Natasja Laheij: Founding Member Profile

Introducing Natasja Laheij, Senior Finance Director at Google EMEA ! In this Founding Member interview, Natasja shares her career journey to date, what would have aided her earlier in her career and why she is passionate about supporting future female leaders.

Please outline the journey you have taken to get to this point in your career:

My career over last 30 years can be split into two halves. The first half (my formative years), were kicked off at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines as Controller for APAC, based in Singapore. This experience provided me with my finance and accounting foundations, as well as installing the international ‘bug’ in me! Next I had roles with Vodafone, Deloitte and Sony Ericsson, living in Australia, Munich and the UK, in both finance and non-finance roles.

The second half, or the last 15 years, have been Tech; EMEA and then Global Strategy & Ops for Apple, CFO for Amazon Fashion and currently CFO EMEA Google Consumer Apps. During this time I have lived in the UK, Luxembourg, and US. I joined my first Board four years ago (Vandemoortle, privately owned International food company) as well as ASOS (UK PLC online fashion) and Expect (sustainability start-up).

Aside from your career, what makes you, you?

My husband has played a key part in my life, we've known each other for 30 years or so and have gone through so many things together. Luckily, we have grown and developed in a way that I can still say that he is my best friend. Besides this best friend, I have a number of friendships I cherish and that I have had for a long time. I take inspiration from them and the amazing people they are and their journeys. My values have also been a great compass over the years (e.g. friendship, challenge, humor, autonomy, integrity) and helped me, providing an anchor in more difficult times.

What key things do your think would have supported you when you were starting out on your career?

Having more women around me that looked and sounded like me. Over my career I have had predominantly males as my co-student, colleges and bosses etc. One of the reason I joined Google was because I wanted to work for and learn from Ruth Porat (Google CFO), one of the very few females in such a big role.

Having more female role models would have speed up my decision making, made me (even more?) bold and made me more confident about my actions and myself. I have realised this quite some years ago and as a result I am very passionate about coaching and mentoring talented female (potential) leaders as well as opportunity to be part of founding groups like Potentia.

Why Potentia?

Earlier in my career one of my few female role models once said that she hoped that during her time she would see enough equality that there would be no need to say ’female’ leader. Unfortunately, 20+ years later we are still in a situation that it would take another 40+ years before there is a 40:60 split in senior roles like Boards, let alone in CEO or Senior Independent Director roles (...if not longer). I have had the privilege of a great career, if I can help and assist, inspire, advocate for other women I will!

If you are interesting in joining Potentia, please register via https://www.potentianetworking.com/register.