Steering a New World Order

Leadership consultant and agent of change Karen Lee Downes believes it is time for leaders and organisations to tap into their feminine intelligence

When it comes to conscious leadership and social en-trepreneurship, Karen Lee Downes literally wrote the book. Not only did she co-found and build an $8.5 million alternative healthcare enterprise in Australia, she went on to support five successful international startups, and is now a leadership consultant designing development programmes in global corporates such as Molton Brown, Intel, BP, Unilever and Virgin Atlantic among several others.

She is also founder and managing director of FemmeQ, an international movement based out of Costa Rica committed to creating new paradigms of thinking and acting in core sectors of society using feminine intelligence. Shuttling between UK, USA and Costa Rica, Karen supports civil-society organisations in India and Bangladesh to transform entrenched cultural norms. A serious road cyclist who competed in the World Masters, Karen has authored six books that have sold over half a million copies.

In 2012, Karen launched The Flourish Initiative where she brings her expertise and hands-on experience to transform outdated organisational systems into those that enable human flourishing and business prosperity. We asked her to share her top tips for organisations and leaders.

What are the top qualities that business leaders need to develop (and especially women leaders) so that they can build sustainable and profitable enterprises?