Alina Addison was at the peak of her career. As Head of Trading and Execution in the Debt Fund Management Team at Rothschild & Co, she had successfully negotiated a four-day work week and been promoted to Managing Director in the same year.
She was proud of her growth and accomplishments at the firm. A member of the corporate responsibility and inclusion committees including the Women’s Network, Alina enjoyed organising various events on behalf of her colleagues and clients. “I got to host a dinner at Chateau Lafite,” Alina recalls. “And had the chance to invite Lady Rothchild to one of our Women Speakers’ seminars in the Sky Pavilion!”
A change in priority
In 2016, Alina’s personal and professional trajectory would take a sharp turn in a different direction. “The catalyst for change was my son, Dan,” Alina recalls. Around this time, Dan was diagnosed with a complex form of Autism Spectrum Disorder. She found it increasingly challenging to effectively communicate with him and struggled to find an approach to parenting that worked for them both. “Despite being able to negotiate with almost anyone as Head of Trading, there was one person I could not negotiate with: my own son. I felt we were so far apart. I felt at ground zero.”
Unwilling to accept that there were no solutions to cultivating a more fulfilling family life, Alina then began her journey towards discovering more about her son’s diagnosis. She conducted research that would help her to strengthen her relationship with her son. Alina’s studies spanned subjects such as leadership, Positive Psychology and neuroscience.
Finally, after 15 years with the firm, Alina decided to take her findings and help others.
The ADAPTAA approach
Inspired by the skills and education she’d garnered in pursuit of helping her son, Alina founded Adaptaa, an executive coaching and leadership development firm. Launched by women-led unicorn businesses, Adaptaa works with clients to identify their leadership needs and support them in making positive changes to themselves, their teams and their organisations. Through one-to-one leadership coaching, workshops and retreats, the executive coaches at Adaptaa aim to shape the modern workplace by creating leaders rather than bosses.
What differentiates a leader from a boss? “Emotional intelligence,” Alina explains. “It is a key factor in relationship-building and actually fosters high performance in the workplace.”
The impact of Covid-19 on teams and leaders
During the onset of the pandemic and the initial chaos, Alina explains, "empathy and adaptability (two of the ten Emotional Intelligence muscles) became two fundamental skills for survival for both leaders and employees.” Given the fragmented nature of many teams in the aftermath of the pandemic, these two skills have become more important than ever. Emotional intelligence, Alina insists, should be continually “cultivated and practiced by the new generation of emerging leaders” in order to thrive in what she calls the “new normal”. Emotional Intelligence skills are no longer nice to have, Alina argues, but must-haves for the leaders of the future.
As for the impact of Covid-19 on Adaptaa as a business, Alina says that, luckily, her teams were well versed in working remotely. “Our team of executive coaches were operating in the virtual world well before the pandemic, coaching our clients on Zoom all over the world.” Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly given the current climate, the pandemic accelerated Adaptaa’s growth.
Inspiring leadership of the future
Alina is enthusiastic about the future of Adaptaa.
“As Dalai Lama articulated at an MIT conference well before the pandemic, when leaders make decisions or take actions, they need to ask themselves: ‘Who benefits? Is it just themselves or a group? Is it just one group or everyone? And is it just for the present, or also for the future?’
My vision for Adaptaa is to create the audacious leaders of the future, who will create a better inner and outer world for themselves and others. Leaders who act from their minds, hearts and gut…beyond the goals or boundaries of one organisation or group and rather seek to target the greater good and heal humanity as a whole.”
An unlikely hobby as hotelier
“During my time as an investment banker with Rothschild & Co, I built a hotel, as a hobby!” Alina explains how the business venture serendipitously started with a dare with her family around the dinner table. “It took my dad one year to find a place with magnificent views over the Dracula Castle and another three years to build a hotel from the ground up! The hotel – Transylvanian Inn – is now run by my younger sister Laura”. These days, Alina takes leaders there on leadership retreats, with the latest adventure completed in September 2021.
Looking ahead
Alina’s son Dan has long dreamed of owning his own zoo. “In 2015, when he was 11, he found a zoo online in liquidation that needed rescuing in the middle of England. He obsessively created a plan to present to Dragon’s Den judges to get financing for his dream. As an investment banker this seemed an impossibility to me, so I discouraged it. Yet, in January 2022, as I am writing my own book called "The Audacity Spectrum", Dan has received his offers from universities to study zoo conservation biology next year and possibilities look closer to reality than ever.”