four different areas because I had so many different interests, but it was very difficult to find a programme that would really fit my interests in both the arts and sciences in, because usually you would go study the sciences, or you would go study the arts, and you couldn't really combine them in an interesting way, which is why something like NYU's` Gallatin, from what I hear, they allow you to choose two different degree, specialty areas that could be completely different. And if I had gotten into that university, I would have gone there. But instead, I settled with doing an English Literature degree, which let me learn about storytelling and film, which is my other main passion. And then outside of school, I balanced having my own company to getting patents, speaking, inventing, and all of that.

Yes, it will be the characteristic of your generation wouldn't it, renaissance?

I think so for sure.

An's has been a hugely successful inventor from the age of 15. And it's fascinating to discover the roots of this being in refusing to choose between bugs, and bones, arts and sciences, and instead choosing to combine things. And as a result, to invent things, some extraordinary things, too. Her refusal to choose is very interesting, and it is very much about refusing to choose between things in the outside world.

Let's move on to Fatima now, because her refusal to choose is a very different form. It's a refusal to, to choose between two different versions of herself. It's much more an internal world. Her refusal to regard her own identity as binary and to combine the identities within herself.

How do you combine all the different versions of you inside yourself without getting confused?

Very good question Julia. Because I am Belgian. I have Belgian nationality. But I also have the Moroccan nationality. I am European, but I am also African. I am a mom, I am doctor in social political sciences, but I am also a social entrepreneur, active in the grassroots and it's very different kind of identity. So you can combine your multiple identities as a richness, as an added value. And not as as something very heavy to have. And I am so proud to have the headscarf, to have my earrings.

Earrings, your beautiful dangling, dangling beautiful earrings.

Yes. And so yes. So and I think that when you are proud of what you are, people, they feel this energy, they feel this promise, and you can inspire the other woman, I hope.

How long did it take you to realise this?

I love your question, Julia. Because it's so, so, so relevant, so interesting, because it was not easy to combine all of this because when I was a teenager, it was very difficult and it was like something who --

grinding, grinding and falling apart. Something that was tearing you apart? Yeah.

Yes. So I was looking for my who I am, how to combine my multiple identities. And it takes time. I read lot of book I, I was like, you know, a traveller in different philosophy, religions to to understand how can I be myself, even if I have multiple identities? And I don't know if you know, the book of Paulo, Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, and actually in his book, the man travelled all around the world and the treasure was close to him.

Why did that speak to you? Because what, you went everywhere looking for answers and where actually was the answer?

Because I find it in my in the culture of my parents and grandparents. And I understand that for me, Islam can be also — because I am Muslim, a Muslim woman — and Islam can also be universal, and the principle of Islam, I can find the principle of Islam in Buddhism, in Catholicism, in atheism, because this principle is serenity, peace, is justice, is solidarity, is love. And to combine the Moroccan part of my identity, and Belgian part of my identity is possible. So I can eat a chocolate with a Moroccan tea, and it's very delicious. And when I understand that all of my identity, it's possible to combine, I feel a kind of peace in my heart. And what I really want is that the new generation that can feel this, they can feel this possibility to not deny one of the part of my identity to be where I am, and is the gender, because in Belgium and France, you have a politics of assimilation. And this kind of politics of assimilation is very violent, because they told you, you don't speak Arabic, or Chech or Spanish, you have to speak French, you need to be in this French culture. And it's very dangerous. So it's another climate, when you see the French political debate with Marine LePen. And she said, if I am elected, woman with a headscarf is forbidden in the streets, in the public space. So you know that our reality, our social political context, can also have an influence with our identity. So that when you, when you can be proud of this, it's happiness, it's happiness, because, for example, my mom has never been to school. Never. And my mom. And I am doctor since a few months. And it was my mom who encourages me to go to school, to study at school. And so my mom was my model ever if she was never been schooled, and I understand that the —

the achievement

the achievement is not related to studies, or money, or material things, but it's related on values, emancipation, freedom, autonomy, and to be powerful as a woman. My mum, wanted for me, what she hasn't had is possibility to make my own choice for my life. So why not?

And it's a very different way of looking at renaissance. It's the realisation that renaissance could be inside yourself as well as external. I think sometimes I think that you see young women struggling with the different versions of themselves. And you think, in the end, you will achieve a renaissance state of realising that the many forms of you are your strengths, but you feel that you want to help them get to that point much quicker.

Yes, and what I what I missed, to my life, it was some role model, who can give me maybe some keys to understand that even if you have some contradictions, paradox, you have to accept it, and to let it go. And to say it's okay. But for me letting go is not just passive, it's also to give some priorities and to take the choice that what people think about me, I don't care. So when you have some people who want to simplify your indentity —

to close you down.

Yes, just in one identity. You don't care. So you can't think what you think I am who I am. And I am brilliant. I am beautiful. I am powerful. And I go ahead with people who want to go ahead with me and for me...to give priority to the voice which is inside you. And when you just listen to your intuition, you are in a good way. And the problem as a woman, as a woman from minority, you have a lot of social pressure from the majority, but also from your community, and it's not always easy because you cannot enter to a category. So when you accept that you are different, you are multipolar. And for me, it's very new because now I say stop with a syndrome of imposter syndrome. For many years I have studied to have legitimacy. For many years, I have to always smile and always to be perfect to be — no I said no. I am now 40 years old. I will stop. I am who I am, and I am really... that I am also part of my story, my struggles, my my difficulties also to be who who I am, I am arrive, who I have arrived now.

I must tell you I how I met Fatima. I heard about this crazy woman who was renaming the streets of Brussels. And I absolutely had to meet her. And and when I did, I met a woman whose proposition was pretty straightforward. You cannot empower the women of Brussels, you cannot say that the civic space in the middle of the great city of Brussels should be a place where women are. You couldn't do that if the city's main streets were all named after men. So Fatima had taken on the task with a lot of other women in Brussels to rename many of the streets after great women. So An and Fatima are both renaissance leaders, it seems to me and I do slightly wonder if the expression will stick and become one of the key expressions of the expedition even before we start off.

Renaissance women seem to be women of many talents and many areas of knowledge who connect up worlds, and who connect up themselves inside, and who say stop, stop when they're asked to choose. And that sounds pretty good to me.

So 10 days to go, I am consumed by impostor syndrome. Who am I to lead such a group of women? 10 days to go, I'm gonna have to overcome my imposter syndrome somehow.

Keep sending messages, keep giving this podcast five stars, keep giving reviews. Please, please, please. Two reasons: one, because your reviews will catapult the podcast into the big time. And second reason is that reading them does help me keep impostor syndrome at bay.

Thank you for listening to the podcast. Your voice and perspectives are crucial to the success of the expedition and we would love you to become a partner to women emerging. You can do this by subscribing to this podcast and joining the Women Emerging group on LinkedIn.