Shownotes The Elephant in the Room podcast is back this week with our guest Romeo Effs, Founder and CEO of Lumorus, a global consultancy focusing on addressing the disconnect, inequality and upheavals within society that stem from a lack of sustainable, forward-looking governance and leadership. In this episode we speak about his name (Romeo), journey from Jamaica, a fairly successful international corporate career.......... Experiencing racism in the UK His views on adapting like a chameleon (or Code-Switching) both as a survival tactic and as a strength The epiphany that prompted the setting up of Lumorus Why it is important to take an intersectional lens to address issues around equity and inclusion He shares his mantras for men of colour navigating the barriers in society & the workplace.  Role models and what drives him on this journey of change

We also spoke about the concept of 'bringing your whole self to work' currently bandied about as the panacea to all ills. Success of the concept usually rests upon the idea of psychological safety within teams and organisations. To put a cat amongst the pigeons - should we not consider whether we really need to bring our whole self to work? Or only those parts that enable us to fulfil our potential and thrive? And what does that mean in reality.  Romeo also believes that people of colour have been over-mentored, what they need now is sponsors - people who open the doors to roles, promotions, bonuses, prestige projects within the organisation. If you want to know more listen here 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾 Memorable passages from the podcast: 👉🏾 Right, So I'm Jamaican, I was born in Jamaica but I have mixed heritage. There is a mixture of Cuba, German and a mixture of yes, Irish, African going on. And so I spent most of my life growing up in Jamaica, my dad used to be an accountant. And my mom was an English literature teacher. So yeah, all my values and everything that I live by now was because of that childhood or growing up in Jamaica. Yeah. 👉🏾 So you're right. I did move mid-career. I moved to the UK when I was 35 and it just happened by chance because I came to the UK to study, to do my masters and the intention was to return to Jamaica. I had my businesses there, I was very involved in politics. I was on a trajectory to be either a member of parliament or being appointed an ambassador or a senator and given a ministry My political mentor at the time became prime minister, which I worked with him on in terms of the campaign. When I came to the UK, I went to a really, really great university Cass Business School, it's now called Bayes. And while there, I was able to have a tremendous network of individuals from all over the world. People from Bangladesh, from India, from Greece, from Africa, from the UK. But, I was able to meet a lot of these amazing individuals who were just kind of exposing me to other stuff that was happening in the world. And I created this quantitative method called the xxxxxxxxx test, which while doing my master's, which is a quantitative method of analysing risk in supply chain, financial risk. 👉🏾 And so while at the conference, my dissertation was sponsored by, I think the third-largest software manufacturing company in the UK called AG Barr PLC. So I moved to Scotland and lived there for about four months, doing this study this research on their supply chain and just being there and being able to see how they operated, being able to travel to their different locations across Europe and just seeing how things work. 👉🏾 I quickly realised that in Jamaica, I was a big fish in a small pond, but in the UK, I had the ability of growing into a whale because it was like an ocean. And so I then started exploring the notion of staying in this country. And then after I did my dissertation, the company AG Bar PLC then hired me for a year. And so I ended up staying. And quickly after I was headhunted into Accenture which was also...