Raise The Bar

This week; how can we divorce better? I talk to family law barrister and founder of The Divorce Surgery, Samantha Woodham, about how they’re helping couples to divorce differently. 42% of marriages in the UK end in divorce, but both the stigma and cost of getting a divorce are huge. Sam set up The Divorce Surgery to enable couples to navigate the process without the enormous legal fees. For the first time in the UK, the service allows couples to share one lawyer with one fixed fee throug...

My guest this week is journalist and author Natalie Morris.Natalie is an online Senior Lifestyle Writer at the Metro, covering race, mental health, women in sport and women in the workplace. Her landmark weekly series ‘Mixed Up’ spotlighted under-represented narratives and explored the nuanced reality of being mixed-race in the UK today.Natalie’s debut book ‘Mixed/Other’ was published in April this year, following a milestone year in the global conversation about race since the murder of Geor...

My guest this week is Dr Chen Mao Davies, founder of Latch Aid.In 2002, Chen came to the UK from China with two suitcases, minimal spoken English, and no personal network. But she was armed with the courage and commitment to succeed.Since then, Chen overcame extraordinary challenges and established a celebrated career in Science & Technology. She fulfilled her lifelong dream to create Visual Effects in feature films, including Gravity and Blade Runners 2049, which won Oscar and BAFTA awar...

My guest this week is Celia Pool, founder of multi-award winning sustainable period product company DAME. Celia tells us how DAME measures success against its sustainability efforts, standing out as a carbon-negative business in an industry that emits the same carbon as 3 million cars driving for a year.I ask Celia if she feels the pressure or desire to join feminist conversations as a brand and how DAME navigates the complexities and contradictions within. We talk about DAME’s infamous tampo...

My guest this week is Mims Davies. Mims is the Employment Minister and Mid Sussex Conservative MP. In this episode, we reflect on the past year for the minister and the impact of the pandemic on the Department for Work and Pensions. Before Covid-19, employment was at a 45 year high, but following the first lockdown announcement on 23rd March, when the Prime Minister instructed us to ‘stay at home’, the employment landscape changed overnight.I ask Mims how she fostered employee wellbeing in he...

This week, how do you contact emergency services when you can’t make a voice call?999 was introduced in 1937, 84 years ago, and it’s been voice-based ever since. Not only does this cause challenges for the deaf community, but there are also many situational reasons why making a voice call is unrealistic; from allergies and choking, to domestic violence and terror attacks.Talking to me today is Becca Hume, the founder of Tap SOS. Tap SOS is an emergency services app that enables users to inter...

This week, I’m thrilled to have Chloe Macintosh as my guest. Chloe is the co-founder of made.com, former Chief Creative Officer of Soho House Group, and founder and CEO of Kama, a new sexual wellness app launched in 2020 that was built as a response to the global sex recession.In this episode, Chloe tells us that stress is the number one killer in the world today, but we’re not utilising our bodies’ natural way of combating stress through pleasure. Our culture is overly cerebral and head-focu...

Maike Currie is an Investment Director at Fidelity International, an investment firm responsible for over £500 billion of client assets under their management.Following on from my recent podcast episode with Laura Farris MP where we explored the effects of the pandemic on women’s progress toward economic equality through a parliamentary lens, I was keen to speak with Maike about the role of financial institutions and how the investment industry itself can better support women to invest in the...

Zara Ransley is the co-founder of MyPocketSkill, a tech platform connecting young people to money-earning tasks and enabling them to save.In this episode, Zara tells us how financial education is behavioural, and the key to “getting good with money” is practical rather than theoretical - learning what to do with your money as you earn it. This is a gap that is missing in formal education and is one that Zara and her co-founder Matt are aiming to fill with MyPocketSkill. I ask Zara about hustl...

This week we’re interrupting our regular schedule to bring you a special live recorded episode all about tax - just in time for the end of the tax year on 5th April. Before you go anywhere, I promise that it’s informative, accessible and not at all boring or overly technical. I have had many messages from attendees who are already saving money, investing in pensions and making informed financial decisions before the end of the tax year - less than one week away. It really is jam packed full o...