Leadership Lens: Carolyn Esser
In 2024, before joining forces with Taylor Bennett to create Taylor Birchwood, Birchwood Knight celebrated its 15th birthday. To mark the occasion, Wayne Reynolds conducted interviews with a wide range of highly accomplished corporate affairs leaders about their experience and views of the function. This interview is with Carolyn Esser who leads corporate affairs at Darktrace.
Bio
Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Darktrace (current)
Deputy Director, Europe, Middle East and East Asia Communications, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2013 to 2022)
Communications Director, CGI Logica (2005 to 2013)
What advice would you give to yourself 15 years ago?
Take more of an interest in understanding people and what motivates them. By leaning into the humanity of what we do in corporate affairs you are more likely to change hearts and minds. 15 years ago, I was probably too focused on showing I could deliver good work from start to finish, on driving inputs and execution, but it’s outcomes that really count. Try and work with the very best people so that you’re learning excellence from the beginning.
How has corporate affairs changed over the last 15 years, and what do you expect next?
We’ve seen huge social evolution over the past 15 years, most of which has been a good thing. This has created a more complex stakeholder landscape and a much wider range of communications channels requiring more thought to reach our key audiences. What next? It’s possible that with the proliferation of channels and democratisation of ‘news’ and content that we’ll see a shift towards quality over quantity, at least I hope so, as people get frustrated by a plethora of crap content. And technology, specifically AI, will begin to help corporate affairs teams to analyse more data and drive more of an analytical approach to what we do, putting us in a stronger position to articulate our value around the executive table. However, what we’ve learnt at Darktrace and what I believe is very relevant also for our profession is that the relationship between AI and humans is fundamental – how they interact for impact is where you find value.
What three skills does a modern-day corporate affairs director need? And if you could pick only one, which would it be and why?
High EQ is number one. The ability to read people and their motivations can be a superpower. I’d add to that the ability to influence others. Corporate affairs has very few ‘hard’ levers of power and often has one of the smallest teams and budgets around the leadership table, with imperfect KPIs. Corporate affairs’ ability to add value and make stuff happen, or equally important, stop things from seeing the light of day, matters – you can only do that with excellent powers of influence and persuasion. Finally, it’s the ability to successfully spot and then triage opportunities and threats by working with a wide range of colleagues inside and outside of your organisation to make judgement calls on their impact on your business where our function drives greatest value.
What do you love about the job?
I love being at the heart of the storm, whether good or bad, and advising on and driving how we shape perceptions of our business as we’re going through periods of significant change. In my experience, every spike moment is an opportunity to shape how people feel about your business, even if that’s something seemingly bad, like a short seller stack (we’ve had some of those!)
If you didn’t work in corporate affairs, what would you do instead?
I’d love to create things, a physical product. Perhaps furniture or ceramics.
What was the last book you read?
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsoliver. It’s about a Baptist family who move from the US to the Belgian Congo as it was then in the 1960s. It’s a story of the impact of patriarchy, colonialism and the Cold War on ordinary lives. As someone who grew up in South Africa, it gave me an insight into central Africa which I never had before.
What would be your specialist subject on Mastermind?
Parenting! My husband and I have three (mostly!) wonderful children and although I don’t claim to be anything close to the world’s best parent, I think I’ve learnt a lot in the last 15 years – not just about parenting but about myself too. I wish I’d known when I started out with it all what I know now!
What do you enjoy doing away from the office?
The outdoors and being active. I recently took up tennis again after many years away from the court and am absolutely loving it.
If you enjoyed this you may also like Wayne’s interviews with:
Caitlin Hayden, Group Communications Director at BAE Systems
Greg Dawson, Group Director of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability at DS Smith
Louise Shield, Group Director of Corporate Affairs and Branding at M&G plc
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17th September 2024