Stories Seldom Told

Christos Demetriou is an entrepreneur, music producer, songwriter and pastor.

Chris’ commercial history embraces multiple areas of business activity, including a sports promotion and public relations company, a television broadcast network (with affiliates in 28 countries), an entertainment exchange portal, a media rights and brokerage business (still active after 32 years) and a registered charity (celebrating 32 years).

Chris is also the author of four books and hosted “It’s All Greek to Me,” a TV programme which is aired in 36 countries.

Chris is responsible for three top 5 chart hits and two number 1 songs. One of Chris’s compositions featured in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games and appears in Q magazine's Top 100 Singles of All Time (at number 77). Guinness Book of Records cited the original version as being the first ‘sample’ ever used in a music production.

Having worked in different capacities with many well-known celebrities, Chris is professionally linked to world renown music artists such as Cat Stevens, David Bowie, Mike d’Abo and John Kongos.

In 1990 Chris and his wife Loraine founded Cornerstone Ministries, a registered charity and Evangelical Christian church based in Surrey. Cornerstone Ministries started as a small Bible Study that grew rapidly to a congregation now exceeding 600 people. Cornerstone is a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic community made up of 41 nations.

Here is a link to the song he mentions in this interview: He’s Gonna Step on You Again

"And I remember when I was working with Cat Stevens, and he found Islam. And he tried to convert me to Islam. And then he said, Chris, you're still searching, and until you find that, you're not going to be settled. And I agreed with it. But he couldn't persuade me to lead my whole life and take on this new life. So I had to have an encounter with God that was personal and real, which I did have, and that's what turned me around."

Nicola Horlick is a British investment fund manager nicknamed 'superwoman' in the media for balancing her high-flying finance career with bringing up six children. She graduated from Balliol College, Oxford with a degree in Jurisprudence, later joining SG Warburg as a graduate trainee in 1983.

She was initially placed in the asset management division of Mercury Asset Management, where she stayed for the following 8 years, becoming a director at the age of 28. In 1991, she moved to Morgan Grenfell Asset Management and in 1992 was made Managing Director of the UK investment division.

In 1997, Nicola was asked to set up a UK investment business for SocGen, a French bank, with the aim of accumulating £5bn of funds under management over the following 5 years. In 2013, she founded Money&Co, a peer-to-peer lending platform where she remains as CEO today. 

"Diversity comes in many forms and one of those forms is not having everybody going down the same funnel. Doing their GCSEs, doing their A-Levels, doing a degree going and doing internships during their holidays. Going on the milk rounds and choosing a bank to work in. You know, it's all very narrow, isn't it? Actually if somebody's been a professional musician for a number of years, they've had all sorts of adversity to overcome and. And having different life experiences really adds to a team and to a business."

Ashok Ferrey is the author of five books, all of them nominated either for Sri Lanka's Gratiaen Prize or its State Literary Award. He read pure mathematics at Oxford and was a builder in London before becoming a writer. Ashok Ferrey's new book, The Unmarriageable Man just won the Gratiaen Prize - Sri Lanka's premier literary prize founded by Michael Ondaatje.

In a parallel world Ashok is an architect whose last building, The Cricket Club Cafe, was nominated for a Geoffrey Bawa Award for Excellence in Architecture. By day Ashok is also a personal trainer.

"And herein lies the rub. I mean, once you get used to [technology], you absolutely cannot do without them. And then you wonder how you managed before. They are absolutely beautiful but what they also do is they take possession of your soul. Even the very fact of writing a novel on a computer. I think I must be the last person on Earth, well, maybe I'm not - I write with a pencil in an exercise book. Why? Because it seems to be more expendable. When you write on the computer, there's an air of finality about it. And I don't want that, because at that first draft stage, it's a slippery fish that can go in any direction."

Vanessa Maria is a DJ, Broadcaster at Foundation FM, and a host at Resident Advisor.

Named as one of the most important young people in music, Vanessa has made her mark on radio stations across the country sharing her love for underground UK music. She’s been busy making appearances at Boiler room, Dazed Magazine, Warehouse Project and HÖR in Berlin. 

Vanessa’s work in and around mental health has also not gone unnoticed.

As the key presenter at Resident Advisor, she currently hosts a music and mental health-related podcast and documentary series. She has been named as a leader in shaping the future of London’s nightlife by The Face Magazine.

"It means feeling so othered that you clearly stick out in a certain context. That might be the way you look, your race. In my case, it was being black at university. But in that same context, even though I was so visible - and it was so clear that I was present and there because I stuck out - I was also so hyper-invisible because I was in the minority. My voice was felt so insignificant, and I felt so unimportant and I felt so undervalued in that same context. So it was a weird feeling to navigate, to feel visible and invisible at the exact same time."

Monica Alcazar-Duarte is a Mexican-British multi-disciplinary visual artist, whose work acknowledges her indigenous heritage while exploring current ideals of progress. Her work references Western society’s obsession with speed, expansion, and resource accumulation as an index of advancement, at a time in which ecological disaster looms. It considers other ways of seeing, knowing, and being in the world.

She embraces themes related to science and technology and their influence over society and the natural world. In her projects she mixes images and new technologies, such as Augmented Reality, to create multi-layered work, producing meaning through seemingly disconnected narratives. Monica’s work has been exhibited and collected throughout Europe, Mexico and the United States.

"We live in a in a post-colonial society. So for example, every time I come back to the country, there are a series of signs that come to the surface of my skin, in almost a hurtful way. And that is in that every person that I see, for example, in advertising or TV, is aspirational. And they look very European, and usually they're kind of light skin, and their features have nothing or almost nothing to do with 90% of the population in the country. And I find that shocking, that it is still very accepted."

Carlos Hidalgo has more than four decades of executive management expertise and development of strategic programs for Fortune 500, mid-market  companies and non-profits.

With an extensive knowledge of Latin America, Carlos has developed programs for Logoi (publishing), the Government Tourist  Office of Mexico, and for bus builders in Mexico and Brazil.

He also has widespread experience of the non-profit sector having served as the Chief Operating Officer of Word of Life, an international non-profit organization. In that capacity, he directed long range and day-to-day operations in 81  countries around the world.

Carlos was appointed Commissioner on the Michigan State Commission on Spanish Speaking affairs by Michigan Governor John Engler and served one term.

Carlos presently serves as a member of the governing board of the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce.

“The things that we lost are not the important things in life. The important things in life, first of all, is the love that you have seen in your  home. That's one, number two, is the integrity that you have seen in your home, and the integrity that you have seen in your mother, the integrity that you have seen in me, the integrity that we have taught you over the years to you and your siblings, that matters.

What also is important is the truth and the ability to speak the truth, always speak the truth, even when the words that you speak, will come back to harm you. You speak the truth.”

Carlos Hidalgo is a Life Design coach, a Corporate Culture Development Consultant, two-time author, TEDx speaker and international keynote speaker.

Over the span of the last 25 years, Carlos has held corporate roles, started his own entrepreneurial ventures, led his company to receive multiple Inc. 5000 awards and has served in non-profit organisations. Carlos is now dedicated to helping others design a life they love to live, through his Life Design coaching and Corporate Culture services.

Carlos’s last book, The UnAmerican Dream details his journey from a workaholic to a life that he loves.

You can follow Carlos on Twitter @cahidalgo or on Instagram @life_design_living

“And so, throughout my teen years into college, and even into adulthood, my entire drive was about just proving them wrong, or trying to shake in a very improper way and very useless way the weight that was in my backpack. Rather than dealing with it and addressing the self-limiting beliefs head on and addressing that unconscious bias head on, I carried it around with me. And that's the thing, it became such a weight on me because I refused to deal really with the hurt and the pain that went with all those things.”

"We all have an unconsious bias, where we're walking down the road, and I could see somebody and I will just presume their life, or wonder what they do, or how many kids they have. I will just be inquisitive like that, because it's in my nature, I think, as a barber."

Content warning: This episode deals with themes of sexual exploitation and death.

Laura is a competitive powerlifter, mother of four and grandmother of two. She lives in Dublin, Ireland. Laura Kavanagh is the co-host of the 'Talk of the Town' podcast that features "3 Dublin girls addressing different issues of daily life".  It can be found on Instagram at @talkofthetown_podcast_, as well as her personal handle @Thismammy.

Laura has many stories to share.

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“And then when my turn was there, I go to the stage, I realised that I couldn't utter a single word. I was completely, like, nervous, and I couldn't. I was stammering as you know, I was stammering , I was spitting. A lot of struggle was there. So the words were not  coming out of my mouth. And everyone was simply - they were laughing. And when I saw some teachers, they were hiding their faces, but I could see them giggling as well. I was trembling, but I finished my speech, I didn't give up.  In that moment, that very moment, I decided that I'm going to become a leader.”

Puneet Singh Singhal was born and brought up in a slum called Sangam Vihar in South Delhi,India.

He grew up facing domestic violence and poverty. Due to his stammer, he also faced a lot of bullying.

Despite these early years, Puneet went on to complete his undergraduate degree in English Honours from the University of Delhi.

He then worked in the Royal Bank of Scotland as an operations Analyst in the Anti-Money Laundering Department.

After a year of working there, he realised that corporate life is not for him. He has since worked with organisations like Amnesty International, Action Aid India, Vision India Foundation and Association for democratic reforms.

He is a former member of the Delhi Minority Commission and a current member of International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

He is currently running a social organisation working towards normalising speech and communication disorders and advocating for a more inclusive and accessible society for people with disabilities.

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“Forgiveness is quite different. First of all, we do it for ourselves. So, I had to get rid of the bias that I am doing it for somebody else. I am doing it for myself. I don’t want to be carrying around this anger inside me. It’s like a form of taking poison when we are angry with anybody. For a long time. I am not talking about just in the moment - for a long, long time. We keep telling ourselves a story about what they did and we are engaging in victim consciousness.”

This is part 2 of my podcast interview with Robin Shohet.  Robin is a therapist, supervisor, trainer and author of the book he co-wrote with his wife:In Love with Supervision. Creating Transformative Conversations.

In the last episode, we discussed the idea of what unconscious bias meant to him. What is individual consciousness and how does this affect all the decisions we make? This interview can be found in Season 4, episode 3.

This time, Robin will share some stories of a more personal nature. His understanding of the word forgiveness and how that may affect his unconscious bias.