Our Founder and CEO

I grew up in London, a huge multi-cultural metropolis where ethnicity and gender were never barriers. My all-girls state high school were proud of consistently achieving better grades than the neighbouring all-boys school. Having only two daughters never stopped my dad from taking us to play football in the park in a classic girls versus boys challenge, where we would win as many times as we would lose. With rose-tinted exaggeration, in his mind, we always won. My parents were proud to be British, and proud of their Egyptian heritage where women had equal education and employment rights.

At the age of eight I invested my pocket money in Greenpeace membership. Environmental activism was a concept too far for my dad. Despite that, he didn't stop me. He was focused on making money. His success measured in material things. He started travelling more, working away from home for longer durations. My mum taught me the truth behind success. My mum still is the strongest, most capable and most resourceful person I have ever met in my life. What I learned from her was the greatest gift and the reason I succeeded and failed. She taught me to never stop until I knew I had applied myself to the maximum. This always involved coupling rational problem-solving with sheer hard graft. Success was when you gave it your best thinking and your best action, the result was always something spectacular.

My generation rebelled, ingrained in our identity - that's what we did! We rebelled against hypocrisy and exploitation. We believed we deserved to be heard, we believed in environmental responsibility and our civil rights. We believed that the non-conformity of our expression through music and the arts would generate an uprising that would create positive impact. From the rise of super clubs to music festivals and Notting Hill Carnival, we demonstrated humanity through creative expression. We experienced kinship with strangers.

It wasn't enough. Now we, as a global community, deal with the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic, we have come face to face with mass devastation. Not caused by the virus, but designed, derived and constructed by people. People who are still operating with the same hypocrisy, manipulation, corruption and toxicity that we fought against and rebelled against in my youth.

Fueled by my rebellious spirit, elevated by my education and accelerated by a lifetime of work experience, Purposeful Innovators is the result of me applying my best thinking along with my hardest graft. While I give thanks to my mum, I also thank those who behaved poorly towards me and those who were on the receiving end of my poor behaviour.

In addition, I am grateful to my immediate family, friends and my founding Purposeful Innovators, for their love and faith in me.

 

Rania Laing

Founder and CEO