Difference Makers Discuss Season 5
The best career advice tends to arrive from an unlikely source. A conversation with someone you have only just met. A contact you had almost forgotten about. A question you did not expect to be asked. Season 5 of Difference Makers Discuss brings together six guests whose paths turned on exactly those moments.
Across six episodes, host Sinead Donovan explores why your next opportunity may be hiding in your weakest connection, and how a career gets shaped far more by the forks in the road than by the plan. She meets an accountant who built an audience of a million, and hears how one woman is working to raise the sights of young people who have been told to expect less. She finds out what saying “yes” can do for a career in Formula One, and asks what artificial intelligence should really be doing in the service of professionals.
The thread running through all six is a simple one. A Chartered Accountancy qualification is a starting point rather than a destination. These are people who took the training, pointed it somewhere unexpected, and made a difference when they got there.
Episodes run fortnightly on Thursdays at 6pm, from 1 October to 10 December 2026. Every episode is free to attend, and every episode is available afterwards on demand and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and other podcast networks.
Watch past episodes on demand
In this special edition of Difference Makers Discuss, recorded for the Chartered Accountants Worldwide UAE community, host Carla Wilson is joined by international tax specialist Hugo van Zyl and HR leader Sarah Brooks. Together they unpack the tax, payroll, and governance risks of letting employees work across borders, along with the practical steps every organisation should take.
Have you ever been told to keep your head down, work hard, and let your good work speak for itself? It sounds like solid advice. It’s also, according to Kingsley Aikins, pretty much the worst career guidance you can get.
What does a fourth-generation New Zealander, with a Singaporean-Chinese mum, a law degree, a Chartered Accountancy qualification, and an Irish husband have in common with the Italian government, a 2,000-strong parent community in Greenwich, and a global mission to attract foreign investment? In this episode of Difference Makers Discuss, host Sinead Donovan finds out.
What does it really mean to be an auditor? Ask Liswaniso Namatama and he’ll tell you it’s far more than ticking boxes or crunching numbers — it’s about understanding people, organisations, and the world around you.
This is a genuinely remarkable conversation, one that challenges assumptions about what accountants do, what business is for, and what’s possible when commercial discipline meets genuine social purpose.
What does it take to train for the Olympics while studying for your chartered accountancy exams, and then go on to break a world record? If you’re Catriona Jennings, the answer involves meticulous planning, hard-won resilience, and a willingness to take calculated risks, both on the track and in the boardroom.
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