Dame Susan Langley DBE
The Visionary
The future, and what is barely possible, reads round the next corner.
Dame Susan Langley DBE is the 697th Lord Mayor of the City of London and the first holder of the office to be styled "Lady Mayor", the third woman to take the role across more than 800 years of the institution, and the first to deliberately rename it. She is an East Ender by birth, born within the sound of Bow Bells, and a West Ham supporter, a biographical detail she names with intent, because the lineage from estate to Golden Coach is itself part of her leadership platform. Her career spans PwC (senior partnership), Lloyd's of London, and international trade leadership at the highest levels. She has held senior board roles across the financial and professional services ecosystem, and she brings rare combined experience of public and private sector leadership, a fluency that defines her year as Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor role is constitutionally a year-long ambassadorship for UK financial and professional services. In Lady Mayor Langley's hands it has been an exercise in deliberate institutional design: a Memorandum of Understanding between the mayoralty and government to outlast the annual churn of both her office and the ministerial counterparts she works with; "City Insight Days" with 86 per cent of attending young people newly considering London as a place to build their careers; sustained international travel as gateway-to-Europe ambassador; and a deliberate redirection of UK leadership energy toward Commonwealth-anchored "coalitions of the willing" as old trade architectures fray. She appeared on Off The Agenda hosted by Sir Charles Bowman. The conversation is unusually generative as source material: a sustained articulation of a fully-formed strategic vision for the City of London's next decade, grounded in specific operational programmes with measurable outcomes.
“I think if you look at the old world order, the way of trade is being... The rules of trade are being severely tested or in some instances cast aside. So I think there's an opportunity with the Commonwealth and with countries that we have deep histories with to come together with small groups with common values, shared objectives.”
“talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. I actually think that opportunity is everywhere, self-belief is not. And therefore, companies in the city need to understand what motivates certain segments of society and make sure their recruitment practices are flexible enough.”
“we have to be a bit less British about talking about them... we should talk about the ecosystem, how you can find every service you need within this square mile. We should talk about our liquidity levels, the talent, the startups, the innovation.”
Off The Agenda Season 1 (hosted by Sir Charles Bowman)
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