Recent global events have made it very clear that female leadership stands out in many ways. For International Women’s Day, we are bringing together diverse voices from female leadership around the world to share their experiences at TheMerode.

We will ask four exceptional women to give their views on female style, skills and competencies to see how society gains from those differences.

About the speakers :

It took 42.54 seconds for Elodie Ouedraogo and Olivia Borlee to race to Olympic silver in the 4x100m at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. A subsequent doping ban turned that silver into gold eight years later, underscoring the quartet’s status as national heroines. As their careers as athletes wound down, the two turned the number representing that winning performance into “42/54”, a clothing brand that embodies style, functionality and sustainable design. After five years of success, “42/54” became UNRUN, an activewear venture with the potential to become the duo’s second gold medal-winning performance.

Annelies Verlinden is Minister of the Interior and of Institutional Reform. In 2001 she graduated as Master of Law at the Catholic University of Leuven, before obtaining a degree in European Law at the Université Catholique de Louvain. After her studies, she joined the law firm DLA Piper in Belgium as Partner Public & Administrative Law. Since 2014, she was Co-Country Managing Partner in the same law firm. She has been Minister of the Interior, Institutional Reform and democratic renewal in the De Croo government since 1 October 2020.

Renowned French chef Isabelle Arpin took an unexpected route into gastronomy. After studying finance in Paris, she was helping a restauranteur friend when she discovered her vocation for food. Back in her native North, she obtained a diploma at the Dunkirk cooking school, to find herself, a few years later, in Ostend, where she remained for over 15 years. Sharing the same values as The Merode: a focus on education, helping young entrepreneurs and catalysing social change, in March 2022 she became the head chef at TheMerode’s restaurant, Ciao. Under her post,, she will mentor rising Italian talent in the culinary world, bringing emerging chefs into the Ciao Restaurant for a taste of head chef experience.

The panel talk will be moderated by Hakima Darhmouch,  a journalist from Brussels, graduated in communication. In 2014, she obtained an Executive Master in Management at Solvay Business School. She started working in radio in 1999 and joined the RTL editorial team a few months later. Journalist, deputy editor-in-chief, presenter of the most watched TV news in French-speaking Belgium for 12 years, Hakima also covers political news… In 2018, she makes an important professional turn by joining the public service. She joined the management committee of RTBF where she was in charge of the “Culture” department for over three years. In 2021, Hakima Darhmouch decided to take up new professional challenges in line with her personal aspirations. She is now a communication consultant. Since 2021, she also sits on two Boards of Directors: Bozar and the Atomium.