Caroline Watson

Founder of Hua Dan, a China-based social enterprise

Categories: Business, Change, China, Corporate Social Responsibility, Diversity, Europe, Leadership

Caroline is a trained actress, social entrepreneur, speaker, writer and a globally-recognised expert in the use of participatory theatre and creative, arts-based approaches for transformative learning.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Caroline first came to global attention through her founding of Hua Dan, one of China’s first and leading social enterprises. Hua Dan uses the power of participation in drama-based workshops to reveal and develop individual and community potential. Hua Dan has a particular focus on working with China’s rural-to-urban migrant workers, particularly women, who work in the manufacturing and service industries, at the heart of China’s economic boom.

In founding Hua Dan, Caroline has pioneered the importance of participation in the arts and creative education in a country that has no precedent for anything other than a hierarchical, rote-learning education model; empowered female migrants from the countryside to lead and manage the organisation through a vocational training model; and refined a sustainable hybrid non-profit/for-profit business model for arts-based learning methodologies.

Caroline has received numerous awards for her work: Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, Architect of the Future by the Waldzell Institute, Fellow of the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University, Annenberg Scholar at Principia College and Social Entrepreneur in Residence at INSEAD.

Since relocating to Europe a number of years ago, Caroline has been developing the work she did in China into a globally-replicable model for using theatre-based approaches for the empowerment of migrant, refugee and displaced populations, through Hua Dan’s sister organisation, the Scheherazade Initiatives. Caroline also offers coaching and corporate consulting services for senior executives and government leaders through her innovative Act For Impact corporate leadership programme and ground-breaking ‘higher order’ personal leadership workshops at Love Not Fear.

In partnership with colleagues from the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Arts in Society, Caroline founded the Global Arts Impact Agenda that enables business and government to unleash the power of the arts for human development. GAIA is especially focused on the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals through the arts. As part of this, Caroline is now establishing The Centre for Arts and Leadership, a cultural ‘tiers lieux’ (‘third place’) on the outskirts of Paris that brings together artists, entrepreneurs, global leaders and inspired individuals to use the arts and creativity to empower transformative leadership.

Caroline’s passion for empowering potential through creative education has also inspired her to co-found Écoles pour l’Avenir – Schools for the Future, that seeks to build a network of innovative, international schools in France.

Caroline’s remarkable Hua Dan story of setting up a social enterprise in China in the 2000s and the impact that it has had on her leadership journey and understanding of the world makes her an authoritative and inspiring writer and speaker on leadership, 21st century skills, China and the emerging world, innovation, education and schools for the future, the intersection of arts, tech and ethics, migration, social change and entrepreneurship, global governance, women’s empowerment, arts for social change and spirituality and leadership.

Caroline is a frequent writer and speaker and blogs on spirituality and transformative leadership on Huffington Post. She leads the Young Global Leaders Spirituality and Transformative Leadership Initiative and, in her spare time, also blogs about combining global entrepreneurship and parenting at Baby In A Backpack. Caroline also sits on the board of Glass Voices, an initiative to amplify women’s voices in the public sphere.

Caroline has been educated at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, INSEAD and Lancaster. She has lived and worked in China, Hong Kong, the Middle East, Mongolia, Spain, the UK, the US, India, Argentina and France. She speaks English, Mandarin, French and Spanish and now resides just outside Paris with her husband and their six children.

Women’s Empowerment: The role of feminine leadership

The empowerment of women is central to Caroline’s work and, she believes, is a key engine for growth in business and civil society. Hua Dan was built with the support of the migrant women she worked with in her first workshops, and it is through women’s leadership that she is replicating her work in other countries. Caroline combines the stories of these women and the challenges they face with her own struggles to define herself in a man’s world and shares perspectives of what it is that women bring to business, government and society. For her, empowering women is not just an objective in and of itself but is a fundamental tool to enable practical solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.

Key takeaways:

Perspectives on the challenges that women face today, such as domestic violence, tensions between work and family life, sexuality and identity
The power of feminine leadership
The role of women in bringing about change in their communities
Women and work – challenging the dominant paradigms of masculine corporate model
Women’s empowerment as a tool, not just an end in itself

Unleashing the potential of China and the emerging world

Born and brought up in Hong Kong and having lived and worked in China and Asia for over 20 years, Caroline brings unique perspectives on China’s current growth and its relevance to global leadership. She offers thoughts and perspectives on how we need to look at our relationship to China, smashes many of the myths we have about China’s rise to power, and addresses the fear-mongering about China in Western media.

Key takeaways:

Challenges and opportunities of working in China and the emerging markets
Leadership skills for navigating cultural differences
Managing the tension of local vs. global as companies globalize

The story of Caroline and the Hua Dan girls

Caroline’s key note speech focuses on her journey growing up in Hong Kong, witnessing the city state at the height of its prosperity in the 1980s through the lens of her grandfather’s business as a portrait photographer of Hong Kong’s elite society; her study of transformative theatre at university in the UK and her return to China at the age of 25 where she founded Hua Dan. She recounts the experiences of setting up China’s first and only non-profit dedicated to using theatre for social change and shares the stories of the young migrant women who helped her grow the organization. Caroline shares her perspectives on witnessing China’s growth through grassroots leadership, her knowledge and experience of working with bottom of the pyramid populations, and her vision of harnessing the arts and women’s leadership as a tool for global progress.

Key takeaways:

Inspiration and motivation to follow a dream, despite huge adversity and the threats of working in a politically hostile environment
Key insights into being an entrepreneur and doing business in China
The potential of women’s leadership at the bottom of the pyramid
The use of the arts as a tool for social change
Understanding the power of thought to effect change: love not fear

Migration, the supply chain and bottom of the pyramid populations

With the recent horrors of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, governments and corporations are beginning to wake up to the reality of global migration. Through her work with Hua Dan, and the subsequent growth of her model globally to now working with refugees and other displaced populations, Caroline has witnessed the biggest migration the world has ever known and brings to her talks her perspectives on what migration can do to build a prosperous society. She outlines the challenges and opportunities that migration poses and offers solutions for how migration can be harnessed as an asset, not a liability, whilst offering new ways of thinking about the role diaspora communities also play in their homeland. She shares her knowledge and experience of bottom-of-the-pyramid populations and how companies can both attract and develop products for this growing consumer market.

Key takeaways:

Ways to harness the potential of migrant workers in your enterprise
Insights into the role diaspora communities play in global leadership
Tools for ethical leadership across the supply chain

Arts for Transformation: Building a culture of creativity and innovation

The arts are increasingly being used as an education and training tool, especially in large corporations that seek to inspire innovation and build the ‘soft’ skills of leadership, creativity, communication and teamwork. Furthermore, culture in its broadest sense is the single most significant lens through which we negotiate global leadership issues, creating a pressing need to become competent ‘cultural empathisers’ so that we can work effectively across borders. Caroline’s background as a theatre facilitator and her work as a creative entrepreneur enables her to share the relevance of the arts to education and skills training, economic growth, personal transformation and societal change. Her spearheading of an initiative to create the Global Arts Impact Agenda to both challenge and support international institutions to achieve concrete development indicators offers new models for progress.

Key takeaways:

Knowledge on how to deliver inspirational and informative training
Understanding of the importance of ‘soft’ skills development for employees, especially in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The role of the arts in innovation
The impact of culture on global leadership
The importance of arts education in the public school system

Spirituality and leadership

Spirituality is foundational to Caroline’s entrepreneurial journey, and the concept of ‘mindful leadership’ is increasingly talked about in the C-suite and at meetings as high-profile as Davos. Caroline shares her belief that we need to find a way beyond religion to talk about the essential spiritual truths that can transform our societies and how her vision of transforming fear into love helped her to set up Hua Dan. Building on her links with the World Economic Forum, Caroline is now launching a dialogue on the role that spirituality has to play in leadership and its ability to transcend religion and politics. See https://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline- watson2/post_12704_b_11248218.html

Key takeaways:

Techniques for mindful leadership
The importance and value of taking time for spiritual growth to lead well
Inspirational role models of leaders – Gandhi, King, Mandela, Suu Kyi – and the legacies they left

Caroline provided a highly engaging, interactive workshop for our internal staff, leading discussion around our perceptions of behaviour and relationships and how we relate to others, which challenged some of our existing preconceptions. She then demonstrated how these preconceptions play out more widely in our lives (both in a professional and personal setting), using theatre as a way to introduce and communicate social change. China is developing at a rapid pace; having a strong awareness and understanding of local culture, language and social systems is key to our success as an organisation working and building relationships here. Due to her own impressive depth of knowledge of and ability to ‘navigate’ China, Caroline was able to focus discussion on how we empower others, and provided space to step back, reflect, and consider how what changes we could make to have stronger positive impact in our working environment both internally, and with those we engage externally from the local business, non-profit and government sectors. Her understanding of gender issues in China, and her passion for overcoming these, was especially impactful, and provided further opportunity to look at how we are supporting working parents in the workplace.
~ Charlotte Fisher, British Embassy Beijing

Caroline is a visionary and trailblazer in thinking about innovation around the arts and social change. I do not know anyone who has catalyzed such thought leadership around the topic. Caroline is a transformative and inspiring changemaker in every way, and her commitment to her work comes through in her speaking style. Audiences are captivated by her passion in her presentations and spoken words. Caroline will not only mobilize audiences but truly energize.”
~ Christina Bain, Babson College, USA

Caroline Watson

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