WABChats : Recent Episodes
Sam Ridgway
As lawyers and business people, we believe the law does not exist in a vacuum. There are lessons and experiences that are transferable to the business environment, to be found in all sorts of places. WABChats provides engaging and informative conversations with contacts, clients, advisors and friends of White & Black Limited, whether corporate or legal professionals, academics, sports people or small business owners. We'll explore everything from our guest's personal experiences and lessons they've learnt along the way to their specific areas of specialism or research, all with a view to gaining transferable insight into relevant, topical business issues.
www.wabchats.com
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Richard Kennell is the founder and CEO of the charity SOFEA. SOFEA is all about helping young people for whom traditional schooling doesn’t click find their spark, the thing that is going to unlock their talents and ultimately find their path in life.
Before starting SOFEA Richard ran his own Education company working with local schools and prior to that Richard had a 20-year career as a secondary school teacher and Assistant Head Teacher. During his time as a teacher, Richard decided he wanted to help those young people that didn’t get on with the traditional schooling system. Richard saw these young people dropping out of school with few skills and fewer qualifications and decided it was time to do something about it.
In this conversation, Richard shares with us the inspiration behind the charity and some of the personal leadership challenges he faced when first getting things off the ground. Richard also talks to us about how businesses can help students in this situation and how they can re-think the early-stage recruitment processes to account for an untapped pool of young talent.
SOFEA - https://www.sofea.uk.com/
Fareshare - https://fareshare.org.uk/
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Piers Daniell is an entrepreneur in the world of energy, property and, more recently, politics. Piers set up his first business aged just 15 and hasn't looked back since then. Piers founded internet service provider Fluidata in 2004 and by the time he departed as Chairman in March 2019, it had grown into a £30m company with over 95% customer retention rate.
The company won numerous awards multiple times including the Tech Track 100 award, Deloitte Fast 50 and being named a Sunday Times Best Small Company to work for three times. Piers himself has also won a number of awards, including Young Entrepreneur of the Year and the Queen’s Award for Innovation which he was presented by the Queen in 2014.
More recently Piers has entered the energy market with his company Tewke. Tewke's AI-enabled Automation allows homeowners to boost energy efficiency, save money, and reduce environmental impact by learning from homeowners' routines and encouraging eco-friendly habits. Tewke's objective is to control and optimise energy, by learning, controlling and adapting.
In this episode, Piers shares with us the challenges and lessons from the very early stage of his business career and the significant challenges he faced when selling his first major business Fluidata. We then go on to discuss his new business Tewke and the work it is doing to address the problems of behavioural change in sustainable living, using AI and Automation to build what is in essence a smart grid for homeowners.
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Omid Moallemi Is a creative and product designer. He is the Co-Founder of the social gifting app Prsnt. After graduating, Omid worked in furniture design, creating designs for tables, cutlery and kitchen products. Following this he joined other design consultancies which ultimately gave him the platform to start his own consultancy BlueSix Design in Brighton.
Omid has also designed a next-generation nicotine device and has a patent around its technology which has attracted interest from the “big 4” tobacco companies. In 2020, Omid Co-Founded Prsnt. Prsnt is a social gifting app aiming to change the social fabric of how we gift in the next few years. In this episode, Omid explains in detail how Prsnt allows you to send someone instant gifts, such as a coffee or a voucher to their phone, they can redeem the QR code and send a video message back. Prsnt already has many big-name brands signed up to its platform including Deliveroo, John Lewis, Amazon and Sainsbury's.
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Mihir Warty is Chief Stategy Officer for World Rugby. Originally an economist and management consultant, Mihir joined World Rugby from the global advertising network MullenLowe Group.
Before this, Mihir was Director of Strategy & Research at Sport England. His introduction of new insight and tools to the sector helped boost sports participation by 700,000 adults, the first-ever recorded increase. Mihir has also worked as Head of Strategy for BBC Sport, where he worked on rights and genre strategy and was Deputy-Chair of Sporting Equals, the body responsible for racial inclusion in UK sport. Mihir has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University and was the gold medallist on SDA Bocconi’s MBA Programme.
Mihir spends time discussing how one might go about building a strategy for a Global sport such as rugby with millions of stakeholders. The stages involved in designing and implementing a strategy and how to effectively communicate it. We also discuss how you can engage stakeholders, something World Rugby is not short of, in this process.
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Francesca Muston is Vice President of Fashion at the world-leading trend forecasting company WGSN. WGSN uses expert trend forecasting and data science to help global companies and brands get ahead of the right trends. WGSN provide consumer insight, product design direction and trading strategies to help businesses create sustainably in the future and ultimately land the right trends at the right time to maximise sales.
Francesca started out as a Senior Editor with WGSN nearly 20 years ago and now leads a team of trend and data experts in delivering well-evidenced trend directions that enable clients to make decisions confidently. Francesca is a seasoned speaker, she has presented and consulted for global brands, retailers and manufacturers advising them on future strategies and sustainability. Her contributions and insight in the future of fashion discussion can be found in the National Press, The Economist and the WSJ.
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Duncan McKay is the Founder & CEO of Aistetic, an Oxford University spinout that aims to revolutionize the fashion industry by offering 3D body models generated from mobile devices. The accurate next-gen 3D body modelling platform is found in Aistetic's first product which is available to online clothing retailers and is designed to increase conversion, lower returns and excess inventory and ultimately this works to reduce clothing waste and increase sustainability.
Aistetic is compatible with e-commerce platforms. The solution is designed to be compatible with any ecommerce platform, with simple low-cost implementation.
Duncan is a highly experienced marketer. He’s an expert in launching and commercializing new products for major consumer goods companies. He started his career at L'Oréal, and has worked for the likes of Unilever and Walls. He was awarded PepsiCo's Chairman's Award and the Marketing Excellence Award and holds an MBA from INSEAD. Prior to founding AIstetic he served as Head of Ecommerce Europe at Pepsi Lipton.
Duncan's vision is to disrupt and make accessible 3D body measurements using state-of-the-art computer vision and deep learning technology.
https://www.aistetic.com/
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Leo Campbell is Co-Founder of Modern Baker. Modern Baker is seen by many as the UK’s first truly healthy bakery. The business launched the latest iteration of the high-tech Superloaf, it's gut healthy bread brand, exclusively into Marks & Spencer in March 2023. The product –full of bioactive plant-based compounds – is co-manufactured and co-packaged by Hovis.
Modern Baker has re-engineered ultra-processed bread to make it actively healthy and it has plans to use the same approach for making other foods healthier such as breakfast cereals, pasta, ready meals and pastries. Innovation UK, a national agency, has just awarded the company £450,000 and six successive government grants has led to investment of up to £4 million.
Modern Baker was born as a result of Leo's business partner Melissa’s breast cancer diagnosis. Whilst she was seriously ill, Melissa supplemented her medication with a very natural diet. It became very clear, very quickly that there were all sorts of benefits to this type of diet. So much so that Leo and Melissa started looking seriously into how significant diet is in terms of the impact it has on our health and general wellbeing.
We talk to Leo about why him and his partner Melissa first started Modern Baker, their drive and purpose. We cover the technology behind the product and it's versatility, how outsourcing has proved vital for Modern Baker and what the future holds for the company following its 6th Government grant from Innovate UK.
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Rebecca Aycheng Ajulu Bushell is CEO of the 10,000 Interns Foundation. She is wow listed in Forbes 30 under 30. Rebecca is the first black woman to have swam for Great Britain, becoming British Champion and ranking number 1 in the world. After retiring from competitive swimming in 2011…… she became a communications consultant and founded NKG, a media and communications agency focused on social change. Rebecca studied fine art at Oxford and has produced an award winning documentary ‘Breakfast in Kisumu' which is about her father, a leading Kenyan academic and freedom fighter in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
We discuss Rebecca's incredibly varied career until now and how she came to be CEO of the 10,000 Interns Foundation and explore the vital work the 10,000 Interns Foundation do in addressing the issue of employment disparity for Black and Disabled students. We also spend time discussing why businesses should aspire to have as diverse a work force as possible, and what practical steps businesses can take to increase diversity in their workforces.
Peter Higgins is Co-Founder and now Non-Exec Director of Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts, which is a multi-channel clothing retailer, specializing in smart and smart casual wear. He is former director of luxury fashion retailers MeandEm and Peter also spent 4 years serving as Chairman at Cath Kitson, and 10 years and clothing brand Joe Browns, as well as some time at LK Bennet. Peter is also a NED at Mary’s Meals. Mary's Meals is a global charity that serves life-changing school meals to some of the world’s poorest children. Their vision is that every child receives one daily meal in their place of education and they are already reaching 2.4 million school children every day.
We chat to Peter about Co-Founding Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts, advising the business through lock-down and what B2B can learn from B2C when it comes to customer centricity.
James Wilkes is a highly experienced trouble shooter in global shipping, marine and international trade. He has been helping companies manage issues arising from corporate malfeasance, criminal activity, political instability, terrorism and other complex problems, for over twenty years.
James founded his company Gray Page, in 2003 and has headed the company ever since. Gray Page are a specialised investigations and intelligence consulting company providing knowledge, insight and advice to private and public sector clients around the world working predominantly in the marine, aviation, energy and commodities sectors, but supporting clients in a diverse range of matters.
In this episode we chat to James about how he built Gray Page from scratch, the challenges he faced along the way and what made him want to start his own business. We also discuss where big data and AI fit into James' industry of intelligence and security. We discuss how Human Intelligence or 'trade craft' is still a vital element of what James does and how in both intelligence and other, broader industries, its value cannot be replicated by AI.
Jess Annison OBE has worked across a variety of sectors including time at the Civil Service, during which she was as awarded an OBE for her roll in organising the 2012 Olympic Games, as well as time spent in higher and further education and time as a management consultant in the financial and logistics sectors.
Jess has since combined all of this experience and started her own leadership coaching business. Jess coaches Middle and Senior Management on a whole variety of leadership challenges and issues and how to solve them and best run their teams.
We chat to Jess about the growing issue of burnout within business and how managers can deal with this for themselves and their teams. Jess explains how a multi-prong approach to dealing with burnout is essential within teams and how purpose at work can reduce stress significantly.
Dom was born in Liverpool and studied Law at Oxford. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG, he spent the next ten years in corporate finance and investment banking and Prior to becoming Chief Executive Office, Dominic worked as Finance Director of Blenheim for 13 years.
Blenheim is best known for Blenheim Palace which has stood since the 1700s and is the birth place of Sir Winston Churchill. You don’t need to do much digging to find that there is far more to Blenheim than the Palace!
Since becoming CEO Dom has thrown all his energy into pursuing Bleheim’s long-term vision which is "To share and protect this place for future generations, to enhance the lives of local people and to be the lifeblood of the local economy". This vision is being pursued by the Blenheim team using 10, measurable goals, over the next 10 years and beyond.
Dom and his team are doing some incredibly innovative, inspiring things, paving a new way for landed estates and properties like theirs. We chat to Dom about his route to CEO, Blenheim's approach to innovation and future plans for tackling environmental and sustainability issues.
In episode 8 of WABChats we talk to Erin Kennedy, MBE. Erin Kennedy, MBE is a Coxswain with the GB Rowing Team and currently steers the mix4plus as a member of the Paralympic rowing squad. Erin is a Paralympic Champion, winning Gold in Tokyo, a two-time World Champion, a European Champion and a World Cup Champion.
Erin also has a rowing World Cup Gold medal, which she won in June 2022. Remarkably, this was just 4 days after Erin was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Erin went on to win one of her European Golds in August 2022, in the middle of her treatment, by which time she'd had two rounds of chemotherapy. Since then, Erin has become an amazing advocate for those battling cancer. Using her platform to really ‘let people in’ and see what its really like to fight such a horrific thing.
Erin chats with us about achieving everything there is to achieve in her sport and we discuss how delayed gratification and the ability to compartmentalise, learnt through elite sport, helped Erin fight and overcome breast cancer.
In Episode 7 of WABChats we talk to William Proger, Founder and CEO of William and Partners. We discuss, spotting opportunities and starting a business in the middle of a global pandemic, how the pandemic led William and Partners to do things differently and why and how one should consider engaging wealth managers pre-deal completion.
For over two decades Will Proger has advised and managed money for a wide range of private and institutional clients. After graduating from Exeter University with a degree in Business Economics in 1999, Will held a series of investment management roles at C Hoare & Co and Kleinwort Benson. He set up and led a team at Barclays Wealth tasked with advising and managing the most sensitive and strategically important clients of the bank. These included the main board Directors, senior financial services executives as well as family offices and Heads of State. Latterly William co-headed the London branch of Mirabaud’s private bank and, most recently, helped to launch Saranac Partners, a multi-family office based in London.
In a special episode of WABChats we talk to three members of the Witney Women 1st XI hockey team. Katie, team Captain of 14 years, and twin sisters Harriet and Lili, two young stars in this year’s 1st XI squad.
Their team have been promoted 4 times in the last 6 years, rapidly climbing the ranks of the English hockey system! We cover their rapid rise to the second-highest division of English hockey, just how transferable skills learnt in a sporting context are to the business world and how they balance playing sport at the top level, with A-Levels.
We chat with the CEO and Chairman of Oxford Engineering, Karim Sekatt. We discuss what world-class really looks like, what Lego has to do with switching from batch to one-piece flow manufacturing and allowing your team to ask questions and challenge things.
Karim Sekatt is CEO and Chairman of Oxford Engineering and a long-standing friend of the firm. Oxford Engineering, which has been described by a previous security of state for Trade and Industry as ‘a jewel in the crown of British Engineering, offers excellence in machining, welding, assembly and testing to World Leaders across the Medical, Aerospace, Nuclear and Scientific sectors. Oxford Engineering is an accredited supplier to companies such as Siemens, Thales and Varian Medical Systems.
Tess Taylor is Co-Founder at The Tap Social Movement, an Oxford-based craft brewery and hospitality social enterprise that provides training and employment opportunities to ex-offenders and also a number of low-category prisoners who are preparing for release. 28% of their current workforce have lived experience of the criminal justice system.
Tess is a bachelor of commerce graduate from Toronto, prior to founding the Tap Social Movement, her career spanned hospitality and craft beer management roles both in the UK and Canada. Tess was also recently involved in National Brewing Library 20th anniversary exhibition at Oxford Brookes, focussing on the women of the brewing industry.
Patricia White is the founder and CEO of the multi-award-winning charity Suited for Success.
Self-sacrifice, clear messaging and brining stakeholders along for the journey
Dr. Jonathan Trevor talks to us about his most recent research published in the MIT Slone Management Review, 'Managing the New Tensions of Hybrid Work'.
We discuss how managing hybrid working has become the latest battlefront for competitive advantage, the importance of pragmatism when determining flexible working frameworks and how managerial skills are so key to facilitating a hybrid working environment.
Dr. Jonathan Trevor is an Associate Professor of Management Practice at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. His main focus is on developing the strategic and organisational alignment of the firm. He teaches on the Oxford MBA, Executive MBA and international executive education programmes. Previously he was a University Lecturer at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School and Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. He holds a PhD in management studies and economics from the University of Cambridge and was a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also the author of 2 books – Align and Re:Align – which unpack themes such as strategic alignment in organisations, overcoming disruption and improving performance.
Sir John Crabtree talks to us about organising the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games. The impact of Covid, ensuring the bigger picture is kept front and centre and the importance of a sense of humour in the board room.
Sir John is a former President of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce & Industry and was appointed Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant for the West Midlands in January 2017. John Chaired the Organising Committee for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Gamesfor which he was appointed Knight Bachelor for services to Sport and to the community in the West Midlands. In 2014 Government Secretary Eric Pickles named John as Chairman of the Birmingham Improvement Panel, charged with supporting the council as it pursues vital reforms.
John’s career as a Lawyer began in 1971 when he joined Wragge & Co, where he remained until 2003, rising through the ranks as Head of Corporate, then Managing Partner and finally Senior Partner. He was voted UK Lawyer of the Year by Legal Business in 2003.
John has many community and charitable interests and is Chairman of the national charity for deafblind people, Sense and Special Advisor to the Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre Trust Board of Trustees. In business, his many interests outside the law include being Chairman of Staffline Group plc, SLR Management Limited and Real Estate Investors Plc. He was previously Chairman of Claimar Care Group plc (2006-2009) and Metalrax Group plc (2003-2010).
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An Introduction to WABChats.
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An introduction to the WABChats podcast.
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