You Might Also Like: Redefiners

**Marla Oates** (0:00)
Call them change makers.

**Tomas Chamorro** (0:01)
Call them rule breakers.

**Marla Oates** (0:03)
We call them redefiners.
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Redefiners. I'm Marla Oates, a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates. And once again, I'm thrilled to be joined by my terrific co-host, Chief Science Officer, Dr. Tomas Chamorro, ProMusic.

**Tomas Chamorro** (0:27)
Hi, Marla. It's great to see you again. Hello, everybody.

**Marla Oates** (0:30)
Great to see you.
Look, before we get started today, just a quick reminder to our listeners that you can find all episodes of Redefiners and Leadership Lounge on YouTube. If you're watching Redefiners, please don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. And for our audio listeners, don't forget to rate Redefiners wherever you get your podcasts. We love to see your feedback.

**Tomas Chamorro** (0:51)
So today we have a truly amazing guest, somebody who has been a board director, a CEO, somebody whose career of around 40 years spans pretty much every continent, and who also has written an amazing book. So we're in it for a treat talking about both the practicalities and also lots of ideas on leadership, particular in our current times.

**Marla Oates** (1:16)
Indeed, Tomas. And with that amount of change, she really has had to write or rewrite her own leadership playbook to lead companies through uncertainty.
In fact, I feel like this is a theme right on point. We're seeing all of our clients just face a tremendous amount of change, transformation. What are you seeing on your side of the globe?

**Tomas Chamorro** (1:36)
Absolutely, Marla. So the topic of how AI is reshaping leadership, is I think keeping every one of our clients up at night. If not, it should. So how do we need to adjust our leadership style or leadership approach to be effective in an age in which we need to manage not just humans, but humans interacting with machines? So we're going to hear a lot more about that. And I'm really looking forward to that.

**Marla Oates** (2:02)
I am as well. So Tomas, tell our listeners and viewers today who our special guest is.

**Tomas Chamorro** (2:08)
I will, Marla. So today we have the privilege of talking with June Yee Felix, the former CEO of Global Online Trading and Investment Firm, IG Group. Prior to IG Group, June held senior leadership positions at Verifone, Citibank, IBM, Chase Manhattan Bank as well. She is currently serving as a non-executive director on several boards, including Iron Mountain, Hiscox PLC and Relics.
She's also serving as a mentor in our own Russell Reynolds Associates Artemis program, where she partners with senior leaders and sees with executives to provide strategic guidance, actionable insights and leadership perspectives. So we're going to hear a lot more about that as well, Marla.

**Marla Oates** (2:52)
That's right. Well, June, welcome to Redefiners.

**June Yee Felix** (2:56)
Well, it's a real pleasure to be with you and a real privilege.

**Marla Oates** (3:00)
June, let's start with a little bit about you. Your father emigrated to Pittsburgh from China. You grew up in Pittsburgh, went to university there and I understand you majored in chemical engineering and pre-med.
How do you go from being in Pittsburgh to working in the global financial industry?

**June Yee Felix** (3:18)
Well, I have to say it was a winding path. My father came to America when he was 14 and he spoke no English. He decided to volunteer for World War II, went back to fight, then came back to university at Carnegie Institute of Technology, became an engineer and became fluent in English.
He taught me a lot about resilience and ability to change. As a Chinese girl, you follow the Chinese culture and what that means is, you choose things that are rigorous.
For me, that was chemical engineering and pre-med. Part of the reason for that is from a young age, I was really interested in making an impact. I thought that the two professions where I could do that was in leading companies and also in healing people, so therefore medicine and engineering. Anyway, I studied both. I had a chance to work in the hospital collecting blood on my senior year at 7 a.m. in the morning, and that taught me an important lesson. I did not want to be a doctor.

**Marla Oates** (4:27)
Was it the blood or the 7 a.m.?

**June Yee Felix** (4:30)
Probably both.
So I spent two summers at P&G working as an engineer on manufacturing lines, and I found out that that path was very slow. And if you're trying to get in to lead a company or an impact position, that was too slow. So I noticed that everybody that was in top management came from brand management. So I tried to get into that area. So 11 interviews later, I got the job. Ultimately, Booz Allen and Hamilton, now Strategy & Co, thought that this would be very important to have people with real operating experience, and they hired me into strategy practice of marketing intensive industries. That included some financial service firms. And that's how I landed at Chase, leading strategy for one of their divisions.