Name: It Pays to be Prepared: How to Future-Proof Your Business Strategy
Start: 2022-07-21T11:00:00+00:00Z
End: 2022-07-21T12:00:00+00:00Z
Location: The AllBright Mayfair

Want to know how to future-proof your business strategy? Of course you do. As the saying goes, fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
 
Luckily, professional futurist Leila Varley is here to give you insights into the future. During this one-hour exploration, you’ll discover that sometimes the most valuable assets aren’t the most expensive.
 
From learning what strategic foresight is, to why almost all successful companies are using it, and how to adapt the same tools and skills to your own unique business context, you’ll leave this workshop with the confidence to be able to spot risks on the horizon, identify opportunities, create beneficial new partnerships, and stay ahead of the competition.
 
Leila Varley Bio:
Solving problems, navigating the unknown, and thinking creatively and strategically about the future is Leila Varley’s bread and butter. From solopreneurs and digital nomads to UN agencies and global corporations, Leila has worked across four continents with diverse groups. She has over a decade of experience facilitating courses and workshops by blending practical learning and intellectual rigour with humour and fun.

It Pays to be Prepared: How to Future-Proof Your Business Strategy

Join us on the last Friday of the month to find inspiration, connection, and actionable insights at our Empower Hour. Led by confidence and leadership coach Julia Darlington, this virtual gathering brings together ambitious, entrepreneurial women to discuss trending topics, tackle career and business challenges, and share wisdom in a supportive environment. Each month the conversation will start with a new prompt to get you thinking, and you'll have the opportunity to share  and learn from one another. 

EMPOWER HOUR

Get ready for an unfiltered, laugh-out-loud, and empowering evening with comedian, author, and all-round badass Cally Beaton, as we celebrate the launch of her brilliantly bold new book: Namaste Motherf*ckers: A Modern Manifesto for Keeping Cool When You’re a Hot Mess.

Join us in the AllBright Lounge at Old Sessions House for an intimate fireside chat with Cally, hosted by the ever-inspiring Eleanor Mills, plus audience Q+A. From mastering the art of staying zen while life spirals to embracing your inner chaos with confidence, Cally’s sharp wit and relatable wisdom promise to leave you feeling seen, soothed, and seriously entertained.

Whether you're juggling deadlines, dodging burnout, or just trying to keep your sh*t together, this is the ultimate night out for any woman who’s done pretending it’s all perfect. Books will be available for purchase and signing on the night.



About the book

Part memoir, part stereotype-defying manifesto, Namaste Motherf*ckers is a funny, empowering, practical book that takes an irreverent look at the author's own story of radical midlife reinvention - taking her from meetings in the boardroom to becoming a stand-up comedian - thanks to a chance conversation with the late, great Joan Rivers encouraging her to make change happen.

Sharing stories and experiences from her career, alongside lessons learned from the many celebrities and experts that have guested on her hit podcast of the same name, Cally challenges at every turn the age-old narrative that women become invisible when they cease to be fertile.

It's also a book about defying the bullsh*t expectation that midlife women at best maintain (looks, career, relationships), at worst decline. With ambitious thinking and personal development takeouts from her time as a coach, Cally debunks many of the myths surrounding the female of the species and gives a fresh, funny and life-affirming look at what it means to be a middle-aged woman who is willing to take a chance, put herself out there and who is also willing to fail.



About Eleanor Mills

Eleanor Mills is the Founder of Noon.org.uk, a Speaker, Bestselling-author, Award-winning journalist (ex Editorial Director of The Sunday Times and Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine 2014-2020) - and now the UK’s premier expert on all things midlife. Her book Much More to Come: Lessons on the Mayhem and Magnificence of Midlife, published by HarperCollins in August 2024 is a Times bestseller. She founded NOON.org.uk a media platform and 50k plus community of midlifers to change the narrative around ageing; after all in the 100 year life, 50 is only halfway through. It’s noon – lunchtime – and midlife isn’t a crisis but a chrysalis when we finally get to become the people we always wanted to be. NOON runs its eponymous supportive Circles all over the UK and the US – they create a network of support and advice and are co-creating a new story about midlife and beyond particularly for women. Eleanor coined the term Queenagers to celebrate these midlife Queens coming into their power and on the threshold of a whole new chapter – the dividend of longevity (lifespans have doubled in the last 100 years).

NOON Consulting creates pioneering insights and reports into midlife; Eleanor’s recent projects include Fearless and Thriving (with HSBC) about the opportunities and barriers faced by midlife female entrepreneurs (which was featured on Woman’s Hour, in the Financial Times and Mail on Sunday).  And The Rise of the Queenager: the Secrets of Midlife Women (with Accenture). Eleanor is an in-demand keynote speaker whose talks and workshops help global corporations tackle the challenges of longevity and an ageing work force.

As one of the most high profile journalists of her generation and a top flight interviewer (she interrogated everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev to Sheryl Sandberg, David Cameron to One Direction, Theresa May to the Dalai Lama) Eleanor still writes regularly for UK newspapers and magazines and pops up as a broadcaster on TV and radio.

From 1997 to 2020 she worked for The Sunday Times as a columnist, Editor of News Review, Editorial Director of the paper,  award-winning Editor of the oldest glossy magazine on Fleet Street The Sunday Times Magazine and served as a senior executive at News Corp, inside the Succession-style bubble. Eleanor was Chair of Women in Journalism UK from 2014-2021, a Board Member of the Society of Editors and a founding trustee of Reporters Sans Frontiers.

She lives in London with her husband, has two grown up daughters and stays sane by swimming in the Hampstead ponds every day of the year.