A VP’s Journey from Scandinavian Floors to American Boardrooms

Speaking at the Forbes Women’s Summit, Tomáš Chumchal, vice president and commercial director at Mastercard, gave a refreshingly honest account of his leadership evolution—one that swapped corporate jargon for personal anecdotes. He opened by half-joking that he is “boring” on paper: a mortgage, two kids, a dog. But his career path, heavily shaped by years in Scandinavian firms, is anything but unremarkable.

Chumchal recalled a moment that stayed with him: a CEO—one of the world’s wealthiest individuals—who made it a rule to eat in the staff canteen at least once a week. Sitting with employees, listening without hierarchy, the gesture impressed on him how flat structures and genuine humanity can define a culture. That Nordic emphasis on trust later clashed with his move to an American company, where he initially felt the shock of a results-first environment. Yet instead of abandoning the Scandinavian mindset, he tried to carry its human touch into a world obsessed with quarterly numbers.

He pointed to his current boss, Jana Lvova, as a model of courage: someone who refuses to accept “no” as a final answer and fights for what she believes, even with senior leadership inside Mastercard. That fight, he said, is the antidote to complacency—and a lesson he tries to pass on to his own team. For Chumchal, creating a space where people can disagree openly is the foundation of a working, diverse team.

What Chumchal’s Story Reveals About Modern Leadership

The Scandinavian Model of Accessible Leadership

The story of the CEO in the canteen is more than nostalgia. It illustrates a leadership practice that actively removes the distance between top management and frontline staff. In Scandinavian corporate cultures, Chumchal argued, trust and flatness aren't soft perks—they are the engine of candid feedback and faster decision-making. When employees can see a leader as approachable and human, the psychological safety to raise problems or challenge ideas rises dramatically. Without that safety, diverse perspectives stay silent.

Bridging American Performance with People-First Values

Chumchal’s move from a Nordic firm to an American one forced him to reconcile two corporate worlds: one driven by humanity, the other by hard metrics. His attempt to inject relationship-focused leadership into a results-heavy environment reflects a broader tension many global companies face. The takeaway isn’t that one culture is superior, but that the best modern leadership synthesizes both—pursuing performance while respecting that how you achieve results matters as much as the numbers. Chumchal’s observation that even American firms are gradually shifting toward factoring in “how you work” and “how you treat others” hints at a real, if slow, cultural change.

Why Diversity Is a Skill-Set Spread, Not a Headcount Quota

For Chumchal, diversity is not a quota but a deliberate effort to avoid hiring identical profiles. His team at Mastercard deals with very different banks, each with unique needs; a homogenous group would fail to cover that range. Cognitive diversity—difference in thinking, experience and approach—is what makes the team resilient. But he was equally clear that diversity only works when trust exists. Without a culture where speaking up is welcomed, a mixed team becomes a collection of untapped perspectives. This insight shifts the diversity conversation from compliance to practical team design.

Courage as a Daily Discipline

The most personal part of the interview was Chumchal’s admiration for his manager’s courage. Refusing to accept the first “no” and fighting for what makes sense is, he argued, a habit, not a one-off act. That kind of leadership trickles down: when direct reports see a boss willing to challenge higher-ups, they learn to do the same. It is a counterbalance to the risk-averse instincts that large corporations often breed, and it turns leadership from a position of authority into a daily practice of speaking truth to power.