How much coffee have you drunk today? We had the pleasure of sitting down with Holly Kragiopoulos, co-founder of Northstar Coffee, who shared her powerful story of forging a new path for the coffee industry amid looming shortages and environmental challenges. Our conversation traversed her personal journey, from the influence of her father's research to her transformative experiences in Australia, and how these have shaped her approach to the business and parenthood.

We discuss:

(00:01) Rethinking Coffee, Work, and Parenthood

(07:32) Coffee Supply Chain and Motivation

(18:48) Challenges Facing the Coffee Industry

(30:59) The Impact of B Corp Accreditation

(36:25) Importance of Empathy and Accountability

Holly on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/holly-kragiopoulos-53501156/

Visit: https://www.northstarroast.com/en-gb

Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/

Want to appear? [email protected]

Visit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠

Amy Polly is the self-styled 'Mindfulness Rebel'. In a world of very serious, very blue, mental health information, she is a welcome shot of pink. She's the former Strategic Lead for Mental Health & Wellbeing for the Fire Service, and has since worked with organisations like Heineken, Bupa, Sweaty Betty, National Grid and many others. She's on a mission to make mindfulness more accessible and inclusive and joins us for this conversation where we discuss:

• Her grandfather’s addiction to alcohol and how it informed her behaviour to always try and make people smile
• The importance of her supportive parents and having a support network
• How she’s embraced thinking differently as an adult
• How she left a solid, 19 year career in accountancy to start working for herself in mindfulness and wellbeing
• The shift she felt working for the Fire Service, contributing to a bigger picture 
• The extreme challenges of creating wellbeing programmes in the Fire Service
• The measures she brought in to support fire fighters
• The basics of creating a mentally healthy workforce and how it’s not the things you might think
• Her connection to mindfulness and how it became a passion of hers as a proactive measure for wellbeing
• Personal days and bringing the human elements to business
• How Mindfulness isn’t ‘hippy dippy stuff’, it’s brain training
• Some myth busting around Mindfulness
• Amy leads Rob through a mindfulness exercise 
• Rob’s reflections after the exercise
• Her advice to leaders for embedding wellbeing in their businesses
• How motherhood is the hardest thing she’s ever done and her ‘Mindfulness for Mums’ programme
• The loneliness of being a mum and the taboo of talking about birth trauma
• Rob shares a rather unfortunate parenting story and how it informed his perspective on parents in business
• The ‘return to the office’ push and the potential negative impacts for some of the workforce

Follow Amy on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amypolly/

Visit: amypolly.com

Follow Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/

Sign up the the 'A Little Bit Radical' Newsletter here: https://share.hsforms.com/1wJzfsT5RR7melJbfDfpsLw4sran

Visit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠

Surf’s up! Often called the ‘British Patagonia’, Finisterre are one of the most respected names in sustainable fashion. Headquartered in St Agnes, Cornwall, Finisterre produce long-lasting, repairable products inspired by the sea. We’re joined by CMO Bronwen Foster Butler for this episode. She discusses:

• The dramatic circumstances of her birth in the Canadian wilderness
• The effect of having a peculiar name and how she ‘likes to play in the edges’ of life
• How she became a parent to a daughter during COVID and how that provided an impetus to become more radical 
• Her experience in a previous role of being asked ‘whether she wanted a promotion, or to become a parent’
• Finisterre’s approach to flexibility and inclusion
• Working for a boss who is a CEO and a RNLI helmsman
• Her commitment to ‘how you get the job done’ not ‘when you get the job done’
• ‘Sea Tuesdays’ - where the whole team get an hour to connect with the sea
• The founding story of Finisterre and the mission to create products that serve cold-water surfers, whilst preserving the ocean
• The very first product the founder, Tom, created
• Their partnership with the last Merino Wool shepherd in the U.K.
• How the wetsuit industry is partly responsible for ‘Cancer Alley’ in the USA, with the production of chloroprene - connected to Neoprene
• How they are reinventing wetsuits, moving away from petrochemical neoprene, to YULEX rubber
• Launching the world’s first YULEX wetsuit rental programme
• Finisterre’s repair service - a challenge to fast fashion
• The shocking reality of where most of our charity shop clothes go
• Her reaction to the U.K. government rolling back environmental policy
• Dealing with Climate Anxiety
• Her approach to leading her team through their Pride campaign, in the face of online trolling

Bronwen on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bronwen-foster-butler-73a31923/

Visit: finisterre.com

Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/

Want to get in touch? Email [email protected]

Visit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠

Without people you don’t have a business. Higson, are a people consultancy, working with organisations to create progressive work cultures with high productivity and high happiness. Augusta Vivian, is the founder and joins us for this interview where she discusses:

• How she feels we are all entitled to have fun at work
• Her personal values of fun, kindness, curiosity, and stubbornness and how her early life shaped those
• How to go about defining your personal values
• Her entrepreneurial Great Aunt who broke the mould as a woman on her own in business 
• Her experience of being told ‘what to wear to be successful’
• Her work at Higson to help businesses become more happy, productive workplaces
• The common blindspots that businesses face when creating a positive work culture
• The real benefit of unlimited holiday vs an annual allowance
• How to create your company values and design the behaviours within your org to live up to them
• The importance of practicality and pragmatism with any cultural change work
• What she’s most proud of in her Founder’s journey
• How she approaches Strategy at Higson and regularly reviews it
• The importance of feedback in all directions with radical candour
• The charities Higson supports with 20% of profits every year 
• The new phase for Higson: becoming a certified Carbon Literate organisation

Augusta on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/augustavivian/

Visit: https://consulthigson.com/

Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/

Want to appear? Email [email protected]

Visit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠

Sally runs Something Big, a B Corp, employee-owned agency based in Surrey that punches above its weight. Having won briefs against agency heavyweights like Ogilvy, Something Big specialises in employee communications with a particular focus on DEI initiatives. Clients include DHL, Telefonica, and IAG. In this conversation we discuss:

• How she’s always been the ‘odd one out’ from her school days 
• Her experience of being the only female in a team of 24 men
• Why she had to keep her relationship with her husband secret for over a decade
• How she’s embraced being uncool in an agency world of cool people
• The significance of turning 50 for her
• Her work at Something Big and their specialism in employee comms, workplaces, and DEI
• Her personal connection to DEI through her experience as a woman in a male-dominated workplace
• How the Barbie movie signifies a huge amount of progress in gender equality, but also highlights how there’s more to do
• How to run DEI programmes in a huge company that spans 220 countries
• How to build a client relationship 25 years long
• What it takes to be the world’s best workplace
• The problem with agencies who are ‘in it for themselves’ rather than for the client
• Winning a brief against Ogilvy
• The piece of work she’s most proud of 
• The nuts and bolts of employee ownership
• Building psychological safety in her business by example
• Dismantling a blame culture
• The potential commercial windfall from looking after people properly
• How community building could improve our society through citizen engagement

Connect with Sally on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/somethingbig/

Visit: https://somethingbig.co.uk/

Connect with Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/

Want to appear? Email [email protected]

Visit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠

Timpson has been a fixture on our high streets since 1865 in the UK. In recent years, they've received acclaim for their approach to hiring ex-offenders. Now, 10% of their workforce have been given an opportunity after a criminal conviction. A unique 'upside-down' company, Timpson eschews many traditional business practices. For example, they don't have a marketing and communications department. In this episode we meet Janet Leighton, Director of Happiness at Timpson. She discusses:

• How she’s gained a reputation for being ‘bonkers’
• How her natural optimism gives her resilience
• How important it is to be yourself at work
• How belief in people and being kind and considerate is a key to maintaining optimism in the face of challenges
• What has kept her at Timpson for 20 years
• How Timpson functions without  a marketing and comms team 
• How to get an email reply from James Timpson, the CEO
• Timpson’s unique ‘upside down management’ style 
• Her road to the role ‘Director of Happiness’
• How happiness isn’t soft and fluffy
• Their radical ‘in-house’ approach to everything
• The day to day of a ‘Director of Happiness’, including what Janet was dealing with on the day of recording
• How Janet deals with colleague issues from financial risk, to suicide
• The importance of colleague wellbeing in business performance
• How she feels the solution to financial wellbeing is not necessarily as simple as paying people more
• What led Timpson to pay for colleagues family funerals
• Timpson’s work with offenders and their approach to recruiting ex-offenders
• Workers joining the company via ‘release on temporary licence’
• How best to support ex-offenders entering the workforce 
• How they don’t use CVs and are only interested in ‘what you’re doing today, and what you want to do tomorrow’
• The state of UK prisons 
• Some of the success stories from the prison recruitment programme
• Her offer of help to any business who’s interested in starting a programme for people with prison lived experience 

Janet on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janet-leighton-8109891a/

Visit: https://www.timpson.co.uk/

Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/

Want to appear? Email [email protected]

Visit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠

How is your mental health right now? According to MIND, 1 in 4 of us will experience a mental health challenge this year. For this episode, we meet Paul Smith, MD of JAAQ at Work. JAAQ is a free online platform that provides access to experts in mental health, wellbeing, disability, diversity and many more topics. Founded by Danny Gray, the platform also features the stories of high profile celebrities, sportspeople, and music stars - opening up about their struggles with mental health.  Paul discusses:

• How he feels his was a ‘lazy’ child and that it was quite a surprise that he ended up being a radical thinker
• His passion for football and his burgeoning career as a professional for Reading FC and Ipswich
• Rob’s first career as a professional actor and how that compares to pursuing professional sport
• How identity is tied up with our careers and the problems with that
• His career in recruitment and what led him to found his own company with two of his colleagues
• The story of JAAQ. Changing the world of mental health one question at a time
• JAAQ’s founder Danny Gray and his struggles with body dysmorphia
• The offering of JAAQ at Work, improving mental health for workplaces
• His struggles with transitioning from founder to employee
• The user experience of JAAQ
• The importance of getting the right expertise and the JAAQ advisory board
• The opportunity for businesses that prioritise wellbeing
• The scale of the challenges facing HR leaders 
• The importance of intersectionality and the importance that the platform can help people ask questions they wouldn’t ask in the workplace for fear of embarrassment
• How he feels that no one business has really smashed it out the park on mental health yet
• The JAAQ video that’s made the biggest impact on his life 

Paul on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/psmith0/

Visit JAAQ.org

Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/

Want to appear? [email protected]

Visit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠

Is the world waking up to refillable? From local refill stores, to refill stations in supermarkets, the movement is gathering momentum. Ahead of the curve on this was Phill Kalli of FillRefill, a company committed to making cleaning products for home, hair and body that are good for you and the planet. As the name suggests, all of FillRefill’s products are refillable, making them a great example of a circular economy business. 

He discusses:

• His Dad, a maverick chemist and manufacturer who took on ‘big soapers’
• How he came to reinvent the family business as a consumer facing brand
• How a lot of the solutions to our waste problems existed 100 years ago
• His first career in the music business, managing an up and coming band ‘Vincent Vincent and the Villains’
• The lessons he’s taken from the music industry into his current work
• Transforming an established business into a brand fit for the modern age
• Tough decisions he’s made, including stopping supplying Chlorine Bleach, their biggest selling product 
• How he avoids feeling insecure about not understanding the chemistry of his business
• The difference between a FillRefill product and the mass market products in the supermarket - from factory to end consumer
• His refreshing take on ‘big soap’
• The decision to make their formulations public and give people the opportunity to buy raw materials and make their own products
• The latest product he’s really excited about
• How he feels the Government could do more to support the transition away from single use and support small businesses that are accelerating that 

Visit: www.fillrefill.co

Phill on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phillipkalli/

Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/

Want to appear? [email protected]

Visit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠

We order over 6 billion takeaways a year in the UK. Many of those are ordered on Deliveroo. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, and operating in 10 countries.  Our guest, Elena Devis, is former Head of Vegan Category at Deliveroo, now a consultant in the plant based space. In this conversation she discusses:

• Her adventurous spirit from a young age, including travelling overseas by herself at 13
• Her first exposure to the word ‘vegan’ and the steep learning curve from her meat and fish heavy diet in Valencia, Spain
• The changes in her health she saw upon going vegan
• How she feels there’s ‘less ego’ in her decisions now as she’s got older
• Her pragmatic approach to lifestyle change as opposed to an absolutist approach
• Her time at Deliveroo over 5 years of huge growth and evolution
• The importance of great leaders
• How she created her own role as Head of Vegan Category at Deliveroo
• Her approach to working with partners to adopt new ideas and new dishes
• How to fight for the role and projects you want in a large business with the right data, stakeholders, and proposition
• How ‘being human’ is the most important thing about being a manager
• How PMS and the menstrual cycle affects women at work and how men can best support their colleagues
• How her manager’s approach to her PMS was life changing and the importance of menstrual leave
• Her passion for meditation

Elena on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenadevisgimenez/

Visit: https://www.plant-futures.com/

Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/

Want to appear? [email protected]

Visit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠

Designing campaigns for Patagonia, Selfridges, BMW, and Penguin Books, Forster Communications is an award-winning communications agency.  Our guest today is Peter Gilheany, Board Director at Forster. An employee-owned B Corp, Forster are a great example of how to live your values. They’ve turned down lucrative briefs from companies that refuse to declare a climate emergency, and have even set sustainability goals for their existing clients in order to continue working together. He discusses:

• His working class Irish background and his parents ‘relaxed’ attitude to their 5 children
• How he and his siblings have all forged their own paths
• The difference between being a ‘strategic’ or ‘tactical careerist 
• How there is a huge need to challenge what is seen as ‘received wisdom’
• The narrow view of what a ‘good career’ is 
• The story of Forster Communications and the founder Jilly Forster, former Head of Communications for the Body Shop
• Employee Ownership and how it works at Forster
• The pieces of work that best embody Forster Communications
• How to walk the talk on tackling the climate emergency for any business
• The stringent targets they set for themselves, their community, and their clients
• What happened when they told their clients to publicly declare a climate emergency and set net zero targets
• A leap into the unknown around a social housing project that led to incredible results
• His surprising response to being labelled a ‘lifestyle business’
• Who knows how to communicate about climate change better? Extinction Rebellion or the average PR agency?
• His take on Greenwashing
• How to turn down briefs that don’t align with your values
• The campaign he’s ashamed of and wouldn’t take today
• The pervasive hangover within business that you can either be financially successful, or morally good 
• The evolution in the charity sector over their corporate social responsibility
• The future of the charity sector, financially unstable, but ideologically free to campaign and speak truth to power

Peter on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pgilheany/

Visit: https://forster.co.uk/

Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/

Want to appear? [email protected]

Visit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠