The similarities are not immediately obvious, but CEOs and the homeless have more in common than most people realise, business leader Bernard Fehon says.
The head of financial planning firm Tactical Solutions has been sleeping out in the cold one night a year in Sydney for the past four years as part of the CEO Sleepout. This year he hopes about 100 other business leaders will join him at Luna Park on June 18 to experience what it’s like to be homeless. Mr Fehon says he’s happier sleeping rough to raise funds for the St Vincent de Paul Society than he was when he previously organised charity dinners. ‘They are hard work,’ he said. ‘My kids were doing sleepovers at school. I thought ‘why don’t we do a CEO sleepover’.’ More than 30 CEOs from some of the nation’s largest companies have already signed up for this year’s event, which organisers hope will raise $250,000.
They include Dick Smith, Fairfax Media’s Brian McCarthy, the NRMA’s Tony Stuart, Pfizer Australia chief John Latham, and Yvonne Howie, the head of the CEO Institute.