Anna Mulock Houwer is an accomplished business leader with over two decades of senior management and advisory experience in multinational and private equity settings in consumer goods and life sciences.
Formerly with PepsiCo and Novartis, she has founded two boutique consultancies that cater to leading global pharma and medtech companies. Currently, Anna serves on the board of the American Club of Lisbon and as a non-executive director for Just Hotter Ltd in the UK, in addition to running her own business. Passionate about transforming Health & Wellness with a focus on women, Anna seeks board roles that ideally align with this mission.
Living in Cascais, Anna has embraced her new home with enthusiasm, combining professional pursuits with a deep appreciation for the country’s culture and lifestyle. A passionate poet, Anna rediscovered her love of writing while seeking to express her feelings for her new home, which she publishes on her website loveandlisbon.com.
When she isn’t advising CEOs or attending board meetings, Anna dedicates herself to her family and advocates for women in leadership, offering mentorship and inspiration to the next generation of female leaders.
Anna: Enduring the week while waiting for the weekend has never been my approach. There is only one life, and it’s meant to be lived fully and unapologetically. Personal and professional are not separate, they are two parts of the same life, to be lived and loved in its entirety.
Simon: You have successfully navigated a high-achieving international career while maintaining a highly fulfilling personal life. Not an easy thing to do! What advice do you have for others striving to find such an elusive balance?
A: People looking at my Instagram account sometimes ask if I do any work at all, hahaha! You know Simon, I think it all comes down to mindset. As usual! Separating work life from personal life while waiting for the mythical retirement scares me. It’s something straight from the times of the Industrial Revolution, and if taken too seriously, could result in a horribly dull life. The word ‘career’ intimidates me too, by the way.
S: Did I just trigger you with my question?
A: Hahaha. It feels like the old distinctions and definitions: of work-play, professional-personal, and career-retirement have outlived their usefulness. With the 21st-century acceleration in entrepreneurship, technology, and self-directed freedom, life is so much more dynamic and fluid than before! Fragmenting it into categories feels limiting. So let’s not think smaller than we need to!
S: OK, so once the mindset is taken care of, how do you achieve the balance between the two? Do you ‘work hard, play hard’?
A: When life gets busy, it’s crucial to be intentional about how you spend your time. While I’m not sure I can keep up with the ‘work hard, play hard’ mantra anymore, I still want to make the most of my time on Earth! So, a decade ago, I started a personal exercise called ‘Life Planning in PowerPoint.’ It’s a bit nerdy, but I swear it works! I update it every year.
That December 2014, I ‘borrowed’ slides from my clients’ corporate strategy decks and applied them to my own life (I mean it quite literally, I lifted strat plan templates from my clients’ decks!). I went into full personal planning mode and have fine-tuned it ever since.
My annual roadmap, with five key ‘buckets:
Work & Inspiration
Health & Wellness
Friends & Family
Love & Intimacy
and World Citizen Lifestyle
Each bucket has goals, initiatives, and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for the year. It’s nerdy, that’s true, and I often miss my ‘annual targets’, but it does help me stay focused on my direction of travel and see the bigger picture while I make the most out of life! So, my life plan in PowerPoint enables the balancing act you asked about. I love it because it honours my dreams and connects me to my life vision. I guess corporate playbooks are good for something after all!
S: So in a nutshell?
A: In a nutshell, it’s about living intentionally, while staying connected to your life vision. The rest is a consequence. You prioritize circumstances, people, and events that bring you closer to what you want. Life is about embracing both work and play as a whole and allowing it to mix in ways that empower us rather than box us in.
By the way, my life planning polarises a lot, haha. Some people love it and beg me to share my templates. Others believe there’s a danger of losing spontaneity if they plan. I disagree, I’m on the (very) far end of spontaneous!
S: Anna, in your work you are the definition of ‘international’. What are the key lessons you’ve learned from your highly international career?
A: I am originally Polish. I lived in several countries before coming to Portugal, which I hope is my destination. I do speak five languages fluently (working to add Portuguese as number six). I am married to a Dutchman who was born in Japan and grew up in Hong Kong. My in-laws live in France. My children were born in Brussels and find the concept of nationality hard to decide. When asked about it, they typically answer ‘We are from Brussels’. We speak English at home.
I have always had tons of international exposure and de facto global access through my work. That’s what I always wanted, and I created that. After a series of international jobs with PepsiCo and Novartis, I set up my shop and jokingly called it the smallest global micro-business. Ever since I have worked with corporate and private equity clients in life sciences around the world. Before the pandemic, I was an avid commuter on both sides of the Atlantic, averaging 6-10 trips per year. This was in addition to running workshops with my clients from Taipei to São Paulo and everywhere in between.
S: Lessons learned?
A: Hmmm, yes:
Lesson 1: It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so better pace yourself. Not something I’m good at even today. I run ambitiously and intensely for a while and need a lot of maintenance afterwards. Creating a sustainable work environment has been a priority.
Lesson 2: You create your reality. It’s uncanny how true it is. I have been privileged to work independently for many years. Creating my reality and re-creating it, again and again, has been second nature and quite simply a must.
Lesson 3: They all cook just with water (Die kochen auch nur mit Wasser). It’s a German saying that points to the essential sameness of humans, despite national, social, and other differences. We are inherently the same, drops in the same ocean, aiming for similar things in life, loving, suffering, and striving in the same way. So don’t get impressed or intimidated. Love people. Love your clients. Love your business. Be kind and empathetic to others because they are us.
