Episode 26 - Nadia Bob-Thomas - 'Don't Let Anyone Define You' - The Secret Resume

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to the Secret Resume podcast, hosted by me, Melody Moore.
In this podcast, we explore the people, places and experiences that have shaped
my guests, those which have influenced who they are as people and where they
are in their work life today, or as I like to call it, their secret resume.

(00:21):
So my guest today is Nadia Bob-Thomas. Nadia, welcome and can you introduce
yourself for the listeners, please?
Hello, Melody. Thank you. So yes, Nadia Bob-Thomas.
I currently work as a head of DEI and well-being at a major blue light service in London.
Recently started that job maybe within the last two years. And before that,

(00:43):
I have been a career civil servant.
Ah, perfect. You are the third, I think, maybe even fourth civil servant that I've had on my podcast.
In fact, I just came back from having a walk with a friend of mine who's
is also a civil servant so very familiar with
that world so thank you for introducing yourself
we're going to go right back to the 80s

(01:06):
is where we're going to start our story and yeah
do you want to tell us a bit about that I've got on my notes Beatrix Potter
school yeah I'm an 80s baby and I think that that generation of people in the
80s I think we have lived quite an interesting resting life because we've been
at the start and finish of quite a lot of like changes in society.

(01:31):
So with me, I put Beach Spotter School as like kind of like a key point for
me because it's kind of where I started my earliest kind of memories of life, I think.
So I come from migrant family.
We came over from Sierra Leone.
In West Africa and my earliest childhood memories are going to Beatrice Potter's

(01:52):
school so for me my childhood was quite it felt as though I existed in the fairy
tale so I was this huge bookworm I loved like you know obviously the books like
Beatrice Potter's books and Peter Rabbit,
Roald Dahl and I kind of like I went to a school where
apparently Mary Mag is no Mary what's
her name sorry no Beatrice Potter yeah apparently Beatrice

(02:15):
Potter actually lived where the school was which is why
the school came came about and like
our uniform was having peter rabbit on our jumpers or
t-shirts it was like you can get them in any different
color you wanted so these rain we had these rainbows of
uniforms like yellows pinks blues and i
was living where big spotter lived apparently roldar

(02:37):
lived up at the top of the road as well he had a house top
of the road so literally i felt the life of the
fairy tale when i was younger yeah it was just it
was such a a beautiful childhood and doing this
exercise made me think about that that's just how
idyllic it all was the school had a beautiful field
at the back of a huge acorn tree we used to
play conkers during the summer we had like a huge pond where when the season

(03:02):
came we used to like go and fish for tadpoles and then you still watch them
grow it was such a beautiful beautiful childhood and going back to it I just
remember the summers and people playing cricket as I'm walking down.
To school and yeah it was just it was so
idyllic and I just I was really happy and I really really loved
it where was that that was in

(03:24):
Earlsfield in Wandsworth it was a time when
you used to leave your doors unlocked and my friends used
to come to my house it's going to each other's houses you got to
come out to play and and I always say as
well this was before um Sunday trading laws came
into play where actually where you can just I

(03:46):
felt so London was my playground because on Sunday shops were never open so
yes yeah we used to ride our bikes all over London so when the cars weren't
there it was just so quiet you had Sunday roast it was just it was just really
really beautiful yeah childhood really really lovely.
And what were you like as a child?

(04:06):
As a child, what was I like? I think...
I had no fear. Like I said, London was lovely.
We had friends all over the place. So everybody around the surrounding schools,
we were all, if you were in the area, you just had the friendship groups in the area.
We'd ride our bikes. I was very, I was into my books. I've said before, I was a bookworm.
So I had such a big library as a child.

(04:30):
I remember we used to go on holidays, mostly to Europe with my immediate family
and everyone would pack and then my mum would look at my suitcase as being a suitcase for the books.
They're going on holiday why are you bringing so many books like because
it was just like my escapism I just really really loved it
so I was a keen reader and yeah I
just yeah I love I remember reading the twits a lot by Roald

(04:51):
Dahl that was my some reason but yeah
that was me and one of the key people
in my life that time I remember my earliest memories my
grandmother and she used to walk me to school I
remember the walk to school you know the big cricket field on route
to get to school and I remember skipping with
her holding my hand with people playing cricket on the

(05:13):
side and then yeah and just going to school still
just really lovely that's amazing
and did you have a close relationship with
your grandmother yeah she is my earliest
memories with her she was instrumental in my
life she was the closest person to me I
think she defined what love was for me she

(05:35):
was my entire heartbeat yeah my
source of love my source of purpose my source of
just grounding she was God-fearing so taught me
so many lessons that I didn't realize until she passed really and I had to kind
of work out oh wow what is this relationship and I talk about it a bit later
about how about this sense making I think a lot of what I'm going to talk about

(05:58):
is really about around identity and purpose and really sense making my reality as I'm going.
Through my journey of life but she was the center of it very pivotal for me
and were there any other you know influences strong influences on you at that time.
At that point, I will say it was my grandmother.

(06:22):
So she actually lived in Sierra Leone. She would come, she would travel back
and forth to London, usually for caregiving purposes, because my mum was a single
mother, so she was working a lot.
So I was raised quite a lot by my grandmother. So she had a very big role in my life.
So I think at that time, I have to say that my world revolved around my grandmother.

(06:43):
My grandfather so my family so my
grandmother and her she had four children and my
grandfather and they actually um she came over it's so
interesting that their stories I wish I'd more time with her to actually understand
her story but one of the things they used to talk about was when they came over
from Fiorio and by boat in those days it used to take two two weeks but the

(07:06):
boat was really lovely the pictures are having parties and stuff like that it
was really quite idyllic but they They lived in Maidstone in Kent.
So my grandfather, I never knew what it was.
I never knew him to actually go to Sierra Leone. So he maintained the house in Maidstone.
It's a really big Victorian house, three floors and a basement.

(07:27):
And he just loved Maidstone. He loved being in the UK.
So he stayed there. So I would go over to him on the weekends.
My grandma would fly over from Sierra Leone, live in the two countries.
And he was actually phenomenal as well. He always wore a suit,
always wore a suit, with a tie, always had a hat, either a flat cap or like

(07:50):
a chubby hat. He was just impeccable.
Very stylish. Very stylish.
Schoolman, very handsome, very softly spoken.
So the two of them, my grandparents, yeah, they were the key people in my childhood.
Yeah. And what was your mum doing? What work did she do?
My mum actually worked in cam so child and

(08:13):
adult mental health no child adolescence or
mental health and she was based in wandsworth so
she at the time it was um around wandsworth i
think what's called west side now something beyond it or
sense it was when i was growing up so she so we also always around actually
psychiatrists psychologists so um she worked there she wasn't a psychologist

(08:35):
she was more of an office administrator so yeah so she worked in that field
but I was always around a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists growing up yeah so.
So take me to your next thing that you're going to talk about.
Los Angeles is in there, your brother, your grandfather. Tell me a bit about that.

(08:57):
So I come from a bit of a, I don't know if it's called a blended family,
but my father, so it's really interesting when you're part of like a migrant family.
So my mother and her side of the family, they all emigrated to London.
We had like more of a London reality.
And my father, he went to Los Angeles and he remarried.
And so I have seven brothers and sisters

(09:19):
and they all lived in Los Angeles so
what I would have is my every summer holiday
sometimes Easter I would get shipped off to Los
Angeles and so I had this dual reality so
term time I'm in London holiday time
I'm in Los Angeles and that was a completely completely
two realities so different but it

(09:41):
was absolutely amazing so so I
just yeah so I just have like all
these siblings like wow this is amazing obviously
I go there it's just all fun because we're on holiday so
we would go to Disneyland Universal Studios all the
big theme parks and I just got to be like
in the sense of all this love more love and more

(10:03):
more play and and everything like that and it was this it
was this really amazing so one of my brothers was
called Salam he was number three I'm number
four I'm the first girl he was I'm the third
boy and he was the closest he was the closest sibling to me at that time and
he he I he was you at the time he was like the love of my life I was just he

(10:27):
was such an amazing kind-hearted soul and he was just my confidant.
And the reason I put him as one of the key people in my life.
Because at the age of 14, when he was 21, we lost him.
He had a heart disease and which
we were unaware of. And he was playing basketball and he passed away.

(10:51):
Having had an attack whilst he was playing and i just
that that moment for me coming from my fairy tale
existence of being you know around what what i just said being
this fairytale fairytale reality i call it
like the loss of innocence because up until
that point i never really experienced death they
were new about death it just came out of

(11:12):
the blue and i call it loss of innocence i remember it was
uh whilst i was in secondary school and um at
the time actually I think we just read the book called Little Lord Fauntleroy
something and that book was about the
loss of innocence so it was that kind having
and I think that was really when I started really
looking at life and the value of life the purpose of life like why we're here

(11:36):
why does that have to happen and I think that really yeah started yeah it changed
my life it changed that romance that I had with life just know like why is this
happening of course because.
I had these two different realities as well it
was quite hard to make sense of
it because it happened outside of my normal

(11:56):
reality of London in this other place and
I had to kind of somehow make sense of these
two realities so it I think that was why I say
probably the start of my my dabble with
psychology and just this you know
just the meaning of life like what what is this here what is my story what is
my journey so that really I think started to just complicate life a little bit

(12:21):
for me and made me I would say start to look at life differently and just question
things a lot more and just ask questions more about life.
How did you deal with the loss of your brother? You were obviously very close to him.
Yeah, that was a really hard journey for me. Really, really hard journey.

(12:43):
And I think it took me a long, it took me years to deal with it.
I think for, I remember for the first year, I think I cried every,
every single day about the loss of my brother.
I mourned him for every single day. but it
was interesting because it took a while a
few years for me to actually get
referred to counselling and there was a beautiful place it's

(13:05):
called off the record it's actually a place in Croydon and I met with a beautiful
counsellor called Louise can't remember her surname but she introduced me to
CBT counselling or behavioural therapy and that helped me start sense making
and she introduced me to the thing I don't know if people know it's called a jelly
baby tree where you have it's a tree and then

(13:26):
you have like different kind of like jelly baby well beings
or something in different places in the tree with
different kind of emotions and every session started she
pointed okay which one are you now and then that
helped and I still have that document till now I actually
unhurt it I thought over two decades ago I

(13:46):
still have kept it and you kind of point see where you
are to help to make sense of your reality and I think that kind of helped me
to understand actually it's okay to not be okay it's okay to be feeling this
feeling that but then just help me to try and make sense of of my reality make
sense of how I'm feeling and just try and just walk my way through but it took me a long time,

(14:08):
to get my brother's path in I can't I can't even say how many years.
It could even be around 10 years, to be honest with you. It took me a long time.
But I remember at the end of that process, I had a little book and I wrote him a letter.
I filled the whole journal writing him a letter just to let go and say,
OK, I'm good now. We can let go.

(14:30):
I've processed it. You're gone. Thank you for being part of my life.
You're a really, really big part of my life. And yeah, and I was able to just
kind of start moving on, I guess you could say.
It must have been difficult because you weren't in the same country then you
know if he had been in la and all your family who were close to him were in

(14:53):
la and you were the only one here that was,
struggling with it yeah absolutely and obviously we're all all my siblings were
all kids as well so we all kind of sense making it making sense of it all but but yeah it's it was an
interesting journey it did affect my relationships with

(15:14):
my siblings I have to admit because um you know
it's like if I go back to that environment and
for me I'm not stuck at that moment
I'm still reliving that moment as I'm going back so it did it did kind of affect
us a little bit but it was an it was an interesting it was a very it had a very

(15:36):
big impact in my life and I I think it really changed the course of who I am personally.
Yeah, yeah. What was it like?
I'm interested in that experience of, you know, terms in London, holidays in LA.

(15:59):
You know, they're two very different countries, very different cities for a
start, you know, So with one family in the UK, another family in the US,
a bigger family with much more siblings,
I guess, how was that transition between the two?
I remember a time, actually, I was speaking to my siblings about this recently.

(16:20):
So I've just come back from Los Angeles.
There was a time where I refused to come back home to the UK. I absolutely refused.
It was too much fun over there. And there was too many opportunities.
There was so much happiness. I refused. They literally had to bribe me to come back on a plane.
And I can just imagine little me just like trusting

(16:42):
these adults to like take me back one day but
yeah it was fantastic
it was another romance for me it was another
beautiful space for me absolutely love
it and um obviously I lost my brother whilst I was in secondary school as well
so there's added complexity there so in my secondary school I went to a secondary

(17:02):
school I call I would say it's called it's like a bit of a centurions there
can be school I probably won't name it since I've called it centurions but it
was in I was all girls school church Church of England School, all girls in Fulham,
it was an interesting experience, that one.
Because it was predominantly a white middle-class school.

(17:23):
And then that's another kind of reality for me, being from a migrant family,
having a Los Angeles aspect, being this middle-class white school.
So there's a lot of different identities for me growing up.
One of the things that I kind of...
Felt a little bit when I was going to Los Angeles the fact that I
would miss key aspects of bonding for

(17:45):
my friends because obviously I've been in Los Angeles and they'll
all have this summer experience where they'll go and do stuff and then I'd come
back and then I was completely excluded from that so there's another complexity
I think oh maybe I shouldn't be going to Los Angeles so much because you know
I'm missing out on these bonding experiences with my friends and so So I think that alongside,

(18:05):
you know, just lose my brother, not really wanted to go there too much anymore,
made me kind of focus more on being in the UK and developing my reality in the
UK. Okay, what am I doing here?
What do I have to do to develop my relationship?
So I kind of fell out of love a little bit of Los Angeles and just kind of just
put it on the back burner a little bit and just focused on London because I

(18:29):
think it was a little bit painful for me to go there.
There but yeah so yeah i was in my centurion's life i call it centurion's face centurion's era.
Absolutely and it really was like
the school is actually quite a high performing school at the time actually um
it was where the blair government was in in place and actually um tony blair

(18:52):
when he one of his daughters looking for a secondary school he actually considered
this school and I remember there was like newspaper articles saying,
you know, the school had people,
kids being picked up by limousines and stuff. We didn't.
But no, that too was a really good experience for me.
Actually, it was interesting. And again, when I look at identity,

(19:15):
one of the issues when I look back in that school was about trying to fit in.
So again, because I have all these different realities, it's about me trying to fit in.
So I felt there in that school, one of the issues I felt with that school is
the fact that I felt they were trying to mould me to become part of this community.

(19:40):
Reality which actually wasn't my reality and I
felt as though back then but now we talk about culture
we talk about differences and diversity but back then I
don't think it was really a thing you had to assimilate and I think being me
all the different aspects of my life and what I was trying to like you know
making meaning of it was very hard for me to assimilate to that culture and

(20:02):
I think looking back now I can see why I had some experiences I had so I was actually suspended
from that school twice and I now looking back I can see why it's because I was very much the,
person who asked questions like why are we doing this or want to do things a
bit differently and in a school where actually you're trying they're trying
to make everyone you know be a.

(20:23):
You know you're part of this school this is your tribe difference wasn't really
valued back then so it was hard for them to understand me it was hard for me
to understand them as well and was that different to your primary school was
that more diverse your primary school,
no I know not at all I think
ones worse for them I don't

(20:44):
think they were full of diversity back in those times and I went to quite other
things in quite affluent areas and so there was a lot but in primary school
I don't think it's that big of a deal and probably as you're at that age you
just meet people they are don't you yes i actually.
I actually didn't experience difference in primary school. I didn't recognize

(21:08):
difference. Everyone was expected.
It was actually wonderful. There was no difference.
But I think going to secondary school, you start seeing the differences.
I think even teachers start to interact with you differently.
You can tell they're coming to you through different lenses.
I'm starting to become an adolescent, an adult.
I'm starting to have more independence. I'm starting to question things a bit more.

(21:31):
And actually I found then that yeah I
don't think this isn't the space where they really want
you to question things you know you're here to do a job get your
grades make sure that you reflect the school in a
good light and how they want you to and that's what it
was there but looking back now I can see that but during that time I think oh
why are they so resistant like am I different what's happening here so as an

(21:55):
adult you can kind of make sense of it but at the time you could just feel something
yeah yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense I think I broke them down I think.
I'm interested how did you break them down I think they realized yeah this one

(22:16):
has a strong spirit I think we could just leave her alone but,
it's funny so one of my teachers back then actually and it's only now I'm really
thinking about it. He was called Mr.
Elkhorn, John Elkhorn. He was the bit, my business studies teacher.
And I remember he, he was from South Africa. So I think he saw me through a different lens.
So back then we didn't have any black teachers at all. So everyone's white,

(22:39):
but I think he could relate in a different lens.
I remember he said something once to me, you know, I,
At the time, I was thinking, what was he talking about? He said,
it's just you and us against them.
He's like, it's you and me against them. I was thinking, what were you talking about?
But now I understand what he was trying to say.

(22:59):
I kind of get the lens that you're seeing life through.
I kind of understand it. So, you know, and I'm here kind of thing.
And actually, he was really, really supportive looking back.
I used to spend the most time in his classes. I
used to put in the most effort in his classes and
actually I got the highest grade and he's I got an A star but GCSE

(23:20):
and he's got A levels in his class and I'm like actually yeah I understand
what you're saying we just had a you know
when you're younger you don't you you feel things
but you can't really make sense of them although when you look back you can
kind of make sense of them but the extra effort he put in and the extra kind
of attention he gave me really paid off because I look at my grades and look

(23:43):
what I've taken from it I think probably he was the first.
Person outside kind of like of my immediate ecosystem I could say actually okay
he made a difference because I
could see from the results like I'm even remembering him I don't remember
most of the teachers but I still remember him so he must
have had an impact in some way yeah i hear

(24:05):
that a lot on this podcast is that you know
the the impact teachers can
have both positively and negatively and i
see it with my own daughter and my friends kids you know kids will love a subject
and then all of a sudden they won't love it because they've got a different
teacher or vice versa you know my daughter came home the other day she's 14

(24:27):
and she said you know She really likes her new maths teacher because he explains
things in a way that she understands,
and the previous one didn't.
It's as simple as that. She will
do better because she can just understand just the way it's explained.
The power of teachers is phenomenal.

(24:49):
It is. And I felt that in secondary school, there's two examples specific, right?
I kind of looked back and thought, wow, the power that you had then really could
have affected the trajectory of my life. So one was in math.
So I'm not sure, I don't think they do it now, but you had different sets in
like different subjects.
So like in math, you had the higher, intermediate and lower.
So I was always in the top sets for everything.

(25:10):
So throughout my time at that school, I was in the top set for everything, math.
And then when we came up to our GCSEs when my
math teacher she put me into the intermediate set so
in the intermediate the highest grade you can get was a B but I
remember at the time thinking this makes no sense because you've just limited
what I could potentially get so even if I was in a top set I could still get

(25:34):
the B I could get a C but I could also get the A and I thought oh looking back
now I think oh you really just kind of just you know just this kind of impacted what
I could have got in that moment based on I'm not sure what.
So I got the B, but I'm thinking, well, I probably could have got the A then if I got the B anyway.
And then the second time was a career fair we had.

(25:57):
And this is the typical experience of a lot of black children of that time where
you are pigeonholed into a career that actually is a prejudice and a stereotype,
which actually isn't anything to do with you.
So I remember going to the careers fair and this person who I've never known

(26:18):
from nowhere because they bought in some careers experts.
I think I told her I wanted to do law and she told me to do something ridiculous.
I've never even thought about something I know around sports or something really out of left field.
I thought, how did you get there? and looking back now doing this exercise I

(26:39):
actually think that she might have affected how I viewed her.
People of authority or people or advisors or people who
can help me because I just thought you you didn't listen
to anything I said you just told me what you just projected something
that you held onto me but interesting enough I was so strong a spirit that I

(26:59):
just ignored her I knew enough to ignore her and and that was me I had a very
very strong spirit back then I I just did I I knew I had, even I had a strong sense of self,
even though I was still trying to understand my identity,
trying to understand meaning of life and my purpose.
I still had a strong sense of self to know when something wasn't right or when

(27:21):
someone wasn't actually talking to me, the me that I knew I was.
It's interesting, isn't it? And I think as a teenager, as a kid,
it's an instinctive thing. You haven't got the words to put around it probably,
but there's just, you know, there's something else going on that you're reacting to.

(27:42):
And now you're like, oh, I think it was that. But at the time,
you're just reacting to something that you just felt wasn't right,
it sounds like. Yeah. Okay.
Okay. Let's talk a bit about university. So you finish school, you go to university.
Where do you go to university? What do you do? Well. Well.

(28:03):
I'm thinking I think so before I went to
university if I could I took a gap year and the reason
I took that gap year is because
I think of that failure of strong career
vice so I come from a family of kind of of lawyers so we always knew in our

(28:23):
family it's really funny that the girls in particularly we were all going to
be lawyers we had no other there was no other another option it was just lawyers
so that's why I knew I was going to do law regardless,
but then I still I had
a lack of awareness of anything else and so
it didn't feel right to go straight into university so I took a gap year I applied

(28:46):
for jobs some interviews I just bombed it was awful but then I got I applied
for the civil service and they they kind of put me on on a waiting list and
then I ended up getting a job in the civil service and I ended up entering at the age of,
I think, 19 at the lowest management role,
executive officer it was, EO, but it was not at the bottom rung.

(29:09):
It was quite, for my age, a really good job.
And then they put me into, I worked in asylum. Yeah.
My life changed. My life absolutely changed. Working in the asylum department
at the age of 19, managing staff, managing asylum applications.

(29:30):
This also would have been late 90s. So there's a height of the Iraq war.
You're having thousands of applications a week from Iraq nationals coming in.
And that was when I really started looking at my privilege, looking at the fragility of life.
And at the age of 19, it was so overwhelming. I remember the first week of working

(29:53):
there, I went home every day crying because it was just so overwhelming to see
all these faces, all this trauma, this looking at you.
So it's like a perplexed glass, applicants for one side and staff for the other side.
And it was just, wow, you just felt a sense of just a world bigger than yours

(30:15):
and people. And then another thing that happened at that time as well was that
in my own country, Sierra Rio, we're also going through a civil conflict.
And times when I saw members of my own family on the other side of the glass,
and I remember thinking to myself, but for a decision that my grandparents made
in the 50s, I could easily be on that side of the glass.

(30:39):
And yeah, and it was just so much happening. I was like, wow, this is really serious.
Life is so serious. and it just became that's a lot at 19 yeah yeah and then
I still have my little compartment compartmentalised realities of this trying to just,
make everything but yeah so I did that for a couple of years yeah I don't I don't really.

(31:06):
Know what I I don't I don't really know what
I was really experiencing during that time I think I was on autopilot doing
it my grandmother um decided to stay
in theatre she could have come over here but she said that she didn't want
to leave and she decided to stay there through the
civil conflict so I also had that kind of
knowing my grandmother was over there and just you know wanted

(31:28):
to just be in her home but thank
goodness um everything worked out for my family we
were we were fine um the war ended but it
did change the geographical
kind of makeup my family so a lot a lot of my family migrated over to the uk
because obviously it was a bit it was unsafe and so a lot of them came over

(31:49):
here so then that was um interesting to have them over here but that was yeah
that was an interesting time for me interest i took a couple of years out then
after After that kind of stabilised,
my life stabilised, my home life stabilised, I then applied to university.
And to answer your question, at the time you're supposed to,
on the UCAS form as it was then, you're supposed to pick six universities.

(32:11):
You pick one course and you pick six universities you want to go to.
So the first university I went to visit was University of Sussex.
As soon as I stepped foot on that campus, I fell in love with it. Brighton, yeah? Yeah.
It was absolutely beautiful. And I knew that was where I was going to be. That was my home.
So instead of doing six universities, one course, I did one university, six courses.

(32:37):
Like, I'm going there. I'll do anything. Anything, yeah.
But luckily for me, they had six different types of law courses.
I just put all the law courses on there.
University of Suffolk, of course. course I got in so they
were like oh she's keen they probably thought
either she's keen or she's filled this form in wrong I

(33:03):
was like I'm not going anywhere else this is my it was just so beautiful gets
romanticized and everything had these beautiful like green luscious trees it
was spacious had a huge library I thought oh my god this is heaven and I top
it off because I'm still Still in my romance era,
the chance at the time was Richard Attenborough.

(33:24):
And for me, that was it. That was it. I was like, what?
It was this, yeah, again, it was a deluxe for me. I'm still romanticised in
life. It was just a deluxe. I'm like, yeah, I want to be here.
Richard Attenborough. Where else would I go? I'm going to be given my degree,
my certificate by Richard Attenborough.

(33:45):
There's nothing else I want. I'm in this beautiful place. and that was it for me went to Sussex.
I love this fact this romance era seems to have lasted quite a long time.
Absolutely it really did it really really did.
What did you end up studying what form of law? So I enrolled in LLB law and

(34:09):
I did that for the first year and yes still romanticizing things.
I did it. And what I realized about myself in the first year is obviously I
had this whole thing about, um,
primary school and secondary school where I loved reading I loved creativity
I love innovation and I did English for A-levels I did it and I just loved English

(34:32):
and what I felt with law was that I lost that creativity and it was too structured
and a lot of it I thought the law wasn't logical,
it just didn't make sense to me I could do it but I just felt that I lost a
bit of me because there's other people's precedence, other people's case laws.

(34:52):
I felt that I lost my voice a little bit.
And so, yeah, I had a struggle. One of the things that my, I had a friend who
was at Sussex from my primary school and she was like, at university,
I didn't, I'm not a big drinker.
I'm not a big, I wasn't a big party then.
I kind of made up for my time. But at that point- You're in the party era now.

(35:15):
You've left the romance era in the party era.
But at the time wasn't so whenever she would
try to find me I was always in the library and I was always in
the library in like the in in some in a
section that wasn't law and she's like do you ever read any
law books I'm like yeah I do but look there's so many
books here there's so many books about everything it's

(35:37):
like oh my god I was so amazed about everything
there and it was just it was so lovely so
in second year I actually transferred and I
actually transferred onto a course international relations and
development which I think makes sense
given my background given given yeah everything I was like wow and I didn't

(35:58):
know that course existed before I applied to Sussex I didn't know any of these
other courses existed so I'm like no I think yeah this is what my life is about
right now it's about the international community it's about trying to help other people,
about trying to help those less fortunate that transferred onto that course.
So you said earlier that you did law because all the girls in your family did law.

(36:24):
Why was that? Where did that come from?
On so in theory my family we
have a quite strong legal background in sierra
leone so one of the most successful people
in my family was a really really it was
a lawyer held up quite a senior position in the

(36:44):
sierra leone government so that was that was the direction of our family so
we still have a strong legal background in our family still now but so it was
just that was what if you were academic that was what you're going to do that's
what our family was doing at the time And how did they react then when you decided
to go and do something different?

(37:04):
Yeah, I think international relations were still okay because it was still,
at the time in Sierra Leone we had the largest contingency of United Nations.
In Sierra Leone it was the largest convoy they've ever had anywhere at that time.
So it was still okay to do because that's actually what,

(37:25):
because I think my thinking right then was not about a life in the UK it's actually
about a life in Sierra Leone and now I'm thinking about it actually it was about
Sierra Leone for some reason so it it was okay to be honest with you it was
okay about them yeah and what did you do with that.

(37:45):
Degree well Melody what did I do so for part of that degree I did like a work
placement abroad board and so I went back to Sierra for about six months to
go and work with an aid agency,
And I chose the grassroots agency because I thought I could just have a bit
more of a big impact there.

(38:06):
But they also had like a partnership with the UN.
And I remember my tutor at the time saying, do not over-romanticize development
work because it's a business like any other.
I know you're going into it with good intentions, but just know it's a business like any other.
And I remember thinking, yeah, that's great. But I know what I'm doing.

(38:30):
And so I went over to the LDO and wanted to change the world.
And then his words just came to fruition.
It was a business like any other. Not everyone was in it for the same reasons that I was.
I saw the impact that aid agencies have on developing nations that are not always positive.
And actually, I saw probably more negative than positive.

(38:51):
And I saw how they were changing kind of behaviors
and just changing cultures
out there which wasn't always for the better i
felt of the the kind of the society and
i kind of fell out of love with it i'm not sure
there's things like the god complex the savior

(39:13):
complex things like that which i thought they
really did a lot lot of harm in terms of people taking away the self-empowerment
of nations of people relying on handouts instead of actually knowing they can
actually make the change themselves and it just didn't really sit right with
me so I kind of um yeah yeah.

(39:37):
I kind of, yeah, it just wasn't. It wasn't what you thought it was going to
be. No, no, it really wasn't. Yeah.
So, yeah, so I think that probably was when the romance of life actually just died completely for me.
Romance era was over. Over. Totally over.

(39:59):
So what did you do? You went back to the civil service? Is that when you went back there?
Yeah. Yeah, so I kind of just fell back there because, again, I was drifting.
I was really, really drifting. I had no defined career path.
And I was in this job. Everyone was telling me it was an amazing job.

(40:19):
My grandfather was absolutely so proud of me being in this job.
When I was at university, people asked me, how did you get this job?
I've been trying to get into it. So I thought, OK, maybe it might be a good job.
And so I just kind of dedicated my time to the civil service.
And that's where I spent the majority, well, most of my adult working life,
become a career civil servant.

(40:41):
And presumably you did the thing that lots of civil servants do.
You moved around departments, different jobs, different roles.
Yeah, so this is where it gets interesting.
So when the asylum department is based in Croydon, that's where it's operational.
So where in operational departments, you get a lot of diversity in operational

(41:04):
departments, most of the diversity is at the junior grades.
So what you got there was, I would say, a lack of self-belief.
Because, you know, that saying, if you see it, you can achieve it, you can become it.
But when you don't see people who look like yourself in senior positions,

(41:27):
you don't really believe it.
So I went back there maybe for a year or so, and I realized it wasn't for me.
There's some really, the behaviors, they didn't, they weren't, it wasn't for me.
It didn't sit well with my moral compass, some of the things that were happening there.
So I just did what nobody does there.

(41:48):
I applied for a job in a different department and I
remember when I got my job at different departments a foreign office
I remember my manager actually saying
to me well how did you do that and it wasn't a how
did you do that in a wow that's impressive
how'd you do that it was like how on earth did you
do that kind of thing and I'm

(42:09):
like wow so that's when I actually knew I did the right thing
actually if I just rewind so I actually
went for a promotion before I
went started applying for jobs and before I got the foreign office job went for
promotion they had this thing called an assessment center back there
where you don't apply for a specific job you apply for
a promotion yes I went for the assessment I got

(42:30):
the promotion a ticket it's called a golden ticket it's valid for two years
I got that and and then I sat
on that ticket for two years because because I just
I was looking for jobs in the same area
and I was like no actually I don't want
to be promoted in this area this isn't where I
want to stick I want to do something else so what I realized

(42:51):
if I apply for lateral move it can
get me further rather than going up straight and so that's what I actually started
doing was jumping around applying for jobs at the same grade because Because
I knew it would give me the wealth of experience I needed to be like a really
rounded civil servant before I then went up.

(43:13):
That's what I started doing. So I started in the foreign office first.
And were there people or experiences in the civil service that really stand
out to you that, you know, had an impact on you and influenced you?
In the early days, no. But what I was able to do when I was jumping around different

(43:35):
departments, different departments is really weird, amazing,
because they all have different ecosystems, different cultures.
So you tap in to a lot of different ways of working, which you just assume it's
just going to be like a hegemonic kind of, sorry, no, homogenous type of existence
around the whole of civil service.
And that was not true. So as I was moving around, I was also applying for kind

(43:59):
of development schemes, different development schemes, different departments
have their different schemes.
And what I found was I was missing out by literally one point, half a point.
And I was really confused at how someone can miss out on a half a point and
then be told you're not good enough.
Well, no, half a point means actually you're kind of good enough.
Because then I was going back, no help, no nothing.
I think, well, actually, there should be something to capture those people in those areas.

(44:23):
Years but so what I ended up doing myself was I thought
okay so you have you have these schemes I
ended up looking at what you did on these schemes a lot of these development
schemes what they did like fast track fast stream they move you around different
departments so that you can increase your skills knowledge and different skills
I thought I will just do that myself I will replicate the fast stream for myself

(44:46):
so I did a little so clever.
I love that I did a skills gap
analysis to see where I was I was lacking so
things like finance communications operations team team
management and I looked for opportunities across different departments where
I can actually increase their skills so foreign office was a comms role and

(45:08):
after that I looked at the treasury I had no finance finance skills I looked
to the treasury And I got another, it was another comms job in the treasury,
but I was around finance. So I would end up...
You know, learning just by being there. So I think that's where I met my first
person who really did change the outlook of who I thought I was and how I kind

(45:32):
of looked at myself and empowered myself.
And that person at the Treasury would have been the guy called Jonathan Blatt.
At the time, he was the Chancellor's spokesman.
He couldn't have been that much older than me, really, but he
he did something to which
impacted my career really from that

(45:53):
point so before then what you'd find was
a lot of people were projecting their own
insecurities onto me so when I was moving and when
I was leaving jobs that I wasn't happy with people say
you can't do that so when I left like the
kind of asylum immigration area people like you can't do that you
can't go to the foreign office that's what the manager asked me

(46:15):
how do you do that it's like who's kind of implying you can't do that how
are you doing that and then when I left the foreign office
job it was it was within a space of
time usually when you get posted you first stay there for like two years before
you move on and I think I left after a year because I wanted to move on people
like you can't do that and I was like well who said you can't do that I can
do that you know and I think Jonathan Black was the first person who kind of

(46:38):
confirmed that you can do whatever you want to.
Do and the way he did that
was um i applied i was working in treasury doing
a comms role and junior again and he
created a team prime minister's question team and it
was nothing to do with me um it was part of the press
office type of um duties and the press office at

(47:00):
that time in treasury elite they were
formidable they were just like the people
you wanted to be they knew their stuff they were sharp they were
just so intelligent they're absolutely amazing so
i got to be part of this team i was
like oh looking back and knowing how he
thought jonathan is a person who seemed to in

(47:21):
my opinion he gave roles
to people according to their ability and not
their their grade you know and so
he saw that i'd be able to do that and so he put me
into this team prime minister's question team with somebody
else and what the prime minister's question team was the pmq team um
obviously you know every wednesday mps give questions

(47:42):
in parliament to the prime minister and they he has to answer it
so if there was a finance question related question it'll come
to the treasury we will find out to the different teams or
draft a response then it's number 10 and so
i was doing that role for a while then so you draft
it and then number 10 it goes to number and then they will kind of just pretty
tidy up and then it goes off to this to the prime minister so one of the key

(48:06):
defining moments for me in this role with um i don't know if you've seen a film.
Called clear and present danger with um harrison ford no you haven't oh no it's so good i mean.
In one of the scenes, he gets to advise the president or something,
president of the United States or something.
And then the president has been interviewed on TV.

(48:27):
And then the president repeats his advice verbatim, what he says.
And he's at home with his wife like, I said that. I told the president to say that.
And literally, I had that moment of PMQs where I drafted a line and it went to number 10.
They thought it was good enough. And so the prime minister, David Cameron at the time,
he was reading out my my words like oh

(48:49):
my god those are my words my words there was no
one around to celebrate with me so just me myself that's something
that I took with me and that's something that that Jonathan like helped me to
to get because he gave me that kind of responsibility in that role when I don't
think anyone else would have because in previous roles it's very greatest it's

(49:09):
like you you exist in this box and you can't be anything else whereas if Jonathan
is like well Well, no, you are you.
If you've got the ability, I'm going to actually give you whatever you want to do.
Another thing, how this manifested as well, is that he would send me into meetings
at number 10 with head of department to just represent the treasury.

(49:30):
And I'm like, I'm a little junior manager and I'm here as head of department for this meeting.
It's like, well, you can do it. And that self-belief, that belief that he had in me,
it just it was amazing for my for my
confidence and my self-belief and it's that I've kept it to this day there's
this I think it's changed actually trajectory of my career in that I was applying

(49:53):
for jobs after that point without any kind of hesitation any lack of confidence
knowing that actually I can do it.
And how long did you spend in the civil service did you get into DEI whilst
you're in the civil service or is that something that's happened subsequently?
Subsequently subsequently so i've
jumped around after jonathan i jumped around probably two

(50:17):
or three times and i met managers who
are not i wouldn't call them leaders i met leaders so the difference i met people
who showed me what real true leadership work was and these are people who who
led with the person, people focus.

(50:37):
They led with the person rather than the work. They were outcomes focused. They led with humanity.
And I think they really started to help me to understand what it was to be a good leader.
They helped me to understand what you actually needed to actually progress through leadership roles.

(50:58):
And I think using them and kind of emulating them helped me to become the person
I needed to be in order to get properly into the DEI space.
So my jump into the DEI space was actually accidental, to be honest with you.
I looked around and I thought, people aren't doing it right.

(51:20):
I just didn't, I didn't, what's the word?
I think for me the problem with dei
i felt as though it's a nice to have i don't think i
didn't think people respected it gave it the
respect that i think it should have it was an
add-on other people's jobs the wrong
people in it i think for dei you really

(51:42):
have to lead with the people you really
have to lead with it you have to be so empathetic you have
to be so so compassionate and you have
to be so respectful of people's views actually in order
to get to the right space and I
think there's a lot of maybe tokenistic gestures in DEI
space a lot of knee jerking which I think sometimes

(52:04):
doesn't actually help and actually harms the
cause I think people are well intended but sometimes you
do have to say no in a DEI space and I think when you put the wrong
people in the space it can it can have
a adverse impact give me a
sense of something that you say tokenistic you
know what what give me an example of that oh melody

(52:27):
i think
this would be quite hard to
do without the context i'm not sure i can provide a of context right now maybe
it might come a bit later but not all good ideas are the best side of it okay.
So let's say this okay so I used to work can I say that in an area where.

(52:54):
Okay so civil service generally as I said before you have your leadership teams
are usually quite homogenous there's lack of diversity I feel so especially
around when I suppose it's the the Black Lives Matter movement really probably
shifted the kind of dialogue around DEI issues in the UK.
And I remember being in the department where...

(53:16):
They were trying, well-intended, they had like a DEI champ, senior DEI champion.
And what that person wanted to do was put in place, because they had a lack
of experience around DEI themselves.
Any suggestion that was put forward to them by black or Asian or other minority

(53:37):
ethnic staff, they would just implement or they would just want to go with it.
Well it's actually if you look at the longer term outcomes and what we're trying to achieve,
personally i thought that was the wrong approach because
actually it wouldn't give you those long term improvements it's
just like something very tokenistic it's very this knee-jerking so i

(53:58):
so i worked for a place called the inspector of constabulary
and fire rescue services and what we did there that
we inspected all fire services and police services
across the uk so one of the of thing some services want
like to do is they wrap their appliances or
their their vehicles in kind of like dei slogans

(54:18):
and i used to just say okay you've done that but so what it was that so what
question so what do you achieve by doing that how do you measure the impact
of that are you bringing people closer together are you being decisive so it's
that kind of thing yes it looks good,
but does it match the maturity of your organisation?

(54:39):
Are you there yet? Are you taking your people with you? And it's that kind of
stuff. Don't look at the totality of what their actions are doing.
So there is a place for wrapping your appliances and slogans,
but you have to make sure that your organisation is in the right place.
Have the right level of maturity in order to actually you know support what comes with that,

(55:02):
kind of thing i always say so what okay you do this
you know it sounds good but so what yeah it's almost like how do you do the
things to back it up you know because that's something very visible isn't it
but if if you've not got the other things happening in your organization it's
like you say it's a tokenistic rather than meaningful i always say there's three levels to.

(55:24):
Um dei one is reacting one is responding
one is embedding and and you know and a
lot of people they do the reacting and they don't
think about the other stuff if you just react to surface
level nothing comes of it but sometimes
you do have to react so you know in the back of like black life matters
yes we did have to react it was it was very topical you

(55:45):
react but you make sure you know that you're just
if you're just reacting make sure you're aware that you're just
reacting in and don't think you're doing this and that's going to
change the culture because the cultural change is such
a is a much longer kind of longer journey
but just understand what you're doing and then make sure
you're doing the other stuff to embed the actual

(56:06):
changes you want to see so you moved
into di because you had a
sense that you could do better that it
wasn't being done in the way you thought it would is
that right or should be rather yeah so
i had the opportunity to join the
organization i'm with currently having seen

(56:28):
it for my pre on the other side for my previous job inspecting so i moved inspecting
this organization become part of it because i saw they had some really key issues
and big issues they actually just completed a culture review and after that
culture you get some really really significant issues and i knew that where
i was I could I could the change.

(56:49):
The changes that I could do just wouldn't be enough.
It's more a theory-based role, whereas this is more actually putting the theory into practice.
And I had the experience enough to know that actually, I know what good looks
like here. I know how I could actually really make meaningful change.
And so the opportunity came up for me to join the organisation and I took it

(57:14):
and I just left the civil service and I thought, I'm going to do this. I can do this.
So I thought I had the skills, I had experience, and I thought,
actually, I haven't seen other people around the public sector in particular
trying to do this. I know I can do this.
And I've been really fortunate to have a leadership team in place who have trusted

(57:37):
my vision, who have really supported me in achieving this.
And I think we are making some real advancements in this space.
Tell me what you think about you know it's in the news it's everywhere about a backlash against DEI.
What's your thoughts is there one is it real
so one of

(57:59):
the things that we've been exploring in my team
I have a really really great strategic lead in my team I'm
going to butcher she has she's written a whole paper about this
and I'm going to butcher it sorry it's called agonism and it's about finding
the middle ground so I think the backlash my perception of the backlash has

(58:20):
been that there's certain factions
that have felt attacked that have felt excluded from the DEI space and.
It's felt like it's been done to them. And agonism, it's about understanding their realities.
And I think DEI is all about understanding other people's realities,
not necessarily making everyone's reality be the same, because that's impossible.

(58:45):
And I think that's where people are going wrong. That's where you get your tokenistic
stuff, where it's this knee-jerk, and we all have to do this now.
No, and I think if you do that, you're really losing the crowd.
So one of the things that we're leading with in Wilder Motivation at the moment
is that we have put in a program where we lead with emotional intelligence in our DEI teaching.

(59:08):
We've developed a thing called an allyship spectrum where it's about empowering
people to be part of the conversation, not telling them that they're not making
them feel bad or excluding them.
I always say, so my organization is 95% white, able-bodied, heterosexual male.
I cannot do DEI without them. So there's no point in not including them in the conversations.

(59:33):
I have to make sure these people are included.
So I always say we lead with the I, the inclusion, and also it's inclusion for all.
It's not inclusion for the minority, it's inclusion for all.
So with the allyship spectrum what we do
is um it's a spectrum it starts with the the bigoted
behavior so when we did a culture review that large

(59:55):
that majority was you know that doesn't happen here i'm not racist i'm not misogynistic
and we're like okay that's fine we start with you're not that's fine if you're
not that's fine anybody who is they're not part of this conversation we don't
want them to be part of this of our organization and then you go from the bigoted,
so we get that out of the way so you know that we're telling them,

(01:00:16):
okay, you're not, you're including this conversation.
Then we go to the anti, so you're anti-racist, anti-misogynistic.
Then you have the anti, then you have from there, you go to...
Oh, I've forgotten. Sorry. This is actually my framework that I've forgotten.
I do that all the time. Oh, no, no. Sorry. No, no, no. So you've got people who are just bigoted.

(01:00:42):
Then you've got people who say, I'm not racist and I'm not misogynistic.
And we say, that's fine. You're not.
That's what most people are saying. We say, but that's quite passive.
If you're not, that doesn't actually say what you are.
So then we go into a more active space, which is the anti, which is actually
if you're anti something.
It means you're actually proactively doing something so

(01:01:02):
what are you doing and we talk about the difference being not being something it
being anti something and often we help them to
understand that when you're not something sometimes it
means that you can actually be allow poor behaviors to happen around
you because you're just saying well i'm not doing it
but they're doing it i'm not but we're the same but then
if their way we can get you to the anti space but actually you can
actually start practically disrupting some of

(01:01:25):
those poor poor behaviors and then what we find about that is
that we find a lot of people are scared to go to the
anti-space because the repercussions on them because these
are their peers that i don't know and also they don't
have the skills to disrupt you know what do i do when i see that so then we
talk about and sometimes when we talk about the anti they go into oh no they
go inside the textbook oh yes so i should go and challenge and do this and do

(01:01:46):
that well actually let's just read it back is it actually safe for you to do
that you know can you if you see something can Can you literally go to your peers,
somebody who you may have been in a job with for like, you know, tens of years?
You know, these are your friends outside.
Can you actually go and say something? They're like, well, you know,
probably not. It might affect my career.

(01:02:07):
Let's see what else can you do? So we talk about micro interruptions,
micro challenges. You know, can you change the subject?
Can you just even just go and talk to the person who you think is being the
recipient of poor behavior? just check in with them so that they know there's
another ally in the room they can talk to.
Just something really subtle to disrupt that behaviour that's anti.

(01:02:28):
And then the foreign inspections allyship. So I think.
People ban the word allyship around. I don't think, I think the majority of people are not allies.
I don't think we're anywhere near allyship. So whenever people say allyship,
my skin calls, I'm thinking, no, no, no.
Allyship is where actually I don't have to, if I'm in a room,
I don't have to talk because you understand it and you're talking for me.

(01:02:51):
And I don't have to be the voice that's always saying, oh, but,
oh, but, oh, but, because that's the voice I am right now.
I'm the voice that people don't like to hear. I'm the voice that people cut at when I say something.
Thing i'm the always that voice you know bring people
back down you know so allyship is when i'm not
when i'm not in the room that's what allyship is they don't even need me so
i think when i see allyship i'm like no no you can't we're not there yet we're

(01:03:16):
really not there yet so anti it's not but those are where we're standing at
the moment what's your view on i've seen a number
of people be criticized you know men criticized for
talking about women's issues white people
criticized for talking about things that affect
black ethnic minority people and in

(01:03:38):
my mind they're demonstrating allyship because they're
talking to their audience which are
likely to be like them and they are you know
they're trying to to i guess
amplify the the voices and but
I've seen people leap on them
and criticize them for that because they're not

(01:04:01):
from that background therefore they shouldn't speak about
it you know it's a man he shouldn't speak about women's women's things and I'm
curious as to your view on that I always say DEI is about understanding your
context I mean if you've gone into a room and that's the reception you've got
then I'm thinking maybe you haven't understand understood the room you're in
and I think it's It's all about context.

(01:04:23):
Virtual signaling never goes down, right?
So if your room aren't receiving what you're saying, then maybe you need to
understand more about where they are.
So I always say with me, the way I practice CI is I go where I meet my audience
where they are and we have the conversation that's actually applicable to them.

(01:04:45):
There's no point having a really great strategy or really great outlook way
up over here and they're completely different in their spectrum because it just won't land.
And if it doesn't land, then you're not really communicating,
you're not really engaging, you're just talking at people.
So for me, it's all about context.
One of the things in I've noticed going

(01:05:06):
through this is that my role models my key people
who have actually shaped my journey which is them is the I
and not what people would probably expect not typical
role models they're all white men and they
have given me a black woman something that actually has changed
my life and something that I've taken this has empowered me and
made me a better person so I do think that

(01:05:28):
you can you can receive knowledge and
empowerment from different spaces people who don't look like
you but I do think you have to it's all
about context you have to really know know your
audience okay you've got
in some of your notes here about your permission to
be you and your relationship with God I'm

(01:05:51):
curious you know tell us a bit more about that so
I think from my civil service days
like I said I a lot of it was about people defining me and putting me in a box
and telling me what I can do what I couldn't do and I think I've moved into
a space now where I'm a lot I have a lot stronger understanding of who I am and one of the things I.

(01:06:17):
Used to do as part of my kind of skills gap
analysis a lot of psychometric tests and what came
of them was the fact that I was never strongly in
any kind of criteria I was always quite mid mid
and it kind of showed that I
was very adaptable to myself in my environment so
I'm a person I can adapt and I can really just work

(01:06:39):
well in different environments and without losing
a a strong sense of myself because i think that's one of the things i
felt that there was surface was i was trying
to be to fit in
be a part of that culture but actually what i
got from it's actually no i'm not fitting in here and that's my brand that's

(01:07:00):
who i am that's my strength and i think that's what dei has given me the fact
that actually dei is about difference and i'm here to champion difference i
see that i am different therefore there's no one better than me to do
it so a lot of people come to me about um
for mentoring and coaching and i

(01:07:20):
always say well it's not about you being me
or you following my footsteps it's about you understanding who you
are and you actually setting that to wherever you go people have to buy who
you are you have to understand who you are one of the things i did a lot in
a civil service of code switch i did it so much and when I left Treasury I actually

(01:07:41):
got offered a job at number 10.
Which I subsequently turned down and my line manager was like I think you might
be the only person in history who's actually turned down the job at number 10 and.
The reason why I did it at that time, why it was so important is because I was
actually burning out because I was co-switching so much being a treasurer.
It was and I loved being a treasurer. I learned so much. I grew so much.

(01:08:06):
But actually, there was a cost of doing it.
Say some more about what you mean by co-switching because some people might
not be familiar with that term.
So from how I understand it, and again, I'm not the most eloquent.
And co-switching is um where I'd say
from my my perspective of being a black female so obviously
once I once I got

(01:08:28):
out of my junior operational roles there are fewer black people
around I'm going up the leadership ladder and so
what you kind of do you start to assimilate to the culture
that you see so I am meeting more middle-class white
people and so I'm I'm code switch into
the kind of like to fit into that to that group
you know I'm laughing at jokes I don't quite understand I might

(01:08:53):
be going out to the pub more I might just
be you know just it's different being professional you can be
professional not code switch but I'm kind of assimilated to
a culture that's not quite authentic to myself
and it kind of takes the toll
a little bit it really does you know you might dress differently you
just do different activities and I

(01:09:13):
think it probably came easier to me because I said with the
psychoanalysis um tests I am adaptable but I think maybe I might have gone a
bit too far switching but I had to turn down that job at number 10 because I
felt like I can't do it I can't do anymore I need to be in an environment where
actually I can just be myself and so I went into another operational role because

(01:09:34):
I felt as though, actually,
I can just be more of myself there.
I can still be professional, still be a leader. But I know that if I say something
in this way, other people understand me.
You know, other people, I could take shortcuts in my, in my interactions with
people, whereas I felt that I probably couldn't if I stayed in kind of.
White hall kind of government service it's interesting

(01:09:56):
you say that about dni because i think you know
dni is very much a it's about being
a change agent and you know i've spent
most of my career being a consultant which is also
about being a change agent and i have a theory that
you have to be similar enough for them to let you through the door
and different enough to be a
catalyst for change and if you're too assimilated and too

(01:10:18):
similar then actually you can't make those
changes because you've lost that ability to
be maybe a bit more spiky or a bit more see
the problems so yeah it's really interesting that
that that you found in that dni role that you're
able to be much more yourself and it's interesting
you said about not being too different because i what i

(01:10:41):
do i'm a leader so i actually don't i
don't think i i'm a jack of all
trades being a generalist and civil servant so my key
skill is leadership it's just leading my teams people
focus leading my teams and I hire in the experts but I hire in the SMEs for
DEI different aspects of DEI but what I found is that they get frustrated quite

(01:11:05):
quite a lot in this space because they do they are they do want to see change
immediately they are very frustrated to the slow rates of change.
I have to say, okay, we have to, I understand that you know where we need to
be, I understand that your frustrations, but we have to understand where everyone
else is as well and where we're working.

(01:11:25):
You know we have to meet people where they are and I think
that's where you get like the high level of burnout I
think you have in a DEI space just because it's so
hard to communicate people just don't get it and you have to I feel for me when
I'm building my team I have to find people who have that kind of emotional intelligence
to understand that this is a slow burn and also you are talking to people who

(01:11:48):
aren't as knowledgeable about the subject as you are who you know but for For the most part,
I do feel as though people are trying their best,
but people also have their own vulnerabilities where actually they do feel attacked
and they do feel as though they are getting pushed out of a space.
Obviously, you're taking power away from people, which is scary to them because

(01:12:10):
it's not as though they're being harmed.
But we're like, no, no, no, it's not that we want to harm you.
It's we want to share the power amongst more people. That's all.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting space to be in.
Yeah. Tell me what's next. What's next for you?
Do you have any thoughts on what's next for D&I? Curious.

(01:12:33):
Well, what's next for me? I'll start with that one.
I'm actually quite, I'm really happy with the space I'm in.
Like I said before, I have leaders who I wouldn't have joined this organisation
but for having a leader who I think is authentically supporting the DEI space
I think without that there's no point doing it if I want to I wouldn't have done it at all.

(01:12:57):
I also have a line manager who is really, he's really empowering.
They've given me the space to do what I want to do. So I'm the voice who pushes
back on tokenistic knee-jerk stuff.
And I kind of say, no, we've got to hold our nerve.
So I always say that DEI is actually about the boring stuff.
It's about doing all the boring stuff, right? And what I say about that is that

(01:13:18):
people think DEI is a separate thing that just happens.
I'm like, no, it's not. not zei's about having really safe
and secure hr systems because if you have hr
systems where people can people can trust like if they have any problems they
can report things they know it's going to get resolved that's when you create

(01:13:38):
the psychological safety which then lets people come with the authentic cells
whatever that is you know it fosters so if you have the the right,
hr functions in place it fosters an
environment of psychological safety where you
get people who have to talk to each other and just trust the culture

(01:13:59):
you build the right culture another thing about
dei which i think people don't understand is that data for me
i always say like i said before is that so what so you're doing this why are
you doing this what is the reason what is the data to support you doing this
and then the so what so you've done that what have have you achieved and I don't
see that enough in DEI spaces it's all quite nebulous people just.

(01:14:23):
It's quite anecdotal sometimes I'm like I want
to see the hard data just like any other areas
of the business show me the data so that's what
I that's where I think DEI has to go have to
be data-led has to be supported by data
and you have to meet
people where they are really in terms of
what's next for me i um really want to

(01:14:47):
i want to have to professionalize the the
kind of ei space and i want
to go into psychology i really think it's about it has to be people-led you
have to understand you have to understand people to be in di you really do so
there's a thing called cultural intelligence i think that's a really interesting
space right now that just professionalizes the DEI space a little bit.

(01:15:11):
So I think my problem with DEI at the moment has been too many people go into
it just because they like it or just because, and I don't want to come out the
wrong way, but when I recruit for DEI professionals.
Well, most of my team, I have a team of about 15 in my DEI space.
Only three or four of the roles I actually want DEI expertise in.

(01:15:34):
The rest, there are other hard skills that I need you to bring.
So a lot of the time when I've recruited in the past, people have led with,
I think I'll be good in this space because I come from a diverse background.
That really isn't good enough. It really isn't good enough to be in this space for me.
We really need some really strong skill sets and

(01:15:55):
expertise around data around reporting around
education around teaching there's some
really hard skills that you need in this space i totally agree
what about i'm just gonna ask
you a few questions that i ask all of my guests what
about any books that you recommend oh i
wish i had i forgot about this but i wish for me personally

(01:16:19):
in terms of my life journey around identity around
purpose and purpose making it has to be the alchemist
just because I've gone
all around I'm a huge traveler I've gone all around the
world trying to find answers about everything and I
come back to the beginning and like my answers is right
at the beginning it's like it started with it starts

(01:16:40):
with you it starts with your belief system it
starts with what you hold dear and that's where
you find your answers so it has to be the
alchemist at the moment for me it's such
a strong element of your story comes through I think around values and how important
they are to you and you know and I love this the fact that you now feel that

(01:17:05):
you're able to be you because it sounds
to me like you've You've been code switching your whole life, right.
From a very young age, actually, but it's really lovely to hear that you've
found a place where you feel you can be yourself.
And linked to that, then, from this place, what advice would you give to your younger self?

(01:17:26):
So I'll say two things. So is this part of the strapline? No, that's an extra.
What advice I give to myself? Oh, I would probably say, oh Lord.
I mean, it may turn into your strapline.
I would say it has to be don't let anybody define you.

(01:17:46):
It'll have to be that one because I think I had a strong sense of self. Then I kind of lost it.
I had like white noise around me, let people like,
you know, into fear of what I knew was true to myself so I think it'll just
be that don't let anybody define you and would that also be your strapline your
title for your story I guess it would be really,

(01:18:08):
yeah absolutely yeah now I've gone through everything it has to be that one
yeah don't let anyone define you brilliant well thank you so much for this apologies
for my dog barking in the background at various times.
But I've really, really enjoyed hearing your story. It's absolutely fascinating, really varied.

(01:18:30):
So thank you so much for giving me the time. And I'm sure the listeners are gonna love listening.
Oh, thank you. And thank you too, Melody. I really appreciate you giving me
this time to speak as well and seeing something in me that you thought was worthy. You're welcome.
This podcast.
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Episode 26 - Nadia Bob-Thomas - 'Don't Let Anyone Define You'

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 26 - Nadia Bob-Thomas - 'Don't Let Anyone Define You'