Episode 5: Christine Chow - Sustainability Leader and Passionate Horsewoman - The Importance of a Strong Core and a Light Touch

Fiftyfaces Focus - Intersections

In Christine's own words: "Horses form a person from within and foster the development of courage, humility, quickness of judgement, self-discipline, self-control and focus".
In this latest episode of our love series we revisit one of our most popular podcast guests from 2020. Christine Chow is a sustainability leader, who will assume the role of Head of Active Ownership and Managing Director at Credit Suisse Asset Management effective April 1, 2023. She has been a passionate horsewoman for many years, practicing dressage as well as a range of other activities and I wanted to capture what she loves about horses and how it informs her professional life.
What a rich conversation ensued - Christine not only meticulously nurtures her passion - she makes notes about the learnings and insights it provides her. We first speak in detail about dressage, its ingredients and how to work optimally with the horse. We speak about the importance of a strong core and a light touch and the partnership with the animal that is so collaborative and satisfying. We talk about the innate characteristics of different horses and some of their limitations and how communicating even through a different language can yield such results. There is a natural parallel here to stewardship and engagement as a light touch but strong core conviction is so important there too. There is a need to be iterative, responsive and to recognize limitations there too when dealing with companies, but equally to try to speak the same language.
We turn then to another recent trip Christine took, on an Idaho cattle drive, where we learned about regenerative agriculture and the adaptive grazing techniques that is restoring agricultural land there. Finally we hear about a corporate initiative that Christine has worked on, in which the outside interests and passions of a group of colleagues are collated in order to promote inclusion, better team building and better mutual understanding. Not unlike this podcast series in fact.