PurpleSpace Confident Conversations

Series Two of our Confident Conversations podcasts is now available, sponsored and produced by A&O Shearman and powered by the Futurists. Hosted by PurpleSpace Founder, Kate Nash OBE, these interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster. This episode features:

• Andrew Hinstridge - General Counsel, Business Banking at Nationwide

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

If you are a C-Suite leader or CEO and would like to take part in a future series, please contact [email protected]

If your organisation has recording facilities and you would like to produce a future series, please contact [email protected]

Series Two of our Confident Conversations podcasts is now available, sponsored and produced by A&O Shearman and powered by the Futurists. Hosted by PurpleSpace Founder, Kate Nash OBE, these interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster. This episode features:

• Nathan Warren - Group Director at Sanctuary Group

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

If you are a C-Suite leader or CEO and would like to take part in a future series, please contact [email protected]

If your organisation has recording facilities and you would like to produce a future series, please contact [email protected]

Series Two of our Confident Conversations podcasts is now available, sponsored and produced by A&O Shearman and powered by the Futurists. Hosted by PurpleSpace Founder, Kate Nash OBE, these interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster. This episode features:

• Annette Moody - Group IT Governance Director at Serco

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

If you are a C-Suite leader or CEO and would like to take part in a future series, please contact [email protected]

If your organisation has recording facilities and you would like to produce a future series, please contact [email protected]

Series Two of our Confident Conversations podcasts is now available, sponsored and produced by A&O Shearman and powered by the Futurists. Hosted by PurpleSpace Founder, Kate Nash OBE, these interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster. This episode features:

• Mike Zehetmayr - Partner at EY

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

If you are a C-Suite leader or CEO and would like to take part in a future series, please contact [email protected]

If your organisation has recording facilities and you would like to produce a future series, please contact [email protected]

Series Two of our Confident Conversations podcasts is now available, sponsored and produced by A&O Shearman and powered by the Futurists. Hosted by PurpleSpace Founder, Kate Nash OBE, these interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster. This episode features:

• Suzanne Rodway - Chief Data Protection Officer at NatWest Group

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

If you are a C-Suite leader or CEO and would like to take part in a future series, please contact [email protected]

If your organisation has recording facilities and you would like to produce a future series, please contact [email protected]

Samantha is an actress, broadcaster, writer, disability rights campaigner, diversity and inclusion consultant and keynote speaker. And her story starts when she is born with a rare genetic condition Osteogenesis Imperfecta - commonly known as Brittle Bones condition.

Having started her career as a teacher Samantha is now a regular face on our TV screens and skilfully uses her own lived experience of disability to drive systemic change in the places that matter. She is also an Ambassador for Scope.

During lockdown, Samantha wrote her first book ‘You Are The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread’, published by Ebury Spotlight in 2022 and one of many lines that chimed with me was ‘we must be unapologetically imperfect’.

She uses, what I call, her ‘obstinacity’ (a mash up of obstinance and tenacity) during moments where she doubts her ability to succeed.

In our conversation, you'll hear how Samantha initially rejected the idea of networking with other disabled people, before later discovering the wonderful benefits of being able to learn from the experiences of others.

She talks about ‘putting in the graft’ to find career stability and the journey of developing her inner confidence. She has found ways to be consistent in asking for what she needs in terms of workplace adjustments or accommodations while building a brand that truly supports others to be who they are, and ask for what they need.

I am sure you will enjoy her fun, her resolve, her unapologetic way of being her authentic self.

These interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster.

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

We are on a mission at PurpleSpace to cascade a universal definition of inner confidence, a strong expectation of a positive outcome, and to share the practical things we can do to navigate our working worlds while managing disability.

Enjoy this episode.

In this conversation you will meet Leanne Cahill, the Chief Executive of Bravissimo. I could have spent all day talking to her. She is ‘real’ and she sits confidently in her leadership space and the opportunity and responsibility she has as the custodian of their business culture.

Leanne was born with one hand and shares with us the challenges that she experienced as a child growing up while being a bit different. Her story is captivating. It’s the story of being human and wanting the best for yourself. And it’s the story of someone for whom their career success mattered to them from the get-go.

Her brand is characterised by navigating awkward moments and finding work-arounds to barriers. She doesn’t let the tough stuff eat her up. She learns, she is practical as she applies learning in all phases of her career. And her career is impressive.

Leanne starts her career at 16 with a part-time job in McDonald’s. It is customer-facing and fast paced. And it requires her to handle a lot of equipment. It does not enter her head that there may be any challenges.

In our conversation we talk about her career and her path through university, a junior management placement with M&S, how she specialised in finance and moved down to London to start her accountancy exams. We discuss how she went up the ranks in retail and professional services firms and then found her way to Bravissimo.

Leanne tells us how she makes conscious choices about how to meet and greet others and remove the awkwardness from situations. She does this in a way that does not diminish her brand but enhances it. She used humour and stories and she shares her vulnerability to build trust in her relationships and within the organisations that she leads.

We discuss the positive consequences that come from being a leader with visible limb difference which could well be one of the reasons why the disability metrics at Bravissimo are better than the average.

These interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster. The first tranche of six films is brought to you with thanks to LSEG who are working to build a culture of belonging for everybody and accessibility is a key part of that. Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

We are on a mission at PurpleSpace to cascade a universal definition of inner confidence as a strong expectation of a positive outcome and to share the practical things we can do to navigate our working worlds while managing disability.

Enjoy this episode.

Toby Burton’s story is going to blow your mind. He conveys with such clarity that while so many of our barriers to career success are caused by external forces, ultimately we have to dig deep and strengthen our reserves of resilience and confidence to push back against those things.

Toby is currently Chief Financial Officer of Fastmarkets. Their annual revenue exceeds 100 million. He began his career at Unilever and became a qualified accountant while there. He then found his way to The Economist and sat at the very heart of news, politics and finance and eventually became CFO to the Economist Group’s publishing business responsible for 300 million of revenues.

Toby was born profoundly deaf and has never used speech. He shares a story about being undermined as a 9-year old boy by one of his teachers. I would imagine everyone who has navigated work while living with disability will have experienced a similar moment when maybe a colleague has been blatant in their view that you cannot do something and you reach a crossroads of choice about what you do with that view. Toby decided to prove his teacher wrong and his career is testament to what you have to do to build inner confidence.

His story of flunking a really important board presentation about stock cubes because of not being able to get the right interpreters is a powerful one. Does he blame the lack of interpreters? No. Does he believe his poor performance is not fixable? No. Does he blame his colleagues for not noticing he had interpreters who were unfamiliar to finance? No.

As you listen to the film, you will hear his powerful truth that no matter how good your organisation is in relation to its own track record of getting it right, there is no way they will know your own unique adjustment needs. So relying on others to set something up for you is never going to work.

He leads. He takes control of his story, his brand, his adjustment needs, his career trajectory. His lessons are powerful and I learnt so much, as I expect you will too.

These interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster.

The first tranche of six podcasts is brought to you with thanks to LSEG who are working to build a culture of belonging for everybody and accessibility is a key part of that.

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

We are on a mission at PurpleSpace to cascade a universal definition of inner confidence as a strong expectation of a positive outcome and to share the practical things we can do to navigate our working worlds while managing disability.

Enjoy this episode.

When Sara is first diagnosed with MS she asks the medics , ‘how did I get it?, what can I do to make it better? and what is it going to do to me?.’

Pointed questions that not everyone asks when we first acquire a medical condition that can disrupt our working lives. And because she did not get clear information she keeps her personal information private and doesn’t share it too widely. However, unlike the majority of us she had a huge job. In fact, she was Chief Executive of Argos.

Her story about how she has built her impressive career at the same time as managing disability is very special and her words will stay with you for a long time.

Sara has a plural portfolio career. She is a Non-Executive Board Director of both BT and Virgin Money. She is also the chair of the government’s Money and Pensions Service.

Sara takes us through her career journey with Mars Confectionary, Abbey National, Sainsburys and Argos, as Chief Executive with 750 stores across the UK. It was, she shares, the perfect job.

In our conversation together Sara talks movingly about how hard it is to ask for help and workplace adjustments. She offers some great take-aways and talks powerfully to the very essence of what it means to be human and her own honest reflections in this conversation bring out the things we need to do to help those that come behind us.

These interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster.

The first tranche of six podcasts is brought to you with thanks to LSEG who are working to build a culture of belonging for everybody and accessibility is a key part of that.

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

We are on a mission at PurpleSpace to cascade a universal definition of inner confidence as a strong expectation of a positive outcome and to share the practical things we can do to navigate our working worlds while managing disability.

Enjoy this episode.

Damian Riley’s impressive career path demonstrates his commitment to leadership across the public and private sectors and it demonstrates his sense of duty and compassion.

I have heard him speak many times and have had the great pleasure of getting to know him for a while. But you have to absorb the entirety of his background to get a measure of the man.

In September 2021 he secured the role of Chief Executive of the Army Recruiting Group and is responsible for recruiting up to 12,000 regular and reserve soldiers and officers each year to serve in the British Army. It is an uncomfortable truth that in the UK, like many nations, we need to be war ready. And that is what he helps to do. He ensures that we attract the talent that potentially could be called on to protect our nation and all of us, as people.

Aside from that huge responsibility, like every other person who wants to preserve and protect their financial independence, his world was rocked when he experienced a life-changing road traffic accident in June 2019.Our conversation will in turn, rock you. We talk about the challenges that come with the dramatic and traumatic onset of a life experience that we would prefer not to have had, as well as the gifts that come with disability.

We talk about those moments when our planned-for life-trajectory is de-railed and replaced with an ambiguous future and we talk about the things that we learn about ourselves as a consequence and how they can be as life-enhancing as they are challenging.

The key confidence fundamental in our Confident Conversation series that Damian talks to is the need to assimilate and make sense of our new identities that can often come from the experience of disability and the need to get comfortable with that before we can expect others to do the same.

These interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster.

The first tranche of six podcasts is brought to you with thanks to LSEG who are working to build a culture of belonging for everybody and accessibility is a key part of that.

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

We are on a mission at PurpleSpace to cascade a universal definition of inner confidence as a strong expectation of a positive outcome and to share the practical things we can do to navigate our working worlds while managing disability.

Enjoy this episode.