Learning to Love Change with Ruda and her special guests
The more life changes, the more change means learning to love it, as Ruda Landman discovers on her special podcast series for BrightRock.
“I have no work-life balance, and I gave up trying to have it.”
It's a striking admission from Suzanne Stevens, CEO and co-founder of BrightRock, a company whose philosophy is built around understanding, embracing, and learning to Love Change.
But as Suzanne explains to Ruda Landman, on a Ruda Talks Change podcast, relinquishing the pursuit of perfect balance does not mean neglecting the things that matter.
“I have wholeheartedly embraced being an unbalanced human being,” says Suzanne. “What matters is being fully present in whatever I am doing at the time.”
This candid conversation is part of a special series of Ruda Talks Change: The journey continues interviews, marking BrightRock’s 15th birthday.
Ruda revisits some of the people she has interviewed over the years, exploring what has changed in their lives and what those changes have taught them.
For Suzanne, the lessons began early. Moving repeatedly as a child taught her that unfamiliar situations could be difficult, but also manageable.
“One of the gifts of moving so often as a child was understanding that change is navigable, and that I can do this," she says.
That belief became central to the founding of BrightRock. The company emerged from a desire to challenge conventions in life insurance and give clients a more equal place in conversations about their money.
“The client should be able to sit as an equal across the table and have the conversation in their own language and on their own terms,” says Suzanne.
The same principle, giving people the power to understand and respond to change, underpins BrightRock's Change Exchange platform. Change, says Suzanne, is not just something that happens to us.
“How you navigate change to unlock the opportunities within it is a skill," she says, "and it is a skill we can learn.”
Her leadership philosophy follows naturally from this. “I see the role of CEO as an enabling role. Your job is to enable other people.”
As she looks towards the future, Suzanne believes in planning without becoming trapped by a plan.
“Stay within your arrow, but adapt to what comes across your path,” she says. “You cannot be completely fixed in a plan. You need to respond to the unexpected while continuing in the direction you want to travel.”
That combination of purpose and flexibility also emerges in Ruda's conversation with Angel Jones, founder and CEO of HomecomingEx, an executive search firm.
When the two first spoke in 2015, Jones was building a business around helping African professionals return home. A decade later, the emotional power of belonging remains at its heart.
“Abroad, you can make new friends," says Angel. "You can’t make old friends."
As Angel tells Ruda, coming back home is not a denial of South Africa’s problems. Her message “Don’t wait until it gets better," she says. "Come home and make it better.”
But the greatest change in Angel's life occurred in her own family, when her teenage daughter experienced severe depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
“I felt as though I was living on one planet before 12 February 2018, and on a different planet on 13 February,” she says.
The experience transformed Angel's understanding of mental health and taught her that listening can be more helpful than offering quick reassurance.
“If somebody tells you they’re in pain, acknowledge it, validate it and listen,” she says. “There’s a dark cloud, but it doesn’t define you.”
That journey brought what Angel describes as “a sudden slap of humility and empathy”. It also strengthened her belief in adaptability. She learned to keep learning, adjusting and moving forward, even when life refused to follow the expected path. “Curiosity keeps you young,” she says.
Joy, resilience and reinvention are equally prominent in Ruda's conversation with actor, singer and author Rami Chuene, who celebrated turning 50 by inviting women to share the dreams they had placed on hold.
Her “forgotten dreams” initiative reflects a realisation familiar to many parents: “We shape ourselves around our families and our children, and put so many of our own dreams on the back burner.”
Rami speaks frankly about the uncertainties of a creative career. At various points, she supplemented acting and singing with voice-over work, writing, translation, braiding hair and baking bread.
“I am always working, but I don’t always have a job,” she says. capturing the insecurity of freelancing and the resourcefulness required to survive it. “You don’t need a job in order to work.”
Rami's reflections on personal growth are just as vivid.
“When you start feeling that you have to limit yourself just so that you can fit in, that is a mistake,” she says. “You cannot stop growth. You might as well find a bigger pot instead of collecting the pieces of the one that broke.”
Above all, Rami chooses to direct her attention towards what sustains her.
“You don’t have to be happy every day, but you have to be joyous, because joy is internal,” she says. “A lot of bad things happen to me, but a whole lot of good things happen too. I choose to amplify the good.”
Across these conversations, one idea keeps returning, in different forms. Resilience does not mean preventing change or controlling every outcome. It means meeting life as it unfolds, with honesty, curiosity, adaptability and hope.
Or as Suzanne puts it: “What we do today is about building things that are bigger than ourselves. The legacy must last much longer than we do.”