It was a great pleasure to have lunch last week with Dr Kriengsak Charoenwongsak at the famed Kompass Campus just outside Bangkok. With its focus on wellness and leadership, it felt an especially fitting place to begin the year discussing values and priorities at a moment when many of us are reassessing both.
Dr Kriengsak’s career spans academia, public service and nation-building. A former Member of Parliament in Thailand’s 22nd House of Assembly, he is today, among many roles, Chairman of the Nation Building Institute and a Senior Fellow at Harvard University. What has always stood out in our many conversations together is his wealth of practical experience and his great optimism about what purposeful leadership can still achieve.
Our discussion centred on his latest book, Beauty Redefined, which sets out the intellectual foundation for his Miss Wellness World paradigm. I was honoured to be asked to write a preface for the book and attempted to capture its essence in a single line: what makes this work so compelling is its central proposition that beauty, when grounded in wellness and guided by purpose, can become a tool for meaningful change.
We also spoke about the Miss Wellness World 2025 competition, held in Bangkok last October. This annual global pageant reflects Dr Kriengsak’s broader vision with great clarity and it was a particular privilege to be invited to serve as one of four international judges at an event viewed worldwide.
From the perspective of our extremely busy professional lives, these ideas may at first seem far removed from the daily schedule. Yet that is exactly why they matter. In high-pressure environments, concepts such as purpose and values provide essential points of reference.
A most stimulating lunch and a timely reminder that meaningful professional results are ultimately grounded in how we define our values and priorities.
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