Taekwondo & leadership: unlock your self-control and indomitable spirit

As a teenager, Joanne Kennedy discovered a natural flair for sports. "I was captain of everything," she recalls. Sport also transformed her inner confidence and, over the years of competing, she learned that sport was fundamentally about "morality, integrity and ambition. This is where I learned perseverance and resilience; gathering all the mental discipline I could muster in order to push my boundaries, for me and my team."

"Sport," she says, "gives us faith to live another day, with the enormous ability to empower, building the skills and confidence that help all of us cope with life's challenges. What it teaches you is the belief that you can be a better version of yourself every day - but to be that, you have to practise and reflect upon every performance."

Sport is where I learned perseverance and resilience; gathering all the mental discipline I could muster in order to push my boundaries, for me and my team… What it teaches you is the belief that you can be a better version of yourself every day - but to be that, you have to practise and reflect upon every performance

Joanne Kennedy-Reardon CMgr FCMI, group chief financial officer at ReGen Future Capital

A photo of Joanne Kennedy-Reardon CMgr, group chief financial officer at ReGen Future Capital

Joanne Kennedy-Reardon CMgr FCMI, group chief financial officer at ReGen Future Capital

That relentless focus on constant improvement has been the hallmark of Joanne's professional career. She has a battery of technical qualifications in management accountancy and internal audit and has been a Chartered Manager since 2011. She is currently the CFO at ReGen Future Capital, which invests in renewable energy and subscribes to the workings of a circular economic model by reinvesting 50% of its dividends into regeneration and restoration programmes

In the past few years her love of sport and personal and professional development have intersected. She is chair of Taekwondo Organisation, an organisation that seeks public funding on behalf of the membership organisations of British Taekwondo Council and British Taekwondo from Sport England.

"There is a proven causal link of the importance of sport and young peoples' mental and social development," Joanne says. "Taekwondo's five guiding principles, or tenets, are: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit. That is a brilliant basis for personal and professional life."