Risk is the New Kale

Credits:

Music Track Title: Everybody Loves a Catastrophe; Licence type: Standard Licence; Artist: Twirl; Composer: Neal Busby & Huguette Arsenault (SOCAN); Publisher: Lynne Publishing (PRS - CAE#: 541626758)

Logo Artist: Avril Orloff; Outsidethelines.ca

Transcript:

Welcome to the podcast. Risk is the new kale. Each episode I talk with folks who have figured out how to extract opportunity from risk. As someone who has spent a career controlling risk, I want to know those who embrace it. Risk is the new kale good for you? Hard to take.

This interviews with Bill Yearwood and the theme is what can complex air accident investigations teach us about our own sense of safety. Bill has been quoted in the media so many times that his voice became synonymous with public reassurance. People just wanted to know that someone got to the bottom of an accident so that it would never happen again. I've known him for many years. We share this drive to understand complexity and also this sense of responsibility that communicating the outcomes of an investigation is a huge responsibility because you actually want to change. People's minds about what it does to be safe and to control risk. I know no one with more integrity than Bill Yearwood. He's the award-winning former manager of Regional Operations Pacific for the Transportation Safety Board Aviation accident investigations. He's a pilot and a road racer. He's the author of getting it, learning from aviation Accident Investigations published in 2021. I'm pleased to be speaking with Bill Yearwood and welcome Bill to the podcast. Risk is the new kale. Happy to be on this and look forward to hearing more of what you've got to put out. Now you've been the lead investigator for numerous complex air accident investigations and you enjoy helicopter flying, so it's fair to say you're good at self management of risk. Well, I like to think that that's that's what it's all about. You know risk. Risk management safety is all about about anticipating and managing exactly exactly and one of the things I really enjoyed in your book bill and I love the title. Getting it. You say that we have to assume that designers, manufacturers, maintainers, operations managers and pilots did not intend the accident to occur. And it's kind of hard to understand how far we humans can go past the signs of danger. So tell me a bit more about that. Well to start with, I I. Have to remind people

that the word accident means that it wasn't intentional. If we were to to think that they thought. Or knew that this would happen then you know it's a police matter. It's criminal, you know, to let it happen so so as investigators and rational people, we we know that that nobody wants their equipment or their operation to hurt other people and we can talk more about that in the end. But the. So how do we go past? So many. Signals of. Danger. Is a lot about. Our need to complete a task.

Most of us when we take on a task, we want to see it completed, we, we and and sometimes they call that operational momentum. That's a great expression. I use the space shuttle accident as a classic example. Of not just signals. But experts saying don't do this. You know that we're not tested for this etcetera and they went ahead anyway, so so I'm guilty of it, you know, and I know that a lot of us are guilty of. Trying to complete. Attask job, whatever.

Once we get started. Now that is such an interesting point around. This need to finish. Almost put parentheses around something. Once you've started it, and I'm wondering whether even as part of our education there's something missing around the ability to pause and let something be open-ended for whatever kind of external thing comes up. And just to kind of let something end and do a pause because you're right, I think we are. All sort of driven to be task completers and so we're putting our heads down and maybe not noticing when we actually should stop. Because because I know that is a trait of mine and many I. Try to get the the decisions of stopping done before I start. In other words, put in. I'm not going unless this and and stick with those and. And even if I get to hear. And they can't see this or do this. I got to turn around because I know that once I get started, even just getting to the airport for me. Is hard to sit to turn around and say you know what? It's not good enough to go. You're almost injecting your own safety gates in by thinking through those pause points. That's neat. Yeah, and I've talked about that about what's human, what's in my nature? And and look out for that what's and and when we when we talk about risk, it's subjective and everybody has different tolerance and and our tolerance changes. Very quickly based on the circumstances and and we can easily find an excuse why we can go. You know another 10 feet or another 10 miles before we turn around and and that might be the the gap you needed to turn around.

So I I just want to take you back to your childhood and because I'm curious about how you've learned this, because you certainly embody that. And I know that you grew up on a sugar estate in Guyana and as a kid you swam in waters that had piranha in them. You had to watch out for alligators and constrictors, so that must have been quite a childhood, and probably it was amazing. How do you think that influenced your choices and your thinking later in life? Well, I think it did a lot. It makes one realize that you have to look after yourself an early age. It was kind of forced on me to stay alive, really in those conditions to manage risk. So what do you do to avoid being bitten by a Parana in water that had Parana? You know, and you learn from little stories from other people and you do it. You know you go in splashing like crazy and get out. No sort of sitting around and wiggling your toe or something like that because it'll be gone. OK, that's the secret. So you've got to scare them off and not thinking that you're actually something making nibble on. Yeah, so it's the opposite of fishing. You know, that's good. And then and then just having your eyes open.

To see what's around and et cetera. So we're some of those things you know. Even when I was an instructor, I could tell students that were easier to train on a helicopter. Because of their background, if they showed up on a motorcycle or we knew they worked a tractor or backhoe on a farm, I knew that they they had some basics to to help them with three dimensional control. And in my case. Had some of that too, but but I had some basics to help me with risk management. OK, that's fascinating. Now when I met you many years ago, it was at an aviation leadership conference and you were standing next to the widow of a man who had drowned after a floatplane accident. I was extremely moved by your dedication to this person. And like all spouses of accidents, she wanted to make sure that what her husband went through never happened to anyone else. That if anything comes from something so horrible, it's learning and correction, I'm going to talk a bit about that. Yeah, unfortunately there's the few of those like that where I end up. Talking to the loved ones of people who have lost their lives in accidents and. Sometimes not sometimes, but every time. As an investigator you get to see some things that that are you'll never forget you can see. Images of. Those persons struggle to survive or to avoid the tragedy they went through.

And when that happens. We don't. We don't share that. Openly. Even among ourselves, we get we get help to counseling because we know that it's that it has an effect on us. But it sticks with you forever. And any time you see. Or come across. That trap that caused that loss. It's vivid. And and you, you can't leave it alone and you get up on your soapbox and start talking about what needs to be done again. Yeah, so it's. It's a must, you know, caring for the people that are left and and all the people who've experienced that and the best care is to to try and make sure it doesn't happen again. I can see that's deeply affected you, for sure. Let's go to a different question that may be reflects risk, as the new kale good for you. Hard to take. What are good risks? So how can we evolve without taking risk as a society? Well, we can't. We have to take risks but it's interesting to to answer that question about what's good risk. And I mean the simple answer is.

You know, probably high probability of success or low chance of failure. You know that that that's simple and that is quick. That's what we do. You know it's it's pretty easy there. That to say, what is good risk is a little more difficult. I mean, it's good to go out. For a walk and exercise, but there is a risk of of getting run over by a car, but there's a bigger risk if you stay at home on the couch and and you know, turn into boneless chicken. You know, it's kind of.

So. It's. You have to to look at it that way and and really what improved the species is good risk management, you know. So the word risk itself is it's the stimulus for the improvement, and we can simply say use an example of wanting to come in across a Creek and needing to jump over it. Now you have to assess well, is it possible at all? And yeah, how far back do I have to run to get up to the speed I need to be? So that I cross the water before gravity takes over. If you do it, then you succeed you have. Enhanced or your judgment? You know or confirmed your judgment. If you fall in the water and you have to run and do it again, you have enhanced your fitness and your judgment theater isn't bad either. You know, in those small cases that it's part of of improving the species. Because if if you can see that it's possible. Then getting through that hurdle wrist challenge. Improves the species absolutely. And of course you know we. We measure safety by hazard identification and. Assessing the risk or managing it, but hazard identification is also what can we do to identify the hazards? Sometimes we can't identify the hazards in our natural life and you can use maybe cancer as an example, being able to identify it early. Can allow the species to live longer. And so the identification of the hazard and then learning how to how to. Manage that risk or get over the hurdle. It's fascinating for me to dig deep into to what we're doing all the time. To. Improve the species to enjoy our life. I

wouldn't mind coming back to that point later in terms of the way that you think, even as you drive to the airport to think about getting in your aircraft and heading out. And the way that you're thinking through the hazards that's seems to be a recurring theme in the way that you actually prepare yourself for that great experience. So we'll come back to that.

As a helicopter pilot, a former car racer and now a road cycling racer. Now you've said that we need a certain amount of risk to keep the species fit, but how do you reconcile all those things? I think almost testing yourself in a way around setting up the conditions for something to be amazing and create opportunity through that. Well, I guess you know people say, well you do all these risky things. No, I live in a risky or hazardous environment and I get some joy and pride out of. Managing it so. How do I do that? And it's really visualizing? The task, the race, the flight, you know, what do I have to do? OK, walk us through that you're walking up to this bike that's probably worth more than most people's vehicles and it's an amazing Rd racer. I'm sure you have a number of them, but I'm just picturing one that's probably hanging in your garage. Do you start that process before you walk up to the bike, or are you? How do you do that? Preparation for, say, a cycling race with the team? Well, the preparation starts with your own. This training and practice. But then as you get closer you it's interesting people say oh, that's a tough course. Well, the course is really. It's the competition that makes it hard because you

can get around the course. It might be slow. There's no problem with getting around the course if you're going to be able to get around the chorus as fast as everybody else or faster. So. Then you have to visualize. OK, there's this hill here. I this is going to hurt me because I'm a heavy guy compared to those guys, I have to be on the front when we get to this hill so that when we get to the top I'm still in touch with the pack because if they go over the top without me, I don't have their draft to get back in the pack. So so. I have to visualize the whole course and where I need to be. At every step of the way, and so that's a bike race. And I also know that that if I can get to the last lap, I have strength. To finish well, you can beat me up to like, feel like I can't do another lap. But if I'm on that last lap and I I can I can win. I can Sprint most anybody and and that carries over to to fly. And then visualize it. You know, here's where we're going to go this way. We're going to do what's the weather today. Will I be able to fly this altitude? Yes, OK. Can't fly that altitude. I might have to go around this mountain even to the extent from a safety perspective. What if we get stuck out here? Even if we just land and have a picnic and we go back and the aircraft won't start, how much time am I giving? Rescuers or responders to get to me before dark and if I get stuck here at night in the dark and the cold. Am I wearing what I need to get through that so you visualize

yourself saying, oh, I wish I had done this or I wish I had brought this or I wish I had done that. You never wanted to say I should of you know, don't you should on me I think you know I have a lot of connection to that. Just how you describe that in the different businesses that I've been in and raising the discussion of risks which there is a bias for optimism with a lot of executive teams. And it makes them uncomfortable to do exactly what you said is important, which is put yourself in the position that it didn't work. Now what are you going to do? They see that as sort of preparing for the worst, but I think it's preparing for the best and the other thing that I see, which is very common is that people believe risks are discreet as opposed to linked. And often something will happen, but it's on top of something else. I mean, we're certainly seeing that in the in the global environment. It's one thing after another. And I'm not sure people really even understand how important it is to do the mental gymnastics about that kind of linking. Yeah, and sometimes we don't want to know. We don't even want to. Think about that and I have pilot friends that don't want to come and see the wreckage. Don't want to hear much about about it because it? Affects their, I guess what they're hanging on to is their invulnerability. Is there some superstition? Do you think in the industry as well about that? There is a lot of superstition in sports and risky sports, but you can't wear your lucky shorts every day.

I remember being in the helicopter with you as the pilot you. You made sure that we both had our helmets on. We had life jackets on as I recall, because we were flying over water. There was just this sense that we were going to incorporate all the tools. To manage all the hazards that we could. And I just have so much respect for that discipline, because as you say, it is a profession and they always say if you're prepared. The superstition as you're not likely to need it. One of the chapters in your book is titled Gaps in Risk Assessment. And you talk about life limits on critical components, basically capping how long the system critical part of what flies a plane can be allowed to work before it's replaced. And there's some reflection in your book too that there's in some parts an industry culture to stretch these times out. Well, it's it's not just the aviation industry. It shows up here because of the. Extra. Limits we put on things. You know the brakes on your car are crucial and we don't actually put a time limit on it. We just wait till it starts squealing. But that costs money. And whether it's in aviation or or driving your car. Things that cost money and take time. Are

often looked at as how can we make this stretch this longer? How can we? Avoid having to do this. And the airline industry was able to. Run pretty much everything on those big airliners on condition. And it's based on the fact that they have so much redundancy and they have so much ongoing monitoring of of the the components so they can. They can can justify this and they put on so many hours. So many flights that that they've been able to to slowly prove to the regulator that this unconditioned thing works. But really it is run it till it fails. What has happened in the industry is then that the lesser airline. Smaller equipment say hey we want this too and the smaller equipment may not have the redundancy. And the sophisticated maintenance oversight to do all of the monitoring, it doesn't scale, is what you're saying. Yeah, exactly, and that's where it's risky. And and then the designers might not have had any idea that you were going to do this to their aircraft. So

they built an aircraft for a certain purpose. Over the years, they've changed no longer just hauling people. Now they're fighting fires and and so they're landing and takeoffs are more frequent and they calculated the failure rates based on an assumption that you're not going to land every two minutes. You're going to fly for 20 minutes at least before you land. And it doesn't apply in certain environments. And sadly, we find out. The hard way. When it. It breaks learning from manufacturers and certification bodies. How they come up with these numbers and. How do they? Why they put in alarms, et cetera. As eye opening and. Many pilots and engineers don't. Get to see that in the background and they might push the limits because. They don't appreciate it. Bill, I'm curious about what role regulators have in setting acceptable risk tolerance standards for the public safety. Rules and following standard operating procedures are important because they set out the gates for preventing accidents. But what if the rules themselves are too LAX or need to be updated? We just sort of talked about some learnings from the way people are maintaining aircraft, but where does the regulators role come into that in certification of aircraft? Well. They play a very important role.

Every rule is written in somebody's blood. And. And the rule is a basic minimum. Because as soon as it it's put forward, it's ground down. Everybody wants to to make it as simple and. The least.

Problematic. For the industry to deal with. So.

We have to look at. Think of that and say what is the intent? And can I do better? Do I understand it? And if you take a simple example that everybody understands, there's a rule. There's a speed limit. And but it's based on on the road being dry. The average performance of an automobile or vehicle, the average capability of the driver, the visibility, all of those things are so average, and any one of those things can change where that speed limit should be.

It will be easier in the future when we take the human out of out of the vehicles and the vehicles stopped to each other and the car knows I've got this much traction and I've got this much space. And I can turn or stop within that. So it's talking to the other car and they space themselves and go at the speeds that that they can. They can handle well just to just to interject their. Do you think that people will accept self driving cars before they'll accept self-driving aircraft? I I think so, but it's not. Rational choice, because it's a lot easier to make a self-driving aircraft than a self-driving car. That the aircraft are out there with less obstacles flying on rails, so the aircraft are like trains. And the it's just that we can't see the rails that they're on. And. It's interesting that we we accepted first elevators without drivers. And it took us a while to accept trains without drivers. But really the train is an elevator on a horizontal plane that's less risky than an elevator that's on a vertical plane. So it's just a matter of distance that how far you're going to go in this. So the elevator we went to floors. That's not too bad, you know and accept that time.

The aircraft is going to be a little harder to do because it goes such a long way. I'm in here by myself or without a pilot looking after me for a longer time. The car will get there because as we age. And we you know better professors you can't drive anymore. It takes away that independence. But when they throw a car in front of you and say. It'll do it for you. You can still go where you want to go by just telling it where to go. We'll accept that. That's my thought anyway, and The thing is, we're getting there slowly but now they put on the brakes for you. If if you forget or you don't look so they're they're allowing us to be. Driving as less competent individuals and regulators when they think about those sorts of things and we were talking about safety rules before. What would you say is the primary responsibility with regulators not just in the performance of aircraft, but in a transitional economy such as moving to self driving cars? What would you expect them to be doing or asking in terms of societies risk tolerance or safety standards? To embrace it, you know, unfortunately. If I have to see it, the bureaucrats get comfortable in. What they're doing and change is not welcome, so getting them to say this would be great seeing the vision of how much it can help and a simple example is is rear view mirrors. Why do we have a review mirrors on cars when cameras are so much better? They don't have blind spots. You can put the image right in front of you. You don't have to look away from in front of you to look in the to see what's behind you. You know this, but the car manufacturers are having a real hard time getting the regulators to to adapt that or to change that. I guess it's a Tombstone regulation. This is the basics every car has to have a rear view mirror. And getting around that is difficult,

but that's a great example. Just a useless piece of hardware now basically, and so it's coming, but it's been so slow. That flows into aviation too, with the. Tragedy of Boeing's aircraft.

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Credits:

Music Track Title: Everybody Loves a Catastrophe; Licence type: Standard Licence; Artist: Twirl; Composer: Neal Busby & Huguette Arsenault (SOCAN); Publisher: Lynne Publishing (PRS - CAE#: 541626758)

Logo Artist: Avril Orloff; Outsidethelines.ca

Transcript:

Thank you so much. This is so nice. This is awesome. I just can't believe we have just run into each other so many times over our career and now I'm out the other side into a totally different career. We can actually be friends as opposed to colleagues college. She's been an elevator mechanic for over 13 years. She's passionate about leadership and advocacy, is formerly a member of the Executive Board of the International Union of Elevator Constructors, a shop Steward, a founding member of BC Tradeswomen Society, and on the Governance. Committee of the BC Center for Women in Trades please welcome Nicole Wheat. Thanks OK, we're going to just jump right in here. Nicole safety breaks became standard on elevating devices in the 1850s, but for some folks that is not very comforting. So why do you think that people believe elevators are riskier than they actually are? I think it's just because people don't understand them, and people often fear what they don't fully understand. It's like a magic box that gets them from one place to another, but they actually have no idea how it works on the inside. Besides, movies like speed, of course, which dramatize it and often use incorrect information. I I heard a lot when I'm like working at when I'm at work, especially if the doors are open and we have our barricades and people often peek in to see you know what it looks like. And yeah, it's amazing how often people comment about how elevators scare them so much, and I usually respond with a little bit of information that most elevators actually fall up, not down. Yeah, exactly exactly right. The breaks are holding them against the counterweight, so magical box is amazing symbolism. OK, so I want to talk about. How you came to be a mechanic for the magical box, but I know that you went to university and you studied criminology and then you did this change and you became an elevator mechanic. So tell me how that happened. Yeah, I wanted to be an RCMP officer and things just kind of changed and my goals changed. Kind of and I was kind of just floating around. It wasn't sure what I was going to do so actually went off to Taiwan and I taught English for 2 1/2 years and Taipei loved it. Still have amazing friends. Actually went back to see some of the students a couple of years ago. They were all in their last year's university because

they were so 12 when I left it was crazy, but. I am yeah, I kind of came back and went back to university majoring in English and my dad was actually talking to my sister's boyfriend at the time and and mentioning that the elevator union was hiring and just a process you call in and get your name on a list and then write it aptitude test and I just responded with like me. I'll do it and my dad's always supported me in anything I've done. So he's like, yeah, you'd be great at this and that's so cool. Kind of just how it happened. Yeah, it's like you fell into it, but of course it was meant to be right because you went to your dad's jobs with them right through high school and I'm sure there was shop talk around the kitchen. So family probably had a big influence. Oh for sure, yeah, my grandfather passed away now, but he was also an elevator guy in the union. So I listened to the two of them and my dad's best friend. Most of my dad's friends were elevator guys growing up, but my dad's best friend and my dad used to do their time together. On Thursdays and they were always building things in the garage as well and I just used to love just hanging out with them and listening to them talk and helping out. I had my own little like old welding hat that I could put on so I could watch what they were doing when they were welding stuff and they always loved their job like they always. They were never frustrated with it, they just considered every time something wasn't working as it should. It was just a problem that they would dissect and talk about and and decide how. Let's try this and maybe tomorrow we'll try this and they just they loved it. They really did love doing it and I think that just passed on to me where I was just like this is a job that my dad loves so much and it was interesting and it's never going to be boring. It's always gonna be something new to break as technology changes and their love of it just really got passed along to me I believe. I just admire that so much I have to say. My dad was an electrician and I learned the definition of integrity

from him because he would describe a job and then he would say and this is what we did to make it work and and I knew that it was elegant the way that you know he pulled the wire through and where he tied it off like it was. Yeah it meant a lot to actually have that as a basis. What do you think today holds people back from going into trades? It's a wonderful career. It really is a wonderful career and I can't imagine doing anything else. But I think representation really matters and it's hard to picture yourself doing a job that you've never seen. Another person doing that looks like you there weren't a lot of women in the trade when I got in. There were two other at the time, but they both lived in Vancouver and worked in Vancouver where I started my career out on the island. So it wasn't till I was. Almost finishing my apprenticeship that actually met another woman in the trade and it was like Oh my goodness, I'm not alone. We call it a Unicorn trade often with those trades where there's there's so few of us around. There's also like a lot of both internalized misogyny and misogyny. Women's face on job sites we can. He could be hard to walk into that, knowing that there's things are going to have to deal with and. And just. That misconception that you have to be a big and strong to be a tradesperson. Well, I don't really think that's right. There's always going to be a time where you need to move £100.00, but do it smartly. Use a tool team lift, lift smarter, not harder. We say that one all the time. And look at what you can do well. Look at your skills and your strengths and work towards those. No one's going to be the best at everything. Just pick those things that you're going to be the best at and. And whether it be like funny or handed to a tight spot, you know troubleshooting some people really get organizing things, and that is definitely something you need in the trades organization. Those are really good tips, right? You can find your own genius. You don't have to have all of it. Yeah, for sure. I'm never going to lift as much as a guy that's 6 foot two right, but I

can do other things really well. Yeah? And then you're going to take care of your long term health because you're not going to end up having compression issues. Very important. OK, so you're a huge advocate for women in trades and we first met when we were both on a panel. You founded the BC Tradeswomen Society. And when you say that representation matters, I also believe you have to see it to be it. So how is the sector changing like do you see policy change, legislative change, culture change? Where is it evolving? It it is changing, so there is a group of women that we yeah, we work together. We created the BC Tradesman Society. We founded it in part because we wanted to get government funding to create a Center for women in the trades. Or we could really advocate for change rather than. Always having volunteers, actually having people that their job was to advocate for women in trades, it is hard to do it all off the edge of your seat wall already working 40 plus hours. Pat your career so. We created the BC Tradesman Society and actually from that we were one of the partners with another couple other groups to create the BC Center for Women the trades and they're doing great work. They are really really changing the workscape to make it more suitable for not just women but other people as well. It doesn't always have to look the same and there's not ever going to be one fix for everyone. But there's a lot of other groups though, too, so there's like the BC tradesman Society the BCC Center for women in the trades. The build together, which is part of the building trades builders code BCI B. There's all these different groups and I think everyone does things a little bit differently and I think with all those options, or really are making a shift of that culture. It's also just explaining people that people

need more than just a job. They need a place where they can like learn in a safe environment and be given the chance to actually learn the skills that they're going to need to have a successful career. You are starting to see that too with like. I know in your lines of work that you've done as well. Trying to help with diversity, like making sure the language is inclusive. Whether it be on a job listing, making sure there's diversity training, there's committees. At your work or union, that can really focus on those things to you, know grassroots as well. It just has to kind of come from all directions to make a difference. I think it's a complex problem. You're right, so it's gonna take a very wide way of solving it. Yeah, that was really nicely described. I'm interested in the language side. For me, language has it's just so important how people describe themselves seems to me that there's a generational shift in that too. The way that people are showing up and intentionally taking back language. Do you see that? I definitely see that there's actually a conversation I'd had on one of my networks just over the last couple of weeks where someone had posted an advertisement for a job, and the job used the term journeyman and I just like nicely set them like, hey, awesome that you're posting. This adds, you say it's a great company. That's what I want to hear. Maybe next time ask them if they could list the ad using the word journey person, which is been the federal language since I think And it definitely rolled into a bit of a conversation where some felt like journey. Man was the term that they want to use, and I go. That's totally fair. You can call yourself whatever you want. I go. But it when it comes to other people that might be considering the trades, they might not feel included if it's uses the language like journeyman and I bring up always the example of you don't usually hear people saying firemen anymore or police band. It's become so common.

In our language, to use the term police officer and firefighters, it's been a bit slow to get to journey person or journey. Often all people just say red seal. If that works for you. Elevator mechanic for myself, I don't actually have a gender in my title, which is nice, but it's language does matter and it's not necessary for the person using the language. It's for the people reading the language that might be considering that a place to work or a career or your. My niece, I don't. She's you know at that age where when she sees words like man or boy you know she in part of something like that means it's for men or boys. And I don't. I don't want her to think that I want her to think that she can do whatever she wants. There's not a gender to any career per se. And how old is she? She just turned 3. I bought her tools for her birthday this year. Yay she she actually loves helping. I always every time I go to my sister's house she always has a list of things for me to do and Claire my niece was a helping counting out the screws for me and passing the the little ones or the big ones and she really liked holding my impact drill. She was very excited about that. I got a really cute picture of her and her beautiful Princess outfit holding my impact drill that is a keeper right for whatever you want as long as you got your PP and you got your right tools. Yeah and so good you know we talked a lot about language, but you know a single thing that can actually improve access to people in trades. Know if there's a single thing, but I think it starts at the beginning. I posted a meme the other day that actually got a lot of conversation around it and it said.

Normalize sending kids to trade schools after high school without making them feel like they're less than four year university kids. I think it really resonated to me because. I was academically inclined in high school. It was just. Trades were never even talked about as an option, even though my dad and my grandfather had successful trade careers, it was just like you will go to university because you get good grades and.

I wish that trades would have been something that they spoke about in school and that they encouraged everyone to take shop classes and learn how to use basic tools and whatnot because I think I may have gotten to the trades younger then if I known how many amazing trades there are out there and these skills that I have now from learning how to build elevators like I use them all the time. I'm always building things at home and I have the confidence to do those things now. So I think a lot of it just comes down to. At an early age, not. Making people believe that they can't do something. That there's always going to be other options, and that you can change your options partway through. You also don't have to decide your career at the age of 14, and never look back, and that's the only thing you can do. You know you can. There's so many women that have that. I know that got into the trades in the 30s and 40s. They had other successful careers on them. They pivoted into the trades there's. There's so many options out there and not to tie yourself down with just one. Yeah, that's I think that's generous, right to say to somebody what you could be, whatever. So here's are all the choices. And you're going to come to the different choices at a different time in your life, too, right? Like you got to have some lived experience and but everything is available to you.

Learning, that's what keeps us going. OK, So what I would like to ask you about Nicole's advocacy as well as passing your knowledge on to other people. Obviously in leadership is in your veins like you are it, So what parts of leadership do you most enjoy like what? What feels like more of a risk or a stretch for you in leadership? I'm just curious. Umm? I've always just wanted to be part of the solution, so just in life since I was a kid like something's going on, I want to get in there and help work to fix it. I always had a hard time like sitting back and watching someone struggle or seeing an issue that I could help fix and just sitting back and letting things fall apart without at least trying. And I also understand that like I have a lot of privilege and I want to use that privilege to make safe spaces and help make a positive impact. And working in a group I think. Of like positive. Interesting people is just it's so amazing like our board. Currently for the BC Tradesmen Society is so diverse and there's all different ages and trades and. I just love it like there's so many ideas and things that I would never have thought of because of who I am and how I and how my life's been thus far. And I just love these ideas and all this great energy and. That's what I love about leading. I love being part of a group and just coming up with everything with this group mentality. I think it's just invigorating. It just keeps me going and gives me more energy to do more. As far as risks or hardships, I guess I find that like stepping up to be a leader in my Union that was that was scary. No one else had, as a woman had held a position in the Union and. Really, yeah, I was the first one and I remember asking one of them. One of my brothers at the time being like hey. I want to get involved. I want to make a difference in the Union. I want my voice to contribute because obviously I felt like there wasn't a lot of diversity at the time and. And they were like, yeah, you should. You should run for executive board. I'll nominate you

and I was like. Oh, that seems like a lofty goal to start off with, but I did it. I ran, I got, I was nominated, I ran and and I actually had the most votes. My first term and why? Yeah, so great. Yeah it was awesome being in that room. It is also hard being in that room. It's hard being having one voice that can be quite a bit different than the rest in the room. It's hard when you're 11 is. Yeah, I did two terms I might run again at some point. I'm not sure, but yeah, it's hard when I speak in front of my union. Membership. It's often like over 100 guys. There's been 300 people there and. And. It's intimidating and often because of some of the other women won't come to the meetings just because it is hard to walk in. To a group like that where you stand out so much and they might not recognize you. So we were like who are you? Why are you here? And I often I'll get up and I'll ask for funding for the Union to send myself and some of our sisters to trades. When build nations conference and that's hard right because I ask and then they put it forward. And then they actually have to vote with me there after I've asked and answered some questions. And yeah, you're pretty vulnerable in that position. Yeah, it's hard, but it's always gone. Well, there's always going to be someone that's not going to agree. And maybe think that I don't belong in that space, but there's so many more that are my allies. There are always louder than the rest, which is that's important. And at the end, when I step back down and I get those like yeah, good job you did great yeah you ladies are doing awesome man I love my sisters and and it's it's remembering that as scary as some things may be, it's worth it in the end and someone has to step up. So until someone else does, I'll continue doing it, yeah? So you have been accepted to the Governor General's Leadership Conference and that's happening later this year. And it's been on hold for a couple of years because of COVID and for people who

don't know about this conference, it started as a Duke of Edinburgh Commonwealth Conference back in the 50s and then Canada repatriated it under the Governor General and it is amazing. I know from experience because I went in 2008 and I loved it. So do you have a sense of? What province you're going to do you know where you're going to go? Yes, I do. Actually so I'm Co. Chairing my group and we are in Toronto. So it starts off in Huntsville ON and then I go to Toronto and then it ends in Ottawa. They've had to change things around it just a little bit because of different provinces having different rules. So I I've never actually been to Toronto. I've never been to Ontario. I've traveled all over the world, but not much in Canada, so I'm excited to learn some new things. I've met some of the people in my group and a couple of them had gone to university in Toronto, so I'm like great you can show me around and tell me about things. But I'm excited. I know yourself, Susie Skidmore. Like everyone that I know that's attended has just told me how. It's an amazing experience and there's no way to really describe it, and I can't wait like it's my biggest accomplishment so far has been being accepted into this and I can't wait to get there like it's been the longest two years. Having an extended extended, but I'm really excited about it. You're going to have an amazing time. I just I learned so much from that. Because it was private sector, labor sector and public sector all coming together and learning from one another. But then learning from the region too and. When you think about stepping into a group like that, people who are representing every part of Canada coming together in these huge forums, unbelievable people step up to speak. I think I recall that a leader from.

I think it was in Nuvet came to speak about the right to be cold so that was back in 2008 and it just seems like such an obvious thing now and back then it was like Oh yeah you do. Climate change is real so. What do you hope to take away from meeting with your leadership peers from across Canada? I think because so much of my work I do now is around tradeswomen. I think I'm really excited, like learn about all the other great things that are happening and that people are involved in like I'm think of it, really. Expand on my knowledge and my contacts. I'll probably find more things that I want to fight for and nurture and advocate for. And but I just yeah, I'm really excited just to learn all about all these people and what they care about and what matters to them and and how they've problem solved issues. Because I really think that that's there's always other ways of doing something. And I just love to learn and expand on that knowledge of other ways. I could troubleshoot issues here in. You see in here for my trades from a movement excellent. Yeah, well there's going to be so lucky to have you part of that group. So big game on the weekend, Canada accomplished something huge. Yay, the men are going to the World Cup something the women have consistently done, but the men are finally going and you are a soccer fanatic in your free time. I understand. Yes, I am. I grew up playing soccer. It was the first sport. I think. I played growing up. My dad played soccer. My sister played soccer and I never actually watched soccer. I was never one that watched. We watched hockey on TV. We watched. Racing we watch golf. We watch baseball, football, all the other sports but for some reason my dad never really watched soccer on TV and the year I moved

to Vancouver was actually the inaugural year of the Whitecaps playing in the MLS. So I actually went to that first game at the temporary Empire field and and. It was so easy to fall in love with like I was already love soccer and then just to watch it live which is just watching soccer. Live is just a whole nother thing. There's chanting there's. There is yelling everyone's like so many people are standing like there's just so much great energy and instantly. I was in a love and and got season tickets shortly after and it's just been a space that I've really loved and had a lot of fun. It was my place where I didn't have to advocate for anything. I just got to go there and enjoy it. Would just be a crazy fan. Yeah totally. And then I got. I started to volunteer a little bit. We do these things called tifos which are these hand drawn displays. Fabric that you hand paint and then you hold them up for often only like a minute at the beginning of the match. Often like poking fun at something for the other team or supporting your team. And I started doing stuff with that. That was tons of fun and. And getting more and more involved and. Making these. Good connections with other women and other supporters here in Vancouver and. Kind of where I started to see that maybe there were some issues there with inclusivity and safety for women and the LGBT two Q Plus community. It was kind of. There was a there was some incidents as a verbal, physical and even sexual assault at BC Place and some of the other supporters events. So a couple of my friends and I created the South sisters. We've actually now just called the sisters, but yeah, we created a safe space to advocate for issues that we face when supporting and. It was a. It's a fun. It's a really fun grade group and we actually worked really closely with one of the other supporters groups. The Rain City brigade and they are a great group as well. And yeah, we do a lot of good stuff, nice. OK, so let's go back to your work.

Tell me what the tools of the trade are for an elevator mechanic. So a little bit of everything because we deal with electrical and mechanical and kind of a lot of things in between. Have a lot of tools like my tool bag. Probably weighs about £80.00, so which is mostly hand tools and then we get all the fancy stuff like magnetic drills and drills and impacts and concrete drills. So it's definitely a mixed bag of everything actually. A couple of my tools in my tool bag were actually passed down from my grandfather, so I'm very attached to those ones, but they're such good quality that you just can't find that stuff anymore. So I actually have them in my tool bag and my one of my chat pairs of channel locks and my. 3/8 ratchet are both from my grandfather and they're like that's constantly in my hands, but for my job I did construction for a long time so I was in new builds and I actually made the transition recently. A couple years ago to service, so now I'm still a billing elevators from the ground up. I actually work on the ones that are old, so I get to learn a lot about old elevators and I really like that part about it. God, I walked past the building the other day and it had a cage elevator in it and. My husband said, would you get in that? And I said, no, I wouldn't. Because I might be in there for a while, so a typical job then doing elevator maintenance tell me what that's like when you drive up to a site. So doing service like right this week, I am replacing an old door operator, so it's the item that opens and closes the door when you come to the floor. And yeah, I get there. I usually try to. If they do have a building manager face to face with the building manager, see if there's any concerns that they have. I'm there if there's two elevators. If there's one that they want me to start with just because I find starting off. On a good foot with someone is always a good idea, especially with old elevators. You never

know what's going to happen when you shut them off and then turn them back on again. There's always a surprise. It seems. Last week my drive decided that it wasn't done. It was done like I'm 25 years old. You gave me a two day break. I quit. It was like I'm not running right anymore, so I usually try and touch base and let everyone know what I'm doing. Make sure my signs are up and and then. I usually actually like now with technology. I take a picture of everything before I start anything just so I have a kind of a good space of like how things looked before and how they worked before just to make sure when I put on the new pieces that everything aligns the same way and things move the same way so that you're not putting any stress on any. Bearings or joints or anything like that. When you are doing the service. You normally I'm assuming, bring the cab down to the bottom floor, but I don't know if people quite understand the structure of elevators in terms of where the machine room is or if there is one and what the pits like and the fact that it is a big shaft, but there's lots of parts in it. Do you want to sort of describe? That structure, so for most elevators that you see, they're traction, so more often than not. In that case, the machine room would usually be on the top floor, like almost like the little top that you see at the top of the buildings. That's often the top of the elevator shaft, and then on top of that, the machine room. Though there are a lot that are actually basement traction as well. You don't see those as much anymore, but there are a lot of them still out there. And so inside the elevator shaft you have your cab which where you stand and then usually either to the side or behind you have the counterweight and the counterweight actually usually weighs up round 50% of what the Max load. Of the elevator is. So often when you get into the elevator, they'll elevator is actually a lot lighter, so it's easy for the elevator

to go up because the counter is heavier pulling it down. And then the elevator has to work a little bit harder to pull that cab down to the bottom and have the heavy counterweight go up. So when I'm doing work on a break, so if I'm replacing like recently, I removed an emergency brake system and put in a new one. In that case because the counterweights so much heavier, I actually parked the car near the very top of the shaft, so that if something did happen with the other break. That the counterweight would only go a couple inches down onto the buffer. And the elevator itself, the cab would only go up a couple inches at the top, so less likely to have a free fall. If I done it the opposite direction, the counter would have had this entire hoist way to fall down if the brakes had failed, was working on the emergency brake and that could have caused the elevator cab to actually go with all that energy to go up into the overhead and cause some damage. And that has definitely happened in the past. I've never seen it happen, but I've heard about it, which is why, like whenever I'm working on the brakes. Most like. Counterweight to the bottom cab to the top. Such great risk assessment, right? Like what are the other barriers you can put in place so that if one thing doesn't work, then you know there is something else to catch it and. And that's what elevators are. There are so many safety devices for an elevator to fall like you see in some of the movies, like each one of those cables can usually hold the elevator in its own, and you might see anywhere from three to eight of those cables. And then there's. A governor which governs the speed of the elevator and and in that there is two different switches in it. There's an electronic one that's kind of like. It sees that the speeds going faster than it should, and that's one way of the elevator to stop, so it'll be like, hey, you're going too fast, you're overspeeding. We're going to stop. And then there's another governor switch. That's like, OK, now you're really going too fast and we're going to put on the brakes,

which are like kind of almost like a wedge most of the time. That wedge is into the rail and stops elevator, usually within 4 feet. It stops it pretty quick. It actually like you can when you do the testing. Of course, as you would know it leaves marks right in the rails because you have to test these elevators before you turn them over to the public and make sure that all these safety devices work as they should in order to get to that last one you have to jump out. All these safety items to even get the elevator to do what you need to do to test those safety items. So it's I always tell people like the elevators are so safe, like they are very, very safe and you should not be concerned. Absolutely. What would you say is one of your best jobs recently? Most fun or most interesting, one of the ones that like meant the most to me was it was a kind of in the downtown East side area. Strathcona of the Budzy building and so it's part of rain city housing. So I think that one specifically was for women and families. So it was like it was housing their whole goal. Rain City housing is like a home for every person like everyone deserves a home and a safe place and it just it meant a lot to me that I was like part of a big project that was going to provide. All these homes for women and families and children and and some are safe. Some are to call their own and had all these other. Things in the building to advocate for them and and just to help people along. And I really like that one. I love that that was like. It was doing so much good. I got to be a part of something that was doing good for the world versus, you know, just a regular condo building of 18 stories. That's just, you know, every unit sells to someone, right? Like this one. It felt good to be part of a solution that meant something something more to those folks for sure. Nice. How is technology changing and elevating devices? It just seems like every day we read about some new

tech device and elevating isn't any different. So what what's coming down the Pike there. There's all. There's all kinds of interesting stuff you see, lots of stuff with magnets and some of the stuff that actually stops elevators from moving faster. Is friction right? Because there's the friction of the wheels that run on the rails, and those get hot if you're moving super fast. So I've seen like some of these. The wheels for the elevator are like super big because they're trying to reduce that friction in that heat, so there is doing some interesting things with magnets, nothing's really. You know mass produced or anything yet, and there's some stuff I've seen preliminary where like they can actually change directions like they can go up and then sideways. They kind of change tracks, but again, that's not something that you're going to see here any time soon, but some of the stuff you see locally that's come up the last couple of years as destination dispatch, so you may have seen that in a hotel or some of those big commercial buildings, so you actually walk in. And instead of just pressing the up or down button. You put in your floor so 432 and on that kiosk that you input that number into. It will say go to elevator B. You walk over to elevator B and what it's done is it's grouped people together with you that are going to the same or close by floors you all get on and once you get into the elevator there's no more buttons to press besides like a door open button and an emergency button. And on top of that now they're even having fancier ones where instead of even pressing the kiosk you can just scan your phone or your key card and it'll be predetermined. You know what floor that goes to and even have to touch anything you just go in. It will stop at your floor and you get out. All these people are going to come back to the office after two years of hybrid work, and they're going to be like what? Yeah, there's so much other stuff too where, like some UV lights to sanitize buttons. And there's some interesting stuff happening. It's always changing

just like any other technology centric trade, right? There's always something new being developed and some way of making things faster, quicker, more affordable. You know fancier, so it's it's interesting. I'm never going to get bored. There's always doing some new problem to figure out. So one of my podcast interviews was with an aviation expert and I asked him about. Pilot pilotless planes. When are we going to see that and he goes? Well, there's no driver in elevators anymore and I'm like yeah, OK, so I'm going to be looking to elevator technology as kind of the bellwether for how planes are going to be automated, how vehicles are going to be automated like your industry. It comes first. That's amazing. OK, I have read that the tallest elevator on the planet is Anglo Gold's Ashanti Mponeng Gold mine in South. In Africa, in three minutes it drops 2283 meters. Which is a lot in a single descent, and the tallest freestanding building is under construction. Right now it's the Jenna Tower in Saudi Arabia and it's going to be over a kilometer tall. And I think both are amazing. I guess my question to you is because you're in this industry. Are you an elevator tourist? Like would you go on those? I don't know if I would travel somewhere specifically. To check out of an elevator, but I have definitely traveled places and checked out the elevators. I was obviously elevator sisters get together and when we go to the tradeswomen build nations conference, the host city usually does something fun for us and we actually went to the Willis Towers or Sears Towers. Now they're called and we got to see the inside of those machine rooms and ride those double Decker elevators, which was just amazing

and fun and I took 1000. Features of course. I was actually really fortunate I was in Taiwan as they were building Taipei 101, which was for a short amount of time. The tallest building in the world, but I think actually held the. It was the fastest elevator I think for about 10 years I held the world record. I think if I remember correctly, so they were building it and finished it while I lived there. So I got to ride that one and I definitely wrote it even though I wasn't in the elevator trade, I was still daddy's little girl and I loved elevators. So I think I went up or down that one like three or four times paid to like did you? Oh yeah, to go up to the observation deck. I'm like, oh, someone's visiting in town. Oh well, I have to take you here I was like, yeah, look at this elevator cool do you actually get the sensation of acceleration and deceleration in something like that but not very much? Actually they had actually have a scale model outside which I took 1000 pictures of course and they have pressurization, so they're actually able to really adjust everything as it's moving. So you barely felt it, I remember. Yeah, I actually got a piece of gum out because of the altitude change like my ears might be bothered and I didn't even get the gum out in time. I was like oh the doors are opening. We're here and you talked about like the swaying of the building at the top of Taipei 101. You can see this giant ball. I can't remember what the material it's made out of it. We can walk around at what that ball does is in. They have a lot of typhoons. Obviously there and earthquakes in Taiwan and and just windstorms too. So that's the counterweight exactly. So yeah, it sways the opposite direction of the building to try to keep that center as still as possible. It was really interesting to read about it, and then the way that they built that observation deck so you could actually see it. We could walk all the way around. It was really interesting. So while I don't think I would travel to a country specifically. To ride an elevator, if I was there, I would probably try and find the time I love it. OK, my final question for you is if you had the power to fix anything, any issue on the planet, what would it be? I think by doing one thing it might help a lot of things and that would be more diversity in leadership roles and you see some of those countries that have had women leaders and you look at New Zealand. They've done fantastic things there and I think if we had better diversity in leadership roles, I think it would help with a lot of the world issues of like climate change, war equity. Safety for all people. You know, I think that could make a big change. I agree with you, because right now there's just not a lot of diversity when you look at the leaders of the world. OK, well, work on it. We're trying, right? You gotta start somewhere. Thank you so much. You're a leadership rock star so you keep doing it.

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Marisa's interview is great because she's an experienced podcaster and she has such a positive, engaging message around personal health, which for me is the same thing as personal wealth. We've known and worked together for more than 10 years, and that's really ever since I finally realized that the people I most admired around me, who were the most successful in their careers, actually were the folks who prioritized their workouts. So this podcast theme, it offers some surprising insights into how individuals assess or maybe are in denial about their health risk and eventually what changes their mind. So that's perfect. Look at that. The two of us in our. Space. He's a health coach to CEO's athletes and business owners, and has been in the health and nutrition coaching and fitness space for 25 years. A certified with a degree in human kinetics from the University of British Columbia as well as certified with the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. Her clients live and work across North America. You can follow her on Instagram and LinkedIn to. I'd like to welcome Marisa McKenzie, owner of Marisa Mackenzie Health coaching. Thank you Catherine. I'm happy to be here great. All right. So I'm going to just dive in reisa. What's the number one thing your CEO clients say about their lives?

Now, do you mean when they're training with me or before they start? Yeah, I would say before they start before you put them on the right path before we start. I think the biggest thing is they're so used to having confidence in every aspect of their life except for their health in before they start with me. That's and it's different for them, that's they're used to having confidence in it, every aspect, but they don't because it's such a specialized field that unless you've done a lot of research. On it, you wouldn't know what to do, so there are a bit lost. Sometimes before we start, so I would say that's it. And then as you get into a program with them, do you actually see a shift in their thinking and about when does that happen? Yes, and that is the best when you see the shift in it is great. I mean this happens with all clients, but it's very cool seeing it with somebody such as a CEO or an executive because they're just so confident in every other aspect of their life. And so when you do see that shift, it's fantastic. It's different for everybody. It can be a few weeks and depending on what their goals are and what they're looking at, why they hire me. And and if it is a risk, something high like that, like a diabetes or a heart attack, it's other scared too. And this might be the first time in a long time they've been scared. So that's another thing that we work on is confidence around what they're going to do, and so we get an action plan together. And then if they know they've got a plan

to follow, it's just so much easier because they know, OK, I can stay on track. With this I can follow this and it's going to get me to where I need to be. I think it's it just feels a lot more comfortable when you know you have a plan of attack where you're just not going aimlessly into something that seems like such a practical way to get people past fear. But isn't it interesting? The people that we don't expect to have that kind of uncertainty or lack of confidence in their lives? This is probably the most vulnerable place they have. Exactly, yes, I think that's it, and I probably get to talk to those people more than anybody else does in a personal way, except for maybe their spouse or their very close friends. And even our very close friends. We don't often, especially CEOs, get to talk to them because they're so busy. So if I see a CEO one to three times a week that say that's three hours or two hours a week, one on one time talking about themselves, that's usually a lot more time. That they can spend with anybody else on just themselves. You know, when you're talking with your spouse, you're talking with your kids. It's different, right? So we're really focusing on their as you said, their fears, their weaknesses, and what's going to get them past that next obstacle that they're trying to get past. I just want to back up a bit then and ask you about your career. I started right after university. I kind of lucked into a job and it was right when corporate health was taking off in Vancouver. I worked at about 5 different companies in their corporate sector, so the people that I came across right away were executives, and that was really lucky for me because I got to know what their lives were like right off the bat. And I realized how much I liked working one on one with people.

So then I decided to go into. Personal training and within a couple years I opened my own personal training studio and it was one of the first ones in Vancouver, so it attracted a lot of people and those were the type of people that attracted executive CEOs and business professionals. So it worked out really well and I think it was luck at the beginning and then it just connections and I really enjoy connecting with people and helping people. Seeing how just everything changes in their life, it's not just one thing. It's not just their health, it's their mental health. It's their emotional health. It's their physical health, it's everything. So it was a really exciting time.

You know it just reflecting on the gym being an intimidating place and you know wearing you know not very much when you're in there. When we're in the business world and you have a jacket or a suit on it's armor. And so there's sort of a mental and physical sort of peeling off of armor when you have to face your own health challenges and what risks? That's exactly it. We're all the same when we're in a gym, right? You don't know if you're beside a person that's been at the gym for 20 years, and that works in a construction site. Or if a person that's in an office as a CEO, we're all even playing field there. And that's exactly, I think. Yeah, you could wear a suit every day to work, or you may not, but it doesn't matter at the gym. Great democratizing exactly exactly. You still got to pull the weights away at the end exactly. Yeah, now you're a business owner and you've had to invest a lot of your personal time and attention to get to where you are. How do you think about your own opportunities and how you've achieved them, you know? It's so funny that you asked that Catherine because I started my personal training studio when I was twenty six something like that. And so I basically worked for two years out of university and a woman that I was working with in corporate health. She came over for dinner one night and she's like we should just start our own personal training company. We want to do it. We want a really good space to train out if let's just do it. And literally we decided over a bottle of wine and dinner that night. We were going to do it. Next day we looked for business investors and we had it up and running in. I think 3 months we went to LA. We checked out gyms there. We thought this is what we want. We wanted our own private studio to train out of and it worked fantastic but it didn't even cross my mind at that age that it was taking a risk. It was so I think it was just now. I think I would be more nervous than I was then because it was just, I thought. Well, I'm if it doesn't work. Big deal.

And luckily it worked and it worked really, really well. So it was the there wasn't much thought. I'd love to tell you that it was something else and I was thinking about risk at the time, but I wasn't. It was just I thought, you know what I'm going to do it because it's what I want to do and I'll see if it worked and it did. So that's just unencumbered joy and enthusiasm about achieving something that was it. And both my friend and I were so passionate about it, and we both had many clients and we thought, well, we've got a full clientele. Now they're only going to like it more if we have great equipment and a great studio, and we did so. And as I said, there was hardly any other one in Vancouver at the time, so it just worked really well. It was good timing. Everything was good. I think there was a really good energy there. It was and we wanted to make it non intimidating. So because just as I was saying, I think that's the biggest thing when you walk into a fitness and health space. It's intimidation if you've never been in before, you don't know what to expect. And it's scary. So that's we wanted to welcome people with a smile and just be able to make people feel comfortable. And we did that. So back to health coaching. You mentioned a few of the things that you see in some of your clients. What do you think are some of the biggest risks in general for the people that you see? I think that my average clientele is probably 40 to 60 now, so the risks would definitely be cancer, heart attack, diabetes, stroke, lifestyle, diseases. In having high stress jobs. Alcohol intake too high. You know everything because my niche market is busy professionals and CEOs. They do a lot of business travel, a lot of entertaining and their high stress. So it's taking care of prioritizing

their health again as opposed to their business coming first. So prioritizing health. What would you say would be the top one, two or three things that people should do probably know they should do, but don't. The movement every day movement, meaning getting some steps in and I know the 10,000 steps is the big one that people say and the 10,000 that came from a long time ago. There's no rhyme or reason to that 10,000 steps anymore. It's somewhere though I'd say upwards of 8000. you can get your 8000 steps in and get it outside as much as possible, because then you get daylight and you get fresh air. I admit I had to chair a very long meeting today and knowing I was getting on a call with you, I went for a walk. Just perfect. That's great. What is this psychology of risk reward tradeoffs that you see in folks like when people know something will be good for them and what just gets in the way for them about making a positive change. I think they have to really get their mindset around it and they have to be ready to some extent, but they think it's all willpower and it's not. Willpower is only gonna get you so far and it's not an all or nothing. There's some days when you're going to go out and you're going to decide. I want to have the glass of wine and a really nice dinner and you want to own that decision? Enjoy it, not feel guilty, not feel shamed because you're doing it. It's just that's what I'm going to do. But that can't be every day. Obviously, if you want to see results, but as long as you have those healthy habits in place, it shouldn't be an issue. So I think that that would be the main reason. The main thing that they have to get over in their head that, OK, I still can do this, but that hasn't been the

case for years and years. We've seen on magazine covers we've read. Oh, you've got to go down to 1200 calories a day and the average person doesn't need to do that. That's such great advice because I think you're essentially saying that. You know people are going to do what is automatic unless there's something that they've already set up to set themselves up for success. Yeah.

So Marissa, tell me a bit about your family story and how that changed what you ended up doing for a career. So I was a personal trainer for over 20 years and in 2012 I had been away in Europe in the summer and my brother was away at the same time and he was 44 time and we both met back in Vancouver and I remember him saying we talked the day after he got back from Europe and he had been to see the Olympics and he was gone for about 6 weeks and he was sleeping in all different beds throughout Europe because he was traveling through. And he said my backs killing me. He said, I think I just need to relax the set. Well, two or three days later it wasn't any better. So he thought he better go to the doctor and it turned out that within a few days they realized that he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. But it had already progressed throughout his body. It was in four different organs and it was stage four. So it was bad and he was only 44. So it was a complete shock because. That was his only symptom, and so he quickly got on a chemotherapy plan and my dad had already been diagnosed with prostate cancer. But it had been pretty much in remission for about 14 years. But it came back with a vengeance that same month as well, and it went into

his bones, so both of them were fighting cancer for the next eight or nine months. And unfortunately they both. Ended up passing away within a six week. So at that point I thought obviously my brother ended up passing away when he was

Hadn't led a very healthy life the last 10 years of his life. He had let himself get to, let's say, £40 overweight probably, and it was mainly in his abdominal region, so he had been really active and healthy up until that point, but the last 10 years he hadn't been and my dad had gone up and down with his health. He had had a heart attack. He died when he was 72, but he had had a heart attack in his late 50s and then got prostate cancer at 58. So that's young and again, he carried a lot of weight as abdominal area as well. So he that really was eye opening to me. I thought, you know they were not linked at all those cancers. It just happened to be at the same time and I thought if I can help one person. I was obviously helping people as a personal trainer, but I wanted to do more so I didn't know quite how I was going to do it. But I ended up listening to a podcast about maybe a year or so after that on health coaching, and I'd never even heard of it before that that was in. 2014 and I thought that's what I want to do because it encompasses everything. Basically I help people with every aspect of their life except for religion. It needed to be a very holistic way of thinking and more functional than just the fitness and nutrition that I had been. So I did a lot of research on where I could get certified and what was the best certification and I went back to school while I was still working as a personal trainer. And I got certified and it worked out great. I love helping people and I am. It's made a huge difference. I feel like I am

actually making so much more of an impact this way than as a personal trainer. Even though I loved that too and I still do that. But it's I like doing both and really having that impact on people so it's hopefully if I can help one person not get a lifestyle disease like they did. Because I really feel like in both of them near the end said I wish I would have paid more attention to my health earlier on. So it was a life lesson that's for sure, a hard one. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's really, really powerful and moving. Yeah, hopefully it will help somebody, especially my brother being only 45 like you never think it's going to happen to you at that age, and he never did.

I'm going to skip down a couple and then come back. Marissa, can you tell us a story about overcoming a particular fear that you had and when when people have a fear of something and they see it as riskier than it actually is, there's a definition for that. It's called dread. So what did you have? I know what you're referring to. I have had oh it feels like it's more than a fear of heights my entire life, like they terrified me. They always have even looking off a deck that's more than two stories has scared me so about I guess about nine years ago, maybe 10 years ago my daughter started doing aerial silks, which is if you don't know what those are. If you've ever been to a Cirque du Soleil show is what they're they're hanging on these silks, so she started doing them. When she was about 9:00 and I would go watch her performances and I could hardly watch them because she was up about 2530 feet and my husband used to always say is like you've got to do something about this. You're gonna scare her which is watching her and so a couple of years after she started she challenged me. She said Mom, I think you should take a class and my first response was there's not a chance. There's not a hope in hell I will take a class but I decided you within a few days there was a place right around the corner. From where I worked and I thought I'm gonna do it. You know what have I got to lose? You know, hopefully I don't fall kill myself but I went to a class. It was in the afternoon. It was about 1:00 o'clock in the afternoon and I walked in and there were three other women in their 40s and I was at the time I was 47. They were all in their 40s and they were amazing. They were totally inspiring. They were all business women and they were just taking their lunch off to do it and it was so beautiful and they were so strong and they just inspired me and they were so welcoming too because that was my intimidation walking into this room. It was basically a circus school and seeing these women up there and my hands were sweaty just walking in and thinking Oh my gosh I'm going to have to do something. My hands are sweaty

just listening to you.

And so within that hour I was totally hooked. And it was because of those women and the instructor. They were all so welcoming and so happy to have a new person there. And so I started going once a week and then within a month I was twice a week. And then I added on handstand training and that was another thing. I was scared of throwing myself upside down in a handstand position and it just sounds like such a little thing. But overcoming that fear within a month I was climbing up 20 feet, two in the air and holding myself up there. And that was another thing. It took a lot of strength to get up there too, which luckily I had. But it was both. I had to really depend on myself not to fall, and it was just so inspiring. Seeing these women, and I had such fun, I had such great new friendships with these women as well. Bonding over that. And then after that. I just felt like if I can do this, I can just emote do anything. It sounds so funny to say, but it gave me the confidence that I saw in my clients all the time. Yeah, it was one of the I think one of the best things I've done in my life, actually.

Well, that's a good bounce on to a question about what gets you excited like. What keeps you so optimistic and continuing to take positive risk yourself. I think that actually because I've seen how getting out of my comfort zone and not putting limits on myself has changed my life. Like that one class and actually not just that one class, my daughter challenging me to that because if anybody else had. I probably would have just said, yeah, I don't think so, but because it was her then I really realized on the other side of your comfort zone. That's when things happen, right? When you don't put limits on yourself. That's when things happen. And I don't know if I ever thought about it in those terms before, but when that actually happened, now I'm pretty much open to that in all parts of my life. So I think that that was a huge change at 47. And maybe it's a little late, but it worked really well. Well, what's the next challenge that you've given yourself? I climbed the lions, which are a huge mountain range in British Columbia. You know, this last year, which was a pretty big challenge. It's a pretty intensive hike at a long one and very high. There was many ledges, so I think I would actually like to do it again this year, but not quite so fearful. Do it one more time. I didn't think I would, but I think I'm actually going to force myself to do it one more time. And when you say ledges you mean like granite outcroppings where you're

looking to put 1 foot in front of the other, and it's just sheer below you, exactly there was on the lions. There were quite a few of those that I just had to pray. So many people have done this. They've gotten through. I'll get through too. Yeah, I think I think that's it. I was. I was trying to think of other things, but I think that's right now what my my goals would be just to keep going because I love hiking. I love seeing the different parts of our province or I'd love to even travel to ghosts. Do some cool hikes somewhere so I think that's it right now, excellent. Do you mind sharing with us what your typical meal or your typical day or your typical workout looks like? My day OK, I usually wake up around 4:45 or five. I do do a gratitude list. When I wake up in the morning. The first thing. So between 4:45 and 6:00 I'll write three things that I have gratitude for, and I'll do a little bit of journaling as well just to what's going on in my life. What my intentions are for the day, and then I'll train a few clients. I usually start training at 6:00 AM, so I'll do some personal training and that could go till noon straight. Sometimes, sometimes I might have an hour break, maybe around 8:00 or nine. It kind of depends if I do have an hour break, I'll do a workout or a walk then and my workout would be a strength training workout because I would be at the gym. So right now I'm doing a full body three times a week so it would be a full body workout. Then I would finish with my clients, usually 12 or one. And I would have an hour or two off, and then I start with my health coaching clients in the afternoon. I do meditate and if I can get it in, I'll usually do it in the middle of the afternoon. I find it's a really good break between my personal

training clients and my health coaching clients, so I'll usually try for 20 minutes in there. So that's my day. It's pretty, very intentional. It's very intentional. I also get a walk in at some point during the day. I'll make sure because I can if I'm not going for a walk, I'll usually have maybe 4000 steps. I'm training when I'm just going place to place, but and my walk can come in anytime during the day depending on when I can fit it in. If it's between clients or if it's after work or sometimes it's with my husband in the evening, sometimes it's by myself or I'll meet a friend, but in the weekends I'll always meet a friend to go for a hike. It's just kind of the one thing it's a way of connecting, and it's a way of getting out in the trees and making sure I do something too. Yeah, so that's that's it. It's very intentional, because I notice if I do not have my walk or getting outside, not Even so much my workout in the gym. I love that too, but my getting outside is huge for my emotional being and my mental being. I love the physical movement too, but it's a time that I really think sometimes I'll listen to a podcast when I'm out walking or I'll connect with somebody and sometimes I'll just be thinking about what the rest of my day looks like. I'll be thinking about a client or a plan that I'm going to do, so I think that that's. One of my favorite parts of the day, so I think that's a big thing and I would recommend it to your listeners because it's game changing how different you feel and how much energy and not just on the treadmill, but actually outside. If you can. I've heard that expression forest washing. Yeah, forest washing or forest bathing kind of rolls over you as you walk through green.

I've always wanted to know if athletes really do have extremely good nutrition and sleeping habits like is that just table stakes for most of them? You know, I think that it is so personalized, I think some put so much effort into that and others don't at all. I've trained some university athletes, some from the States and I really thought that they would have an incredible, especially like in the private universities that they've went to. And I was kind of shocked that they really didn't really care about their nutrition. They didn't focus on it as much as I thought they would have going to a private. Diversity when they're on very high level team and so. But from professional, I think it's really everybody's different. Some athletes definitely put, for instance, Tom Brady. He is really focuses on his health and nutrition, but there's other NFL players that really don't at all. So I think more so now than 10 years ago. But I still think that there's some that do some that don't. So I think it's certainly yeah, it's a performance edge, isn't it? And if people grab it, but again, it's sort of. I'm not an athlete, and yet you know, I think it's the same thing around. You know it's good for you in your whole life and it's just getting past that hurdle of OK, yeah, no. It's actually going to make me feel happier and live longer, perform better. Exactly. Yeah, I think that's it. I think in some ways they may think so much of their life is regimented by their practices and how much training time and how much sleep they need that some of them just think you know what. It's a lot of effort that to put in the extra nutrition that some of them just don't. You know the sport that definitely does is bodybuilders. They have to because it really is their aesthetics.

That and I'm not saying it's a healthy sport because I would say it's not. It's so based on their look. But they definitely are. Setting up their nutrition because every Oz counts when they're in their training season. But more performance athletes. It's a little different. You and I have talked before about that mind body connection and how sometimes for people to make a decision around their physical health that they see that show up later in their mental resilience and in their capacity for working longer and being more successful. But you said you've also seen it where? Their mental strength had to come before they could actually work on their physical strength. And what made me tell us a little bit more about that mind body connection and how you've seen it play out? I think the mindset is so so huge and that you're right. I think it can happen in both ways. I think for some people I've had a client recently that came to me as CEO and in every aspect of her life doing amazing and this aspect doing very well. But she basically turned a switch called me and said I need to do this this and this and I need to get there. You know, can you get me there and she had already turned it on. She just needed an action plan, whereas sometimes other people they knew they needed to do something, but they weren't quite there. So we chatted about it. We got into it and then maybe three or four weeks later I could tell OK, they're seeing results now. They're feeling results, I think, actually, that's a better way. Not just seeing, but when you're feeling increased energy, you're feeling better. You're feeling stronger. In the gym,

you're feeling stronger at work. You're not getting, as you know that 2:00 o'clock or three o'clock slump. Needing the coffee, then all of a sudden too, your mindset changes too. Like, OK, This is working. I'm feeling better. I just a little bit more spring in their step, and I think that crosses over to their mind then too. But yes, you're right. I think it definitely happens both ways. And it's just different for each person. We're just coming to the near the end and I just have two more questions for you. Have you seen someone recalibrate their risk tolerance as a result of their holistic health approach? Yes, I've seen the blood markers change. I had one client come to me last year and he his blood sugar levels were very high and his hormone levels were completely out of whack and his doctor wanted him to take medication and he said, you know what? Let me just try it on my own and I think doctors are so used to just giving medication. Because most people, the majority of people, they may say they're going to do it, but they don't. So then that puts them at a higher risk, obviously, but this person did, and everything changed and he went back to his doctor three months later and everything was right where it should be. So he was. I think the doctor was pretty amazed because I don't think that they see that very often and this guy felt so great that it was all back to where everything it should be because he had been dealing with it for a while. And just basically putting it on the back burner, because as I said, most people that I see their business comes first because when you're in your 40s and 50s, I think that such impactful time of their career that it kind of has to come first in some ways, even though it probably shouldn't. So that was great. I think that was probably the. The best story I have in terms of the

markers and the risk. What a wonderful outcome for him. OK, Marissa, if you could make anything better with a wave of a wand, anything, what would it be? Oh, people's health. Hands down, yeah, I think you know if people just realized that if they took care of their health, how it would impact so much in the world like first them and their internal world, their spouse, their family, everything. And then just from a worldview. Think of what that would save the money in the hospitals. So I think that would be it. Quality of life. Yeah love it makes sense. From a health coach, right? Marissa, thank you so much. So much for this conversation. It was great. Catherine, thank you for inviting me on. I've enjoyed it. I always love talking about health and risk too. You've got me thinking about my next challenge.

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Slavi Diamandiev and I first met when he was in management consulting and he killed it back then too. Smart driven and direct, which is why we get along. I enjoyed this podcast interview because his story reflects the incredible work ethic of new immigrants. For him arriving in Canada from Bulgaria, working three jobs to pay for school, and bootstrapping his success. And now for him in particular, it's because he knows his children's opportunity depends on it. He worries about what's next for this country and the theme of the conversation is that Canada's economy is at risk. We are not growing fast enough to dig ourselves out of the debt. As an economist who deliberately selected this country for its opportunity, he tells us how to fix it. But with that I'm just going to jump right in and I do appreciate your time. So thank you so much, let's do it. It's my pleasure. He's the practice lead for Deloitte Economic Advisory in Western Canada, and his clients are global private sector firms and federal and provincial public sector organizations from strategy consulting to economic impact modelling, he's a frequent speaker on economics and policy. Welcome to slavery de mandev.

OK, Slavy, you're in the business of predictions based on signal analysis and economics is a tough business and the world is roiling at the moment. It's got to be pretty tough to be an economist right now. It's actually a very good time to be an economist because everyone wants to know what's going to happen. So as long as you have a coherent explanation out there, there's a fair bit of demand for economic analysis. Well, what in your view is more of an economic risk? Is it COVID or is it the supply chain issues that resulted? Or is it a war in Europe?

OK, so of the three factors that you mentioned. My view is that the third one, the war, is probably introduces the most risk and uncertainty right now, and the reason I say that is because the ultimate outcome and impact of that of that event is going to be driven by political decisions, which is not something economics can predict for us. If I sort of go in order here, I think the the impact of of COVID is is now abating. We're seeing that as as more and more health restrictions are being lifted, and we're well on our track to returning to a pre COVID level of economic activity. Now there's always the chance that a new variant will come around and some of the health restrictions are going to have to be reintroduced, but I think we've learned how to cope with this. Particular virus and given the level of vaccinations, particularly in Canada, I would say that that risk is fairly limited on the supply chain question. There certainly continues to be struggles with a broad range of products. One of the reasons why this is happening is not only because of the COVID disruption which is disrupted, the ability of ships and trucks to move products around, but also because as a result of. Of COVID and the restrictions on services. People in mass have shifted their spending towards goods and so part of this is driven by the demand for goods which is sky high and is causes difficulties being met. And so I say that because I think as people's spending begin to shift back to more towards services and as we see the effects of interest rate increases tamper down people spending. I actually think those supply chain challenges are going to resolve themselves in the near future. Oh, that's interesting. Just naturally, they're just gonna fall off because the demand falls off. To a certain extent, and then on the other side,

I think with the restrictions coming coming off now, there's a lot more capacity in the system in ports and trucking companies, et cetera, et cetera to to simply move the goods faster. Now this isn't taking into account the effects of the war in Ukraine, which one of which is further exacerbation of the supply chain issues because. In areas such as energy exports, wheat exports, things have really grounded to a halt, and Ukraine and Russia export and in normal share of those products globally. We for example, is as high as 30% global exports come from these countries, and so the fact that there are ships stranded in the Black Sea not able to bring that way to market is causing a lot of anxiety, and it's likely going to result in some shortage of food. Quite frankly in the developed. Developing areas of the world and everywhere else it's going to result in higher prices and so that inflationary pressure is bad on its own. But then it would be even worse if it forces central banks to raise interest rates, which is then going to make the cost of living even higher. For people who have borrowed during the recession. So there's a chain of events here which can be very detrimental to people all over the world. One little known fact that would just mention is that Ukraine is actually a major exporter of Palladium as well as neon, and those are critical minerals that are used in semiconductors, and so this issue with Ukraine may actually impact the global supply of semiconductors, which are everywhere from cars to you know, household products and so those are the kinds of things that I think I can go really in a bad direction, even if the war. Self doesn't escalate to more countries just in the last decade,

we've had three major events globally that have just driven home how connected our economies are. Even a relatively small economy like Canadas. So we had this sort of the. The finance collapse, as it were, that just sort of swept through most of the Western nations and impacted sort of global issues and then COVID, which shocked everybody. No one saw it coming, and yet it had been predicted for generation. And now this terrible event that's happening in Eastern Europe. So this idea that Canada is so uniquely tied to this one country, I mean, obviously not just Canada, but many, many countries. And let's just focus on Canada now as the small economy in an interconnected world you've talked very clearly about what Canada needs to do, and maybe in the last couple weeks. Even more imperative. Let's talk about innovation and how we're going to get our double digit growth. As a country. OK, so maybe to set the the table here. One of the main challenges for Canada right now is that our long term rate of growth for our economy is very anemic. It's somewhere between one and a half and one point 8%. Let's say in that range, which is nowhere near where it needs to be to continue to improve our standard of life for the people here. Not to mention for us to be able to sort of grow out of the. Massive debt that we have accumulated over during COVID in many provinces in Canada, the provincial debt combined with the federal debt load is now over 100% of the provincial GDP, which is a bit of a red line

for economists, and so as much as people want to think about us growing out of this. The harsh realities that are long term growth is only explained by three factors. One is the rate of accumulation of capital in our country which relies on business investment and business investment has been a perennial weak spot in our economy. In fact, last year we saw a decrease in the capital stock in the country. So if you think about all the machinery and equipment that exists and all the productive real estate that exists in the country. The value of that actually declined because it's. You know, depreciating faster than businesses are investing in it, and that's a shocking statistic, I think. So that's one factor that's not going in our direction. The other one is the growth of the labor force. Obviously, if you want to have a bigger economy, one way to get there is to have more working people. And because of our demographic challenge, which is a combination of low fertility rates, you know rapid aging of our population, retirement of the baby boomers. Who are exiting the workforce that rate of growth of the workforce is also very low. It's probably around Let's say in the last level, the last factor is productivity. So the productivity of the labor and capital that you have. And this to me, is where a lot more focus needs to be put, because one way to be more productive is to be more innovative. Of course, to get there you need to. Put in place a lot of policy and. Sort of investments to make it happen. Some of it have to do with, you know the regulatory complexity and the tax burden that that folks face. Human capital

is a major driver of innovation and productivity. So for and so forth. So maybe I'll pause here and let you let you ask another question, OK? If Canada has these. You know very few levers, but extremely important ones. And part of the solution to more workers is to increase our immigration. Does Canada stand a chance when people can move to any country on the planet? And many are trying? Are we a safe enough and? And wealthy enough and environmentally clean enough country that we actually should have amazing talent moving to the country like, is that a trajectory that you would see in support? I think it's it's quite evident that people want to come and live here. Our immigration as a portion of our population is very high. I've been here since 2000 even in the time that I've been here, our population has gone up by millions, and that's going in the exact opposite direction in many other developed countries, particularly in Europe. And so I think there's a lot of evidence that people want to come here. There is a question around what kinds of people? Where we attracting right and to your point around building up our human capital and productive workforce that keeping those people here is going to take more than just offering them an environmentally friendly lifestyle. You know, in a safe environment to raise their families, I think a lot of particularly young single people. They come here because of the upward mobility in our system. And if those folks feel that their efforts aren't going to reap benefits because they're going to be taxed to

death as they progress through the income brackets, or they were actually not able to move up the income brackets because of structural barriers, that's very detrimental, and I think a lot more can be done. In on those aspects, to make it a desirable place to stay. Another thing to sort of keep in mind here is that. You know, young people that. That's sort of the try to succeed through the income brackets also need to be accumulating capital, and I say that as somebody who has come to the country with nothing. And even though I have learned a fair bit in terms of compared to others, it's very difficult to catch up for new immigrants. In terms of the wealth that they're accumulating to the folks that are already in the country and perhaps have. Families that are, you know, helping them out, and so because there are the assets are appreciating so quickly, especially real estate assets. For newcomers it can seem very daunting achieving a similar level of lifestyle as someone who was born here, even if they are being paid well and so helping helping those folks accumulate capital accumulate wealth which can then be invested, and they can get on. On that same trajectory of appreciating assets is very important and part of that is not taxing. All of you know, not taxing them to death, even if they're earning income in the higher brackets. Hopefully that made some sense there, but I think it's a real issue and I see a lot of people sort of despairing on that front, right? If you're never going to be able to afford a house, why stay here? It's such an important point, because if there's barriers to recognizing people's

credentials in the 1st place and then the treadmill to get on the real estate growth and to accumulate capital through that way. If that is just so untenable that people can't even go there, I think that's a really fair question. Why would people come? And those are structural barriers that, as you say, that's a public policy debate and issue about how we actually change that. And that leads me to sort of a little bit of a parallel question here, which is I've always been curious about productivity. One of the third lever that you mentioned, and why Canadians on balance have lower productivity rates than Americans, where as entrepreneurial. But what is it? About the way we have structured our economy that we actually don't show up as being as productive and we need to increase that rate.

This is a really challenging question to answer and a lot of studies and thinking has been done. I can only mention some of the factors. You know I I think 1 aspect of of the productivity question is that the actual composition of our industry? If you take BC as an example, we are overweight economically in sectors where they're so labor intensive, that is simply difficult to raise productivity up. Do you think about the restaurant industry for example, or accommodation, hotels, tourism? These are labor intensive. Sectors where it's just hard to automate, it's hard to make someone you know produce twice as much output as they as they did yesterday, right? So part of this is adjusting our industry mix, or at least balancing it so that there are industries growing here that are highly productive and they sort of compensate for some of these other industries which are still important for quality of life here. So that's part of the answer. The other structural part of the answer is the fact that. The number of small companies so think about 3:00 to let's say 10 people is overwhelming in Canada and in BC it's it's probably 90%, maybe more of what exists here. And it's the fact is it's very hard for a small company like that to make investments that increase productivity. In contrast, that large companies, for example, are mining companies are highly productive. I mean the output. Employee at a mining company can be as high as $700,000 per year. The output of a worker in a small company can be as small as little as 40,000, and so that's a massive gap, which then impacts what

people can earn. Because if you're not generating value, it's difficult to be paid a high salary, and so that's another sort of structure. So getting small companies to grow is an important part of the solution. Other factors that are often mentioned is a bit of a cultural difference where you know perhaps there's a bit more complacency in Canada or. More of a. Sort of conservative attitude when it comes to making investments in new technology and really going about, you know, being on the leading edge of implementation and adoption of technology. And it's ironic that we're actually a great generator of startups which tend to 1st pilot their products and get their first customers abroad, and that's detrimental to the growth of those startups and also detrimental to our. Economy because we're not reaping the benefits of that innovation, and I think what's kind of tragic is that over time, what that leads to is, you know our region here becoming a bit of a feeder feeder region to the silicon valleys of the world where we incubate small companies and we attract talented individuals just to see all of that leave as soon as they gain some maturity and actually begin to generate value. And so, that's that's how I would answer that question. All right. So slavy, I'd really be interested in your opinion about the risks on the horizon for young people graduating today. And are those the same, or are they different for folks who are currently working? I'm happy to share some opinions of that, although I have not been in that category for some time now. I think one of the one of the difficulties for young people. Right now is

the choice that is available to them, particularly for folks graduating with higher levels of education, and especially those that have some experience. It's an incredibly hot labor market at the moment, and what that can result in is the phenomenon of hopping around. And I see that quite often now in the resumes we get. And so I think what's causing it is is is the fact that there is a scarcity in educated workers right now. And by the way, the demand for skilled labor right now is way higher than it was prior to COVID, so that's one of the labor categories where demand is rapidly outpacing supply, and I think it's going to get worse, and so it's actually very easy right now for someone with high level of education and a good skill set to walk across the street. And get you know 1520% bump in their compensation, which is very tempting. And I think the challenge is balancing that against the longer term investment. One needs to make into acquiring deeper knowledge and building relationships. If they're with their current employer, and so as much as it's good to get broad experience. If that comes at the expense of of of actually investing in your in your skill set knowledge and relationships, I think it's detrimental over the long term, and I would suggest people think about that. It's a good problem to have, I think, but it does introduce this risk of just being very short term focused and not understanding that nothing good long term comes. Without patience and investment in yourself in the people that you're working with. Yeah, thank you for that. I think we've seen at various times in Canadian history where extremely hot labor markets,

whether that's for professionals, whether that's for trades, whether that's in healthcare, it has. It has created winners and losers and I think in some respects when people chase the money to your point, they lose out long term because they're in a position where they're going to be part of that commodity spending, so they're going to buy a lot of toys, but they're going to miss out on the other aspect that you mentioned, the value of relationships of attaining wisdom and their network building, and being able to be seen as credible and loyal to a company at the same time. Exactly exactly and inevitably, it catches up with you because for to achieve high levels of compensation you have to generate a lot of value, and by switching from one position to another very quickly, you're actually not allowing yourself to progress in your capabilities, skill sets, and knowledge to be able to generate that value. So there's a happy medium somewhere in there. In my simple mind is somewhere around 5:00. At least five, maybe six years, to allow you to kind of take the next step.

So when we think about challenges for starting career, I want to talk about you because you came to Canada. You mentioned in 2000 you came as a student. While you were at UBC, you received the Governor General's Academic medal for the highest academic standing in a bachelor degree program in Canada, which is amazing. Maybe tell me a bit about that time in your life and what was at risk for you as a student then? Sure, so just for the record, I actually started in Peterborough ON I came there when I was 18 and I came on my own so my family still back in my original country which is Bulgaria. And so when I arrived in Peterborough I started doing three different jobs in addition to studying I was shoveling snow in the winter as you do in that area of the world. Washing dishes at the student cafeteria and then loading trucks with furniture to kind of be able to pay for my living expenses. In addition to that, I had to maintain a very high academic average so that I can consistently win scholarships and awards. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to pay for my tuition and so to be honest, it wasn't a choice as much. It was a necessity, and so that's. That's sort of how this came

about when I think about what was at risk for me. Really it was having to go back to my home country which was in a very difficult economic state that at that time and so my overriding objective in life was essentially to stay in Canada and that in some ways defined my choices. And I would say that as sort of negative as it may sound, it's actually relieved some of the pressure that I see many other young people have today where. There is infinite possibilities in front of them because it sort of gives you that purpose and overarching objective that helps you make choices consistent with that objective. So that's how it worked for me. One last thing I'd mentioned is. You know, fortunate that my my parents basically invested what they had in in me coming to Canada, but at the same time I was cognizant that my younger sister couldn't benefit from the same level of support and investment at the time. So I always had a certain degree of responsibility to generate return on that investment, and that's how I approached my career following my education. That's a very strong value for you responsibility. I think it was imposed on me. I don't think I was born responsible, but I think you sort of. You know with no one to lean on necessarily, it's sort of. You you begin to develop it yourself. I've often thought that Europe in general has a culture of scarcity. Coming from. The last couple generations after two world wars and Canada and the US has had culture of abundance and I think that that actually filters down to your point around having

this luxury of choice versus having a very stark choice. If you're in Western or Eastern Europe about how you're going to move ahead.

There is a lot of truth to that. A lot of truth to that. At the same time, I find the attitude of particularly as you move West through the country. Be one of seeing the opportunities in life and chasing those opportunities, and I've certainly never felt discriminated on. The basis of my origin. I know others have in our country, but I I've been lucky not to have been, and I'm almost certain that that would have been a factor headache gone to Western Europe, and so I think that's an advantage that Canada has in its part of our brand as a country. That we should be aggressively exploiting if you will, to attract more more talent here, it's it's almost. It looks very daunting for a young person that's not born in the right family to get to the level that they could get here to replicate that in a Western European country necessarily. And so anyway, there's there's pluses and minuses, but I think Canada overall is in a very good position. To attract that type of talent, if we can make it possible for them to realize that the fruits of their labor. So we have the we have this sort of marketing globally around the kind of country that we are about. Now we need these systemic structures around how somebody is successful in this country. We need to work on those is what I heard you say earlier. Exactly I heard them once a presentation by by someone who who had studied the brand of

Canada around the world among young people and the overwhelming response to what brand does Canada have was that it's nice, and so it's a funny thing because it's a positive quality to be nice, but to me it feels. Highly insufficient and I just have to wonder, can we be more than Nice? Can we be perhaps innovative, right or ambitious or you know hyper successful? I mean you can think of a lot of other terms that you would want to be called beyond beyond being labeled as nice, and that's the opportunity, I think for our country and for improving our brand, if you will. My personal feeling is that Canada needs to think about different words to your point, and I would start with kind because I think kindness is a superpower. But then after that is courageous and innovative. I love it. So, Slappy, you've done amazingly, as this professional in your life, and I'm just wondering, how do you personally assess risk and opportunity? Like what kinds of things do you trade off? I'll give it a try. First of all, when I think about risk. I I try to think of it as calculated risk, I think there's a lot of confusion when someone goes down a path that is uncertain. Whether that's you know, viewed as someone is just taking a leap of faith in point of fact. Relating the risk you're taking is is is the solution of that dilemma and you may not know what's going to happen. But if you have a good sense of the magnitude and the impact and the likelihood

of being successful, then you can make an informed proper decision whether that's worth the return you're expecting or not. And the biggest I think problem with companies and individuals is. Is not that they take risks, but they actually don't understand the risk they're taking. The other comment that I'll make here is that every choice you make carries risk, including the choice of doing nothing. And to economists that come comes quite intuitively because we have coined the term opportunity cost, which specifically measures what you're giving up by doing nothing or doing. Something as opposed to an alternative, but I think for many non economists that concept can get lost and so thinking about the opportunity you're giving up and the fact that there is risk with that loss because you may not come about the same opportunity again. Or perhaps your next set of choices would be worse. It's something you have to take into account, especially in a world that's moving very quickly and evolving very quickly, and we see that with. Companies as well not not doing anything is almost assuring your obsolescence within within a matter of years, so that actually carries very high level of risk. So hopefully that. Gives a start here on an answer. I'll make one more constructive I guess. Advice here when I think about my own choices. My career choices in my business choices. One of the overarching I guess, considerations for me is the consistency of the choice I'm making with the brand they want to have in the marketplace. And with my history to date, I think

if people make sure that. What they're choosing can be explained naturally from where they've been and where they want to go, and reinforces how they want to be seen in the marketplace. Even if you make the wrong decision for the lack of a better term, or you fail at whatever endeavor you're embarking on, your risks are actually significantly diminished because it becomes part of your story and your narrative that people can come around. In a, I find that that consistency in in sort of you following your purpose, actually has a convening power. It draws people toward you, and it creates what I call followership in business. Those are the people that folks want to be behind because they're seen as as people that stick to their objective and they have a certain level of predictability in their actions. The opposite. Can be very stressful actually for people to deal with and I don't want to go too far here philosophically, but that's part of how our minds are wired is to try to understand that the broader story and the purpose of what's happening and so you have to be able to offer that to the marketplace. I think that makes incredible sense, and I think from a personal perspective it does require you as a leader to really be thoughtful about how other people perceive you and and your effect on others. Because unless you think about the other person and have some empathy. It's hard for you to kind of analyze your own behaviors and the choices that you make as being consistent in terms of how other people would perceive that. Yeah, that's that's great advice. I think it doesn't matter at what point someone's in their career too. To actually hear that and take it in.

Maybe coming down to some of the final questions. We live in an amazing part of the world. And what do we need to do in your view, to capitalize on the opportunity here? Are there other risks besides the economy that keep you up at night? Yes, well I you know I. I think I spoke a fair bit about the the economy. You know, if I think more about the the social aspect of our lives. My fear is. The continuous polarization of our society and it's, you know, it's a much bigger trend than just British Columbia, but increasingly. I feel there isn't the public forum where ideas are being exchanged in a respectful manner that at a minimum is being recognized by the other side and there's many dimensions to that, including not in the least of which is the rural urban dimension, and for a province like BC, which is vast yet many people live in a bit of an urban. Double it's often difficult to understand the perspective of people that live in in a rural communities, not to mention indigenous communities, and so that's causing me some angst. The fact that this chasm appears to be growing and I have the benefit as an economist of understanding the how intertwined our communities actually are and how much we. Those of us who live in in the metro areas benefit from what happens in the rural areas and vice versa. I think most people are a little

bit oblivious to that, and that sheep's people's views on anything from politics to economics to what kinds of social priorities they want to see. Immigration, et cetera. But I think trying to keep our. You know our province somewhat united is is going to be a major challenge in the years ahead, and then you sort of open that up to the level of Canada where we have stark differences between provinces and then even more around the world. That's what causing me a fair bit of anxiety. I think if there's one positive thing that may come from the conflict in Ukraine is maybe that wake up, call that. And by that I mean freedom of choice, independent media, freedom of movement, access to products. These are things that we typically take for granted, but they can quickly quickly disappear. I feel that these crises that we've had that in a way it invites the conversation about how connected we are and how dependent we are rural to urban. When we saw the highways not being passable and what it meant in to sort of the stopping of the distribution of goods, there was sort of this. Oh, that's right, they come through rural BC from Alberta or out to the port. Or this is what it means when we actually can't go visit friends or family or we can't get goods from central or northern BC down to the coast? I hope that we learn from those kinds of crises, to your point, that that's the opportunity in all of this. OK, we're going to sort of change tactics here. Slabby you have traveled all over the world and it's something that I know you personally love, and one of the things that I really appreciate about you is this story around you. Visiting some

of the biggest monitor lizards on Earth. So the Komodo Dragons and walking through a Komodo dragon Park, I find these giant lizards both fascinating and completely repellent at the same time. Given what they can do if they bite you, so tell me about that experience. Very good, I'm glad you asked that question, so I was in Indonesia 10 years ago and at the time on a on a small budget backpacking. Getting to see the lizards who live in on only two islands in the country was was actually a very sketchy experience. It involved negotiating with you, know, four local people that don't speak any English to get on a wooden boat for two days without any facilities whatsoever. So, so that was that was interesting, but ultimately, seeing seeing the Comodo Dragons is a is a bit of a life changing experience. I would liken it to seeing the mountain gorillas which I have also seen in Rwanda. For those of you that are unfamiliar with what Komodo Dragon is, it's. As large as the three meter. Monster and they actually occupy very interesting ecological niches on the islands. Because as as young Komodo Dragons, they're tiny lizards that live in the trees and feed on insects and other small. Animals, when they're fully grown, they can eat 80 kilograms of meat per per meal, which is more than a way they they also run at 40 kilometers an hour when they're fully charged up, so they could easily catch up with you, and they have a special bacteria in their saliva that essentially causes very rapid infection in their victims,

which is how they kill some of the larger game, including deer. They would bite them and wait for them. To become completely anemic and they need them. So it's really fascinating. Quite it felt quite dangerous. We had a guide with us at all times with a shotgun and yeah, just to see those. Dragons, it's it was. It was quite something. That's amazing. I mean, I have heard that they prefer to eat dead things, so maybe that's one advantage. But still, the fact that they can outrun you and they don't look very swift when you see a video of them. But and if you do get bitten, you're looking at a very expensive airlifted by helicopter from the island to the nearest hospital, which is many hours away. So not something you want to you want to take advantage of. So you're going anywhere else in the near term? Well, on my bucket list they have Antarctica, Madagascar in the Galapagos Islands. If I had to pick three, those would be the three, but in the near term I'm going to go back to my home country and visit my family because I haven't seen them for three years because of COVID. So that's what's coming up next. The trip to Bulgaria in the summer, beautiful. Lastly, slavi if you could make anything better on this planet, and I mean anything, what would it be?

You know I have a real soft spot for biodiversity. I know it's. Maybe an overused term, but I I actually do see a lot of value in maintaining different forms of life on on this planet, and I don't always agree with how it's being framed. I I have an allergic reaction to the term mother Earth and how we're hurting hurting our mother Earth. Someone who has a basic understanding of geology. I have no doubt that you know, in a million years. Even if we killed everything on our planet, it'll come back and potentially be even more diverse, but I think it'll be very sad for our kids and our grandkids if they can't go and see a live coral reef or go to Africa and see giraffes. And I'm afraid we're rapidly moving in that direction despite efforts that are being made, it's going to take, I think, a lot more. And it cannot be sort of. Isolated in small different pockets, we would have to think of about some larger scale preservation of ecosystems and that I think is going to be very difficult. Well, those are prophetic words and we need to heed your advice because that's absolutely right. That's our responsibility to the next generation. For sure, slavery. Thank you very much. You're very welcome.

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I'm curious whether we make different risk decisions about choices in our career when we're in our 40s or 50s then we do when we're 19. I guess one thought is that we have a lot of lived experience and so by the time we're in the middle of our careers, maybe we are more reflective. We have more things that we worry about and so our tradeoff decisions take longer. And when we're 19, everything is possible and the world is right at our feet. That's one potential outcome, but maybe we actually have exactly the same risk tolerance when we're 19 that we do when we're 40 or 50, it's a question of our values and just what we want out of life. Hey I want to welcome Zoe to the podcast. Risk is the new kale Zoe. Thank you for joining me today. Thanks for having me so Zoe is 19, a student and an international model. And she is represented by deja Vu model management. Hi, everyone. So great to have you with us, Zoe. I wanted to ask you some questions just because you're really seeing opportunity and this is a career. Hmm. You're weighing, you know, what are the risks and the rewards for this kind of career. So what is it that you you hope for from doing modeling at this point in your life? I hope for the opportunity just to travel and like meet new people around the world like growing up in a small town you get definitely can be isolating, so I'm excited to just explore and meet new people and hopefully get jobs and. Just have fun honestly. Yeah, that's so great. Good for you. You have such an open attitude. You're just like, OK, this is going to be a learning experience. I'm just like wanna go there and have fun and ignoring the experience like while I'm there right? And maybe you can describe where where are you gonna go? I'm going to Shanghai, China. So it's definitely a big jump from a small town to like the third largest city in the world. So

it's gonna be really exciting. I guess the thing I would be interested in knowing from you is what surprised you about modeling so far. Anyone can just do it and I think you need to put a lot of effort into actually get to where you want to be at. And for me like this took. Two years for me to get signed like internationally like I worked hard like I went to lots of conventions, did a lot of photo shoots and did like tried to do free work just to get signed internationally. So when you get to be my age and you look back on your career. What? What advice do you think you would have for the 19 year old self? I think my advice would be to be open minded and like. Open to new experiences, because definitely it's a culture shock from Canada to China and there's going to be differences. And also I just want to take risks and not let other peoples like perception of me or what I'm doing make me insecure and make me not want to do it. I just want to live my life to the fullest without letting other people affect what I do. I hope they my age Zoe remembers what? She told herself when she was 19. That's so great, yeah? What do you think of risk as the new kale as a podcast title? I love it. I love it so much. I actually was talking while we were eating dinner and we were eating kale and really excellent. And we were talking like. I think the only way to move forward in life is to take risks. And let yourself be vulnerable in front of other people. And if you don't do that, then you're going to be stuck in one place for like the rest of your life. And that's like kale, like you have to be healthy

and you have to better yourself in different ways. How do you know what is the right amount of risk when you think about decisions in your life, you've you're in school right now. And university. You have these really great friends and you've made a decision about what people are in your life like. How do you kind of think about trade offs and taking risks. I feel like everyone has this different perception of risk, like my like. Biggest risk could be someone's like smallest risk. You know, like it's also, it's all different. I just like wanted like not cave into my insecurities, not be insecure and be scared of like what people will say to me and so that's something I'm working on so. Because you're right, everybody does have different risk tolerance, yeah? Big risk for me is like jumping off a plane. And like skydiving, you know. But also a big risk for me is like putting myself out there. Maybe like in relationships or but like when you think about it. What's the worst thing that could happen from rejection? Exactly like who knows what goes on inside someone else's mind, right? Like the decisions that they're making. Maybe there's something going on that's deeply impactful for them and they just can't be in the present with you at that moment. Yeah, exactly. You can never like understand what another person is going through, so like someone else's reaction towards something like you do like it's all like in their hands. Kind of like I'm not gonna take something that someone said personally to me because maybe they're going through something that I don't know about and they're just putting their anger like I feel like there's a lot of people in the world that need to learn that lesson. Do you have a personal mantra? I don't know, I'm me and my friends are really into like manifesting and like we go on manifest drives. So like

it's like it sounds kind of cringe but it's just like we go and we just like talk about what we want. Like we already have it instead of like like wishing for it. We kind of like put our mindset to like we already have this and we're working towards it really well. How did you come up with that? Where did you learn that? Well my friend she's really into manifestations so like she. And I got me into it and then yesterday was like February

So it's like So we two. Yeah, so we all went for like a minute. And it's just fun. It's just like all about like the intentions you put out. If you're putting out negative intentions, then you're not gonna move forward. I think it's like not even about like thinking the universe is going to great like give you something. It's like just putting your intentions into getting what you want. And working towards it and really just owning, owning your own place. Yeah right yeah. If risk is good but everybody has a different risk tolerance. How how would you suggest that your risk tolerance is may be different from other people in your life? I mean, besides this group of friends out doing your manifestation with, which is so great. Well, like for example my friend like in high school like she went to Germany and she decided to like live with a new family. Go to a whole new country where she didn't know anyone. Go to a new school with a different language and like all like that and I feel like. That's a different risk that she would take than I would take, you know. So like me, taking a risk of not enjoying somewhere I'm like at so I leave and like don't care about what other people's thoughts about it are. It's like the same level as just different situations. Kind of I don't know. Yeah, so almost like same way of parsing risk

but may be different priorities at this particular time in life. Yeah, I think like everyone right now everyone I'm talking to. Has like different things going on, it's not like when I was in high school where we all kind of had similar issues or similar thoughts about. I know high school things you know now it's like real life stuff that everyone's kind of like and all at different. Everyone's at a different point in their journey too, right? I guess that's the thing about 19 is you're an adult and your lives are starting to diverge and you may have very similar values because you all grew up in the same place and you're still friends. But as you say, there's different life circumstances, so you're kind of bringing maybe a different lens to each one of those. OK, I'm pretty sure when I was 19 I could not articulate a difference in a risk tolerance decision between me and my friends. I'm sure I could have said that they made different choices and I would have described those, but to have the language that I think young adults have today and. Maybe that part of what we've gone through in the last couple of years where we've actually had open conversations about the tradeoff between what society needs and what individuals must do or not do. Given that we've come through a pandemic. Perhaps some of that ability to describe opportunity through risk has now become just part of everyday language and very interesting, but also heartening to know that people are able to look into another person's decisions and perhaps way. A tolerance difference or a life timing, decision, difference and just allow that to be held by the other person without passing judgment. I think that's great. What's the riskiest thing you've ever done in your life? I think a big

risk for me was like when I decided to leave like the university I was going to, I think that was a big thing in my life because it wasn't just about my feelings. I was like scared about other people's like thoughts on it and I didn't want them to think about oh she left because she like couldn't do the school work or she couldn't do it like that was like a really vague like stressor for me when I left. And yet you overcame that. Yeah, like you were like, no, I need to make the right call for myself and I'm so happy I did. Because like once I realized like I was like, I don't really care what other people are saying and if they do have an opinion like they don't know my experience. And. I'm doing like the exact same things, just like in a different area. That's because now I like have this big opportunity to like go to China and also study feel like end up falling in your right path instead of. Being unhappy, I guess totally. I totally agree with you. I I over my lifetime, I've kind of had to weigh big decisions. And I've sort of said, OK, let's just pretend I've made that decision. Do I feel relief or do I feel stress? And if my body actually relaxed when I sort of believed I had already made the decision, I was like, Oh well, that's obvious. That's the decision I have to make. Like it's kind of worth it, like moving on and some like you can't make everything single thing in your life perfect. You know there's this mantra in the technical world that not everything can be important or nothing is. And I feel like you already live that it's like, OK, this is an all important. I'm going to actually concentrate on the stuff that is and I'm not going to sweat over all the details. Eventually there's a point where you have to call it, and that probably happens in modeling too, right? You're going to go to a lot of go sees, and sometimes you're going to be picked, and sometimes you're not. So do you have a sense of how you're going to? Just sort of not sweat it. I

just keep like I keep having like this doubt in my mind that's like like did they make a mistake like are they needing to fix someone else like I don't know like. Yeah, that's imposter syndrome. Nice yeah. So like I keep having that, but then I have to keep like telling myself like I was chosen for a reason like this agency has a belief in me that I can. Get jobs and get work there and let they see me working in China so I have to go in with confidence because if you don't. Build yourself up with confidence and you go in insecure like that person isn't going to want to. Hire you like life. I feel like it's 90% confidence even if you don't even have it. Like fake it till you make it type of thing you know.

You know another question that I have for you. Zoe is. You're planning on traveling overseas. You have two to three month contract that is being tied up in a really big city that you haven't been to before. I just curious to understand what risks do you see in traveling overseas to model? Well, I have like a lot of trust in my agency that I'm going there with. I definitely am like more nervous because I feel like I'm a little naive like I never lock my door like when I leave my house. You have to have your guard up, maybe in a different sort of way. Yeah, I think Clyde burgard up and just like more like mindful that you don't know like every single person in this town so you don't really have like a trust with that person. I feel like I need to be more like protective of myself. But honestly, like not trying to like get myself too scared. I don't think I have to be scared of like every situation. So I definitely think I'll have my guard up. It's just I need to remember like once I adapt to living there I can't like. Compare it to a small town because it's not the same. Free out. You seem very dialed in on that. Umm?

I think that there are so many people who are in kind of public roles like the one you're talking about, particularly creative roles where, yeah, you have to. How you present is the thing that you bring in the moment, and you kind of protect the squishy part of you like I'm going to protect that. But you can be both right. You can have both. You can feel nervous or have a squishy bit inside and then still project this amazing confidence. Some of the most confident people when you see them. They're not the people that. Like they knew, like have like this perfect image of like I feel like the most perfect people are like. OK with themselves and how they are and. They just like to move on with life, so yeah.

I'm really curious about how a photo shoot. Works like maybe you can just describe the process. What do you do to prepare what happens during a photo shoot? Well, to prepare for a photoshoot, it probably takes about like an hour and a half and then you get your makeup done, which can take from like 15 minutes. If you're in a rush to like minutes. And then the stylist has to pick out an outfit for you which can take like 30 minutes like up to 30 minutes. And then they'll photoshoot process is actually like way quicker than like 5 minutes to maybe like 25 minutes. And when you are ready to have the photos done, I'm assuming that. The photographer like, whether it's in a studio or outside. They give you some instructions like how do they typically like what? What's your interaction with them? Because they're kind of the creative in partnership with you, really, they usually pick like the location. But if you like work with the photographer more and more like there's one photographer I've worked with like a lot and I remember like my first photo shoot she gave me like the entire like. Time gave me direction and what to do. And then you kind of adapt to her style. Like over time. So then you kind of already know when you go into the photoshoot. You know you sort of see it on television and you think, OK, this is. You know how a photographer will speak to somebody to try and get different angles, and I've had my picture taken obviously for corporate headshots and stuff, and and that. The question that I asked the photographer was taking my pictures last time was, you know, I'm assuming all the best shots happen early in the photo shoot. And

he goes no, the best shots you know, kind of. The winners are at the end. Is that your experience? I feel like yeah, the first like couple minutes is like you just getting it comfortable in front of the camera and then once they start giving you pointers like chin down or like move your head to the side a bit more like that's one of the best photos come out. When you're relaxed, yeah. Nice. I'm interested in the fact that as an industry, modeling has really changed its center of gravity, so. So a model that you and I both know who's worked in the business for. 35 years when she was starting out and she was your age. The models from Canada went to Europe. And obviously the industry is really changed and so models from Canada are going to Asia. I guess that's where most of the work is. What do you understand to be going on in the industry, given that you're on the West Coast, here in Canada and you're heading across the ocean? Well, I definitely think from. Like the modeling industry has like been way more diverse in the last like 10 years than it has been like before. So I think with that. Europe is still like a really hot spot for modeling, but now like places like Mexico are even growing like a lot because like I'll have a agency that I went to and I went to a convention talking about how much the market has like exploded there and like people still have like doubts like going there, but there's like a lot of opportunities so I think with Asia that's like kind of the same thing. It's always like been like a little bit of a hot spot, but now it's like growing way more and go because like. Now with COVID 2, a lot of like buyers that I think in the country

would go to different places. Now we're like kind of relying on their like designers and their own countries and now every like Big city in the world or like big country is kind of like popping off. My question to Zoe is. If you could fix. Something on the planet? Doesn't have to be like the whole planet, just one thing. What would it be? Like especially like now in like Canada or like all over the world there's like this big divide and hate towards like one another like I know people are like losing friendships over like things that are going on in the world and I just wish like like my magical power would be like. There was more like acceptance and like. I guess with social media now it's really easy to put out opinions, other people to see it, and then it built. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I just wish that I know everyone was understanding of everyone. Well, you put that intention out into the world. Let's manifest it together, yeah.

OK, final question for you. So Zoe I would like to know. What is the tiniest thing that you know that makes the biggest difference in your life? I think like small acts of kindness from other people like and seeing like other people do, that for me makes me want to do that for like other people. When someone compliments you about your kindness or like you're giving or something like that like that makes you also feel good about yourself, you don't even realize you're doing it.

You can follow Zoe on Instagram. Zoey Elizabeth Baxter, her agency is deja vu modeling.

So it's like So we two. Yeah, so we all went for like a minute. And it's just fun. It's just like all about like the intentions you put out. If you're putting out negative intentions, then you're not gonna move forward. I think it's like not even about like thinking the universe is going to great like give you something. It's like just putting your intentions into getting what you want. And working towards it and really just owning, owning your own place. Yeah right yeah. If risk is good but everybody has a different risk tolerance. How how would you suggest that your risk tolerance is may be different from other people in your life? I mean, besides this group of friends out doing your manifestation with, which is so great. Well, like for example my friend like in high school like she went to Germany and she decided to like live with a new family. Go to a whole new country where she didn't know anyone. Go to a new school with a different language and like all like that and I feel like. That's a different risk that she would take than I would take, you know. So like me, taking a risk of not enjoying somewhere I'm like at so I leave and like don't care about what other people's thoughts about it are. It's like the same level as just different situations. Kind of I don't know. Yeah, so almost like same way of parsing risk

You can follow Zoe on Instagram. Zoey Elizabeth Baxter, her agency is deja vu modeling.

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Music Track Title: Everybody Loves a Catastrophe; Licence type: Standard Licence; Artist: Twirl; Composer: Neal Busby & Huguette Arsenault (SOCAN); Publisher: Lynne Publishing (PRS - CAE#: 541626758)

Logo Artist: Avril Orloff; Outsidethelines.ca

Transcript:

Say I'm super grateful that the two of you agreed to do this, and I was picturing what you were doing this morning, and I thought Liz, you probably went to your mom and dad's house for brunch and your dad has roped you into doing this to a woman you've never met. What is pretty accurate?

He's a board director and investor and a dad. He's had a stellar career as a very successful business person and philanthropist, and if he's all in, he's all in. She is his daughter. She's the youngest Canadian ever to have climbed the highest peak on all 7 continents. And she did all of that by the time she was 26 and then wrote a book and then became a firefighter. This is a family that doesn't do anything by have so welcome to John Rose and Liz Rose. Thank you so much for having us thank you. Oh, it's super to have you. OK so I'm going to start with the really big question first John is parents. What was it like waiting to hear from Liz to know if she had survived summiting Everest? Yeah, that's that's was quite a time. So maybe I'll back up and say we decided that when she was going to go and climb Everest that for those days. Everest is a two month journey where you're you know acclimatizing, et cetera. But when we got down to the three or four days, Susan and I decided to go to Salt Spring Island and be on a boat and just. Be together ourselves and then we got a phone call from a colleague that said, I hope Liz isn't climbing today because someone just died up there. And I know I just kind of thought, how could you do end up making a call like that? But what was interesting at the time? Because we didn't. We didn't have the time to to get too nervous about her venture to Everest because. Three weeks prior was when she had met. A fellow climber in Akagawa and decided and was invited to go to to Everest. But what was really interesting is we had everybody light a candle. To to

send her best wishes. Yeah, and it was. It was really interesting. There were just tons of people that really got behind Liz's quest. And then we heard that she had submitted. And then the worry began because it was what happens in the in the descent. Whenever you look at any of the climbing movies, it's not on the way up. It's on the way down. So we worried a lot. Tried not to. You heard from social media, so not directly from me for when I submitted exactly 0 communication. OK, yeah, so yeah. So zero communication from Liz. Heard from social media and then I'll let Liz tell some more of the story. But I happen to be in a colleague's office and I see this huge number come across my iPhone, which I figured it had to be a satellite phone. And I got so emotional that I just press the button and then spoke to Liz and it was. It was just emotionally overwhelming. I'd never had such a flood of emotion hit me like it did, so I think sometimes you you end up having this pentop feeling, and it isn't until you're able to just release that it. You know you think back and say wow that just uh, I'm so glad she's safe. Yeah, I had asked my mountain guy if I could call my parents from the top and they said like they would rather they had a satellite phone there but they're like no. I think it's best to wait until you're safely down to make that phone call so. Anyway, it's got down a couple days later and that was probably the most excited phone call I've ever made, so you had to wait like more than 24 hours to actually let them know what was that. Like for you knowing they were on the other side of the world,

worrying about you. Yeah, I just tried to stay focused. It was pretty treacherous coming down, so all my focus was on that and some of my group had stayed an extra night on the mountain at one of our first camps just to rest. But I had asked if I could go with a guide all the way down just to be down as safe as quick as possible so. Yeah, but I didn't realize anyone there was three people that had died while I was up there summitting, but we don't hear any of the news besides what's going on around us, so I was happy not to know any of that until I was down. It's amazing, I think this is one of the things I so admire about the two of you and Liz. Your your focus and your presence of mind in a very, very complex critical situation is something I'm really fascinated by because I'm talking to all these people who make these choices under quite a bit of pressure. And in that moment you know you focused on getting down safely because you're in the long game, you're going to survive this. Dissent and and your parents are in the long game too. In terms of their support, it's amazing. So your mom, Susan, wrote you a beautiful e-mail Liz? Well, you were at one of the camps preparing for the climb up Everest and she said, and this is in your book. Remember, the story is not about the summit. It's an amazing quote. So what does that mean to you? So I think she kind of just meant. Embrace every moment on the whole journey and don't be focused on only making it to the summit. Live in the moment and be present. And like surround yourself. Got to know the people you're with and just don't worry about

the outcome and enjoy. Kind of a lesson for life, isn't it? Do you think that you two are high amplitude people and by that I mean like you really experience life. So when you say live in the moment, you're not just like OK yeah, I'm living in the moment but you're like really taking it in. I'd like to do.

Well, it was interesting. One of the things that Liz was trying to get me into doing was entering the competition for Amazing Race Canada. Oh, good grief really. Yeah we made it to the final round of interviews we did. Yeah, and wow, yeah we had the one on one interview with him and and then I started to look at some of the things that they were getting them to do and I was thinking oh. You know, but anyway it was we we. We ended up not making it, which at once had gone through it. It was. I mean, it was great to go through, but I think it would have been something that would have been incredibly fun for us to have done. We were heartbroken that we didn't make it, but even the whole experience of making the videos and doing in person interviews and stuff was special. And that's really cool. Memories to look back on. Yeah, totally. You would have eaten ended up eating raw amphibians and stuff to get through.

Completely out of our comfort zones, but no, there's some pretty gross stuff on that. That's yeah, great awesome, so I feel like there are other adventures in your future. Do you have a sense of what those are?

My bucket list. I would absolutely love to go to space, so I'm trying to get John on board for that one. Nice. Oh dear, I actually had to reconcile because both of my kids said they would sign up for the Mars mission and I had to reconcile that what that meant. His parents might mean that you actually never see them again because. Yeah, I'd be right. I'd be right there with them.

My God, I can totally see it all right. So we're going to change gears because I really want to understand if you believe other families and yours have the same kind of conversations around the dinner table. What do you think?

That's that's a tough one to answer. We it wasn't though we had these kind of conversations around the dinner table. I think things started back when Liz's twin brothers were about 10 and a friend of mine who had twins said, you know, it's probably good to have a one on one trip with them on a regular basis, so they're not just the twins. And then when Liz. Got to be 10 or 11, she goes well. What about me? And so we started then having our one on one trips and that's really how it got started. And Kilimanjaro, I'll let Liz answer how she roped me into doing that. Umm? I was living in Toronto at the time looking for a job and didn't get my dream job instantly and so I just felt the need to go accomplish something and. I thought of the idea of climbing Kilimanjaro and then I was like, oh, you know, what like my dad might be interested. So I talked to my mom 1st and she's like, oh I don't know. But I mean if anyone can convince him it would probably be you. So yeah, and called you up. I had three weeks notice. I didn't have hiking boots. She gave you three weeks notice. Wow, yeah, nice of me. I think you said something like Liz. Do you have any idea how tall Kilimanjaro is not realizing what the next three years we're going to be about for her? Yeah, yeah, really. Just start out as another adventure and I sort of remember saying, do you think we can do it? And Liz says yes, Dad, we can do it. So I thought, OK, you know she's done the research and the way we went so Liz, I just want to ask you because you have this mantra that all you need is to say yes to your goals. And you really live your life that way. So tell me about following Kilimanjaro, how you actually knew that you were going to be determined about this next phase of your life. Yeah, so I feel like so many people talk about ideas that they want or goals that they want to achieve in life. But until you decide yourself

and take the first step of saying yes and doing research making plans. Right, it will then start to become a reality. So after Kilimanjaro, I absolutely loved it. I had no idea that it was going to lead to me climbing anymore mountains at all. I was working on a cruise ship at the time, so it was six months on two months off. So in my next two months off I was like, ooh like I'd love to go on another adventure because I loved Kilimanjaro so much. So that's when I decided to go to Everest base camp and it wasn't until Everest base camp. I even had learned. The seven summits were so a girl in my group, her aunt had done the Seven summits and the second I heard that I was like Oh well, I've done one so I guess I can do them all as well and literally just decided right then and there without doing any research that that would be my lifelong goal. So it rang a bell for you like you knew it when you heard it. Yeah, it was like instantly. I googled what they were and my mom was like huh OK? But a super pivotal moment in my life to learn what the seven summits were and be embraced in the mountaineering culture at the time, and. Yeah, it just kind of sparked something in me that I didn't realize my life was changing so much right then, but it did. OK mountaineering culture. That's an interesting term. It is a bit of a cult, isn't it? A little bit, yeah, but it's really neat to see everyone come from all over the world sharing that similar goal of reaching the summit and experiencing what it's like to be a team. Right? Right? Probably an experience that none of us who are kind of flatlanders really understand that kind of complete reliance on a team. Yeah, you build relationships with people very quick. Even Dad will know from

Killimanjaro how instantly tight you bond with your group because you need to rely on each other. Absolutely.

I'd like to go back to your book list and I have a copy of it here. It's written in the snow, which is a beautiful title. And you've described your journey and every time an opportunity came across to climb, you wrote about it as though it was the most logical thing to do. Like just to jump on the next climbing team. And you made that decision. I would say with probably less data than most of the rest of us would make a decision and that enabled you to do that. All those climbs in three years. So tell me about your thought process. There lots of it just fell into place like my decision to climb Everest. I was climbing in South America and just happened to meet someone who had had the trip organized and he was kind of like what are you doing in three weeks. And at that time I was supposed to go back to a cruise ship but nothing was set in stones. So I was like, oh like, I don't know why and he was like Oh well like join my Everest team. I have 30 sherpas and everything's all ready to go. And you're a strong climber and I'd love to have you so. Like not too much thought or research went into it. I knew that I had to talk it over with my family and do my research and prepare for it, but it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and that's kind of how most of it went. I made the decision and then researched and got organized afterwards so it was really the threshold. Was the decision then after that it was like logical. Like OK, I'm just going to plan this out. Nice and John, you've had this tremendous support for Liz, but I'm curious about how you saw her decision making like for you was that, yeah, OK. I completely understand that she's a good

researcher and so she's a good judge of character, and I think that's key when you're going to be part of a team and you know, sort of. A longer view of the. Trip to Aconcagua was, you know, she and her group were turned away from the summit initially, and they got to within sort of meters of it, and a bad storm came through. And then they got pushed down and the mountain was going to be closing in another week and she felt strong enough to, you know, attempt again, so her her question to the the guy was I want to go. Can you get me another guide because nobody else in her group? They were all spent and they said no, we're not going to attempt it, and so through that push she was able to get it a guide and they she had acclimatized, so they went straight to sort of the second camp, and that's where she met the climber that was the climatize going to go to Everest in three weeks. So I think a lot of it is when the stars align and you know you you do your research and you you know you're driven and you make that opportunity happen and she was very fortunate that it all sort of came together. There's a very poignant and I thought, actually quite personal and private. Part of your book, Liz and you write about this discussion of all the potential outcomes of summiting and in particular this was the summit of Everest. And what would happen if the worst case scenario came to pass? And the practical discussions that you have with family and friends around that. But you also let us into this conversation that your parents had. I'm trying to think back to that. I know that I made my dad promise if anything happened to me to get me off the mountain because so

many people have their bodies left up there.

Maybe I. I think the key for Susan and I my wife. Was we knew that if something happened we would be judged. Fairly, and probably unfairly. Why would you let your daughter go and do something as crazy as allowing her to Summit Everest? And we decided that no, we had. We had thought it through, as, you know, as Liz's parent, and we wouldn't let whatever happened. Define us as a as a couple. We wouldn't let it come through and have a second guess. Oh, should we have done that and blame each other? We would say you know what? We made that decision and we're going to live with that decision. That's what Liz wanted to do, and we fully support that, and I think that. It was a real strength in our relationship, just having to to deal with that up front. Liz, you have at the end of the book talked about the continuous journey you're on as. As an amazing leader, but I wonder there's some dark parts of your book and I really I felt a lot of compassion towards you and you didn't dwell on it. But you talked about your feelings around. Whether you would support your family or friends to do some of the same climbs that you did. Would you? Continue to climb. Are you continuing to climb and would you go back and do some of those same climbs again? Yeah, I definitely personally would go back and do any of the climbs again in 2019. I tried to be. The first Canadian woman to climb K2, which is the 2nd tallest mountain in the world due

to weather, we were unsuccessful. But and then I kind of had to make a decision from there that my next goal would be a career job as a firefighter. So before going on my last climb, that was all decided and now I would love to do any of the climbs, go back to K2, but right now I'm happy being a firefighter. And that brings me enough challenges. To face so I'm content in life but open to more climes.

OK, that's cool. Yeah, I hadn't realized that you had gone to do K2, which I think by all accounts is the hardest. Climb on the planet. Yeah, definitely very challenging. But yeah, in my book I joke that I would never let my kids climb Everest and hopefully I stay true to that.

OK, so this is a bit of a sidetrack here, but Liz, I want to understand how comfortable or uncomfortable all of this technical equipment is that you're wearing. And I would like you to take me through what it is. Know you're sleeping in your clothes probably, and you know in some tent and the wind is howling, but you're up really, really early. Like what is it to put all that gear on? Can you just go through the steps and?

Yeah, so when you're high on the mountain, you. You're sleeping in your full snowsuit, so you've got a massive onesie puffy snowsuit that once you're on the mountain that's never coming off. So. That's yeah, and then. But once you leave your tent, you've got to put your massive boots on and then you've got crampons, which are metal spikes that dig into the snow or ice, and you've got a harness, lots of carabiners, and different things. Clip to you helmets, you try to protect your face as much as you can, so you've got like a little neck warmer that comes up and covers your face eye protection, so you try not to show any skin. But for the most part, you're in all the gear. When you're up there the whole time. Are you carrying like in your hands? Do you have an ice pick like what are you doing to kind of stabilize yourself to on the way up? Yeah, you've got an ice, an ice axe in one hand, and then an ascender or a jumar which is a handle that clips into the rope and so it allows you to go up. But if you were to fall it catches your fall on the way down and then you've got a backpack full of an oxygen bottle and. Extra layers and any other gear that you might need as well. How much would you say? All of that weighed? It depends on the mountain. Umm?

Like Summit Day on Everest you're packs maybe £30 or something, but because of the altitude it feels like a lot more and then a climb like Denali, your. Pulling a sled of about £100.00 and £60.00 on your back. So yeah, it really varies from climb to climb. I found that really interesting you describing being in Alaska and how much more physically strenuous it was, because you're hauling all your gear up, and it must be a very different climb, like technically different weight different. Your team is different. Yeah, for sure it's nice for some of the others where you have all the helpers, the sherpas, the porters, but somewhere like Alaska and Antarctica. You're just relying on yourself. You're carrying all your food. Cooking equipment and your gear. So absolutely everything you need so completely different climb and different ways of training for that, doing sled poles and just making sure that you're comfortable with all the weight. Because I'm quite fascinated by the gear and you're a tech head John, so you do a lot of work in tech. You support as an investor, a lot of very interesting tech like the rain stick and. I'm just wondering some of the equipment whether you guys store it now for this, like how does that work? Because there must be a ton of it and it sounds less like there's different obviously different setups for every climb. Yeah, they definitely store it all for me, which. There's not so happy about. But in fairness to Liz, she she did all the research. She's always been one to. Investigate, figure things out what she needed to do. Like before she went to ever. She knew that she needed to have someone train her in using an ice axe.

So she hired somebody in Squamish to take her out to train her on using an ice ax so. I really was in the background more there to say OK do you make? Are you sure that you have everything you need to be successful? And you know she was very detailed oriented and you know, I. I just felt comfortable knowing that she would make sure that you know she had enough. Sets of gloves for. You know, you can use myths on some days, but if you're using your carabiners you need gloves because you need the dexterity of your fingers to be able to loop in and loop out, so I was very comfortable that she she had that and and I guess we never talked about who was going to store everything afterwards.

Parents always store it. Doesn't matter if it's mountaineering snow tires, so yeah, that's just the deal. I, I'm impressed. In particular, this is something I've noticed, and maybe it's a gender thing, but I noticed that women who have technical equipment do very well at attention to detail, and that's just from my experience knowing people who do stunt work in motion picture where they're flying equipment so they're harness and where all the wires attach. They're the most meticulous in terms of, you know when you replace the harness and the fact that that's a piece of equipment. That's going to save your life. How does the sponsorship ride work? Liz in mountaineering, it's honestly really hard. I was lucky to have a few brands that I would take pictures with their products and stuff on the mountain, but I think my main focus was climbing for a charity, so I did the last of my 7 summits to end my whole adventure for cannot place children's Hospice, which. When it's something that's bigger than myself, then people like to get on board. So that was kind of more my main focus rather than trying to get sponsorships for myself.

And you're both major philanthropists. And you did raise a lot of money for a Cannock place and I'm just wondering in terms of that sense of satisfaction, that that you were doing something bigger than both of yourselves. I mean your families joined you on that final climb that must have been amazing. Yeah, it was really special to have everyone there with me and the children that cannot place the place ended up giving her special watch so they could follow her final climb up the mountain and keep track of where she was etcetera. And then the kids wrote on special paper their wishes and then Liz let them on fire and they floated off into the heavens. It was very moving time. That's beautiful. That's really cool. Is there a contingent in mountaineering where the social media side has kind of taken over? Like you said that you're climbing for A cause bigger than yourself. Liz, but with having to do media and taking pictures of sponsorship, logos and stuff, do you see that in Elite sport? Is that becoming more of a thing? Yeah, I definitely think now it's becoming more of a thing. It was kind of nice on. Lots of my climbs not having Wi-Fi and not having to worry about any of that because at altitude it's just brings a whole new level going into Everest. I thought I would have a ton of cool photos on the top, but realistically you have the opportunity to take one or two and you just hope they're good so. Yeah, times are times are changing, but it becomes a lot trickier when the elements are involved.

One of the interesting things going back to Everest was the best Wi-Fi reception for Liz. What time was it there it was? 4:30 in the morning here. And it was night time there, yeah, so everybody had gone to bed. And so I got up every morning at 4:30 to have my 1520 minutes with Liz and and it was it was really. It was really special just to kind of hear about you know what her day you know? You know how it was? It had unfolded and I remember one one day, one morning I said, oh I'm going to connect place. We're giving Trevor Linden, president of the Canucks at the time, we're giving him a special. Presentation and listen you tell Trav that I've got the Canucks flag with me and I'll get a picture for him at the top of the mountain if I make it. And so I went with Trevor.

My best friend Travis. So I said that word for word. And he laughed. And and then, when Liz came down, she met up with Trevor and gave him the flag. The Canucks flag and a picture of her holding it on the top of Everest. And so they had a really nice bond. After that. It was great. Oh, you better blown his mind. Seriously, yeah, it was neat.

You're a firefighter now, and you went through training to be accepted and to become an active firefighter of those different types of training. What? What would have served you best? Like what? What is the physical requirements now of your job? Yeah, so I had a personal trainer during my climbs and I kept him on while training for fire so because he knew my body so well so that was it was definitely helpful to go straight in from the climbing training to the firefighting training. Lots of similar things of carrying a heavy pack and now carrying all the fire equipment. So it was a helpful transition for sure. But yeah, I know you definitely have to be very physically fit, which I'm learning now in the fire and industry. You say that so casually? Oh yeah, no, it was definitely helpful. OK, so I want to ask, is there a kind of a psychological profile for people who go into firefighting? You're risking yourself and you're also going to observe a lot of trauma, and I think that's quite similar to mountaineering, but there's other aspects that are different. Do you have a sense of how you see them as the same and different? Yeah, they definitely have their similarities from being fast asleep in the middle of the night to having to wake up to climb or wake up to go on a call. So just going from zero to 100 really quick to prepare your body for that. So it was nice. I was kind of used to that, but I'm still very new firefighter, so as far as. Everything I'm seeing and things now there's no real way to prepare for that. And going into it I had no idea how I would react. I was hoping I'd be OK seeing what I'm seeing, and so far there's no issues at all. I just treat it like a job and not like a spectator event. So interesting, OK? That's a cool statement. Yeah, so most people would look at something super gory, but I just try to stay focused and think of the task that needs to get done and listen

to my orders from my captain and just treat it that I'm here at work and it's my job to. Keep people safe. Yeah, I think your focus really comes through and how you describe that like that's one of your key strengths for sure. OK, last question for the two of you. If you had the power to fix anything, any issue on the planet, what would it be? I would have to say world hunger that every kid should have access to healthy food and no one should go hungry. There's plenty of food in this world that it's so unfair that there's so many people without it.

And I, I guess I would add to that to say that. You know, I just think it's so sad in this day and age where people can't celebrate diversities and and there isn't a higher level of kindness that can Trump over. All the egos and.

Terrible things that are going on in the world. We somehow need to be reinspired to value each other and life and help each other do their best. You know going forward to live a a purposeful life and one that should be available for everyone from you. Know every walk of life and I don't know how we end up doing that. But I think it all starts with. Getting the word out and you know trying to influence in a small circle and that small circle circle influences a larger circle, and you know hopefully there will be a. A change where you get enough people thinking that we need to really look after mankind or we won't have it in the future. Is I guess my wish and. Hope that somehow that can take place within our lifetime. Well, I'm inspired by both of you. You have this kindness and compassion and your your place in the planet is to do good for other people. You really see that through your actions and doing things that are for people. That's your higher calling. So I thank you both so much for this for doing it together, that was interesting. Sharing one set of Earpods to make it happen. Thank you Liz. Good luck to you and your firefighting. Rare, seriously, you're a rock star. I love it. Thank you so much. Take care you two.

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Credits:

Music Track Title: Everybody Loves a Catastrophe; Licence type: Standard Licence; Artist: Twirl; Composer: Neal Busby & Huguette Arsenault (SOCAN); Publisher: Lynne Publishing (PRS - CAE#: 541626758)

Logo Artist: Avril Orloff; Outsidethelines.ca

Transcript:

He paints dreamy, surreal canvases and is self taught. He's lived all over North America in some pretty tough neighborhoods, and he's a survivor of bullying and physical violence. He's a gentle, thoughtful artist who's been mentored and supported by some of Canada's most famous painters Gordon Smith and Richard Otiluke Axe. He believes that an artist rule is to break down barriers and social protocols. Welcome Tyler tapes. I think the intro. Yeah, it was good. OK right on so Tyler, when we first met we were at an auction where one of your paintings was going for an amazing sum. And your work has been compared to Expressionists, Vescia and Dekoning. But you're an authentic creator of exciting new paintings. What does it feel like when your work gets that kind of attention? Uh, feels good. It feels like I've accomplished something or I take kind of like risks in a way of like just. Putting myself out there and allowing myself to be vulnerable because I didn't know how that was going to go. And that day. And does it shock you when like a whole bunch of people are bidding like? Yeah crazy, but part of me felt like it was gonna go well, but I wasn't sure. So I was like. Don't didn't want to put all my eggs in one basket kind of thing. Well, you know I'm a huge admirer of your art and it seems to me to be alive with the figures that you paint. There are so many faces and they're all benevolent spirits. I think I've heard you describe them that way. It's beautiful and dynamic. There's a lot of energy. There's bold color and it incorporates the aesthetics of street art as well. What's the process for you of translating what's in your thinking onto the canvas? The process for me is actually down to the bare bones is like buying the canvas, buying the paint, the colors that I buy that day are gonna reflect what my how my paintings gonna turn out in the mood it's gonna give also life

experience I draw from everything like a simple walk on a city sidewalk like and staring at all the detritus or the beauty. Or like the nice. Buildings in the rundown areas or the. Train yards or the. Subway system. It's all inspiration. I'm watching something I'm watching. I'm a viewer and also it's like when I paint the when I paint the paintings. It's like a mirror image of what's actually in my mind. umm In a strange way I draw from like life experience and in a lot of visual too things that. No one really looks at or doesn't even notice like in this city or wherever. I feel like those things I just will stare at for a long time, like if there's a nostalgic feel to like buildings and places and things where people congregate. That have been there for like centuries and centuries. Sounds to me like you pick up on the energy of the people that have been there before. Yeah, I do. I pick up on a lot of energy. Some would say like I pick up on certain energies that have been there and look at old photographs of like what that used to be or. Even living in places where like. A business used to be there on the street or whatever, and you used to go get your coffee there. Ohh, that's not there anymore. They tore that down, but like there's like neighborhoods where I grew up in, especially in Vancouver. It's happened a lot more. And

you know, just, oh that's not there anymore. That's not there anymore and it will have like a new generation of people that don't even know what was there. And even before that. But also it has it carries like this energy. It's like intergenerational kind of yeah that are there. Yeah yeah yeah that's great. Is it hard to make a living as an artist? Yes, yeah, it's pretty can be pretty stressful to like. Make a living as an artist. But it's like what I love to do and it fuels my fire but also. It is hard to make a living sometimes like, especially if like things are happening in the world or whatever, especially with COVID and stuff and shows game cancelled and the business side of it. The business side of it, the financial. The I always felt like the collector and the artists have this unique relationship in this bond because. If there is no collector, how? How long can you go on making art? I still Make Heart but like I wouldn't be. Attached to it monetarily, I feel like the collector and the artist. It's very important because I'm sharing something with the collector and they like the painting or a piece of artwork or whatever and they get something from that painting. And in turn it helps the artists move forward with more art making. Yeah, it helps them with finances of like overhead of like making large scale paintings and stuff because you're not working in miniatures here. No, they're not

miniatures, but I'm also it's like a boost of confidence too, cuz you know that people still believe in you and. You have all those great things to draw from as an artist. It's more than a business relationship. It's more than just a business relationship. It's not like, ooh, I sold the painting. Oh yeah, big box and stuff like that. It's not like that. It's good. I sold that painting and it's an accomplishment. But also I can feed myself. I can clothe myself, I could take care of myself and I can make more artwork to move forward. In the future and still build solid relationships with people and stuff so. Yeah, just try to be a productive member of society. But it's like this. It's like there's almost underground subculture of artists and collectors that are like that group together that when necessarily. Like meet each other in their own circles, right? Totally? So it's kind of like bridges. The gap between society and. Stereotypes and stuff so yeah. Yeah, I think that's that breaking down of social barriers piece. That's really important to you as well. Yeah, yeah, I'm really about that because like. When when people kind of like cast you away for. Being a different person or just like? Growing up in a different.

Lower income neighborhood or something or. Whatever race color like. Religion or and also like financial like you can be like a fluent businessman or woman like and there's a lot of barriers. Yeah, like yeah yeah. What do your friends in the artistic community say about how the last two years of the pandemic has affected them? How has it affected some of the folks that you know and work with? I know that it's affected a few peoples, some people were.

Still doing OK, but I know that some artists were struggling and stuff. I know a lot of friends that were like struggling financially and I was too, but I didn't let that stop me. Make do with what you have and. Yeah, we could leave the small small paint budget and still having faith in myself and my art practice and having faith that things will get better.

Yeah. But I know that like some of my friends were. I don't know. It's like some of them were struggling, but everyone seemed to make it through it like. Where that resiliency comes from? Maybe it's just the collective takes care of one another, but. There are very interesting parts of society that we're super resilient through the pandemic.

I know you were raised in East Bend, Windsor ON South Bend IN. Yeah, where was the best place that you lived like those are all very different weather places and I also lived in Dominican Republic when I was really young. But I'd say I like the weather there, but I.

I kind of take a bit from every place where I lived, like take a little snippet of it and and just I like what it has to offer in that area. You know in South Bend you could easily. Just go to Chicago or something for like. A day trip or whatever, so. That was fun, and you're close to other big cities too, but.

In Windsor you can go to Detroit and that's like really good for music and I had a lot of friends in Detroit that would like come over. And to Windsor, and we would on the weekends, we'd have dance all parties and stuff in the basements and the West side I grew up in East Windsor. But yeah, there's like all kinds of things, and when the weather is nice, it's like. It's kind of. It's different like the East Coast or whatever, and living in the Midwest. It was different living in the states there was like a bit of a like different because I'm in a different country, but it's still North America. But it's like there's a lot of different things going on. You know, like it was very fast paced and. You could feel culturally that it was different, yeah, and generally people were like. Friendly like they were, they were just like. If you wanted trouble like where I lived, you could easily go find it if you wanted it, but. Is good to steer clear of that like. A lot of people had their heads screwed on straight, you know? But not saying that I was the best child, but is there such a thing as a best? I don't know what the best child is anyway. Yeah, I would like to talk about a subject that you've talked openly about before, but I think it's also wanna be really respectful of the fact that you live with a mental illness and you are diagnosed with schizophrenia at 19. Tell me about what it means for you to. I was I was diagnosed with schizophrenia but I also was just rediagnosed with PTSD, but I'm like doing a lot of like healing around that therapy and stuff. And just like taking care of my mental health and. And I was like misdiagnosed for like so long. Is it's like a hard topic.

Obviously to talk about like you just don't tell your first date or anyone or like a new friend or something about it, because there's a stigma attached around having a mental illness. When do you think society's gonna figure that out? Yeah, there's so many of us that carry something. All it is is like a chemical imbalance. So the serotonin that your body produces. Creates a positive electricity in your mind, right? So like if we just looked at it like that way instead of how someone is when they're on the deep end of their mental illness, or they have like relapsed off medication or something that is actually a medical condition. I feel with COVID because. That idea of anxiety and the stress of COVID brought so much more discussion of mental health to the front. Yeah, as a society we're beginning to have more language around it and yeah, and maybe language has to come first before there's a tipping point about how people can be open and feel accepted. Yeah, because one thing that that stigma causes is barriers, right? So there's a lot of people that's fortunate. That have multiple barriers because they've been cast away from their family or friends or whatever. They're they don't get the proper medical help from like government paid for like clinics and they're still really good workers there and they're really great people. You're taking a small budget and you're spreading it quite thin over a lot of people, yeah, and not everyone has the time to really focus on you. That someone like me who. Is doing really well and I'm not in a crisis.

You almost have to have a crisis to be able to talk to someone and get consistent therapy. You gotta just take care of yourself I guess. How do you take care of yourself? I mean, you've obviously. Created a place for yourself around your Wellness that is really exceptional. If people are listening to this, what would you say is really important for somebody to be doing and thinking about? Well, the one thing that helps me take care of my health is staying positive or an optimistic. Once I kind of slope down into negative thinking that does nothing for me and it produces that manifestation or whatever. So as long as I'm optimistic and I'm positive. Through all the rough times it trains my mind to like be more open and have gratitude for what I have already.

If you have said in the past that you use your mental health as a creative tool, how do you use that? How does that sit together? I find that even if I was in a state of crisis like I have been in, just like mental health nightmares that where I still stayed creative and I would just be like painting this huge giant painting, just losing my marbles. It wasn't frightening, but I knew that if I did not paint or like make something, it would be a lot more drastic. That was another risk. I didn't take a break when I was having a rough time and I ended up selling that one painting I had, but I continued to paint. And that's the one thing that I felt like is the true savior. It's like I don't. I'm not religious, but I just. I feel like there's something there. There's something there that is unexplainable. There's an energy in being creative yeah, I mean, I think that was really well described. I just feel like if there's other people that have anxieties or depression or I feel like being creative somehow. Reset your mind into a different space in your thoughts and your physical being your like emotional state. Do you feel like you live with risk? Tell me how risk an opportunity would offer you. Yeah, I take risks. But like. I feel like it's still a risk even if you approach someone and need a job or something, you're putting yourself out there. You're taking a risk, like from embarrassment or a financial risk like oh, I'm

gonna paint this giant painting. But I gotta buy a $500 stretcher for it. So there's all kinds of risks that I take. But it's also like I think artists do take risks. Because that's so. That's what you have to do to prove that you're a painter, an artist, or a visual artist. If you don't take risks as an artist and you're playing it safe all the time, it only lasts for so long. You know what I mean, so we're in your studio right now, and there's somebody next door you can hear. Sounds like they're prepping their work. Is there any time when you just know that every studio in the building is occupied? Do you feel that yeah, sometimes it's like. If my music's too loud, I'll find out about it or or whatever, but do you always paint to music? Yeah, I painted music. Sometimes I like silence. Yeah, it's strange sometimes find I paint really peaceful when I'm playing like black metal or something. Listen to that for a few hours and I'll turn on some jazz or something.

OK, I want to ask you a question about your art because you use a lot of different medium. I'm going to use a bunch of terms and they're all going to be wrong because I'm not an artist, but I see in a lot of your work, not just. The way that you layer paint, but you also layer fabric and you stencils. You you build up. And then you have paintings where there's just multiple stories almost within the same canvas and only you know them because people are seeing the final version on the outside. What compels you to use? A different medium said process and there are oil paintings. Sometimes I'll like. Paint and encryptic under painting and then it will inspire me for the final painting. Just like picking up the paintbrush, painting on the canvas and doing my drawing there and sketching on the canvas, I don't base it off a drawing that already have done. It's not that structured, right, yeah? And is that really an intuitive process? You're just sort of also letting your physicality be part. Yeah, you're like your arms connected to your mind.

You are mammals, has its own brain. I find like human interaction and stain social is very important to me for my mental health and also my art practice. But even if you're by yourself and you're just in a public space. You are still feeling that warmth of energy. That I feel like. It's OK, you can. You can chill now or so awesome, yeah. Colors were sitting here. Some of your canvases are enormous. I do paint small paintings too, but it's really fun. Painting large paintings and I have never stopped since I started so. Painting large, it's like different. There's something different to it because you're opening yourself up even and and rate there lies the risk, because if people think it's not a good painting, it's not a small risk. It's like it's like a big risk and you spend like $1000 or 2000 sometimes on supplies for it, so it has supply chain affected the cost of. Yeah, some art supplies have gone up in price for sure. The one thing that kind of ticks me off is. Minimum wage hasn't really gone up and there are people way worse off than me that can afford to do certain things like or have a studio. Yeah. Do you go back to the same paint color? A lot like? Is that something that you personally are sometimes attached to certain colors? And yes, it's good to move on, but I do like red. When you're like placing colors in different areas, it's kind of like a game of Tetris. Yeah, I, I can see that because when you look at your canvases, your eye moves all over the canvas. What other? Artistic mediums, haven't you tried that? You would like to? So

you said that you're not a musician, yeah, never been on stage. Have ever been on stage? Actually when I was when I was when I was a youth, I acted in music. Video acted in a few music videos used to act in TV commercials like small Time Ones. I don't know. I'd like to get into like sculpture. That's something that I'm starting to work towards. This year is to great start the ball rolling. Also. It's easier to buy. A sculpture if someone doesn't have the wall space for painting, they can still collect or that way I do have. Neon piece that I'm having made right now got a few irons in the fire. Yeah, I've always got irons in the fire. So you support your craft and the studio through a day job. So what's your day job? My day job is I work for a Russia and I build window displays. We fabricate window displays.

Yeah, and I do a lot of painting there. I think there's an interesting relationship between retail and art, and those storefront windows are kind of part of that, right, yeah? Yeah, it's. I work with a lot of artists and musicians in my department, so it's like a fun place to work for. Sure, yeah. I I have read that you have said the only way to live is by example. Yeah. I used to work at a U three source Center for U that were either St and trenched, or had multiple barriers. And the one thing that I knew was to live by example to help you see that there is an there is there's other avenues and paths. Just because this rough time is is not the best. If you leave by example, someone can see that their life can get better. But also when you're trying to help someone, it's best not to preach to them, but I do lead by example. This is the last question, yeah? You could fix anything on the planet, any issue. What would it be? What would it be? Yeah. I'd have I'd have a few things to fix on the planet if it whatever it would be. We do live on indigenous land and and it's not the only place where it's happened. It's happening around the planet but also climate change. Building

pipelines all across the planet, polluting our environment and we have to pay for it because. Some corporation is greedy, and they're in cahoots with the politicians and the politicians or the authoritarians to stop people from protesting those things. But also, like politics, is like a very tricky thing to talk about, because, like. You can say one thing, but someone else has some mouse to say another thing. I would like to change would probably be like you know, like equality like I feel like we gotta like like take away like. Stereotypes of demographics and just. Have just like. Like you Topian planet would be my dream like would just be like really cool. So it's amazing. Thanks so much you're welcome. Like an hour, yeah, I guess I guess so. yeah

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Credits:

Music Track Title: Everybody Loves a Catastrophe; Licence type: Standard Licence; Artist: Twirl; Composer: Neal Busby & Huguette Arsenault (SOCAN); Publisher: Lynne Publishing (PRS - CAE#: 541626758)

Logo Artist: Avril Orloff; Outsidethelines.ca

Transcript:

Doctor AJung Moon is remarkable. She chose a field of study that quite simply no one was looking at at the time. This podcast examines the issues of potential conflicts between humans and machines from an expert in responsible design of robots and artificial intelligence. Ajang and I first met when she launched a consulting company called the Open Robotics Institute in order to offer ethics reviews of organizations deployment of AI. To say that she opened my eyes is an understatement. And to this day the work that she and her team did instilled the language of AI ethics into that particular organization's DNA.

OK, here we go. She is an experimental roboticist specializing in ethics and responsible design of interactive robots and autonomous intelligence systems. A professor at the University of McGill, she founded the Open Robotics Institute and she has advised the UN Secretary General's High Level panel on digital cooperation as well as the government of Canada's Council on Artificial Intelligence. Welcome to Doctor AJung moon. Hello, thanks for having me. It's great to have you OK adjunct. What is a robo ethicist? This is a job title that really didn't exist five years ago. Yeah, I think I just made my own job title. And I think that the ruble athesis is still a term in making. Robert, this is essentially means people people like myself who may be robotics is really looking into ethics and trying to understand the ethical implications of the things that we build and try to bring it up, but not so consider the ethical implications during the design phase. And there are also robot SSS or people who I would qualify as Robot FSS who are actually studying the ethical implications on the whole of robotics, generally speaking. Even you know, even if they may not be designing the robots themselves. Yeah, I love that you believe technology is a superpower for humans. So what is the role of autonomous

systems in society? You're asking a very tricky question here because I think I think technology is still. I still believe that technology is a superpower because I think we can do so many interesting and powerful things using technologies that we were never able to do so before.

And at the same time we are in this era where we can start to think about machines that are autonomous and intelligent and they can do massively scalable things for us so. If I were to say technology, broadly speaking is a superpower for humans, I would say autonomous systems are like superpower plus plus, it allows us to do things much faster, much more in in mass in ways that we never envisioned before. But in terms of the role of autonomous systems in our society, I think that's something I'm still trying to figure out. Because I don't think we have a very close ended answer on that question. Well, that I think that bounces to the next question I have for you, which is societies perception of risk associated with robotics and autonomous systems. There's sort of this perception. Maybe that's maybe quite different from the reality. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, when we when we talk about risk and robots, I think traditionally we were thinking about oh robots working around robots can be dangerous. We want to separate robots out from humans because what if robots end up punching you? That's the physical risk and that's something we can really wrap our heads around and put some barriers on top. But then there's also the sci-fi notion of

risk with respect to robots. Which is things like Terminators. We might have this great robots that we trust, and we have all over the world and maybe all of a sudden they will just turn on us. And that's how things will go bad. But I think that the kind of risks that I study is really more about the risk that come from the interaction between humans and robots coexisting in a space.

And it's not necessarily like a Terminator that will. That is out to get you, but it's really more about how much of faulty things will we end up believing because of robot is telling us this particular information. So really changing almost the way that we interact with our world, and much less about a physical safety. It's more kind of shifting societal behavior in a way is what you're looking at.

Yeah, I think there's a lot that I'm discovering about human behavior. Some of our psychological effects or our behaviors can be predicted because a great example could be a robot that moves super fast, as though is punching you just about to punch you, but it's program not to punch you. It will stop a few millimeters in front of your face. You probably will. Respond without even thinking about it by blinking, maybe ducking, maybe shying away and having this fear response where your your palms will get sweaty and your heart rate will go up. Those are things that we probably won't be able to control. These are bodily reactions that are built into us, but by programming the robot to move in such a way, I cannot predictively elicit that response in you isn't that powerful? Yes, that's so interesting, that's. In a way kind of the managing the ethical and moral responsibility not to elicit a response that is. Is not something that we wish to respond with, but it's actually tapping into kind of the just as you say, the physiological response. That's automated because of the nature of us being human beings. That's really interesting. Yeah, part of it could be also also purely psychological as well. One really interesting study done in 2018 by Robinet Al. They were really interested in this effect of Overthrust. Will people trust robots in such a dangerous level that we need to start to worry about it and so they created this experiment where they introduce these people to a robot that they are working? And they said, oh, it has this

kind of little flag on it. We're trying to design it so that it can guide you towards a fire exit if there is any case of fire in the building. By the way, the just in case there is fire during the experiment, the exit is this way and they would give them all the safety orientation and they said because the robot is is still a prototype. It's faulty, it's not going to direct you in the right direction, so don't follow the robot and lo and behold, they fake triggered this fire alert and they watched people whether they follow the robot towards supposed exit or they go towards the exit. They have been told is the right. And they saw that majority of the participants actually follow the robot towards a dead end. Really, that's the kind of humanoid robot. Do you think that had something to do with it? No, it was just that was an instruction that they had in the immediacy. So they followed it exactly. It doesn't look humanoid at all. It's literally like a boxy cylindrical thing that moves with things sticking out of it. Nothing too sophisticated, right? So you would think like, why would humans do this? This is not the kind of risk that we. We have in mind when we build these and now we are starting to think about this interactive behaviors that are really quirky when we put robots in the room. Would you describe that level of interaction as a conflict between humans and machines?

Yeah, I, I think we can think about it as a form of conflict, but a form of conflict that we have yet to uncovered because when we talk about conflicts, I think we envision this direct kind of head-to-head kind of conflict. But in this particular scenario about the experiment with over trusting of robots. The robots don't really have intentions, they're just machines. They're just programmed to do whatever they're programmed to do, and many times they will fail as well. In that sense, we can't really frame things going wrong from this interaction, as though it is really about human human conflict, headbutting of differences, opinions or intentions or desires, because in a way a lot of it is very one sided. Oh interesting, yes. Yes, we have a lot of accountability in that as the human. Yeah, as a user, especially with the punching robot example that I gave you. What, how, how much of that interaction would I say is about accountability? How much of my physiological response, the threat response? What I say is part of my control and how much of things that I can control about myself. Can I say is something I can be accountable for? These are open ended questions. Yeah, well where do you place the accountability of the designer and the programmer of the robot? Then in that interaction did they hold the majority of the ethical accountability right now? No, I would say this is a very contentious topic. Very open-ended issue right now, especially when it comes to self driving cars and some of the accidents that we have seen. We're really looking at the limitation. Between what humans can do. And what robots are very good at and we have situations where we are getting people to monitor these systems. That majority of the times they work perfectly fine, but humans are there to catch that 10% of the time or 5% the failure modes. But if the system has been working fine for the majority of the times, you're not going to pay attention to this. You're going to be complacent about it. Automation

complacency is a behavior that we understand very well. In human machine interaction. And yet, with the kind of systems that we are seeing with human testers, we actually hold the human testers or users accountable for things going right. If they're actually not paying attention to the road and so on and so forth. Although we are really hitting the limit of human cognition at that point. And I would say that this particular contentions topic is there because our legal system that protects us from certain types of risks that we know about in interacting with other humans don't really apply well when we start to look at these machines that do a lot of interesting superpower stuff. But also there's a lot of new uncertainties for us as well. As we interact with robots as we interact with artificial intelligence systems, as we're sort of blending the environment, so law has to expand, and I just so appreciate this. Underpinning that you're bringing around the ethics side of it. I think it's important for people to also understand your definition and the difference between robotics versus artificial intelligence. Perhaps you can sort of ground us a bit in some definition. Sure, so I define robots to be these systems that have a body. That have physical, tangible things you can touch. As AI doesn't need a body to be artificially intelligent, so in a way I say that not all AI needs a physical body. All robots have a body and not all robots need AI to operate OK. OK, so for example, I think a great example is one of my colleagues, Professor Audrey Sedal, also at Miguel. She's

an expert in soft robotics and soft robots. Are these systems made of these composite or stretchy material that are? You can even actuate with a bike pump essentially so that they change shapes and they're soft and they can move in ways that are useful for us, but they don't need any kind of intelligence in the background to operate, and perhaps another example of a robot that doesn't have a. I would be robots that I've seen when I was an intern. An automotive factory many many years ago. These companies have gigantic robots that paint the chassis of a car as they come down the conveyor belts, and these systems can be programmed to repeat the same task over and over again. The next car will be blue. The next time will be red. You don't need to supervise all of that. That's all programmed in there, but nothing about it is artificially intelligent in that sense. OK.

Yeah, it's a continuum, I think is how you're describing it. And as we're now in the 22nd century, my perception of robots is that most have some kind of intelligent kind of analysis of what's going on around them. But I think you've cleared up that there can be many types of autonomous systems that are just simply doing the same tasks over and over again, like a piece of machinery in the 1700s as an example.

OK, I'm curious about your stories here around how do robots and AI systems influence us? Because you study how these systems change us and that they influence how we as humans move and behave and make decisions. Can you tell us a background story around your experimentation and your research there? Sure, I can try and scratch the surface. Eliz robots and AI. As we briefly discussed, are kind of two different beasts that work well together. I think of robots as these physical things that can be powerful influencers of our behaviors because they have the body. And they move around in such a physically salient immediate ways, whereas AI, the kind of AI that we think of the software that's running on our phones. Software behind Google Maps or any apps that you use to drive around, find the best routes from point A to point B. All of those systems I would say are systems that influence us in powerful ways because they're so invisible they can be so invisible. The part that I'm really fascinated by is the fact that even the youngest of babies three months, six months old. Show them things moving around you. Tell them stories of the circle that is triangle. And then after a little while you, you give them choices of you know the circle toy or the triangle toy and then the babies will definitely prefer the good. Triangle over the circle and that inherent. Perception we have between mapping of motions to something that is good, something that will protect us. Something that will allow us to be happy. I think that translates to how we see robots and the way they move. Robots in a way, have the capacity to be programmed

to lead us to be very anxious, feel unsafe, or really feel comforted. Is that a deliberate choice of programmers, or is it something that not all designers of systems actually think about and are intentional about it? The start of whatever they're creating? I believe it's more of the latter than the former that we're just starting to really understand the full effects of robots and their emotions, and even verbal behaviors around us. Yet we are developing these systems without having had this full understanding of them because roboticists tend to share this. Where robots will be in our homes, they'll be doing our chores. They won't get in the way. They won't interrupt us when we are busy doing things. There will be all this very intelligent and amazing things, but just the question of what does that mean for us to even have a robot in the home? What does that do for our perception of privacy? Of being in my bedroom and all of a sudden there is a robot. I think that's the kind of question we're starting to address that we don't have full answers for. So in a way, we're kind of parallel tracking between designing of these robots that could be really cool and understand the implications of it at the same time. Fascinating emerging field and as you're as you're describing it, it's helping me understand, kind of where experts like you are thinking and actually leading us to be questioning. How are we going to feel and react in the same way that I have? An intelligent speaker on my desk and every now and then I think you know what I'm about to have a conversation. I don't actually want that on. I'm going to unplug it, but

I don't always think about that. And now I'm actually quite comfortable with it sitting there. It's just a little Alexa speaker and but that's taken some time, but it's funny how quickly that integrated into just sort of the day-to-day in the household. Definitely, and even understand the longitudinal effect is something that we are starting to do more and more in, especially in the domain of human robot interaction we put on our scientist hats on and do this control experiments. Half an hour come in and work with the robots for us. But we are also seeing that when you give people these robots to hang out with for many, many weeks down the road, some people may develop a strong emotional attachment to them. Some people might not even bother with them after a couple of weeks, and some people are kind of in between, so we have yet to understand and unpack the nature of these relationships, I would say.

So you were describing domestic robots, but of course there's industrial robots, transportation, robots, and military and security robots. In what ways are their similar risks associated with them, and in what ways would you describe some extreme differences? I like to think about risks deployed in different applications separately. When we talk about domestic robots. I believe we have the capacity to think about the scalability. We will likely be mass manufacturing them. We will want to think about maintenance of them. Updates to the software that end up being massive manipulation engines for all the users.

Whereas if we start to think about robots as weapons that can be make targeting or triggering decisions autonomously, then. We're not only talking about the ethical implications of doing that or the physical harm of the people on the other side of the weapon. But we are also talking about the political risks and implications of that as well. So the scale and the spectrum of risks are, I think, quite different. But again, maybe the similarity across the board is really about the fact that risks with respect to robots are really social technological risks. We can't. We can't stop our discussions about risks in the traditional sense. That says, ah, there is. I don't know, 2% probability of failure or if the robot were to come into a physical contact, then the likelihood of you losing your eye is XI. Think our days of just talking about safety or traditional sense of risk is kind of over in terms of robots, in part because they're now. Sharing our physical world with us outside of these boundaries. So the boundary is more porous, but the opportunity is greater thus. That's why they're adjacent to us, so such a fascinating thing in that spectrum of difference all the way to the politics of deploying autonomous weaponry. You were on a UN committee that looked at the use of robotics in weaponry and warfare. Do you believe that as a sort of global geopolitical? Discussion that the right conversations are happening there. Do you have confidence that the right people are in the

room? So the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons is the international fora where we're having the killer robots discussion whether to ban such a system or whether to have a treaty and if we have a treaty, what would that look like? But I would say I'm hopeful about the fact that we're having the conversation. Because it is a, it is an International Convention under the umbrella of the UN community. The pace at which this conversation is happening is much slower than me sharing a Google Doc and Co. Drafting something with you. So it's a multi year process, and as technologists I think a lot of us share the perspective that this is way too slow. We have a lot of the members of the Community who support a ban or who support some sort of a regulatory framework for against this kind of. Advancement of military technologies and we need action now. I think we're being a little bit impatient there as well, and I'm not sure what the answer is to marry the necessary slowness of these multi state dialogue and the necessity of catching up with the pace of the technology. But when I was working as a senior advisor for a high level panel of Digital Corporation, part of what the panelists were discussing were really about that notion of when we think about digital technologies. What kind of big issues should be cool? Should we be cooperating on as an international community? Because even bringing everybody to the same table is?

Hard task to do. And in a way, I think there is a segregation between people who usually go to these UN conventions. People who hang out in the Silicon Valley and talk to the investors. And then there's also people who are leveraging on on open source code base and contributing to really critical pieces of software that the whole world relies on, but is not being paid to do any of that work is completely voluntary. Those people don't often meet in the same location, nor do they have an overlapping community, so I think that's a big problem that would be hard for us to solve, but important to solve. In the same way that agile as a philosophy has kind of permeated from software and tech into the business community, I feel the next place for that to play out is in public policy so that you trial a new policy and people agree that might not be perfect, but you roll it out. I think GDPR is an example of that. Some of that leadership where privacy and one part of the global community has just become something that is being tried and it. Seems to be influencing what's happening in North America. It gives me hope that people like you are involved. I have to say.

And John, what does it mean to embed human values into predictive data driven algorithms? Me embedding human values into predictive systems. Means understanding what values we share as a community in the first place. Having an open conversation about how the new technology that we're trying to deploy. Interact with those values. And making sure that they are aligned.

In my past life, in the startup world. I was like, yeah, I thinks consultant in part working with you in deploying this kind of process of unpacking stakeholder conversations into specific set of values and then thinking through how do Joe understand the notion of fairness differently from Joe? For example. I'm just making up names here. And why does that matter to the design of this piece of software? That may impact people's decisions down the line. That process is something that we are still continuing to develop, but it's also a very necessary process. I would say in really starting to understand what doesn't mean for us to build systems responsibly. And I say that because a lot of my students, a lot of the students who are really excited about AI and they're going to coding boot camps and so forth. They would like to have these big tech jobs secure jobs that are highly paid and whatnot. But they they may not realize that once you join this community of developers, the big homework, the challenging homework for them is to really have a conversation with their colleagues about what do they care about. Why are they doing it this way? Why is it different from what I believe in? And why is the leadership going in an opposite direction? Perhaps, and being able to reconcile that? And I think that's also a very human story of designing technology that we are. Again, still in the early stages of uncovering. You opened my eyes because

when I when I thought about the risk of deploying AI accuracy. Really sort of went to the top of what I thought was one of the most important risks. What if the algorithm was inaccurate and led to poor outcomes, but you, in describing the way that it would be used and the impact on the users and the stakeholders and the clients? Eventually you helped me understand and we saw that the users of the algorithms had a value around transparency and understanding. They really wanted to know why was the algorithm. Making the decisions that it did. Your work led to a way of daylighting. Some of the principal parameters that were enabling certain outcomes out of that algorithm gave them so much confidence too. I just so appreciate that it just was like a wow. This is amazing. Different framing. I'm so glad this is on recording right? Didn't say you were caught, you absolutely well it shifted the organization and I have to tell you that. So this is, you know years later. There was a decision by a client care group to deploy.

Sort of autonomous robotic processing. So just basically taking keyboard strokes and replicating in a very, very quick way, a way of pulling in a file, examining it, making a decision, and then sending a note back out to a user, but it's saying it was potentially going to save hundreds of hours of an individual's time. Not having to do those keystrokes. All of that was just a robotic process. The users, the employees. Because the language of an ethics assessment was now part of the history of the company, did their own assessment. Oh, and weighed the outcome as to whether this was important work that they would continue to do, or whether they were happy to hand it off to or bought it process automation. And in the end. They agreed management was not involved in this, that this was an important efficiency gain and that they were better off working on higher value work as humans. Oh my goodness. So that shifted the culture of the organization such that it took. Into the culture, we get to examine the application of an autonomous system. And we're going to make a decision. Which is amazing, like it was getting goosebumps. You did the pixels, but you totally did that. OK, I'm gonna. I'm going to jump onto a different question. What is the way that you personally assess risk like how has it changed? How you do your work over the years? By it are you referring to something specific or more broadly, about my personal risk management? Well, I see you as

you're an expert. You've made a decision to move across the country and be a prop in a different university. You you certainly put yourself out there going on these panels. You have so much confidence. I'm sure you have a ton of PhD students that you're supervising. You are living your life out loud, so you're making risk choices in your career, but also in many other aspects of your life. And part of the podcast. I think is just how do people make this decision around positive risk taking? Because you can see opportunity.

Yeah, I. I'm pleasantly surprised that you viewed me as somebody who would take risks in the positive kind of way, in part because I don't really consider myself as a risk taker. I think I'm hard on myself for not taking enough risks.

Umm? And in a way I I I I kind of have a chat with my PhD students as well, saying well, why are you asking me whether you're you you want to apply for this position or not. You should just go for it. You know what is the risk in part because I see that element in myself, which is a little bit of self doubt weighing pros and cons and being indecisive about it. But at the end of the day. I think something that has helped me in making decisions, whether I am really weighing the risks and in my personal life or not is more that I have a clearer sense of the kinds of impact I want to have in the work that I do. I think I had a consistent theme for many years that I want to be in the overlap between technology design and practically. Speaking, but doesn't mean for us to think about ethics. On top of that, and it has been itching at me as a lifelong homework that I haven't finished and somehow it has really led me to these different opportunities that presented itself even my work in working at the UN headquarters was an opportunity that came to me when I didn't expect it at all. Even the the project that I did with you was not a contract that I had expected. I had reached out to you for mentorship because I wasn't sure Katherine should I launch this nonprofit full-time or do a startup consultancy and you said, why not do both? So I think having mentors like you. Who who would ask this questions

about. Yeah, try both of them, why not? I think that that helped me along the way. That whole description is amazing and what I see is universally true of people that I'm talking to is this. External motivation and it comes to people through different means, but that seems to actually help frame the choice of decision and seeing risk as opportunity. That's my current hypothesis at the moment.

So Doctor Moon you have extensively published your research and it's been cited in publications between a 1000 times. Seriously, I just odd when I Google you and one of the publications or your research that's most cited is a paper titled Meet Me where I'm gazing, how shared attention. And shared attention gaze effects human robot hand over timing. Can you tell me about that? That particular research? Sure, perhaps this was another risk that I took without knowing that this was a risk. It's a paper that came out as a result of a hackathon project that I participated in with, I believe, about 8:00 or nine different people, and in this paper we were just really curious. Whether at this big new humanoid robot that we just got in the at the Curst lab at UBC. If we were to design the robot to act a little bit more human, like as in when it's trying to hand over a water bottle to you, it would look at different locations in space, like a human would as they're handing over the water bottle. With that actually make a difference in people who are trying to receive that water bottle from the robot. So. We were we were just thinking that would such a simple thing, such as a gaze behavior, as in where is the robot looking? Would that make a difference? And it turns out it did. It had a significant.

To tell when the robot will stop moving or when the robot will be finished handing it over to to the person. So even before the robot Clunkily reached its hand to stop moving and say please take the water bottle. It didn't even have that cue. People would intuitively know when to start to reach out and meet the robot halfway. So I think that was a really cool study that we've done we. Launches an experiment with over 100 participants that we pulled from UBC orientation week just randomly said random interact with the robot. Get a free bottle of water.

And yeah, I'm I'm so happy that this was such an impactful work in human robot interaction. Very cool, thanks for asking. This is a lot of fun too to remember that project. That's very cool. OK, my final question to you and John if you could make anything better on this planet anything, what would it be? If I could make anything better. I think I am working on my my big homework which is.

Making people be more considerate to one another in small tasks, small decisions. My homework even more scope down version of that story would be to try and make sure that when we're designing things we are being a little bit more thoughtful and considerate to each other. Yeah, that's what I'm working on. I'm not sure how far I can go in my lifetime, but that'll be my gift to the planet. Beautiful, that's fabulous. Anjung. Thank you so much for our conversation today. Thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun and thanks for telling me about the story of what happened after our project together as well because. There is really lack of documented understanding of whether doing AICS has any value. I'm at the quest to think about is there a value add to Aics because we don't have an answer yet?

Doctor AJung moons research and thought leadership can be found on her website at jongmin.com, as well as McGill University site under electrical and computer engineering. You can follow her on LinkedIn and on Twitter at Robo Ethics.

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