Hi ☺️👋! I’m Mica - the founder RunYouself, a pioneering AI-powered platform that helps managers develop transformational communication skills, which helps their companies develop a high-performance culture (without burnout). Here’s my story and what led to RunYourself:

My first experiences of leadership were highly authoritarian and directive. I grew up in an ex-soviet country and my first job was in investment banking. So for a long time, I thought that to lead meant to tell people what to do with a lot of authority. Luckily the following 15 years would teach me differently.

In my first role at Graze.com I found myself managing a team of data scientists and engineers (without being one). I quickly realised that telling people what to do wasn’t going to work, but I didn’t quite know how else to lead. Following that, I held various other leadership positions including a COO position. And during these years I kept wondering - how do you lead without telling people what to do? How do you lead in an enabling and empowering way rather than command-and-control … but still get stuff done at the pace that it needs to be done? How do you develop a culture of ownership, responsibility and accountability?

Years later, I stumbled upon coaching because I was interested in behaviour change. I was absolutely amazed by this different way of communicating that I had uncovered. It taught me that when someone comes to me with a challenge, I don’t need to fix it for them - I can help them solve their own challenge. I call it a super-power - the ability to catalyse critical thinking, creativity and self-awareness in someone else without telling them what to do. 

Over the past 5 years, I’ve spent thousands of hours coaching over 100 founders and leaders in tech companies. Developing the skill of coaching has absolutely transformed my personal and professional interactions. I have whole-heartedly come to believe that it is an essential skill for every leader and manager. And guess what? The research backs that up - employees who have a coach-like manager are eight times more likely to be highly engaged (source: Forrester).

The good news is that coaching isn’t rocket science. The bad news is that it requires behaviour change, which is easier said than done. And hence our mission at RunYourself is to make it easy for leaders and managers to have effective coaching conversations - both between peers, as well as managers and their team members.

Mica Vaipan

Van Leer Foundation

Building Van Leer's impact investing / mission related investing portfolio across multiple (impact) private market asset classes, with a focus on VC, PE (ed-tech, health-tech,) and real assets (social and affordable housing). Leading the end-to-end investment process (building the investment pipeline, due-diligence, investment & impact thesis, management of impact investments). Leading the development of Van Leer's strategy on ESG.

Representative, Mission Related Investing 

Director, Knowledge for Policy (a.i.)

Lead, Learning to Scale

Porticus

Porticus is a family office and philanthropic foundation with 13 local offices across the globe and 13 different thematic areas. The organisation manages the grant-giving and impact investing programmes of the Brenninkmeijer family entrepreneurs. The Strategy & Learning team was the organisation’s internal think tank (including its monitoring, evaluation & learning function).

Senior Officer, Strategy & Learning

Evercore Partners

£6bn+ in complex transactions for UK financial institutions, including:
- Scale-up of Partnership Assurance through £1.5bn IPO on the London Stock Exchange
- Sale of Bestinvest to Permira
- Sale of Chi-X Europe to BATS Global Markets (creation of nr.1 equities trading platform in Europe)

Associate, Financial Institutions Group

£3bn+ in complex transactions for UK financial institutions, including: 
- Scale-up of Towergate Insurance through £1bn refinancing (including £200m Advent investment)
- Scale-up of Jupiter Asset Management through £0.8bn IPO on the London Stock Exchange
- Bridgepoint buyout of Quilter from Morgan Stanley

Analyst, Financial Institutions Group

Lehman Brothers

- Advised leading European asset manager on the valuation & sale of its stake in an alternative asset manager 
- Advised FTSE 100 Company on annual capital review projects
- Advised private equity player on acquisition of AIG Bank Polska 
- Overviews of the banking sectors in various countries

Summer Analyst, Financial Institutions Group

Mission Related Investing Representative @ Van Leer Foundation | Impact Investing & ESG

17 years experience across investment banking, impact investing, strategic philanthropy and social innovation. I am passionate about using the power of capital to create positive societal change. As a mission related investing representative at Van Leer Foundation, I am focused on building and managing an impactful investment portfolio across (private markets) asset classes that aligns with the Foundation's mission and values. I lead the end-to-end impact investment process, from sourcing and due diligence to impact measurement and management.

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Mica Vaipan

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