So what is it that strikes Ransom about the leaders she’s come to know and interview? Speaking to Women’s Agenda, she says that it’s often a sense of self-knowing, resilience, and a commitment to keep moving forward. 

“I would describe it as: they've clearly done the work themselves,” Ransom says. “They know what they stand for. They know what they believe in. There's a real, grounded conviction that's quite striking.”

“One of the things that equally impresses you is these people are the first to demonstrate a curiosity, or be able to tell you what they're working on next. So it's not like they've arrived, but there's this very clear sense of, ‘I have done the work on myself, and I continue to do the work on myself’.”

In the past 12 months in particular, Ransom says the women leaders she’s interviewed have all been prepared to push through adversity to lead in challenging circumstances. 

“When I think about Liz Cheney, Jacinda Ardern, or Simone Biles… the extraordinary resilience that has needed to be demonstrated,” Ransom says. “[They have that] conviction that you need and that strong sense of whatever you're doing or chasing after, has to be worth it in order to overcome that.”

So how did Ransom get here?

The founder and CEO of Emergent Global spent her early professional years building skills and connections in the not-for-profit sector. Ransom always had a deep interest in gender equality and focused her energy into making a difference where she could.

“I went to Kenya to help build a microfinance project. I was involved in starting United Nations Women in Australia. For a time, I was the world's youngest Rotary president,” Ransom shares. 

“With all these different opportunities, people would often come up and say, ‘Hey, can you come and talk to us about how you [Young UN Women] got young men interested in gender equality?’, or ‘how did you [G20 Youth Summit] manage to get world leaders to take young people seriously?’

It marked the beginning of Ransom’s endeavours as a sought-after speaker and emcee, and led her from the not-for-profit sector into the business world. From there, people really started to take notice. 

“I was fortunate enough to speak alongside Sir Richard Branson when he came to Australia,” Ransom says. “He came up to me after our conversation together, he said, ‘I love the way your brain joins dots and how you ask questions. Would you come to London and host Virgin Disruptors for me?’ I might have never found my way into interviewing and hosting were it not for Richard.”

When Barack Obama came to Australia, he specifically asked for Ransom to be the one to interview him. She had previously run into the now former US President through her work at the G20 Youth Summit.

Now, Ransom, a Harvard Kennedy School graduate, is a best-selling author and business leader and spends much of her time advising Fortune 500 companies, executive teams, government and brands on how to build future-ready and diverse teams and lead through complexity. 

Ransom has been an entrepreneur for the better part of a decade now and says what she loves about being a business owner is the sense of accountability it brings. 

“The buck stops with you [when you’re a founder],” Ransom says. “There's no one else's door to go knock on, and you're responsible for kind of signing off for pay checks.”

“[From a] work ethic standpoint, there's a pressure that I enjoy about that accountability. It means you have to be very thoughtful about how you make sure you recover and switch off.”

How founders can protect their mental health

Ransom is passionate about founder mental health, and says it is a discussion that needs to be brought to the forefront of leadership discussions. 

“We need to be having more of a conversation about it,” Ransom says, “of founders that have burned themselves out at various points of the journey because of how hard they’ve worked and the ways it can creep in when it’s your own endeavour."

Ransom says learning to manage her energy rather than her time has been game-changing for her own mental health. 

“It’s a simple idea, but quite a profound one and quite a significant change from what we all got schooled in - the art of time management,” she says. 

“What comes with that idea of managing your energy, is understanding where you source your energy from and fiercely protecting it.”

For Ransom, her essential building blocks for energy are ensuring she makes time for exercise, as well as tracking the data around how she recovers. 

“It's really easy to tell yourself that the minimal amount of sleep that you got is perfectly fine, or that you weren't all that stressed about the week that you just went through with all those deadlines,” Ransom says.

“Having the objective data that I've got to look at on a daily basis has been surprisingly powerful for me.”

So what’s on the horizon for Ransom in 2025? She’s currently working on her second book — a follow up to her debut The Leading Edge — looking at the future of leadership in the disruptive age of AI. 

“I'm watching businesses and individuals grapple with, what does it look like to make yourself irreplaceable in this automated age? What do I focus on? What is a competitive advantage?” Ransom explains. 

It involves a lot of research and thought, but Ransom says it’s clear the human side of leadership will remain as important as ever. 

This article was written in partnership with and originally published by Women's Agenda.