Resilience is rarely built in comfort zones. Suzanne Heywood – COO of Exor Group and Chair of CNH Industrial and Iveco Group ...
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0:00She chairs CNH Industrial and ICO Group, sits on the boards of The Economist and Christian Louboutin, and wrote bestsellers like What Does Jeremy Think?
Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for your attention. I can introduce you to our special guest tonight, Suzanne Heywood, Baroness Heywood of Whiteall, a renowned British business leader and author. She chairs CNH Industrial and ICO Group, sits on the boards of The Economist and Christian Louboutin, and wrote bestsellers like What Does Jeremy Think? and Wavewalker: Breaking Free. Please welcome Suzanne Heywood.
Although the Secretary of State asked people to move, we do not. It's too dangerous. We are so delighted to have you here. We invited you because of your outstanding leadership and fascinating life story. You wrote about it in that book, right?
So, you were seven when your parents left England to retrace Captain Cook's third voyage. I thought it might be a nice adventure, but reading the book was hard. Can you share your experience?
It's fantastic to be here. When I was six, my father announced over breakfast that he wanted to sail around the world following Captain Cook. My maiden name is Cook, but we're not related. We set sail when I was seven. I had mixed feelings—I left my friends and doll's house, but he promised we'd be back in three years.
It varied. We started with three crew from England to South America. My father fell out with them, so we got two new ones to cross the South Atlantic. We were sailing the wrong way around the world because Captain Cook did. That means going far south where the waves are huge and storms are terrible. We saw some whales and dolphins at first, but then it got very difficult.
Because we were following Captain Cook. Normally you sail near the equator with nicer weather and wind behind you. But he went the other way, so you have to go far south. That means enormous waves and storms. Our first leg from the UK to South America was fine, but from South America to South Africa we had huge storms. Then we set sail from South Africa across the Southern Indian Ocean, one of the most dangerous oceans.
We set sail from Cape Town with two new crew, Larry and Herby, who had never sailed before. I think Herby was Swiss—I'm not in contact anymore, he probably ran far from the sea. We ran into a huge southern ocean storm. The waves built day after day. After a week, we had 30-40 foot waves. You have to go down the wave perpendicular to avoid flipping. Then three waves combined, wind shifted, and my father saw a wave three times as high as our main mast—about 90 feet. It broke over the boat, smashed through the deck, and I was down below. I was flung against the ceiling, broke my nose, fractured my skull, and was knocked unconscious. It was a really bad accident. Every subsequent wave funneled water through the hole.
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Heywood, S. (2025, November 26). What a life of disruption reveals about business and leadership in uncertain times | Suzanne Heywood [Interview transcript]. Lucerne Dialogue. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1005580/
MLA
Suzanne Heywood. "What a life of disruption reveals about business and leadership in uncertain times | Suzanne Heywood." Lucerne Dialogue, 26 Nov. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1005580/.
BibTeX
@misc{heywood2025_1005580,
author = {Suzanne Heywood},
title = {What a life of disruption reveals about business and leadership in uncertain times | Suzanne Heywood},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Lucerne Dialogue. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {nov},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1005580/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
