This Way Forward
This Way Forward
Podcast Description
This Way Forward is a high-energy podcast where strategy gets real. In just 10 minutes, a C-suite leader walks us through one bold strategic bet: the moment they took the risk, why it wasn’t obvious, what made it hard, and how it changed the game.
Hosted by Charlie Newark-French, CEO at Cascade, each episode is a window into the minds of the people steering companies through uncertainty, complexity, and transformation. No fluff. No jargon. Just raw, strategic decision-making at the highest level.
For leaders who want to learn from the sharpest minds in business, this is the way forward.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast focuses on themes of strategic decision-making and leadership with specific topics including risk management, company transformation, and market competition. Episodes feature real-life examples, such as how Lime's CEO Wayne Ting made a pivotal decision to keep hardware in-house, emphasizing the importance of product control in achieving profitability.
This Way Forward is a high-energy podcast where strategy gets real. In just 10 minutes, a C-suite leader walks us through one bold strategic bet: the moment they took the risk, why it wasn’t obvious, what made it hard, and how it changed the game.
Hosted by Charlie Newark-French, CEO at Cascade, each episode is a window into the minds of the people steering companies through uncertainty, complexity, and transformation. No fluff. No jargon. Just raw, strategic decision-making at the highest level.
For leaders who want to learn from the sharpest minds in business, this is the way forward.
Welcome to This Way Forward, the podcast where C-suite leaders unpack the bold strategic bets that changed everything.
In this episode, Charlie Newark-French sits down with Dermot O’Gorman, CEO of WWF-Australia, to explore how one of the world’s most recognized conservation organizations made a radical bet to reinvent itself for the future.
The bold strategic bet
In 2016, WWF-Australia faced a challenge familiar to many mission-driven organizations: how to scale impact in a rapidly changing world. While others doubled down on traditional philanthropy, WWF made a bold move—redefining its role from a conservation charity to a catalyst for innovation, technology, and impact investing.
The organization embraced AI, blockchain, and blended finance to bridge the gap between philanthropy and profit, proving that purpose and performance could coexist. The shift wasn’t easy. It required cultural reinvention, new risk systems, and rethinking what it meant to deliver impact. But the bet paid off—WWF built social ventures like OpenSC, now operating in 19 countries, using blockchain and AI to verify sustainability claims across global supply chains.
In this episode:
- How WWF used future forecasting to identify three “mega trends” reshaping purpose-driven work
- Why Dermot bet on AI, blockchain, and impact investing long before they were mainstream
- The cultural and operational changes needed to drive innovation at scale
- Lessons from building ventures that blend philanthropy and investment returns
- What it takes to keep a 60-year-old global brand future-ready
👉 Subscribe to catch new episodes each month. Every conversation is under 15 minutes and laser-focused on one transformational decision that shaped the future of a company.
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