How can human kindness be combined with business? That is what Mary Portas asked herself. Portas was a board member at the British luxury department store chain Harvey Nichols. As she rose through the retail ranks in the late 1980s and 90s, she learned to put profit first and people second.
With her own advisory company, she wanted to do the opposite: put people first. She wanted to restructure the Portas agency around values allowing everyone to be as authentic as possible at work. At that point, Portas realised that kindness is not a weakness but a strength: a foundation for a company to grow. And the companies that organise around this way of doing business would be the winners, she says in a TEDx Talk:
Mary Portas' BBC series "Mary Queen of Shops" aired in 2007. Her successful podcast series include "Beautiful Misfits" and the business podcast "The Kindness Economy". Portas is the author of "Rebuild: How to thrive in the new Kindness Economy (2021)" – and a speaker at the 73rd International Retail Summit.