Podcast
The Elephant in the Room
Hosted by Sudha Singh · EN
The Elephant in the Room Podcast is a curated safe space to have uncomfortable conversations about the pervasive inequalities in society and our workplaces.
The idea of the podcast was born from my sense of conflict about identity, self and the concept of privilege and fuelled by my own need to understand how my overlapping identities and experiences had impacted and would continue to impact my life chances.
Two years ago I decided to ‘opt out’ to find my own purpose and focus on passion projects including learning about the systemic biases that are endemic in business and society. The Podcast is my very own listening project, a step towards being more intentional in my learning.
The Elephant in the Room Podcast is for people who want to be a part of the change, for those who want to step up & speak out, for those who want to learn more about biases, barriers and best practice, for business leaders and for individuals, anyone who is interested in a fairer, more inclusive and compassionate society and workplace.
Each week I will interview inspiring speakers from across the world on issues that are taboo and deserve to be mainstream including(but not limited to) systemic and institutionalised racism, discrimination based on further eight protected characteristics, poverty, mental health, climate change. The podcast will also talk about cognitive inclusion, culture, purpose, ethics and the importance of empathy, cultural intelligence and how conversations on identity and disadvantage would be incomplete without considering intersectionality.
With the podcast I hope to share stories of people with lived experiences, stories that may have never been told, stories that galvanise us to take action for change and keep the conversations alive by raising the decibel on issues of inequity, inequality in our search for a fairer and more inclusive world.
20episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
126: A conversation with Christina Brooks, Founder, CEO Ruebik. inclusion first talent attraction agency
Dec 18, 202400:30:01Tap to summarizeShow Notes:There are some brilliant leaders doing amazing work to promote equity & inclusion in the UK. Would you agree? There are not enough superlatives to describe the hard work and commitment of these advocates.Christina Brooks, Founder and CEO Ruebik is one such leader. Along with her day job she is a trustee for an alternative provision school in Tottenham, a Trustee for pioneering Social Communications Centre for Autism. She also mentors incarcerated young people and advises many black owned social startups.So, I was thrilled to have @Christina Brooks as a guest on the 126th episode of The 🐘in the Room podcast to talk about all things equity and inclusion. In this freewheeling conversation we spoke about her journey from global talent lead at Rolls Royce to starting Ruebik an inclusion first talent attraction agency and DEI consultancy. We also spoke about 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👉🏾 Learnings from the corporate world that she brought to her entrepreneurial journey👉🏾 Being purpose led, and B-Corp certified👉🏾 Lived experiences, and her intersectional identities that led to her being othered👉🏾 Her thoughts on Industry trends indicating a slowdown and step back in investment and commitment of DEIB/EDIB initiatives👉🏾 How culture and measurement contribute to creating an impactful recruitment and hiring process👉🏾 Conscious/Inclusive leadership👉🏾 Future of work – the impact of AIWe also spoke about her podcast Elevated Conversations with Tacita Small and Monique Carayol, Zoom Fenty, even Beyonce, her beliefs, motivations and having a long view of change………..To learn more head to the podcast (link in comments) 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾Episode Transcript:Sudha: Good morning, Christina. It's such a pleasure to have you as a guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast today.Christina: It's an absolute honour to be here Sudha. Thank you for the invitation.Sudha: Brilliant. let's start with a quick introduction to who you are and what you do. Also, tell us why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?Christina: Yeah, a really good question. Why did I decide to become an entrepreneur because it was not by design, I actually fell into it. So, if I give you a little bit about my background, I've got almost 20 years executive search experience. So that's really my bread and butter. So really thinking about how organisations should attract and retain exec leaders.And prior to setting up Ruebik, I worked for Rolls Royce as a global talent acquisition lead. So, my team were in Derby, and I was based down here in London, and it was a really wonderful experience. And my mandate at the time was to increase gender representation, and we started to look at other underrepresented strands as well. But I think the real light bulb moment for me, Sudha, was when I was often looking for suppliers and other executive recruitment firms to help us really think about diversity.They often sounded and looked like the business that we were trying to change and innovate in. And so really for me, I built the kind of business that I wanted to work with. So Ruebik, as it stands, it's an extension of a talent acquisition function. And so, we really partner closely with organisations who are trying to move the dial beyond gender. We're looking at race, we're looking at social mobility, we're looking at, fringe communities that typically sit on the periphery. And so that's what we do day in and day out.Sudha: Wow, that's amazing. I think nothing better than a purpose led business because that's what you are. What were the learnings you brought from your corporate experience that have helped you navigate this journey to building a B Corp certified talent agency?You are B Corp certified, congratulations.Christina: Yeah, I'm happy to display it in the back.Sudha: How important was it to have focus and purpose when you were setting this up?Christina: It was intrinsically linked. It was never an afterthought and so when people say when did you decide to go to B Corp? B Corp came to me in a strange way.Because of how I had built and set up the business I was introduced to a fantastic organisation called Cyd Connects. And it's run by two incredibly powerful women, and they take organisations through the B Corp process. So, if you ever need help and support with this, CydConnects, and I'd be happy to connect.When I met with the co-founders and I explained how Ruebik was built, that we look at the ecosystem. As much as I'm passionate about changing executive diverse leadership within organisations, so really those decision making roles, I also look at fringe communities as I've already referenced.I'm a trustee at a pupil referral unit, we are the academy that one, young children have already been expelled from school and it's typically because they have emotional, behavioural, psychological challenges that don't fit into that neurotypical peg. They come to our academy, and beyond that, we then, as a business, go into prisons and work with young men who are currently incarcerated.I've been to Thameside, I've been to Pentonville, I've been to Brixton Prison and we work with the young men there to help reframe some of the activities, that really made them successful in an illegal way. How can we transfer that into a legal sustainable work that would help empower them and their families.Because of this ecosystem that I've built that looks not only at executive leaders but wider society and community, it just felt right to have that B Corp certification and status to share with our clients, share with our candidates that this is something that is part of our DNA as a business.Sudha: You haven't taken the easy path, because there are lots of people who've jumped onto the bandwagon post-COVID or pre-COVID because they saw an opportunity, a business opportunity.Clearly you are deeply embedded in trying to bring about change as you said in communities that are at the periphery and are not likely to find as much support.Christina: That's right.It's so important for me, Sudha, because I often describe myself as the product of the problem that we're trying to solve. I left school at 15. I didn't do A levels. I did not go on to university at that time. I was brought up in a single parent family. My mom had four kids and in an incredibly religious environment. What that means, I was actually raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, so what that means to me is that I have a deep understanding and respect for other people's faith.And while it is no longer my faith, but if you think of all of the complexities of also growing up outside of London, it was in Gloucester, it just meant that I was different in so many different ways. I was othered because of the colour of my skin, othered because our dad didn't live at home with us in that traditional family setting, othered because I was a Jehovah's Witness, there were so many things that made me so different.And then it was a bit of an awakening to move from Gloucester to Tottenham, which is a very deprived inner city borough of London that for anybody who doesn't know it, but it's where the riots took place in 2011 when Mark Duggan was shot and killed by the police. That, that was literally the bottom of my high road.And I just have a different perspective in terms of people growing up in lots of different social communities and what access allows and what the lack of access excludes you from. And I think that this is where this fight comes from is really understanding how very quickly and easily you can be excluded.When I would go to job interviews, the minute I said I lived in Tottenham, no callbacks, I would never get a callback. So, I started creeping up the Victoria line. And I was like, I live in Finsbury Park, maybe we'll call you back. I live in Highbury and Islington. And then it was the callbacks because I had to be savvy. I didn't want to lie about where I lived and I wasn't ashamed. It just meant that people perceived me differently when I said, I come from Tottenham.Sudha: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not what we're doing, it's how others are willing to engage with you because of the differences. Post COVID, you know, DEI gained a lot of traction and momentum, but research in the past couple of years has shown that the efforts are now stalling.And I have two questions here, do you agree or disagree with the research findings? And if you agree, what are the reasons for this progress stalling?...
Transcribe →125: How social entrepreneur Anusha Bharadwaj (Voice4Girls)is empowering adolescent girls in India to unlock their potential
Nov 29, 202400:43:04Tap to summarizeShownotes: Reams have been written recently about SDGs, climate change, just transition…… what does it mean in practice? India's National Action Plan on Climate Change emphasises the need for inclusive and sustainable development to ensure it does not fail millions on the margins or without a voice. It would not be presumptuous to say that most people in world are aware of India’s demographic dividend. At 21% or 253 million, India is also home to the largest adolescent population in the world of which 120 million are girls. For a just transition and for India to reap the benefits of the demographic dividend by unlocking the potential of its youth, it is crucial that they are empowered with knowledge and skills to combat social and economic exclusion.A majority of India’s adolescent girls are on the margins and face numerous challenges including lack of access to education, domestic work, early marriage and pregnancy and financial dependency. There are a myriad of government initiatives and schemes aimed at keeping this group in education in urban and rural area, but long lasting change will be impossible without addressing the deep rooted cultural norms, expectations and stereotypes.This is where organisations like VOICE4Girls, step in, they create safe spaces for girls to have critical conversations around their physical and mental health; recognising, preventing and reporting violence and a space where they can dream. This social enterprise led by Anusha Bharadwaj, has impacted over 3,00,000 girls and boys through their work across 12 different Indian states. In the 125th episode of The 🐘in the Room podcast we spoke about Anusha’s childhood, how it influenced her to step into the social sector, her ambition for Voice4Girls, breaking the cycle of exclusion, deprivation for young girls and boys, the challenges of being a founder. We also spoke about 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👉🏾 SoCh for social change an initiative aimed at building leadership capabilities of young social changemakers,👉🏾 Social entrepreneurship as a powerful force for transforming communities and nations, being hubs of innovation👉🏾 Context, feminism and feminist leadership 👉🏾 Failures, highlights and role models girls and boys can identify withAnd much more in this freewheeling and inspiring conversation. Head to the podcast to know more about the incredible work being done by Ashoka Fellow, Anusha Bharadwaj and Voice4Girls 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾Episode Transcript:Sudha: Good morning, Anusha. Wonderful to have you on the Elephant in the Room podcast today.Anusha: Hi Sudha, lovely to be here.Sudha: Let's get started with a quick introduction. Tell us a bit about your childhood, your education, what sort of influences did you have? I'm curious to understand how and why you decided to work in the social sector.Anusha: Every time somebody asks me this question, some new parts about my family emerges and today what really came up is that I grew up in a South Indian family where education was super important Sudha. In fact, both my great grandfathers were very well educated, one was a medical officer, the other was a maths professor. And I've heard that, even during those times, this is still very British ruled India both my grandmothers, my maternal and my paternal grandmother, both are high school graduates.Again, something very unusual for girls during those times. Looking closely, I realized that education for girls was a desirable thing for women in my family, because they should get a good marital match, right? Because boys were all very well educated. So, the end goal was getting her married and for that education that will get her married.And that's the background of my family and my childhood was peppered with the constant efforts to prove that I'm better than the boys at home. In fact, I remembered as I was preparing for this question, that my father used to say very fondly that me as a daughter was a boy trapped in a girl's body because I had all the spirit of the boy is what he said and at that time I didn't understand. I would just be so proud of that. But realizing that I'd set a poor benchmark, this is always like, I also don't want to cry, I as a girl, because I was the only girl amongst my cousins and my own brother. So, there was a lot of being like a boy and better like a boy, I studied engineering, played cricket.I think it was only when I was pursuing my engineering that I realized that my mind heart was not in it. Though the immediate family was super patriarchal, my parents were very supportive of all my choices.When I finished my degree, I said, this is the certificate and now I want to, change my career because I'd already started volunteering for social organisations. I was working with a foundation, a CSR that was working with children and teenagers and I was like, this is the path I want to go. So that was my first steps in the social impact sector in 2002 and I've not looked back since. I continued working in that organisation, I did a rural management degree from the Institute of Rural Management in Anand. Worked in, civil society organisations. I worked for the government and UNICEF for a while and then of course my own social entrepreneurship journey with Voice4Girls. I found my own voice and purpose through the work. But yeah, I've never looked back since then and how much of my childhood and all those stereotypes is what, my organisation and my life's work has been in ensuring that girls just realize that they have so much in themselves that there's no competition.Sudha: Yeah, they don't really have to be like boys, but it's so good to understand how you found your purpose, your calling, so to speak, and how you went into the social sector. I've read so much about, Voice for Girls and the wonderful work that you do. Tell us about its genesis and how you came to this and probably the influences that you've spoken about in your childhood in your own experiences were the stepping stone to getting on this, social impact entrepreneurship.Anusha: Though 2002 I started working in the sector, I worked mostly with children and young people. And even then I felt gender was too much for me to unpack I felt like a lot of my childhood and my upbringing would inhibit and I felt that I couldn't be professional enough. I think again, these are some of the stereotypes that I carried that doing work in gender would make me very emotional.Only later I realized it made me more resilient and strong. But it took me about a decade in the social impact sector working with children that I realized I love working with girls Sudha. Just give them a small platform and they'll shatter it, and they'll take charge of their lives.And that sort of inspired me and that's what I felt that through them, I started realizing how much potential it is to work with girls and how crucial it would be at a very formative age to give them that platform and that safe space. But I think the true calling came when I was doing some field work, I was in an Anganwadi where they were doing a baby shower.So, they were telling young to be mothers and their mothers in law healthy nutrition for pregnant women and lactating women. When I saw a very young girl, I felt she was not more than 13 and 14, heavily pregnant, completely listless, not answering, it seemed like almost the whole life's burden is in her womb. And I felt very angry that this shouldn't be happening to girls, but I was also angry that nobody else was angry. Like I had department officials, there were other civil society organisation members and police was there and everybody, like even parents and family, they weren't angry at that situation, right?And it left me very angry to say this shouldn't happen and what can I do to see as many girls not getting trapped in that. So that's really the genesis of ‘Voice for Girls’ because we believe that creating a gender transformative safe space is very crucial in the life of adolescent girls.Because, today she's a girl, she gets a period, she's almost a woman and then the transition was so quick that the girls aren't, ready for this transition, aren't prepared for what's happening in their bodies, let alone what sociocultural expectations will fall on them. So helping girls navigate that phase in life through Voices’ work was the vision in which we set it up.And by creating these gender transformative safe spaces for marginalized adolescents, and we do it mostly in government funded schools, residential schools, in colleges, what we're doing is help girls understand what's happening in their bodies, how to navigate this crucial phase and prepare for what life is ahead of them.And since 2012, we've been doing this work and we worked in several geographies, not just in Telangana, but currently our work is in Telangana, Andhra and Karnataka. Our work has impacted the lives of close to 27...
Transcribe →124: : ESG/EHG: The future of sustainable investing and ESG in India: Arvind Chari and Chirag Mehta, Quantum Advisors
Nov 12, 202400:48:05Tap to summarizeShow notes:The ESG backlash is real, and it is polarising. The rhetoric around it exacerbated because of roll backs by corporates and governments on climate/energy commitments. According to a leading ESG publication, Trump’s victory in the world’s second largest democracy, is likely to result in roll backs on climate and ESG regulation in the country and retreat from the global stage. Despite all the noise against ESG - asset managers globally are expected to increase their ESG related AuM to US$33.9 trillion by 2026 (84% growth). The driver for growth for ESG activity is not altruism but value creation. In India the world’s largest democracy there are reasons for cautious optimism, with the government introducing a slew of policy changes over the last decade, that makes it obligatory for organisations to adopt an ESG lens for sustainability reporting. Since 2022-23, the top 1000 listed companies are obliged to follow the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting framework. The driver of course is India’s ambition to be a 7 trillion economy by 2030. There is lots to be done but the country is on the path.To discuss India’s journey on ESG and Sustainability reporting I spoke with Arvind Chari and Chirag Mehta, Quantum Advisors in the 124th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast. The focus of the conversation was global and local trends and Quantum’s own approach to ESG investing. We spoke about 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👉🏾 The drivers for sustainable investing👉🏾 Responsible (patient investing) and what it means. Adding a 5th P to the 4 Ps investment management - predictability or patient capital 👉🏾 The reason for developing Quantum’s own due diligence process or integrity screening mechanism👉🏾 How weightage on governance can drive better E and S performance for an organisation👉🏾 Sustainable investing in the Indian context (considering India needs approx. $200 billion a year), where the country is on the sustainable investing journey👉🏾 Public equity markets as the low hanging fruit for sustainable investing in India👉🏾 Whether Indian companies are prepared to meet the regulatory requirements in particular BRSRWe also spoke about the ESG backlash, social license to operate, whether ESG funds perform better than funds that don’t have an ESG lens, the EHG trilemma and The 🐘 in the Room. If sustainability, sustainable investing, transparency and accountability is your thing check out Quantum’s ‘The Little White Book of Governance’.Disclaimer: Quantum Advisors are not my client and I remain sceptical of the investment management & PE industry and their relentless pursuit of profits. However, we know how critical they are to achieving global and local climate and SDG targets. I was drawn to Quantum's mantra ‘Be good and Do good’ and intrigued by the integrity screen.Check it out for yourself – links in the comment 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾#esginvesting #esg #sustainability #impact investing #governance #Climatehange #SDGsEpisode TranscriptSudha: Good morning, Arvind and Good Afternoon, Chirag. Wonderful to have both of you on The Elephant in the Room podcast today.Arvind: Sudha, it's good to have us. Your name of the podcast itself is so interesting, and there are always a lot of elephants in the room to be discussed about so great to be talking to you.Chirag: Yeah. I echo Arvind and pleased to be here.Sudha: So, let's get started with a quick introduction. Tell the listeners about probably who you are and what you do.Arvind: Quantum Advisors the firm that we both work me and Chirag, it's an India based, India dedicated investment management firm. It's the oldest firm in India in that space.Quantum was founded in 1990 by Ajit Dayal and so we've been championing the cause of investing in India, either through research and advisory or through managing on their own name for now close to 40 years, right?Quantum specializes in thinking about long term India investing from a very sensible risk adjusted approach. And we also believe, and as you will know over the course of this talk, that we believe in be good and do good. And we've employed that not only in our investment philosophy, but the way we run the firm and the choices that we've made as a firm to be able to deal with putting the investor at the centre of everything that we do. We have two pools of capital, one is the global investor, the global pension fund, sovereign wealth funds, university endowments, family offices, investing into India. Quantum manages and has strategies and products for that pool of capital. And then there is the Indian investor that the Indian retail or Indian high net worth investor who is investing into India and we have the mutual fund, the Quantum Mutual Fund for that.I'm Arvind Chari. I'm the chief investment officer of Quantum Advisors, now of Q India UK, I moved to London about two years back to be able to be closer to the global investors. So, I basically fly two flags, one is to tell global investors that they are missing out by not investing in India and, more and more investors need to think about India dedicated.And to fly the Quantum flag in terms of how Quantum can help long term investors allocated to India in a sensible risk xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Chirag, who's here as well, Chirag Mehta is the chief investment officer of Quantum Mutual Fund, which is Quantum AMC.Chirag, if you want to give a quick intro of yourself.Chirag: Sure. So, I've been associated with Quantum for more than about 18 years now and, it gives us pride. Arvind joined in 2004, I joined in 2006, so we both have been here pretty tenured and have seen cycles, and we really know how the Quantum way of investing benefits investors across these cycles.So, I am the chief investment officer at Quantum Mutual Fund as Arvind said. I do look at many funds at Quantum. including spearheading our integrity efforts. When you say integrity, the outside world knows it by various other names like sustainability, responsible investing, et cetera. So, I do spearhead that and manage a team that looks at these aspects That's a brief introduction and I managed funds across the board in terms of right from multi assets to gold to small caps to what is called in India as ESG funds. We would like to call it integrity, but it's called ESG funds in India. So that's been a snapshot of what I do.Sudha: Awesome. So, the focus of our conversation today, as I'd mentioned earlier is responsible investing. What does it really mean for Quantum Advisors when you say responsible investing?Arvind: Sudha, we actually do not like to use the words, sustainability, responsibility, ESG. Either they've been abused or misused or it is not exactly relevant. What we call ourselves as a measure is integrity investing. And integrity is of course a higher measure to hold onto, but also suggests that there are certain morals or certain ethical framework that you use for your investments or for running the firm, and you don't change it, you live by those standards. We think of ourselves as integrity investing as an idea and everything that we do comes about from that perspective.I'll just give you a history of the firm, which explains how we got into this aspect of why sensible risk adjustment and integrity is essential to what we do. We started the firm in 1990 and there are two seminal partnerships that Quantum had one was between 92 to 95 with a group called Jardine Fleming which we call Quantum Jardine. That's where we learned two very important aspects of an investment management firm. One is to be independent, right? When you are an investment firm and you're independent, the only thing that matters to you is your unit holders or your investors.If you're independent, then all you're doing is investing long term capital for your fiduciary investors, which your unit holders. The other thing that we learned from the association is what we built as a integrity screen. Subbu who joined Ajit in 1996, so Ajit and Subbu are the longest serving equity managers maybe around the world now that Charlie Munger passed away. They've had a long history and that's when they built this integrity screen, which is basically a screen to avoid bad management, no matter how large they are, no matter how big they're part of the sector, no matter how big they're part of the indices.If they don't fit our integrity screen, we will stop, we will never invest in them, we will never put client capital into that. So that was the first learning about being independent and having this integrity screen way back in 1996. And then we learned the process of investing of long term process through an as...
Transcribe →123: Are stigma and social ostricization the biggest barriers to eradicating Hansen's disease: In conversation with Daisy Mansfield, Leprosy Mission
Oct 4, 202400:30:15Tap to summarizeShownotes:Not many people in the western world have heard of Hansen’s disease or Leprosy – for most who are familiar with it arouses fear and aversion. It is a tropical disease that occurs in more than 120 countries, has been referenced in the bible and Victoria Hislop wrote The Island inspired by a visit to Spinalonga, the abandoned Greek leprosy colony, which sold over a million copies.My earliest interaction with the disease was on the Main Street of the city I grew up in. Along the street, one aften came across a small group of people begging for alms, those badly affected being pulled on makeshift carts by the more able bodied. The easiest thing to do was to ignore them or pretend one could not see them or their plight. That was my first experience of shame. Shame at the lack of knowledge, confidence or ability to engage with respect with people disfigured and ostracised by disease. However, this is not about me but about people who are disenfranchised, excluded from accessing healthcare, education, economic opportunities and social support because of fear and misinformation.A couples of months back, I happened to be seated on the same take table at India Week as Sian Arulanantham, head of programmes and research of Leprosy Mission UK. We got chatting about the incredible work they are doing across the world and in India and I invited them to be a guest on my podcast to speak about the important work being done to eradicate an ancient disease that stigmatises and makes outcasts of over two hundred thousand people every year.In this episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast, Daisy Mansfield Policy and Advocacy Adviser at Leprosy Mission talks about the work being done in India and across the world. We spoke about a) how they deliver on their goals in this highly complex geography b) behaviour change campaigns for education and removing social stigma c) Strategies to empower individuals and families d) Roles models with lived experience of disability and stigma e) WHO 2035 goal for eradication of the disease and challenges to getting to the targetThe most important thing to remember is that if detected early, the disease is curable with multi drug therapy (MDT) and the good news is that the WHO has made MDT available free to all leprosy patients around the world (with the help of big pharma).Head to the podcast to listen and see how you can support the cause 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾Episode Transcript:Sudha: Good morning, Daisy. Lovely to have you here today. I'm so glad that I met with Sian and Louise at India Week recently in London. And that's how I came to know about the work of Leprosy Mission UK. So, let's start with a quick introduction. Tell us a bit about yourself.Daisy: Hello. Yes. It's so nice to be with you on the podcast today. Thank you very much for having me. I'm Daisy and I work for the Leprosy Mission and have done for about three years now in a number of different roles. So, my current role is called a Programs and Advocacy Officer. Which means I am a point person, look after some of the projects that we fund in India and work in partnership with our team over in India. And previously I had roles in fundraising and also advocacy and policy working with UK stakeholders in parliament and also in international spaces such as the UN and WHO to advocate for people affected by leprosy.Sudha: That's very interesting. So, we are here today to talk about leprosy or Hansen's disease. How prevalent is it globally? What is it and what are the symptoms? There seems to be a lot of ignorance, especially I'd say in Western countries. And it doesn't exist in lot of Western countries. So tell us a bit about it.Daisy: Yeah, certainly. Actually, when I first joined the Leprosy Mission, I thought, Oh, I know what leprosy is. And I quickly realised that there was a lot of misunderstandings or misconceptions about the disease that I had thought were true.And leprosy is one of the oldest diseases known. We see it back in biblical times, but there's so much of the disease that is so misunderstood in today's world and as you said, part of that is because it no longer exists here in the UK. It did many years ago and affected many thousands of people.But today we see it across the world, particularly in places where poverty exists and slightly poorer communities, rural communities. So, you might be surprised to know there's 200, 000 new cases every year. And so. if you do the rough maths on that's about one person every two minutes.And that's new cases of leprosy, but also there's thousands of people or millions of people that are living with the causes of leprosy which could be disability. It could also be the stigma that is surrounded by a leprosy diagnosis, which I'll talk a little bit more in detail about later. So, leprosy is a bacterial disease that is spread through prolonged and close contact and many of us think that leprosy is actually caught by touch, but that is a myth. It is not caught by touch it's transmitted through water droplets in the air, so between coughing and sneezing. But you need to have that prolonged contact with someone to catch leprosy.Some people may remember many years ago. Princess Diana was heavily involved in work with people affected by leprosy. And she was over in India and there was a very iconic picture that hit the news of her with her hand, her arm around somebody affected by leprosy and everybody had told her, You can't touch them, don't touch them, you're going to get leprosy, and actually she'd been told by medical experts in these hospitals that it was okay, it wasn't caught by touch. And so, there's another example of a miscommunication that many of us have.And let me just talk a little bit about the symptoms of leprosy as you've asked. So, leprosy affects the nerves and particularly in people's hands and their feet and they lose feeling in their hands and their feet. And you can perhaps imagine that you're cooking, and you've got a saucepan on the hob or something, and yes, it might be hot, but until you touch it, do you know how hot it is and actually. If you put yourself in a slightly more rural position where you perhaps you're cooking on an open fire, and you have a pan there if you have no feeling in your hand, there is nothing to tell you to remove your hand from this hot pan and you can so easily burn your hand and you can get really severe wounds and ulcers. And particularly many people experience ulcers on their feet. And these can get infected and if they're not looked after properly, sometimes there's no other choice other than amputation for people's legs particularly.And so, we see one story is a young girl called Shakti who was in one of our hospitals in Nepal. She was only 16 years old and because her leprosy hadn't been diagnosed for many years. She'd hidden it away but also medical centres which she'd been to had not necessarily diagnosed it, she hadn't received the treatment particularly early and actually at 16 years old, she had to have an amputation of her leg. And the impact that had of her not being able to go to school and she had dreams that she wanted to become a doctor and the implications then of how her life changes at such a young age. One really key thing is to be able to find and treat people with leprosy as early as possible. The sooner people receive medical help, then the less likely they are to have implications.Sudha: Daisy, is there a cure for leprosy? I know in India; all children are given the BCG vaccine just a couple of weeks after they're born. But I'm aware that again, in Western countries, it is not so prevalent and it's not something that is given. And also, there is the anti vax movement, which is pretty strong.Daisy: Yeah, so actually the good news is there's a cure for leprosy and it's relatively straightforward. It's antibiotics as we know. These antibiotics are called multi drug therapy, MDT. And they're taken for between 6 and 12 months, depending on the load of bacteria in somebody's body.And for patients affected by leprosy, these antibiotics are free. But actually, they only cost 24 pound so, they're not expensive to provide for people affected by leprosy. And the link that you mentioned to the BCG vaccine obviously children get this vaccination when they're first born.And this actually, offers a small bit of protection against leprosy. The primary job of that vaccine is tuberculosis, but the reason that there's a link is because the bacteria of leprosy and the bacteria of TB are almost like cousins. They share some similarities and so that vaccination doesn't necessarily fully prevent people from getting leprosy, but it does provide an extra level of protection.And so, there's lots of research across many of the countries around the world research centres are studying how leprosy is transmitted, the actual bacteria and particularly a lot of research into the tools to di...
Transcribe →122: Spotlighting the 'S' in ESG: A conversation with Sakshi Bansal, Unesco Kindness Leader, Diana Award Recipient
Sep 21, 202400:34:00Tap to summarizeShownotes:Disclaimer: All views expressed in the podcast are Sakshi Bansal’s personal views and do not represent or reflect the views of Arup Ltd.Excited to share the latest episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast featuring Sakshi Bansal FRSA ChMC! 🎙️ Sakshi, a recipient of The Diana Award, the world’s first UNESCO Kindness leader and Founder of Project LEAP, dives deep into the 'S' in ESG. In our conversation, we explore:👉🏾 Psychology's link to sustainability👉🏾 Social equity, triple bottom line, and social license to operate👉🏾 Challenges in reporting the 'S' factor and current industry trends👉🏾 Global sustainability dialogue dynamics and diversity concerns👉🏾 Millennials' & Gen Z's perceptions of Purpose-driven organizations👉🏾 The importance of continuous learning in navigating evolving standardsTune in for insightful discussions on sustainability and ESG with @SakshiBansalLink to the podcast in the comments below. 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾hashtag#ESG hashtag#Sustainability hashtag#PodcastDiscussionEpisode Transcript:Sudha: Good morning, Sakshi. Wonderful to have you as a guest on the Elephant in the Room podcast today.Sakshi: Hi, thank you so much. It's so nice to be here.Sudha: To start with, give us a quick introduction and tell us a bit about yourself, maybe your childhood, education.Sakshi: Gosh a bit about myself. So, I am a psychologist by education, both a bachelor's and master's degree, but I'm also a management and strategy consultant now. And if I look back on my career, because it's so well integrated into who am I it's what I call a roller-coaster career or a squiggly career. It started in a tech startup. I was studying in Delhi I wanted to be a professional salsa dancer, And I came across these guys and they were doing something really cool at university, building an AI platform for billing and telling software and digital menus of the hospitality industry.And I said, ah, I'll join you. And started working in a startup as one of those co-founders specifically focused on bringing in clients. So we were a bunch of 16, 17, 18 year olds with a team of 20 people bringing in clients and selling our hardware and software products all over Delhi on a tech platform that I knew nothing about. So that was my first real education, I think, into the world of entrepreneurship is learning how to not run a business, how to be a leader, how to talk to investors. And I think very early on, I got an insight into that world. And I think that sparked the sort of entrepreneurial interest in myself, and then I later went on to start a charity. So later means two years later, when we sold the startup to Amazon, went on to start a charity which is called Project Leap, and we were providing free education to underprivileged families in New Delhi. And that really came out of a very personal experience I had visiting some of these areas in New Delhi.And I saw that while people want to help, they just don't know how to help And so we started Project Leap for the last 10, 12 years of my life, I've been running Project Leap. We've expanded to different parts of the world, to Nepal, Sri Lanka, pan Africa. Then I came to the UK, did leadership development here, capacity building, team building for three years and then started doing sustainability and ESG and investments.It's just been a roller coaster of various different things, but I've had a real privilege of working in various different organisations such as the UN as a youth activist, talking about, youth employment even in New York, all the way to Australia doing change management. And now, in India in aviation so it's really just a mixed background.But I grew up with a very simple idea. I want to be a dancer, and I want to travel the world.Sudha: And now today, of course, you are dialling in from the UK, you are in the UK, like me not based in India at this point in time.Sakshi: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it's really important to be mindful of the personal, experiences you've had and how they shape you as a person. And not a lot of people have time for that kind of reflection, but I've always. And maybe that's where the psychology background comes into play, right? You make time for reflection, and you think about how things have shaped you and it helps you take the next step as well.Sudha: So, you wouldn't assume that after degree and master’s in psychology, you'd end up doing sustainability and ESG. what's connect? How did you find that route?Sakshi: I think it's a very good question, because honestly, I was in my first company after my master's degree doing a very psychology focused role. So doing leadership development, team building and all that. And when COVID hit and I was in parallel running my charity as well, we started taking the charity work international and remote.I was so well versed with the grassroots challenges in India that this time I had to re-educate myself on what's happening in Africa and what's happening in New Zealand. And I had a reintroduction to SDGs as well, which is sustainable development goals. And so, this understanding about sustainability and what that means and how do we redefine it for education, which was my charity's goal, became really important.And I think at the same time, I was growing discontent with what I was doing in my job. Not because it wasn't good, but just because it wasn't good enough. There was so much else I could do, and I think that's when the entrepreneurial spirit sort of came back to hit me. And I said, I'm working for a big company, it was Willis Towers Watson. It's a massive US based conglomerate. So, they don't just do what I'm doing, they do 20 other things. So just started ringing people up from the organisation and started asking the question. What is your role? What do you do?What do you care about? And these are really senior people. And around that time, ESG was a word that was quite thrown around quite a lot. So some of the senior directors in my company were trying to understand what ESG means for them and for the business. And what do we take to market? And what do we say to clients?And I offered help, I was so young, and I said, when you go and speak to clients, can I come, I can help facilitate some of these conversations. I'm good at that. And we went to Spain, we went to France, we went to, various different clients with my company.And we just asked the question, what does ESG mean? What does it mean for your business? What can we do for you? And then we came back and synthesized all of that data to try and make a go to market offering for Willis Towers Watson. And that was my role; to go and listen and suddenly I was working with a whole different team in the company with very senior leaders. And it was my first experience of making a global strategy for a very targeted thing that I knew nothing about. But actually, I probably had done it before with the tech startup as well. So that was really interesting. And I realized that coming from a psychology background is such an advantage because I really understand some of the things around social, so ESG is Environment, Social and Governance, right?And the social pillar and the governance pillar were really intrinsic to me.<...
Transcribe →121: Why the social model of disability is key to equitable and inclusive change: Caroline Collier, CEO Inclusion Barnet
Sep 12, 202400:29:04Tap to summarizeShownotes:Being an advocate for equity and inclusion requires a certain level of self-awareness, humility and an appetite to be a lifelong learner. Especially considering that the vocabulary around DEIB/DEIBA or whatever you choose to call it is constantly evolving, there is more we don’t know than we know.My chance encounter with Caroline Collier, CEO Inclusion Barnet happened over a LinkedIn recruitment post and my subsequent message to her regarding the language. She was gracious in her response educating me about why they were using ‘disabled person’ (instead of person first language). I was slightly mortified but glad that I had the opportunity to engage with Caroline to better understand why they subscribe to the social model of disability. I am grateful to Caroline for making time for this important conversation (a learning opportunity for me). In the episode we spoke about Inclusion Barnet and why it describes itself as a Deaf and Disabled People’s organisation, deaf being separate from disabled in deference to the cultural model of deafness. We also spoke at length about the ‘social model of disability; harnessing lived experiences for social change; acceptable language; role of the private sector in opening up opportunities; what allies can do to support; and the just launched ‘Campaign for Disability Justice’ calling for a) Opportunity b) Security c) Respect.Did you know that care in the UK is based on a ‘medical model’ that frames the body or mind of disabled person as something that needs to be fixed?“We see disability through the ‘social model’, where being Disabled is a political term that describes our experience of marginalisation, not individual impairments. The social model allows us to come together to fight back against a world that we can’t navigate safely without care and support. This model helps us understand that a flourishing social care system should give us access to choices and the freedom to live independently.We want a system that enables us to live independently, rather than generating a list of ‘care tasks’ our local authority can charge us for. The struggle for a better, more equal system should unify us all to talk about intersectionality and disability justice alongside the crucial demands for fair conditions for both paid and unpaid carers, wholesale changes to the gendered imbalance of care responsibilities, and the need to tackle the looming climate crisis, which will affect our capacity to care for one another.” Caroline Collier, CEO Inclusion Barnet Episode Transcript:Sudha: Good morning, Caroline. It's wonderful to have you today as a guest on the Elephant in the Room podcast. Thank you for being hereCaroline: Thank you. Really pleased to be asked, so thank you so much.Sudha: Let's start with a quick introduction to who you are and what you do.Caroline: I'm Caroline Collier. I'm CEO of a deaf and disabled persons' organization called Inclusion Barnet. My background is varied. I started after college working in libraries. Then I ended up in my thirties writing about the construction industry, unusually enough. That changed in 2009 when I became really ill with what turned out to be bipolar. I had a bit of a rethink just because I wanted to find something with a little bit more purpose, and I was incredibly lucky to end up working in the organization that is now Inclusion Barnet. I've been here for nearly 14 years, and I consider myself incredibly privileged to be able to have a job where I can sometimes make a bit of a difference and also just be learning every day.Sudha: Yes, it's good to hear because we tend to put people in boxes but there's always a journey.Caroline: I've been pretty adaptable over the years, I would say, yes.Sudha: From what I understand, Inclusion Barnet it is a deaf and disabled people's organisation. Tell us a bit more. I'm curious and interested to understand why deaf is separate.Caroline: Okay. You're not the first person to ask, and it does confuse a lot of people. But the deaf being separate from disabled is in deference to the cultural model of deafness, which rejects the idea that hearing loss is an impairment and instead emphasizes the shared sort of culture and history of British Sign Language users. So, because the deaf community is more comfortable with that approach, in London at least, we tend to use "deaf and disabled people's organisations" to recognise that distinction. Sometimes, in other parts of the UK, just "disabled people's organisation" is also used, but that's regional variance.Sudha: That's very interesting to know and also good to be aware about this.So Caroline, our first interaction took place because I reached out to correct you by suggesting person-first language on a LinkedIn post and very kindly and generously, you educated me on the social model of disability, which I know of. I have been looking at diversity and inclusion and try to keep myself updated. But I'm hesitant to use that model. Is one or the other more acceptable and why?Caroline: That's really interesting, and I might explore with you later, if you're okay with that, why you're hesitant, because I think that's really interesting.The first thing to say is, obviously, we can all self-describe however we want to. But I think one of the reasons that the kind of person-first convention has taken hold is because the social model of disability is not nearly as widely known as it should be. Very simply, the social model of disability says, okay, some of us have conditions, impairments, illness, whatever, but what actually disables us is not our individual condition, but it's the disabling attitudes and barriers created by society. So if I were a wheelchair user, my problem in a multi-storey building is the fact that there isn't a lift; it's not a problem with me, it's a problem with the building.If I was rejected for a job because someone was worried about whether a bipolar person could do the role and whether they could handle the stress and all the other bad attitudes people have, that's not a problem with my competency. That's a problem with their attitudes. So, there's a lot that society can do. And it's really important because society needs to accept responsibility for changing and being inclusive. I'm not saying the social model is perfect; no theoretical model is perfect, but it's a really important construct to make us think about, okay, what can government do? What can institutions do?Because there's always a temptation with disability to just go, oh, it's sad, but it can't be helped. A lot of things can be helped, and it's really lazy thinking, especially today when we have so much technological knowledge, so much ability to change things. Why wouldn't we just make things as accessible as possible? So, it's important to keep pushing the social model, reminding people, and just challenging people to think about difference. And how that comes back to language is, I always say disabled people or disabled person because we are disabled by society. If you say person with disabilities, you're attaching the disability to the person. That's social thinking. So that's why we make that distinction. And can I ask you why you're hesitant? That's really interesting.Sudha: While you've been speaking, I've been thinking about that, why I've been hesitant. And it could also be to do with the fact that people are not as conversant, including me, with the social model of disability. While we hear advocates occasionally speaking about it, the other model is more prevalent in most places, even in training, unfortunately. And that could be the reason for the hesitancy because you're unsure, am I doing the right thing?Caroline: Yeah, no, it's difficult, isn't it? And I think we all sometimes worry about saying the wrong thing.I think it's a challenge for the disability movement to actually get more airtime to explain why this is important because the theory behind it is important; it's the impetus for change. And while we campaign for that change, we think it's important to use the language that reflects that. That's not to say that there aren't all kinds of challenges trying to always find the right words for the right things, because I think that's something that we all grapple with in this world now. But the core theory of trying to get systemic barriers changed is the overriding thing.Sudha: That's true. I've gone to your website and seen this, that you speak a lot about harnessing lived experiences for social change. How do you do that, and why does it matter?Caroline: I think it’s really important to bring lived experience to bear on a variety of issues.And we use our lived experience in a variety of ways. A good example might be, we have a service called Touchpoint, which is all staffed by disabled people and provides ...
Transcribe →120: In conversation with Sabiana Anandaraj: Lessons for a successful second innings
Aug 12, 202400:36:29Tap to summarizeShow notes:We all need our cheerleaders, the people, who stand by us through thick and thin, who inspire and bring us joy. The friends who are like family or better. I am lucky to have a few friends like that. One amongst them is @SabianaAnandaraj, whom I have known since my first job in PR over 30 years ago when I was a young mom to two toddlers in Mumbai, and she was the young, independent, go getter who introduced me to the workings of the agency and our mutual clients. We worked together for a short while before life got in the way and we drifted apart - she moved jobs, got married, had kids and I moved to the UK.It was serendipity that we bumped into each other in early 2007 in Mumbai. The circumstances were wildly different her father was in very ill in hospital and mine was in and out of hospital (the same hospital) as he battled a rare form of Parkinson’s. Sadly, both our fathers passed away in 2007 much before their time. And @SabianaAnandaraj facilitated my unexpected move back to India for a stint to look after my mother. This move would have been impossible without @SabianaAnandaraj offering me a role in the agency she worked for at that time. And the ‘rest as they say is history.’ Today, we have a deeply, fulfilling friendship and our lives are deeply enmeshed (along with the rest of the gang) enmeshed together (in the best possible way).Getting her on the podcast has been on the cards for a while, to share her amazing work trajectory and her foray into entrepreneurship. But, also to spotlight the reality, that women in their 50s are not done as yet, they don’t suddenly lose their ambition. The dominant narrative is about them being overlooked and written off but some of us are pushing back against the lazy ageist trope. Sabiana and I are both in our mid-50s (soon to be late), have no plans to retire and firmly believe the next decade may be our best as yet Also, I don’t think we are the kind of people who will take kindly to being overlooked! In this free flowing conversation we spoke about our mothers, being old, work, women in leadership, ageism, freedom in the 50s, entrepreneurship, learnings, cheerleaders, staying motivated and much more…..We still need to talk about female friendships, menopause, empty nest, ambition, aspiration, work-life, second innings, third innings, fulfilment, and definitions of success…… Meanwhile, head to the podcast to hear more…… Episode transcriptSudha: Hi Sabiana. I'm so, so happy to have you as a guest on the Elephant in the Room podcast. We've been discussing this for the longest time, and finally, it has happened. It's good to see you here.Sabiana: Thanks so much, Sudha. It has been a pleasure. I was really excited when you asked me to be a guest on your podcast. We know each other for decades, have had, n number of informal conversations. I think this is one of our first formal conversations on a platform like this. So, I'm really looking forward to it.Sudha: Let's get started with the questions. I always ask all my guests. And even though I know you so well, and we've known each other for decades, please introduce yourself for our listeners and tell us a bit about yourself.Sabiana: In the grand scheme of things, I am the third musketeer in the family lineup.All the way from Bombay, I am today a 57 year old grown up. My one and only, what do I say? partner in crime is Trivikram. I've spawned two mini me's through him. One is Aria, who's my son, and Kaira, who's my daughter. My entrepreneurial journey started in the year 2020, I must say where I started my rollercoaster journey which I tell you that twist and turns could probably be something that you could compare with a Indian, Bollywood, blockbuster. But after two years now, finally I've settled down and I'm really enjoying the entrepreneurial journey.Sudha: So, you're enjoying the ride, so to speak.Sabiana: Yes, that's right.Sudha: We've discussed this informally a lot of times, and we speak about it. You know, when our parents were in their 40s and 50s, we thought they were really old, but like you just admitted on the podcast that you're 57, and I'm 57, I don't feel very old. Do you feel old?Sabiana: I don't actually you know, but we must understand that the times are very different Sudha. They came from a time where there was so many limitations, right? I mean, look at the job scene then, look at the job scene now, look at the exposure we have as compared to the exposure they had.They always looked for government jobs where there was work life balance. Here we are looking at, you know, raring to go even at 57. So, I think it is the times that really defined how you felt. Given the day and age that we are in today. I don't think we feel old because there is so much opportunity that I don't feel I've come to the end of that opportunity, which probably they would have, you know, at 58, they are retired, they worked at government organizations, lived in joint families. I think in their heads, life, had to come to a grinding halt from a professional point at 58.At 57, I mean, you know, two years ago I just started, being an entrepreneur, a new twist in my career. So, no, I don't feel old at all to answer your question.Sudha: Yeah, I mean, my mum was 42 when I had my oldest daughter, that is Asmita. And of course, my children show no signs of getting married or settling. And as you said, times are different. And the weight that they felt, I think it was those times where they got married early, had children early, did everything sort of at an accelerated pace and then waited. And I think even the lifespan used to be smaller. We now live longer and healthier than I think they did.Coming to something that I believe is very true. Do you think people view women differently after a certain age? Personally, , of course, and professionally.Sabiana: Sudha, I've had different experiences. I think generally speaking, yes, they do. Again, it depends on the times that we are talking about. Professionals our age at that time would be looked at very differently, treated very differently, perceived very differently, judged very differently. Over the years, I think that gap has been bridged to a large extent only for the reason that women have started playing different roles.In the past, women were playing more housewives and not really sitting in boardrooms. Today you see women are in boardrooms as well. They've broken all glass ceilings. So they are viewed differently, but that gap has been bridged over time. There's nothing that a man can do that a woman can't do.And I think over time, they've realised that we play a role at home. We look after their parents, our parents, our children, the home, and a successful career as well. So I look at it really differently because my experience has been very, very different. I've worked for organisations, Sudha, where the senior leadership team were all men and I probably was the only woman. But nobody really made me feel that I was the only woman. They gave me equal rights to speak up and so on and so forth.But I think generally speaking, it has been a struggle. When I speak to the other womenfolk, it has been a struggle for them to get their foot in the door, for them to really get things moving because men, I can't generalise, but there are men who are also very insecure about a woman taking over their seat, which they probably had for years, right? So then all those nuances one does have to face being a woman, but I think slowly things are changing.Sudha: Yeah. So this is the impact in the workplace. And I think this conversation that we are having, some of it is we are reviewing the journey that we have come on and that journey has not always been privileged, right? We've all struggled through different sorts of, what do you say, exclusions to come where we are today, and we are in a position of privilege.And I see from the kind of person that you are, Sabiana, I think a lot of women lack that confidence and that clarity and the courage to be able to work to their potential. And I think you have been singularly very focused on that part and you've been, no, I wouldn't say nobody is blessed with that courage, I think you've given yourself that courage, right?And you've spoken about the impact in the workplace. Are there any specific incidences, you don't have to name your employers, but are there some specific incidences that you can of think of where clearly, you know, the current people in power do not want you to step up or take your rightful position? Have you experienced that?Sabiana: Yeah. Because the organisations that I've worked with in the past were more male, less female. So I feel it was more male, but it's not that you don't find it with women as well. But coming to...
Transcribe →119: Misinformation, Disposable Diversity, Ethics in PR with Prof. Lee Edwards, Department of Media and Communications London School of Economics and Political Science
Jul 31, 202400:50:05Tap to summarize Shownotes:In the past couple of years, there have been a lot of discussions, debates, articles around how PR practitioners can combat misinformation. It is often cited as one of the bigger challenges along with AI (advanced technology) facing the PR industry.The Elephant in the Room is the role of PR professionals in the dissemination and amplification of misinformation and fake news. How complicit are we as an industry when propagating the agenda of businesses, individuals, and governments?Beyond the industry a lot of people ascribe ‘spin’ a pejorative term to the work being done by professionals. So, what’s the truth? To discuss this and more I spoke with Prof Lee Edwards, from the Department of Media and Communications at the LSE. Considering that the title of her 2020 research paper was, ‘Organised lying and professional legitimacy: public relations’ accountability in the disinformation debate’, she has an in-depth understanding of the subject.In this episode of The Elephant in the Room, we spoke about role of PR in society; the misinformation debate; disposable diversity; ethics of climate communications, AI, ethics in general, and more……..Thank you Stephen Waddington for the introductions, this fine conversation would not have been possible without your initiative.Interested in learning more, head to the podcast (Link in comments) 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾 Episode Transcript:Sudha: Hey, Lee Good morning. Wonderful to have you as a guest today on the podcast.Lee: It's a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me, Sudha. I hope you're well.Sudha: So, let's get started with a quick introduction to who you are and what you do. I'm really grateful to Stephen for the introductions that he made over email, but I'm keen to know more because I haven't really met with you.Lee: Yeah, so my name is Lee. I'm a professor of strategic communications and public engagement at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and I've been there about seven years. Prior to that, I was at the University of Leeds, Manchester, and Leeds Beckett originally. My research area is focused on strategic communications, particularly public relations. That's the area I look at most. More recently, it has expanded into the area of public engagement and also media literacy, which ended up being quite nicely related to the type of work that I do.I originally started in practice. I did about eight years working for the technology industries as a PR consultant. Like most PR practitioners I know, I kind of fell into it with no particular ambition to do PR, but just ended up there. I originally started in New Zealand, then I came back to London. I was mystified by the apparent power that Tony Blair's communications director, Alastair Campbell, had and how much he was hated because he was the proverbial spin doctor. I was working in the profession and didn't really feel like I was powerful at all.So that led me to do a PhD focused on understanding how power works through public relations and in public relations as a profession. The rest is history, really. I've been working in academia now for just over 20 years and really love it.Sudha: Wow, that's interesting. And I think that we should have another podcast episode, probably on your PhD, because like you, I'd agree that, yeah, we don't always feel very powerful as communications professionals. In fact, rather disempowered and often isolated, including with clients and within organisations.Let's move on to the next question. We live in such divisive and polarised times. What do you think is the role of PR in society? We are so set in our views; we all think the choices or the sides that we take are the correct sides to be supported and advocated for.We've seen, day before yesterday, the attempt on the presidential candidate in the US. All this is a result of the churn happening in society, the conflicts and the unease there. And, of course, communications professionals have a huge role, I believe, to play. We don't often get that opportunity. But between strategic advisors to the C-suite and spin doctors, which most people like to think of PR practitioners as, is there a happy medium between the two? A space that we can occupy with authenticity?Lee: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really interesting question. There are perhaps two answers to it in the sense that I think currently there's the role that public relations as a profession and practitioners occupy, and there's the potential role that they could play. Currently, I think we oscillate between those two roles of strategic advice and spin doctor.The strategic advice role is the one that has the most promise, in the sense that it's a role that is more reflective and considered as a contribution to the organisation. It doesn’t just take the organisation for granted and follow what the organisation says. It’s much more of a kind of critical friend type role. And I think that's got to be positive because organisations can become very self-oriented and absorbed with their own purposes. That’s just the nature of the beast. But public relations practitioners have this bridging role that is very valuable. The strategic advisory capacity is important for helping organisations understand the nature of the society they exist in.The spin doctor role, I think, is what happens when practitioners don’t or aren’t able to take on that more strategic approach. To some degree, that's a question of organisational culture, the degree to which organisational leaders are able or willing to listen, and perhaps also the degree to which comms practitioners are able to make themselves relevant. There’s a challenge there, because if you end up being the spin doctor, you end up simply parroting what the organisation thinks is important, and that’s not necessarily what society needs. So I think that’s what currently happens.There’s a lot of debate within the profession about the pros and cons of both roles and the desire to be seen as more strategic. I think there is also a much bigger role for communications professionals, particularly public relations professionals, because they are different from advertisers, branders, and marketers. They are more focused on dialogue, discussion, and engaging with audiences. There’s a lot of talk, for example, about relationship building and engaging in conversations. That gives the profession a platform to influence society and the way social dynamics unfold.For instance, with the shooting of the presidential candidate at the weekend, the ways in which the communications profession responds should also reflect on how they might make interventions as a profession, not on behalf of their clients but as a profession. They should discuss how and why such events might happen, what rhetoric underpins them, and how one might change it and make concrete moves in that direction. They have a lot of influence; these are people who work with some of the biggest companies in the world and with some of the largest media conglomerates. I would like to see a more socially oriented professional identity than we have at the moment. I think that could have a really significant impact on the way people talk about division and debate.Sudha: I think that's a very interesting perspective, Lee. And I also think, how we contribute to the discourse, whether we contribute just on when you know, strictly has a problem or there's some reality TV show or we are participating in issues that really make a difference to people and to society. I think, we need to definitely consider that.Moving on from this, we're talking about the U. S. and of course the U. S. has been so prominent in the past couple of decades, not just because of its power, but, what has been happening in politics. So the 2016 U. S. elections, were a time when we saw a lot of fake news or biased news and it brought misinformation to the spotlight.And there was a spotlight on the role of lobbyists, PR practitioners, foreign actors to build a particular narrative. It’s been eight years since that spotlight. Has there been any change in behaviour or is it more of the same? Because I noticed that, as practitioners, as an industry, we love to talk about things, but I don't think, we really address some of the issues root and branch and try to make a systemic change. What are your thoughts on this?Lee:I think the reality is that the volume of misinformation that became very visible in 2016 is now normalised. I think that’s probably the case. It was interesting how little it was discussed in the UK election, for example. I’m not sure about the election in India—there have been so many elections—but I was struck by the fact that occasionally it was covered as an issue but not really picked up, and there was no significant monitoring of it as far as I could tell. Although I was away for some of the election time, so it may have happened in my absence.I think the real...
Transcribe →118: SDG 2 and the role of the private sector in sustainable development: Chris Argent, Head of Sustainability & Corporate Affairs, AMEA, Syngenta
Jul 10, 202400:31:12Tap to summarizeShownotes:Most people would agree that sustainability is a much-abused word. It has become a catch call phrase for individuals and businesses keen on asserting their ‘good for society/good for planet credentials’. As we hurtle towards 2030, the reality is that the private sector has a pivotal role to play in helping to meet the SDGs. Cynicism aside, behind the rhetoric and noise, there is serious effort by some businesses to integrate it into their business strategy.A couple of weeks back, I spoke with Chris Argent, Head of Sustainability for AMEA at Syngenta (A leader in agricultural innovation) to understand the role of the private sector in global food security (SDG 2), on innovations that can catalyse change and help improve the lives and livelihoods of farmers (especially marginal farmers). According to the World Economic Forum, ‘the global food security challenge is straightforward: by 2050 the world must feed two billion people more and the demand for food will be 56% greater than 2010.’ The sector also accounts for a whopping 30% of greenhouse gas emissions and 70% of freshwater withdrawals, so there is also the need for adoption of innovative practices to be more sustainable.What is the private sector doing to address SDG 2? How are businesses transforming and innovating for sustainable development? Chris covered some of the issues during our conversation👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👉🏾 The link between purpose, profit and sustainability👉🏾 How organisations can be authentic when speaking about purpose or sustainability👉🏾 What it means to be a leader in agricultural innovation for Syngenta?👉🏾 The impact of climate change on small and marginal farmers who make up majority of the world’s farmers and produce over 70-80% of the world’s food (UN FAO 2021)👉🏾 The ‘Good Growth Plan’ (Indian context) a time bound target to reduce its carbon intensity by 50% by 2030 from a 2016 baseline👉🏾 The Portfolio Sustainability Framework aimed at increasing transparency to external stakeholders👉🏾 Changing food preferences and growing trend for sustainably grown foodWe also spoke about sustainability narratives, reporting, communications and much more.Global non-profit EAT, “Food is the single strongest lever to optimize human health and environmental sustainability on Earth”To hear more, head to the podcast (Link in comments) 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾Episode Transcript:Sudha: Good morning, Chris. It's wonderful to have you as a guest on The Elephant in the Room Podcast today. Thank you for being here.Chris: Thanks very much Sudha for inviting me to join. Looking forward to the discussion.Sudha: Brilliant. Let's start with a quick introduction. So, you've moved from politics to external affairs and then sustainability. How has the journey been?Chris: That's a great question. Things have certainly evolved in terms of sustainability over that period. As you mentioned, I started my career in Australian politics working in various roles for about seven years before moving to the private sector. And certainly, in that early days of sustainability, it certainly wasn't high on corporate's agenda. But over that time it has very much come to the fore, which I think is great for the community, for business and also for the environment.It really started with the development of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and it's certainly progressed from there.Sudha: Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like a very interesting journey, and I'm sure there have been lots of learnings that you can now use in your current role.So, I listened to a podcast where you spoke about purpose, profit and sustainability. This is something I'm very passionate about. my consultancy is called The Purpose Room. Both purpose and sustainability have become sort of buzzwords for organisations keen to show their commitment to a bigger, cause to a bigger purpose. So how can organisations show up, authentically when they speak about purpose or sustainability without somebody groaning on the sidelines?Chris: Yeah, thanks for the question. I think authenticity is the key word that you just mentioned there Sudha. I think sustainability and sustainable operations throughout the business world and beyond are critically important to some of the key issues that we face as a community at the moment. And certainly, two that very important to Syngenta, which as I'm sure your listeners would know, is one of the biggest agribusiness companies in the world, where we sell seeds and crop protection products to farmers. And so, food security and climate change are two incredibly important big issues that the world faces, and that certainly not only impacts our industry, we believe that we can be part of a very complex solution to these issues and so authenticity is critical.And I think we've all heard of many companies falling foul of accusations of greenwashing and certainly I think many companies perhaps were keen to demonstrate that they were doing something in the purpose space.But I think critically, and this is fundamental to sustainability at Syngenta, it can't be separate from your business strategy. Sustainability needs to be part of the business strategy. If it's business and sustainability, I think it can be seen as an add on or an afterthought or even a cost rather than an investment.And the private sector has a critical role to play in these big issues. And so that's where, I guess, where purpose meets profit, is to me the foundation of where the answer may lie. Private businesses are in service to their consumers and shareholders, but also increasingly consumers and shareholders expect the private sector to be in service of something bigger, and that's where the purpose comes in.But if it's not profitable, if we can't find that sweet spot between purpose and profit, it becomes outside that that private sector space. And I think if we can find those areas where profit meets purpose in a meaningful way, that's how we can really drive the agenda forward and drive change. And I think it starts with being part of the business strategy, which is the approach that we take at Syngenta.Sudha: Very well-articulated there and what is interesting that you're saying is it should not be an add on because so far it has been an add on for businesses. I think for decades it's been like yeah, you do some philanthropy and CSR and that's something that you're doing just a bit on the side. I think companies are definitely finding it difficult to, like you said, to make it an essential part of the business.So, your boiler plate reads Syngenta Crop Protection is a leader in agricultural innovation. What does leader mean? Leadership has been redefined so many times in the past couple of years, I'd say. What are your aspirations as a leader for Syngenta? Is it size, scale, innovation or purpose?Chris: Yeah, sitting on the fence, Sudha, I think it's part of all of those things and certainly going back to the point I made before about the importance of profitability in the broader scheme of the pursuit of purpose. So certainly, we seek to be a leader in the industry and I think that leaves us best placed to help farmers with the challenges of growing more food, with less impact on the environment.I mean, that's a critical important challenge that I mentioned before. So, there's all that leadership in terms of how we listen to farmers. I mean, farmers being at the centre of everything we do, how do we understand the challenges that they're facing? And agriculture is tremendously diverse and if I think about the region that I'm responsible for Asia, Middle East and Africa, we have large scale industrial farming, and then we have a lot of smallholder farmers who trying to make a living and support themselves and their community with one hectare or less of, land to farm on.There's lots of different challenges across that region. But I think finding a common way to understand what farmers are looking for in terms of solutions to their problem is one approach we take. So, there's that leadership. There's leadership in terms of innovation, which in terms of buzzword Sudha is another one that I would contend is thrown around a lot at the moment.And innovation can mean a lot, it can mean technological innovation and certainly from our product development approach, that's a big part of what we mean by innovation. But it's also about innovative ways to deal with what is very complex in terms of food security and climate change, and the role that agriculture plays in that.And so how can we be innovative in the solutions that we provide, not just from a product perspective, but also through partnerships with broader solutions for some of these issu...
Transcribe →117: Harnessing the power of GEDI(Gender, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) to build a more inclusive organisation: Kavneet Sahni, Dasra
Jun 13, 202400:38:34Tap to summarizeKavneet Dasra Shownotes:In my second innings I have been intentional about working with the third sector. Through The Elephant in the Room, I am able to engage vicariously with the sector without being a part of it. To some extent I have been able deepen my understanding and engagement with the sector through PRADAN where I truly believe there is an alignment between my passion and their purpose. However, truth be told the sector is cliquey and closed like most sectors/industries the world over. A bit jarring considering they exist to make society more equitable and inclusive, to provide support to the most excluded. In the Indian sub-continent where I have spent a lot of my time it is no different. A cursory look at leadership, boards and composition of teams can be revelatory. That they mirror society, and all its inequalities is a bit alarming? Is it possible for them to continue to work with the excluded and marginalised, and be effective in their current avatar? What does it mean for the sustainability of the social sector short term and long term? To learn about what the sector is doing to change, I reached out to Dasra one of India’s most respected and leading third sector organisation. Dasra evolved from being a philanthropy fund to a bridge between NGOs and funders. On their website they state that, ‘Equity is at the centre of everything we do’. To kickstart my conversations with the sector I spoke with Kavneet Sahni, who anchors internal DEI efforts, spear heads the GEDI (Gender, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) initiative at Dasra and leads on their Social Impact Program. GEDI is a lens that not only guides Dasra’s internal inclusion strategy but also informs their funding and grant making strategy. For the uninitiated GEDI is commonly used amongst multilateral organisations including ILO, IRC, UN to frame conversations on diversity and inclusion. In this freewheeling episode Kavneet and I spoke about her background, move to the third sector, faith, privilege, GEDI, the drivers for change in the social sector, representation, war for talent, barriers to change, best practice, inclusive campaigns and initiatives, successes and failures………My one key takeaway, the road to inclusion is paved with failure and learning……..To hear more, head to the podcast….Episode TranscriptSudha: Good morning, Kavneet. It's wonderful to have you as a guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast today. Thank you for being here and making time.Kavneet: Thank you, Sudha. It's a pleasure to be here and I'm so delighted that you actually are interested in learning a bit more about my journey and the work that we do at Dasra around diversity and inclusion. So, thank you for having me.Sudha: Let’s start with a quick introduction to who you are and what you do.Kavneet: So, I work as an Associate Director at Dasra and my role primarily is to design and implement capacity building programs for non-profits and other stakeholders in the sector. You may know this, but Dasra was formed on the basis that there is a lot of funding, a lot of focus that goes into supporting programs, on ground and very little focus on building stronger institutions like we often do in the corporate world. So, my role, my journey at Dasara has been, very old. I've spent close to 11 years at Dasara now and most of my time goes in building, designing programs, which will help nonprofit leaders, look through their own leadership journeys, become better leaders, but also strengthen their teams, their organisation.In the last few years, with a lot of chatter happening on diversity and inclusion. I also have had the opportunity to dive a little bit deeper and understand. Beginning from who I am, what is my identity, how does that bring the privilege that I carry. And even at Dasara, I've had the opportunity to anchor some of the diversity and inclusion efforts.So that's a little bit about me professionally. I'm a mother, I like to call that out, of a seven-year-old. He keeps me on my toes and kind of teaches me, new lessons every day, if I can put it out there.Sudha: Amazing. So, like you said, you didn't start off in the social sector.If you were not at Dasra, what would you be doing? Have you thought of it? Do you think about it sometime?Kavneet: Yeah. I was at the crossroads and there was this dilemma back in 2013/14 when I joined Dasra. But on one side I had to pick this job at Dasra and the other side I had an offer from Johnson & Johnson. So, it was either the corporate world or the development sector. And I'll be honest, I did give it a thorough thought at that point of time because of course, if you enter the corporate world, you get a better salary, as a starting point, you have a lot of other incentives. There is a clear career path that you're moving ahead on. At the same time, I think my passion lies in the development space, and I really wanted to contribute my skills, my experience to the society and that's where I picked Dasra. But wherever I would have been, if not Dasra, Johnson & Johnson, any corporate job, I think I would still be doing the very same thing, engaging with stakeholders, working on diversity and inclusion, because my background was in human resources.Sudha: That's so interesting. So, you are passion led and you knew very clearly where you want to go and how you want to use your skills. How important, Kavneet, is your identity to you? And what are the experiences that have shaped you and influenced the work that you do today? Because, we are also confused about our identities, like, who am I at the end of the day? Most of us tend to be identified by our designation and the place where we work.Kavneet: That's such an interesting question, Sudha. And I see it in a way that there is a perception or there is a way in which the world identifies you. And then, there are certain things that you identify very closely with your own personality, with your work, with your personal family life.And to the world, of course, I would say I have the privilege to be an able bodied woman, married women born in a upper class, upper middle class family, had the privilege of finishing a double masters and supported by my parents. So, I think I do acknowledge the privileges that I've had while growing up.But at the same time, I also I always try to not negate the challenges that I have had, whether it is around, socioeconomic challenges of being in a family where I was the first girl to not get married at the age of 22. Where I was the girl who was like, I want to do a master's, but I don't want to do a BEd, which is apparently the best way for me to settle down in life and, in my career. Where I was the one who said, okay, if you don't want to, sponsor my MBA, I will take an education loan and I will go ahead and I'm ready to take the risk and the responsibility of the repercussions that come along.So, I also had my own set of challenges, whether it was around seeing the financial difficulties, parents and me not getting on the same page around when to settle and what's best for me in my life. But I think what's always stayed with me are some values, that I identify myself with.I am very into preachings of Guru Nanak Devji, and I follow Sikhism as a religion. But I think more than any of the gurus, any of the teachings, I'm very influenced by the teachings of Guru Nanak and he has spoken a lot about being kind to others, not discriminating, just believing in the oneness of God, but also the oneness of human beings. So, I think those are some of the values I really identify with and hold very closely to my heart.Sudha: That's so good to hear gives a holistic view into who you are, your spirituality and faith that often, sort of grounds us and is our North Star and guides us in making decisions in life.Tell us about your journey at Dasra internal, to DEI as strategic imperative, because I don't think for the social sector, it has been a big priority. What are the drivers? Why is it that the social sector really needs to sort of get started and get going very quickly on this journey?Kavneet: Yeah. So, Dasra was formed in 1999, we've been in existence for 25 years. And I think some principles that have stayed at the very core of whatever programs we build, whatever path, new strategies that might have come along. We always want, and we always try to keep the communities, the vulnerable communities that we serve at the centre of everything we do.So that has been like the core right from the beginning as to how can we think and how any program, any activity, anything that we do, any action taken at Dasara, how is it influencing these communities positively? I think that has been one of the very, I would say strategic drivers, for us to do what we do today in the field o...
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