About Lindsay Levin
Lindsay is a seasoned strategist, entrepreneur, and facilitator with over two decades of experience advising leaders on navigating complexity, fostering systemic change, and acting with purpose. She began her career at Bain & Company in London and went on to found, grow and subsequently sell a number of companies. Lindsay became known for building values-driven, people-centered businesses, and in 1999 won a UK EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
In 2001, she founded Leaders’ Quest (LQ), a global social enterprise that equips leaders across business, government, and civil society to align their work with their values. The work took her to Asia, Africa, North and South America, and the Middle East, building partnerships with people from all backgrounds. In 2004 she created the LQ Foundation to provide leadership training for thousands of people in marginalized communities across China, India and parts of Africa. Today, Lindsay serves as Chair of the LQ Board.
Lindsay is also the co-founder and leader of TED Countdown, a global climate initiative launched with TED in 2020 to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. To date Countdown’s reach has surpassed 280 million viewers and listeners and helped catalyze hundreds of millions of dollars in climate philanthropy.
In 2023, she created Blue Dot Collective, as a platform for her work at the intersection of leadership, the economy, climate, and conflict. She serves as an advisor to Uniting for a Shared Future, an initiative founded by Principles for Peace to support a just and peaceful future between Israelis and Palestinians.
Lindsay brings deep international experience, a systems-thinking mindset, and a strong track record of building bridges between diverse stakeholders to drive impact. She is the author of Invisible Giants and lives in New York City with her husband, David. They have three sons.
Featured Talks
“Leadership in the Age of AI” with Paul Hudson
TED Countdown 2024
Lindsay Levin, in conversation with pharmaceutical CEO Paul Hudson, discuss how AI eliminates "unglamorous work" and speeds up operations while collaborations across competitors can dramatically boost sustainability.
“An Action Plan for Solving the Climate Crisis” with John Doerr and Ryan Panchadsaram
TED Countdown 2021
Lindsay Levin, in conversation with engineer and investor John Doerr and systems innovator Ryan Panchadsaram, lay out six big objectives that—if pursued with speed and scale—could transform society and get us to net-zero emissions by 2050.
“CompassionX: The Bridge from Cleverness to Wisdom”
TEDxExeter 2016
As we seek durable solutions to some of the most pressing issues facing us all, how do we bridge the gap between cleverness and wisdom? In this wide ranging talk, Lindsay unpacks how compassion often holds the key.
Podcast Appearances
“The Head and The Heart of Radical Leadership”
Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast, 2020
Lindsay joins hosts, UN Climate Chief Christiana Figueres, political strategist Tom Rivett-Carnac, and sustainable business consultant Paul Dickinson, to discuss her work reshaping what leadership looks like through vulnerability, listening, and looking within ourselves to find our collective humanity.
“Wise Leadership”
The Way Out Is In: The Zen Art of Living Podcast, 2021
Lindsay joins hosts, Zen Buddhist monk Brother Phap Huu and practitioner and journalist Jo Confino, to discuss wise leadership and new ways of creating change and harmony in turbulent times.
Further Reading
Invisible Giants: Changing the World One Step at a Time
Published in 2013, Invisible Giants is about leadership, choices in life and the potential in everyone to make a difference. It tells the stories of some of the remarkable people Lindsay has met, and their impact on the world.
They are individuals who have overcome a lack of education and resources to re-energise their communities, and business leaders who strive to integrate purpose alongside profit. They are female activists in slums campaigning to end the exclusion of girls from school, and environmentalists tackling the effects of industrialisation on the world's ecosystem. They are the people we meet every day, who are revisiting their life choices.
It's also the story of Lindsay's own quest to ask: "what really matters?" and to figure out where the answers can take her.