Caroline Mason, CEO Esmee Fairbairn

I call it a slice of heaven. In any situation, you focus on the slice of heaven, the thing that’s really fantastic or good. Sometimes it is only a tiny piece and you really have to hold onto it…but there is always something positive or good in a situation…that’s the thing I take away, always.

The proudest moment of my life? I am hoping it is still to come.

I was working in a couple of very hard-core financial services organisations, on trading floors, and the atmosphere was really nasty actually. And I remember two incidents where I thought this is so unpleasant and what on earth am I doing, why do I feel this a good way to spend eight hours a day?

I had already started to realise that what I was doing was at odds with my personal life, so my personal and professional life were diverging. I fundamentally don’t believe in exclusivity and I realised the whole world I was in was about exclusivity versus inclusivity. All my good friends didn’t work in the city. I was in a world that I bore no relation to.

When you are unhappy, you are unhappy at home, unhappy with your partner and your children and it all becomes quite stressful. My family has always been the most important thing to me so why would I do something that was making my family unhappy. It’s not worth it, just not worth it.

We seem to be able to solve these incredibly complex, technical problems, but it’s the simple, basic ones thatwe can’t seem to tackle. If this is a point in time for disruption, we have an opportunity to makesure that disruption happens in the right way and doesn’t just reinforce a quicker and smarter way of carrying on the damage.

Caroline Mason, CEO Esmee Fairbairn