This Can Happen Podcast

We welcome Victoria Wright to our podcast this week. She was the Grand Prix winner at the This Can Happen Awards 2021.  Together with her husband Matthew, she set up Riders Minds in 2019, an online bespoke resource dedicated to supporting the mental health and well-being of all horse riders, drivers and equestrians.  Sadly so, Matthew took his own life a year ago and today Victoria talks openly about the relationship she has with her 3 young children since Matthew's passing and her belief in strong communication.

Warning - this episode contains conversations about suicide

https://ridersminds.org/ - Victoria and Matthew's charity

The following are two organisations that Victoria has been using with her children:

http://www.tomorrowproject.org.uk/

https://www.childrensbereavementcentre.co.uk/

As we launch the This Can Happen 2022 Awards I was fortunate to sit down with Andy McAleese from Pacific Life Re to understand how one management meeting changed the course of his mental health which ultimately led to him winning Inspiring Leader of the Year Award in 2021.

If you would like to nominate another Inspiring Leader or your own company for doing great work in the area of mental health, please go to https://www.thiscanhappenglobal.com/events/awards 

This session comes to you unedited from the This Can Happen 2021 conference this year.  We were absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to speak to writer and broadcaster Nicky Campbell who talked openly and honestly about his adoption and how it has been part of his mental health journey.

From the feedback from the obesity and mental health session that we held at the 2020 This Can Happen workplace mental health conference we needed to delve more into this subject.  I am delighted to welcome back Sarah Le Brocq who is the director of The UK Obesity Organisation.  We will be discussing the connection between mental health and obesity, how the individual fight against obesity is so much more than eating less, moving more and how obesity can have a profound effect on someone’s mental health. 

To mark World Mental Health Day, This Can Happen has teamed up with our charity partners Mental Health UK and Beyond to bring a great podcast.  We were delighted to chat with Jonny Benjamin and Louisa Rose from Beyond and Katie Legg from Mental Health UK. 

We cover a lot but focused on the responsibility of the workplace to their young people and the need for those young people to find their voice at work so that change can happen. We also discussed how we are all managing our own mental health.

For more information on This Can Happen, visit www.thiscanhappenglobal.com

In today’s podcast, we welcome the inspiring Emily Hamilton.  Not only is she a This Can Happen Ambassador but a role model at her workplace, RS Components,  and within the Trans community.  Emily’s aim is to bring a greater understanding of those people who, in her own words, were 'born with the wrong parts.' Today Emily will be sharing with us her journey of gender dysphoria and being a closeted trans, the fear and shame that she felt for decades, and how this impacted hugely on her mental health.  

'I felt comfortable enough to come out as bisexual when I was 16.  I didn’t feel comfortable enough to come out as suffering from depression until I was 30.'

Gavin Alexander is based in Massachusetts, USA. He graduated from law school in 2012 and worked in the corporate department as an associate at Ropes and Gray from 2013 – 2020. From November 2020 he has been a Fellow at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court standing committee  on lawyer wellbeing.

In this podcast we hear Gavin’s inspiring personal story, how others reacted to it and how this lead him to help transform workplace culture.

Josh Krichefski is Global COO and EMEA CEO at Mediacom. He is a strong supporter of a mentally healthy workplace which comes from his own personal experience.  He is a global thought leader on the subject and is now campaigning for mental health reporting in business, all of which is explored in the podcast.

In the first This Can Happen podcast Zoe Sinclair interviews Barbara Harvey, Mental Health and Workplace Culture Campaigner and Speaker and former mental health lead at Accenture.  Having been awarded the Founders' Choice Award for Outstanding Service to Mental Health in 2021  it was only appropriate that Barbara launched our podcast series in her final weeks of working at Accenture.  She has made a huge impact on workplace mental health there and this podcast explores this in detail.