Claire Holden is passionate about people and helping them reinvent how they lead themselves, their teams & their businesses to maximize talent, leverage strengths & embrace opportunities.
With a career spanning more than 20 years, and two continents. Consulting to large multinationals, medium sized companies and small start up’s. She’s passionate about offering up-to-date, bespoke solutions and strategies that allow people to perform at their best and add maximum value to their organisations.
Claire has worked with EDF Energy, Liberty, Santam, Disney, Massmart, Toyota, and MTN among others. And has coached leaders from multiple industries across the globe.
Taryn Marcus prides herself as a devoted change agent and positive disruptor, with an enterprise perspective. She collaboratively works to create organizations where people perform better, feel engaged, deliver customer value, and have fun – all at the same time.
Taryn has a special focus on methodologies that aid individuals, teams, and organizations build mindsets, skill sets, and toolsets to make continuous reinvention a competitive advantage.
She brings almost two decades of Human Capital experience in both established and emerging markets. 15 of which have been at Executive management level for listed complex multinational (pan-African, Asia, Europe, Oceania, North American) organizations. Taryn is a registered Industrial psychologist and Harvard Business School Alumnus.
Before you read, read part one of this interview with the co-founders of Reinvent CoLab.
What’s the African country you would love to visit this year and why?
Claire: There’s so many countries I’d love to go to in Africa. One of the countries that interests me the most is Rwanda. I think they’ve got such a complicated history and have been so extraordinary in rebuilding their country and in intentionally designing it to be sustainable. And it’s been such a well-designed and intentional recovery process that I think it’s really inspiring to me.
What’s the most underrated South African food?
Claire: Asking me a tough question because I mean I heard Taryn start laughing. I am not a foodie. I have no sense of smell so I don’t know if my sense of taste is that great. Do you know what I would say, but this is much more on a global scale. I would probably say biltong. Although South Africans all love biltong, I know that as soon as you go overseas, there are a lot of people who kind of think that nothing sounds worse than dried meat. So I’d go with biltong.
How do you look after yourself in your free time?
Claire: I do a lot of running and exercising, a lot of journaling. For me, that kind of journaling is a way of being in conversation with myself and a lot of meditation. So for me, that kind of body, mind balance and feeling centered is super important. And so yeah, journaling, meditation and exercise are super important. Sleep is important too, but I’m not as good at that as I am at exercise or reflection.
What has been the most humbling moment in your journey as an entrepreneur?
Oh, that’s a hard one. For me, the humbling moments are usually when I see that I’ve really made an impact. When you say something and you can see a client’s whole perspective shift, when you know you’ve made a difference in their lives, and that is what we get paid to do. But when you see that aha moment, and you know that things are never gonna be the same for that client again, for me, it’s extraordinarily humbling to be allowed to be part of their journey in that way.
What’s one thing you would love people to know about you?
Claire: That I love asking tricky questions. So yeah, I’m passionate about questions and I especially like uncomfortable or difficult ones.
What’s the African country you would love to visit this year and why?
Taryn: So funny enough, I never thought of this till you asked the question, South Sudan and I’ll tell you why South Sudan. I’m doing some work at the moment with African Parks and I had the opportunity of watching some of the wildlife work that they’re doing in South Sudan and I was like now there’s a country I never thought I’d want to go to and like now I need to go. Like it’s just spectacular. So yeah, South Sudan is on my list all of a sudden.
Read Also: 3 Minutes with Joshua Igba, Founder of InstaDrop
What’s the most underrated South African food?
Taryn: Minimilk. It’s amazing. You can make it savory, you can make it sweet, it can be for breakfast, lunch and for supper, it’s definitely the most underrated.
How do you look after yourself in your free time?
Taryn: Exercise is definitely important to me and affording myself really good red wine.
What has been the most humbling moment in your journey as an entrepreneur?
Taryn: I think it’s those moments where you do stumble and you do fail. And I think that in what Claire was saying is knowing who you can go to, who can help you dust yourself off and try again and to see. Claire always talks about practicing the flip. How can you see the positive in what has been quite a negative experience and what are the learnings you can take from that? For me, those have probably been the most humbling moments.
What’s one thing you would love people to know about you?
Taryn: What is the one thing I want people to know about me? That I’m a positive disruptor. I know that I help people understand disruption, but I’m equally good at creating that disruption. And I’d like to think it’s for a positive outcome.
Find out more about Claire and Marcus, co-founders of Reinvent CoLab:
Watch the interview here.
