The hardest days in leadership rarely look like what you expect: they don’t announce themselves. They arrive in the middle of an ordinary morning and ask you to become someone you weren’t quite sure you were yet.
Mine came in September 2007. I was Marketing Director for The Body Shop in Asia, based in Singapore, when I received the news that Anita Roddick–the brand’s founder–had passed away suddenly.
I remember the stillness of that moment before everything accelerated.
The Body Shop was not a typical corporate brand. It was a movement built around one woman’s conviction that business could be a force for good. Anita wasn’t a figurehead in the traditional sense – she was the moral compass. Franchise owners across Asia had personal relationships with her. They had built their businesses around her values, her voice, and her vision. When she died, what the organization lost was far greater than a founder. It lost its north star.
I was, for all practical purposes, alone. Our communications manager was on holiday. Most of the senior leadership team was in Japan–and most Singapore phones were incompatible with Japanese mobile networks, meaning the moment they landed, they were unreachable. Our UK head office was several time zones away. And so, with my usual sounding board of colleagues unavailable to weigh in, I was effectively leading crisis communications, franchisee reassurance, and internal response on my own.
The grief was compounded by the fact that Anita’s death came only 18 months after The Body Shop had been acquired by a major global industry player; a transition that had already unsettled parts of the franchise community. Her passing intensified emotions that were already raw: pride in what the brand stood for, unease about ownership, and fear that without her voice, its values could drift.
There was pressure, in those first hours, to default to a controlled corporate response. Something polished and careful. But I knew instinctively that would be wrong: franchisees weren’t loyal to a product range or a supply chain, they were loyal to a purpose. Any sense of evasion or over-management would erode trust faster than the crisis itself.
So I made a different choice. I slowed down. I chose words carefully. I communicated directly with franchise partners–not as a corporation, but human to human. I acknowledged the loss honestly, without pretending to have answers I didn’t yet have. I tried to hold space for the grief rather than manage it away.
What I learned in those hours is something I’ve carried with me ever since: the hardest moments demand humanity before strategy. Trust isn’t built on certainty–it’s built on honesty. And in a values-driven business, emotion isn’t something to be smoothed over. It needs to be recognized, named, and respected.
The turn came when I stopped trying to reassure people and started listening instead. Franchisees began to articulate something remarkable: that without Anita’s voice, they would carry her values even more deliberately at a local level. The conversation shifted from fear of loss to a shared sense of responsibility for legacy.
If I could tell my 2007 self anything, it would be this: you don’t need perfect answers to be a credible leader. Values under pressure are what define a business. And in moments of uncertainty, how you show up will be remembered long after the decision itself.
That experience shaped everything about how I approach leadership now, particularly the importance of working for organizations where purpose isn’t a marketing line, but a genuine operating principle.
It’s a large part of what drew me to Specsavers. This is a business built on the belief that access to affordable, quality eyecare is a right, not a privilege–and that belief isn’t abstract. You feel it in the franchise model, in the relationships between partners and their communities, in the way people talk about why they joined the business.
Taking on the Managing Director role for Specsavers in Canada has felt like a natural extension of that. B.C. was Specsavers’ proof of concept in this country–the market where the brand first tested its conviction to bring accessible and affordable eyewear and eyecare to Canadians. That instinct was right, and the growth since has been remarkable. But there’s still a significant chapter ahead, and building it here, in the market where the Canadian story began, feels like a privilege.
What 2007 taught me is that leadership is ultimately about stewardship–protecting what matters through change and earning the trust of the people around you one honest moment at a time. I carry that into this role every day.
