Nadia Bob-Thomas Podcast Transcript

Melody Moore:
Welcome to the Secret Resume podcast, hosted by me, Melody Moore. In this podcast, we explore the people, places, and experiences that have shaped my guests, those which have influenced who they are as people and where they are in their work life today. Or as I like to call it, their secret resume. So my guest today is Nadia Bob Thomas. Nadia, welcome. And can you introduce yourself for the listeners, please?

Nadia:
Hello, Melody. Thank you. So, yes, Nadia Bob Thomas. I currently work as a head of Dei and wellbeing at a major blue light service in London. Recently started that job, maybe within the last two years, and before that, I have been a career civil servant.

Melody Moore:
Ah, perfect. You are the third, I think, maybe even fourth civil servant that I’ve had on my podcast. In fact, I just came back from having a walk with a friend of mine who’s also a civil servant, so very familiar with that world. So thank you for introducing yourself. We’re going to go right back to the eighties, is where we’re going to start our story. And. Yeah, do you want to tell us a bit about that? I’ve got on my notes, Beatrix Potter school.

Nadia:
Yeah, I’m an eighties baby, and I think that that generation of people in the eighties, I think we have lived quite an interesting life because we’ve been at the start and finish of quite a lot of, like, changes in society. So with me, I put beach spotter school as, like, kind of like a key point for me because it’s kind of where I started my. My earliest kind of memories of life, I think. So I come from migrant family. We came over from Sierra Leone in West Africa, and my earliest child’s memories are going to Beatrice water school. So for me, my childhood was quite, it felt as I existed in the fairy tale. So I was this huge bookworm. I loved, like, you know, obviously the books, like Beecher Spotter’s books and Peter Rabbit, Roald Dahl.

Nadia:
And I kind of, like, I went to a school where apparently Mary Mag is. No, Mary. What was her name? Sorry, no. Beatrice Potter. Yeah. Apparently Beatrix Potter actually lived where the school was, which is why the school came. Came about. And, like, our uniform was having Peter Rabbit on our jumpers or t shirts, and it was like you can get in any different colour you wanted.

Nadia:
So you had these rainbows of uniforms, like yellows, pinks, blues. And I was living where big spotter lived. Apparently Roald Dahl lived up at the top of the road as well. He had a house, top of the road. So literally, I felt as though life was a fairy tale. When I was younger, yeah, it was just. It was just such a beautiful childhood. And doing this exercise made me think about that, just how idyllic it all was.

Nadia:
The school had a beautiful field at the back, the huge a country. We used to play concurs during the summer. We had, like, a huge pond where, when the season came, we used to, like, go and fish for tadpoles and then used to watch them grow. It was such a beautiful, beautiful childhood. And going back to it, I just remember the summers and people playing cricket as I’m walking down to school and, yeah, it was just. It was so idyllic and I just was really happy and I really, really loved it.

Melody Moore:
Where was that?

Nadia:
That was in Ellsfield in Wandsworth, so it was Max in Ellsfield in Wandsworth. It was a time when you used to leave your doors unlocked and my friends used to come into my house. It’s going to each other’s houses. You got to come out to play. And I always say as well, this was before Sunday trading laws came into play, where actually, where you can just. I felt as though London was my playground because on Sunday, shops were never open. So, yeah, we used to ride our bikes all over London, so the cars weren’t there. It was just so quiet.

Nadia:
You had Sunday rose. It was just. It was just really, really beautiful. Yeah, childhood. Really, really lovely.

Melody Moore:
And what were you like as a child?

Nadia:
As a child, what was I like? I think I had no fear. Like I said, London was lovely. We had friends all over the place, so everybody around the surrounding schools, we were all. If you were in the area, you just had the friendship groups in the area. We ride our bikes. I was very. I was into my books, I said before, as a bookworm, so I had such a big library as a child. I remember we used to go on holidays, mostly to Europe with my immediate family, and everyone would pack and then my mum would look at my suitcases being a suitcase for the books.

Nadia:
They’re going on holiday. Why are you bringing so many books, like? Because it was just, like, my escapism. I really, really loved it. So I was a keen reader and, yeah, I just. Yeah, I love. I remember reading the twits a lot by Roald Dahl. That was my. Some reason, but, yeah, that was me and one of the key people in my life that time.

Nadia:
I remember my earliest memories, my grandmother and she used to walk me to school. I remember the walk to school, know the big cricket field en route to get to school. And I remember skipping with her, holding my hand with people playing cricket on the side and then. Yeah. And just going, really lovely.

Melody Moore:
That’s amazing. And did you have a close relationship with your grandmother?

Nadia:
Yeah, she is my earliest memories with her. She was instrumental in my life. She was the closest person to me. I think she defined what love was for me. She was my entire heartbeat. Yeah. My source of love, my source of purpose, my source of just grounding. She was God fearing, so taught me so many lessons.

Nadia:
I didn’t realise until she passed, really, and I had to kind of work out. Oh, wow. What is this relationship? And I talk about it a bit later about, how about this sense making? I think a lot of what I’m going to talk about is really about around identity and purpose and really sense making my reality as I’m going through my journey of life. But she was the stencil of it. Very pivotal for me.

Melody Moore:
And were there any other, you know, influences, strong influences on you at that time?

Nadia:
At that point, I will say it was my grandmother. So she actually lived in Sierra Leone and she would come, she would travel back and forth to London, usually for caregiving purposes, because my mom, so she was working a lot. So I was raised quite a lot by my grandmother. So she had a very big role in my life. So I think at that time, I have to say that my world revolved around my grandmother, my grandfather, so my family, so my grandmother and her, she had four children and my grandfather. And they actually, she came over. It’s so interesting, their stories. I wish I had more time with her to actually understand her story.

Nadia:
But one of the things they used to talk about was when they came over from Sierra and by boat in those days, it used to take two weeks, but the boat was really lovely. The pictures are having parties and stuff like that. It was really quite idyllic. But they lived in Maidstone, in Kent, so my grandfather, he. I never knew what. I never knew him to actually go to Seoul Den, so he maintained the house in Maidstone. It’s a really big victorian house, three floors and a basement. And he just loved Maidstone.

Nadia:
He loved being in the UK, so he stayed there. So we’d go over to him and on the weekends my grandma would fly over from Sierra Leone, live in the two countries. And he was actually phenomenal as well. He was always. He always wore suit. Always wore suit with a tie. Always had a hat, either a flat cap or like a chilby hat. He was just impeccable.

Melody Moore:
Very stylish.

Nadia:
Very stylish. Tall man, very handsome, very softly spoken. So the two of them my grandparent. Yeah. They were the key people in my childhood.

Melody Moore:
Yeah. And what was your mum doing? What work did she do?

Nadia:
My mum actually worked in cams, so child and adult mental health? No child adolescence or mental health. And she was based in Wandsworth, so she. At the time, it was around Wandsworth, I think what’s called Westside now or something. The Arndale sense, it was when I growing up. So she was always around, actually, psychiatrists, psychologists when I was younger, so she worked there. She wasn’t a psychologist, she was more of an office administrator. So, yeah, so she worked in that field, but I was around a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists growing up. Yeah.

Nadia:
So.

Melody Moore:
So take me to your next thing that you’re going to talk about. Los Angeles is in there. Your brother, your grandfather. Tell me a bit about that.

Nadia:
So I come from a bit of a. I don’t know if it’s called a blended family, but my father. So it’s really interesting when you’re part of, like, a migrant family. So my mother and her side of family, they all emigrated to London. We had, like, more of a London reality. And then my. My father, he went to Los Angeles and he remarried. And so I have seven brothers and sisters and they all lived in Los Angeles.

Nadia:
So what I would have is my every summer holiday, sometimes Easter, I would get shipped off to Los Angeles. And so I had this duality. So term time, I’m in London, holiday time, I’m in Los Angeles. And that was a completely different. Two realities. So different. But it was absolutely amazing. So.

Nadia:
So I just. Yeah, so I just have, like, all these siblings, like, wow, this is amazing. Obviously, you go there. It’s just all fun because we’re on holiday, so we would go to Disneyland, Universal Studios, all the big theme parks, and I just got to be like, in the sense of all this love, more love and more plain, everything like that. And it was this. It was just really amazing. So one of my brothers was called Salam. He was number three, I’m number four, I’m the first girl.

Nadia:
He was. I’m the third boy. And he was the closest. He was the closest sibling to me at that time. And at the time, he was like the love of my life. I was just. He was such an amazing, kind hearted soul and he was just my confidant. And the reason I put him as one of the key people in my life, because at the age of 14, when he was 21, we lost him.

Nadia:
He had a heart disease and which we were unaware of. And he was playing basketball and he passed away having had an attack whilst he was playing. And that moment for me, coming from my fairytale existence of being around what Ronald just said, being this thread, fairytale reality, I call it like the loss of innocence. Up until that point, I never really experienced death, never knew about death. It just came out of the blue and I call it loss of innocence. I remember it was whilst I was in secondary school. And at the time, actually, I think we just read the book called Little Lord Fauntleroy or something, and that book was about the loss of innocence. So it was that kind having.

Nadia:
And I think that was really when I started really looking at life and the value of life, the purpose of life. Like, why are we here? Why do that has to happen? And I think that really, yeah, started it changed my life, it changed that romance that I had with life. Just know, like, why is this happening? Of course, because I had these two different realities as well. It was quite hard to make sense of it because it happened outside of my normal reality of London, in this other place. And I had to kind of somehow make sense of these two realities. So I think that was why I say probably the start of my dabble with psychology and just, you know, just the meaning of life. Like, what is this here? What is my story? What is my journey? So that really, I think, started to just complicate life a little bit for me and made me, I would say, start to look at life differently and just question things a lot more and just ask questions more about life.

Melody Moore:
How did you deal with the loss of your brother? You were obviously very close to him.

Nadia:
Yeah, that was a really hard journey for me. Really, really hard journey. And I think it took me a long. It took me years to deal with it. I think I remember for the first year, I think I cried every single day about the loss of my brother. I mourned him for every single day. But it was interesting because it took a while, a few years, for me to actually get referred to counselling. Another beautiful place, it’s called off the record, it was actually a place in Croydon.

Nadia:
And I met with a beautiful counsellor called Louise. Can’t remember her surname, but she introduced me to CBT counselling or behavioural therapy, and that helped me start sense making and shoot me to the thing, I don’t know if people know called a jelly baby tree, where you have. It’s a tree and then you have like different kind of like jelly babies, well beings or something, and different places in the tree with different kind of emotions. And every session started, she pointed, okay, which one are you now? And then that helped. And I still have that document till now. I actually, on her, I, over two decades ago, I still have kept it. And you kind of point to see where you are to help to make sense of your reality. And I think that kind of helped me to understand, actually, it’s okay to not be okay.

Nadia:
It’s okay to be feeling this, feeling that, but then just help me to try and make sense of my reality, make sense of how I’m feeling, and just try and just walk my way through. But it took me a long time to get my brother’s passing. I can’t. I can’t even say how many years. It could even be around ten years, to be honest with you. It took me a long time. But I remember at the end of that process, I had a little book and I wrote him a letter. I filled the whole journal, writing him a letter just to let go and say, okay, I’m good.

Nadia:
Now we can let go. I’ve processed it. You’re gone. Thank you for being part of my life. You a really, really big part of my life. And, yeah, and I was able to just kind of start moving on, I guess you could say.

Melody Moore:
It must have been difficult because you weren’t in the same country then, you know, if he had been in LA and all your family who were close to him were in LA, and you were the only one here that was struggling with it.

Nadia:
Yeah, absolutely. And obviously, all my siblings were all kids as well, so we all were kind of fence making it, making sense of it all. But, but, yeah, it’s, it was an interesting journey. It did affect my relationships with my siblings, I have to admit, because, um, you know, it’s like if I go back to that environment and for me, I’m not stuck in that moment, so I’m still reliving that moment as I’m going back. So it did, it did kind of affect us a little bit, but it was an, it was an interesting, it was a very, it was, it had a very big impact in my life, and I think it really changed the course of who I am personally. Yeah, yeah.

Melody Moore:
What was it like? I’m interested in that experience of, you know, terms in London, holidays in, in LA. You know, they’re two very different countries, very different cities, for a start. You know, with one family in the UK, another family in the US, a bigger family with more, much more siblings, I guess. How, how was that transition between the two?

Nadia:
I remember a time, actually, I was speaking to my siblings about this recently, so I’ve just come back from Los Angeles. There was a time where I refused to come back home to the UK. I absolutely refused. It was too much fun over there and there was two. It was just too many opportunities. There was so much happiness. I refused. They literally had to bribe me to come back on a plane.

Nadia:
And I can just imagine little me just, like, trusting these adults to take me back one day. But, yeah, it was fantastic. It was another romance for me. It was another beautiful space for me. Absolutely love it. And obviously, I lost my brother while I was in secondary school, school as well. So there’s added complexity there. So in my secondary school, I went to a secondary school.

Nadia:
I would say this court is like a bit of a centrins. There can be school, I probably won’t name it, some stuff called distant Trinians, but it was in. I was all girls school, Church of England school, all girls in. In Fulham. It was an interesting experience, that one, because it was. It was predominantly a white, middle class school. And then that’s another kind of reality for me, being from a migrant family, having Los Angeles aspect, being this middle class white school. So there’s a lot of different identities for me growing up.

Nadia:
One of the things that I kind of felt a little bit when I was going to Los Angeles, the fact that I would miss key aspects of bonding for my friends, because obviously I’d been in Los Angeles and they all have this summer experience where they’ll go and do stuff and then I’d come back. I was completely excluded from that. So there’s another complexity. I think, oh, maybe I shouldn’t be going to Los Angeles so much because I’m missing out on this bonding experience with all my friends. And so I think that alongside just lose, my brother not really wanted to go there too much anymore. Made me kind of focus more on being in the UK and developing my reality in the UK. Okay, what am I doing here? Would have to develop my relationship. So I kind of fell out of love a little bit of Los Angeles, and just kind of just put it on the back burner a little bit and just focused on London because I think it was a little bit painful for me to go there.

Nadia:
But, yeah, so, yeah, I was in my centrinan’s life.

Melody Moore:
I call it Centurion space centrins era.

Nadia:
Absolutely. And it really was like, the school is actually quite a high performing school at the time. Actually, it was where the Blair government was in place. And actually, Tony Blair, when he one of his daughters looking for a secondary school, he actually considered this school. And remember there was like newspaper articles saying the school had people, kids being picked up by limp zines and stuff. We didn’t because essentially we really. But no, that too was a really good experience for me, actually. It was interesting.

Nadia:
Again, when I look at identity, one of the issues when I look back in that school was about trying to fit in. So again, because I have all these different realities about me trying to fit in. So I felt there in that school, one of the issues I felt with that school was the fact that I felt they were trying to mould me to become part of this reality, which actually wasn’t my reality. And I felt as though back then, but now we talk about culture, we talk about differences and diversity, but back then I don’t think it was really a thing you had to assimilate. And I think being me, all different aspects of my life and what I was trying to like, you know, making meaning of, it was very hard for me to assimilate that culture. And I think looking back now, I can see why. I had some experiences I had. So I was actually suspended from that school twice.

Nadia:
And now looking back, I can see why is because I was very much the person who asks questions like, why are we doing this? Or want to do things a bit differently? And in a school where actually you’re trying, they’re trying to make everyone, you’re passing school, this is your tribe. Difference wasn’t really valued back then, so it was hard for them to understand me. Hard for me to understand them as well.

Melody Moore:
And was that different to your primary school? Was that more diverse your primary school?

Nadia:
No, I. No, not at all. I think Wandsworth, Fulham, I don’t think they were full of diversity back in those times. And I went to quite. I lived in quite affluent areas and so there wasn’t a lot. But in primary school, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. And prior, as you’re at that age, you just meet people. They are, don’t you? So I actually.

Nadia:
I actually didn’t experience difference in primary school. I didn’t recognise difference. Everyone was accepted. It was actually wonderful. There was not no difference. But I think going to secondary school, you start seeing the differences. I think even teachers start to interact with you differently. You can tell they’re coming to you through different lenses.

Nadia:
I’m starting to become an adolescent, an adult, I’m starting to have more independence and starting to question things a bit more and actually I found then that, yeah, I don’t think this isn’t the space where they really want you to question things. You’re here to do a job, get your grades, make sure that you reflect the school in a good light and how they want you to. And that’s what it was there. But looking back now, I can see that, but during that time, I was thinking, oh, why are they so resistant to my difference, what’s happening here?

Melody Moore:
So as an adult, you can kind of make sense of it, but at the time you could just feel something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Nadia:
I think I broke them down. I think.

Melody Moore:
I’m interested. How did you break them down?

Nadia:
I think they realised, yeah, this one has a strong spirit. I think we could have leave her. It’s funny, so one of my teachers back then, actually, it’s only now I’m really thinking about it. He was called mister. Elkon, John Elkon. He was my business studies teacher and I remember he was from South Africa. So I think he saw me through a different lens. So back then we didn’t have any black teachers at all, but everyone’s white.

Nadia:
But I think he could relate in a different lens. I remember he said something once to me, you know, at the time I was thinking, what was he talking about? He said, it’s just you and us against them. No, that is you and me against them. I’m thinking, what are you talking about? But now I understand what. I kind of understand what he was trying, he was trying to say, I kind of get your, I kind of get the lens that you’re seeing life through. I kind of understand it. So, you know, and I’m here kind of thing. And actually he was really, really supportive.

Nadia:
Looking back, I used to spend the most time in his classes. I used to put in the most effort in his classes. Naturally, I got the highest grade, I got an a star, but GCSE. And he’s got a levels in his class. And I’m like, actually, yeah, I understand what you’re saying. We just had a, you know, when you’re younger, you don’t, you feel things, but you can’t really make sense of them back. You can kind of make sense of them. But the extra effort he put in and the extra kind of attention he gave me really paid off.

Nadia:
If I look at my grades and look what I’ve taken from it, I think probably he was the first person outside, kind of like of my immediate ecosystem. I could say, actually, okay, he made a difference because I could see from the results, I’m even remembering him. I don’t remember most of the teachers, but I still remember him. So he must have had an impact in some way.

Melody Moore:
Yeah, I hear that a lot on this podcast is that, you know, the impact teachers can have both positively and negatively. And I see it with my own daughter and my friend’s kids. You know, kids will love a subject and then all of a sudden they won’t love it because they’ve got a different teacher or vice versa. You know, my daughter came home the other day, she’s 14, and she said, you know, she really likes her new maths teacher because he explains things in a way that she understands and the previous one didn’t, you know, and it’s as simple as that. She will do better because she can just understand just the way it’s explained. And the power of teachers is phenomenal.

Nadia:
It is. And I felt that in secondary schools there’s two examples specific. I kind of look back and thought, wow, the power that you had then really could have affected the trajectory of my life. So one was in math, so I’m not sure. I don’t think they do it now. But you had different sets in, like, different subjects. So like in mass, you had the higher, intermediate and lower. So I was always in the top sets for everything.

Nadia:
So throughout my, my time at that school, I was in the top set for everything math. And then when we came up to our GCSE, when my math teacher, she put me into the intermediate set. So in the intermediate, the highest grade you can get was a b. But I remember at the time thinking, this makes no sense because you’ve just limited what I could potentially get, though. Even if I was in the top set, I could still get the b. I could get a c, but I could also get the a. And I thought, oh, looking back, and I was like, oh, you really just kind of just, you know, just kind of impacted what I could have got in that moment based on I’m not sure what. So I got the b, but I’m thinking, well, I probably could have got the a then, if I got the b anyway.

Nadia:
And then the second time was on a career, career fair we had. And this is the typical experience of a lot of black children of that time, where you are pigeonholed into a career that actually is prejudice and a stereotype which actually isn’t anything sturvy. So I remember going to the careers fair and this person who I’ve never known from nowhere because they brought in some careers experts. I think I told her I wanted to do law, and she told me to do something ridiculous. I’ve never even thought about something I know around sports or something really just out of left field. I thought, how did you get there? And I, looking back now, doing this exercise, I actually think that she might have affected how I viewed people of authority or people or advisors or people who can help me, because I just thought you didn’t listen to anything I said. You just told me what you just projected something that you held onto me. But interestingly enough, I was so strong a spirit that I just ignored her.

Nadia:
I knew enough to ignore her. And. And that was me. I had a very, very strong spirit back then. I just did. I knew I had even, I had a strong sense of self. Even though I was still trying to understand my identity and start trying to understand meaning of life and my purpose, I still had a strong sense of self. To know when something wasn’t right or when someone wasn’t actually talking to me, the me that I knew, I was.

Melody Moore:
It’s interesting, isn’t it? And I think as a teenager, as a kid, it’s an instinctive thing. You haven’t got the words to put around it, probably, but there’s just, you know, there’s something else going on that you’re reacting to. And now you’re like, oh, I think it was that. But at the time, you’re just reacting to something that you just felt wasn’t right.

Nadia:
It sounds like, yeah, okay.

Melody Moore:
Okay. Let’s talk a bit about university. So you finish school, you go to university. Where do you go to university? What do you do?

Nadia:
Well, I’m thinking, I think so before I went to university, if I could, I took a gap year. And the reason I took that gap year is because I think of that failure of strong career vice. So I come from a family of kind of lawyers. So we always knew in our family, it’s really funny that the girls in particular, we were all going to be lawyers, that we had no other. There was no other option. It was just lawyers. So that’s why I knew I was going through law regardless. But then I still, I had a lack of awareness of anything else.

Nadia:
And so it didn’t feel right to go straight into university. So I took a gap year. I applied for jobs, some interviews. I was bombed. It was awful. But then I applied for the civil service, and they kind of put me on the waiting list and then ended up getting a job in the civil service. And I ended up entering at age of I think 19 at the lowest management role, executive officer, it was eo, but it was not at the bottom rung. It was quite for my age, really good job.

Nadia:
And then they put me into. I worked in asylum, my life changed. My life absolutely changed. Working in the asylum department at the age of 19, managing staff. Managing asylum applications. This would have been late nineties. So there’s a height of the Iraq war, so you’re having thousands applications a week from Iraq nationals coming in. And that was when I really started looking at my privilege, looking at spaghetti of life.

Nadia:
And at the age of 19, it was so overwhelming. I remember the first week of working there, I went home every day crying because it was so overwhelming to see all these faces, all this trauma, this looking at you. So it’s like a perfect perplexed class. Applicants for one side and staff with the other side. And it was just, wow. You just. You just felt a sense of just a world bigger than yours and people. And then another thing that happened at that time as well was that in my own country, Sierra Leone, we were also going through a civil conflict.

Nadia:
And times when I saw members of my own family on the other side of the glass and I remember thinking to myself, but for a decision that my grandparents made in the fifties, I could easily be on that side of the glass. And, yeah, and it was just so much happening. I was like, wow, this is. This is really serious. Life is so serious. And it became.

Melody Moore:
That’s a lot at 19.

Nadia:
Yeah, yeah. And then I still have my little compartment, compartmentalised realities of this, trying to just dense make everything. But, yeah, so I did that for a couple of years. Yeah, I don’t. I don’t really know what. I don’t. I don’t really know what I was really experiencing during that time. I think I was just on autopilot doing it.

Nadia:
My grandmother decided to stay in Syria. She could have come over here, but she said that she didn’t want to leave and she decided to stay there through the civil conflict. So I also had that kind of known my grandmother was over there and just, you know, wanted to be in her home. But thank goodness everything worked out for my family. We were. We were fine and the war ended. But it did change the geographical kind of makeup of my family. So a lot of my family migrated over to the UK because obviously was a bit.

Nadia:
It was unsafe. Instead, a lot of them came over here, but then that was interesting to have them over here, but that was. Yeah, that was an interesting time for me. Interesting. I took a couple of years out. Then after that kind of stabilised, my life stabilised, my home life stabilised, I then applied to university. And to answer your question, at the time, you’re supposed to, on the UCAs form, as it was then, you’re supposed to put six universities. You pick one course and you pick six universities you want to go to.

Nadia:
So the first university I went to visit was University of Sussex. As soon as I stepped foot on that campus, I fell in love with it.

Melody Moore:
Brighton. Yeah, yeah.

Nadia:
It was absolutely beautiful. And I knew that was where I was supposed to be, out of my home. So instead of doing six universities, one course, I did one university, six courses.

Melody Moore:
Like, I’m going there, I’ll do anything.

Nadia:
Anything, yeah. But then, luckily for me, they had six different types of law courses. I would put all the law courses on there. University of Sussex. And of course I got in. So they were like, oh, she’s keen.

Melody Moore:
They probably thought, either she’s keen or she’s filled this form in wrong.

Nadia:
I was like, I’m not going anywhere else. This is my. It was just so beautiful. Gets romanticised and everything had these beautiful, like, green, luscious trees, spacious, had a huge library. I thought, oh, my God, this is heaven. And I top it off because I’m still in my romance era. The chancellor at the time was Richard Attenborough, and for me, that was it. I was like, what? It was, yeah.

Nadia:
Again, it was idyllic for me. I’m still romanticising life. It was just idyllic. I’m like, yeah, I want to be here, Richard Attenborough. Where else would I go? I’m going to be given my, my degree, my certificate by Richard Attenborough. There’s nothing else I want. I’m in this beautiful place. And that was it for me.

Nadia:
Went to Sussex.

Melody Moore:
I love this fact. This romance era seems to have lasted quite a long time.

Nadia:
Absolutely. It really did. It really, really did.

Melody Moore:
What did you end up studying? What form of law?

Nadia:
So I enrolled in LLB law and I did that for the first year. And yes, still romanticising things, I did it. And what I realised about myself in the first year is, obviously I had this whole thing throughout primary school and secondary school, where I loved reading, I loved creativity, I loved innovation, and I did English for a levels. I did it and I just loved English. And what I felt with law was that I lost that creativity and it was too structured and a lot of it. I thought the law wasn’t logical, it just didn’t make sense to me. I could do it, but I just felt I lost a bit of me because there’s other people’s precedents, other people’s case laws. I felt as though I lost my voice a little bit.

Nadia:
And so, yeah, I kind of struggled. One of the things, like, I had a friend who was at Sussex from my primary school, and she was like, at university, I didn’t. I’m not a big drink. I’m not a big. I wasn’t a big party, and I kind of made up for no time.

Melody Moore:
But at that point, you’re in the party era now. You’ve left the romance era in the party era.

Nadia:
At that time, I wasn’t. So whenever she would try to find me, I was always in the library. And I was also in the library in, like, the. In some section that wasn’t law. And she was like, do you ever read any law books? I’m like, yeah, I do. But look, there’s so many books here. There’s so many books about everything. She’s like, oh, my God.

Nadia:
I was so amazed about everything there. And it was so lovely. So in second year, I actually transferred, and I actually transferred onto a course, international relations and development, which I think makes sense, given my background, given. Yeah, everything. I was like, wow. And I didn’t know that course existed before I applied to Sussex. I didn’t know any of these other courses existed. So I’m like, no, I think, yeah, this is what my life is about right now, about the international community.

Nadia:
It’s about trying to help other people, about trying to help those less fortunate that I transferred onto that course.

Melody Moore:
You said earlier that you did law because all the girls in your family did law. Why was that? What was the. You know, where did that come from?

Nadia:
So, in Sierra Leone, my family, we have a quite strong legal background in Sierra Leone. So one of the most successful people in my family was a really, really. It was a lawyer, held quite a senior position in Sierra Leone government. So that was the direction of our family. So we still have a strong legal background in our family still now. But. So it was just, that was, what if you were academic, that was what you’re going to do. That’s what our family was doing at the time.

Melody Moore:
And how did they react then when you decided to go and do something different?

Nadia:
Yeah, I think international relations were still okay, because it was still. At the time in Sierra Leone, we had the largest contingencies of the United nations. In Sierra Leone, it was the largest convoy they’ve ever had anywhere at that time. So it was still okay to do, because that’s actually what. Because I think my thinking right then was not about a life in the UK, it was actually about a life in Sierra Leone. Now I’m thinking about it, actually. It was about Sierra Leone for some reason. So it.

Nadia:
It was okay, to be honest with you, it was okay about them. Yeah.

Melody Moore:
And what did you do with that degree?

Nadia:
Well, Melody, what did I do? So for part of that degree, I did, like, a work placement abroad. And so I went back to Sierra for about six months to go and work for aid agency and I chose to grassroots agency because I thought I could just have a bit more of a big, big impact there. But they also had like, a partnership with the UN. And I remember my tutor at the time saying, do not over romanticise development work because it’s a business like any other. I know you’re going into it with good intentions, but just know it’s a business like any other. And I remember thinking, yeah, that’s great, but I know what I’m doing. So I went over to the audio and wanted to change the world. And then his words just came to.

Nadia:
Came to fruition. It was a business like any other. Not everyone was in it for the same reasons that I was. I saw the impact aid agencies have on developing nations and that are not always positive. And actually I saw probably more negative than positive. And I saw how they were changing kind of behaviours and just changing cultures out there, which wasn’t always for the better. I felt of the kind of the society and I kind of fell out of love with it. I thought, I’m not sure.

Nadia:
There’s things like the God complex, the saviour complex, things like that, which I felt they really did a lot of harm in terms of people taking away the self empowerment of nations, of people relying on handouts instead of actually knowing they can actually make the change themselves. And it just didn’t really sit right with me. So I kind of, um. Yeah, yeah, it. I kind of. Yeah, I just want.

Melody Moore:
It wasn’t what you thought it was going to be, so.

Nadia:
No, no, it really wasn’t. Yeah. So, yeah, so I think that probably was when the romance of life actually just died completely. For me.

Melody Moore:
Romance era was over.

Nadia:
Over.

Melody Moore:
So what did you do? You went back to the civil service? Is that when you went back there?

Nadia:
Yeah, I kind of just fell back there, because again, as I was drifting, I was really, really drifting. I had no defined career path and I just. I was just. I was in this job. Everyone was telling me it was an amazing job. My grandfather’s absolutely so proud of me being this job. When I was at university, people ask me, how did she get this job? I’ve been trying to get into it, so I thought, okay, maybe it might be a good job. And so I just kind of dedicated my time to the civil service and that’s where I spent the majority, well, most of my adult working life becoming there.

Nadia:
Career civil service servant.

Melody Moore:
And presumably you did the thing that lots of civil servants do. You moved around departments, different jobs, different roles.

Nadia:
Yeah. So this is where it gets interesting. So when the asylum department is based in Croydon, that’s where it’s operational. So where in operational departments you get a lot of diversity. In operational departments, most of diversity is at the junior grades. So what, what you got there was, I would say, a lack of. Not visual, lack of self belief. Because you know that, that saying, you see, if you see it, you can achieve it, you can become it, but when you don’t see people who look like stuff in senior, senior positions, you don’t really believe it.

Nadia:
So I went back there maybe for a year or so, and I realised it wasn’t for me. There are some really, the behaviours that they didn’t, they weren’t. It wasn’t for me. It didn’t fit well with my moral compass, some of the things that were happening there. And so I just did what nobody does there. I applied for a job in a different department and I remember when I got my job at different departments, a foreign office, I remember my manager actually saying to me, well, how did you do that? And it wasn’t. How did you do that in a. Wow, that’s impressive.

Nadia:
How’d you do that? It was like, how on earth did you do that kind of thing? And I was like, wow. So that’s when I actually knew I did the right thing. Actually, if I just rewind. So I actually went for a promotion before I went. Started applying for jobs and before I got the phone off, a job went for promotion. They have this thing called an assessment centre back there where you don’t apply for specific job, you apply for a promotion. Yes, I went for the assessment, I got the promotion. A ticket, it’s called a golden ticket, it’s valued for two years.

Nadia:
I got that and, and then I sat on that ticket for two years because I just. I was looking for jobs in the same area and I was like, no, actually, I don’t want to be promoted in this area. This isn’t where I want to stick. I want to do something else. So what I realised, if I apply for lateral move, it can get me further rather than going up straight. And so that’s what I actually started doing, was jumping around, applying for jobs at the same grade because I knew it would give me the wealth of experience I needed to be like a really rounded civil servant before I then went up. That’s what I started doing. So I started with foreign office first.

Melody Moore:
And were there people or experiences in the civil service that really stand out to you that, you know, had an impact on you and influenced you in the early days?

Nadia:
No. So, but what, what I was able to do when I was jumping around different departments, different departments is really weird, amazing because they all have different ecosystems, different cultures that you tap in. There are a lot of different ways of working, which you just assume it’s going to be like a hegemonic, kind of homogeneous type of existence around the whole list of observers. And that was not true. So as I was moving around, I was also applying for kind of development schemes, different development schemes. Different departments have a different scheme. And what I found was I was missing out by literally one point, half a point. And I was really confused how someone can miss out on a half a point and then be told you’re not good enough.

Nadia:
I’m like, well, no, half a point means actually you kind of good enough. Because then I think going back, no help, no nothing. I think, well, actually there should be something to capture those people in those areas. But so what I ended up doing myself was I thought, okay, so you have, you have these schemes. I ended up looking at what you did on these schemes. A lot of these development schemes, what they did, like fast track, fast stream, they move you around different departments so that you can increase your skills, knowledge in different skills. I thought I would just do that myself. I will replicate the fast stream for myself.

Nadia:
So I did a little.

Melody Moore:
So clever. I love that.

Nadia:
I did a skills gap analysis to see where I was, I was lacking. So things like finance, communications, operations team, team management, and I looked for opportunities across different departments where I can actually increase those skills. So foreign office was a comms role. And then after that I looked at the Treasury, I had no finance skills, so I looked to the treasury and I got another, it was another comm job in the treasury, but I was around finance, so I would end up just, you know, learning just by being there. So I think that’s where I met my first person who really did change the outlook of who I was, who I thought I was, and how I kind of looked at myself and empowered myself. And that person at treasury would have been in. The guy called Jonathan at the time, he was the chancellor’s spokesman. He couldn’t have been that much older than me, really, but he.

Nadia:
He did something which impacted my career, really, from that point. So before then, what you’d find was a lot of people were projecting their own insecurities onto me. So when I was moving, but when I was leaving jobs that I wasn’t happy with, people say, you can’t do that. So when I left the kind of asylum, immigration area, people like, you can’t do that, you can’t go to the foreign office. That’s what manager asked me. How do you do that? Who’s kind of implying you can’t do that? How are you doing that? And then when I left the foreign office job, it was within a space of time. Usually when you get posted, you first stay there for, like, two years before you move on. And I think I left after a year because I wanted to move on.

Nadia:
People like, you can’t do that. Well, who said you can’t do that? I can do that, you know, and I think Jonathan Black was the first person who kind of confirmed that you can do whatever you want to do. And the way he did that was I applied, I was working in treasury, doing a comms role and junior again, and he created a team, prime minister’s question team, and it was nothing to do with me. It was part of the press office type of duty, then the press office at that time, in the treasury elite, they were formidable. They were just like the people you wanted to be. They knew their stuff, they were sharp, they were just so intelligent. They were absolutely amazing. So I got to be part of this team.

Nadia:
I was like, oh. Looking back and knowing how he thought. Jonathan is a person who seemed to, in my opinion, he gave roles to people according to their ability and nothing, their grade, you know, and so he saw that I’d be able to do that, and so he put me into this team, Prime Minister’s question team with somebody else. And what the prime minister’s question team was PMQ team. And obviously, you know, every Wednesday, MP give questions in parliament to the prime minister and they have to answer it. So if there was a finance related question, who come to the treasury? We will find out to the different teams who draught a response, then it’s number ten. And so I was doing that role for a while and then. So you draught it and then number ten.

Nadia:
It gets number ten, then they will kind of just tidy up and then it goes off to the prime minister. So one of the key defining moments for me in this role was, I don’t know if you’ve seen a film called clearing Present Danger with Harrison Ford.

Melody Moore:
No, you haven’t.

Nadia:
Oh, no. It’s so good. You have to watch it. One of the things, he gets to advise the president or something, president of the United States or something, and then the president’s been interviewed on tv and then the president says, repeats his advice verbatim, what he says, and he’s at home with his wife. Like I said that, I told people to say that. And literally I had that moment, pmQs, where I drafted a line and it went to number ten. They thought it was good enough. And so the prime minister, David Cameron, at the time, he was reading out my, my words.

Nadia:
Oh my God, those are my words, my words. There was no one around to celebrate me. So this, me and myself, that’s something that I took with me and that’s something that Jonathan, like, helped me to get because he gave me that kind of responsibility in that role when I don’t think anyone else would have, because in previous roles it was very greatist. Like, you exist in this box and you can’t be anything else. Whereas with Jonathan it’s like, well, no, you are you, if you got the ability, I’m going to actually give you whatever you want to do. Another thing, how this manifested as well is that he was send me into meetings at number ten with head of departments to just represent the treasury. And I’m like, I’m a little junior manager and I’m here with head of departments in this meeting. He’s like, well, you can do it.

Nadia:
And that self belief, that belief that he had in me, it just, it was amazing for my confidence and my self belief, and I’ve kept it to this day. I think it’s changed, actually, trajectory of my career in that I was applying for jobs after that point without any kind of hesitation, any lack of confidence, knowing that actually I can do it.

Melody Moore:
And how long did you spend in the civil service? Did you get into Dei whilst you’re in the civil service? Or is that something that’s happened subsequently?

Nadia:
Subsequently. So I’ve jumped around after Jonathan, I jumped around probably two or three times. And I met managers who, I wouldn’t call them leaders, I met leaders. So the difference, I met people who showed me what real, true leadership work was. And these are people who led with the person, people focused, they led with the person rather than the work. They were outcomes focused. They were. They led with humanity.

Nadia:
And I think they really started to help me to understand what it was to be a good leader. They helped me to understand what you actually needed to actually progress through leadership roles. And I think using them and kind of emulating them helped me to become the person I needed to be in order, fit, get properly into the DEI space. So my jump into the DEI space was actually accidental. Honestly, I looked around and I thought, people aren’t doing it right. I did. Still, I didn’t. What’s the word? I think for me, the problem with Dei, I felt as though it’s a nice to have.

Nadia:
I don’t think. I didn’t think people respected it, gave it the respect that I think it should have. It was an add on other people’s jobs. The wrong people were in it. I think for Dei, you really have to lead with the people. You really have to lead with. You have to be so empathetic, you have to be so compassionate, and you have to be so respectful of people’s views, actually, in order to get to the right space. And I think there’s a lot of maybe tokenistic gestures in dei space, a lot of knee jerking, which I think sometimes doesn’t actually help and actually harms the cause.

Nadia:
I think people are well intended, but sometimes you do have to say no in a DeI space. And I think when you put the wrong people in the space, it can have an adverse impact.

Melody Moore:
Give me a sense of something that you say tokenistic. You know what? Give me an example of that.

Nadia:
Oh, Melody, I think this would be quite hard to do without the context. I’m not sure I can provide a context right now. Maybe it might come a bit later, but not all good ideas are the best ideas. Okay, so let’s say this. Okay, so I used to work when I say that in an area where. Okay, so civil service generally, as I said before, you have your leadership teams, are usually quite homogenous. They lack a diversity, I feel so especially around when, I suppose the Black Lives Matter movements really probably shifted the kind of dialogue around DEI issues in the UK. And I remember being in the department where they were trying.

Nadia:
Well intended. They had, like, a Dei champ, senior Dei champion, and what that person wanted to do was put in place because they had a lack of experience around dei themselves. Any. Any suggestion that was put forward to them by black or asian or other minority ethnic staff, they will just implement, or they will just wanted to go with it. Well, it’s actually if you look at the longer term outcomes and what we’re trying to achieve, personally, I thought that was the wrong approach because actually they wouldn’t give you those long term improvements. It’s just like something very tokenistic, very. This knee jerking. So I.

Nadia:
So I worked for a place called the inspector of constabulary and fire rescue services, and what we did there is that we inspected all fire services and police services across the UK. So one of the things some services like to do is they wrap their appliances or their vehicles in kind of like Dei slogans. And I used to just say, okay, you’ve done that, but so what? It was that. So what? Question so what do you achieve by doing that? How do you measure the impact of that? Are you bringing people closer together? Are you being divisive? So is that kind of thing. Yes, it looks good, but does it match the maturity of your organisation? Are you there yet? Are you taking your people with you? And it’s that kind of stuff. We don’t look at the totality of what their actions are doing. So there is a place wrapping your appliances and slogan, but you have to make sure that your organisation is in the right place, has the right level of maturity in order to actually, you know, support what comes with that. So that kind of thing, I always say, so what? Okay, you do this.

Nadia:
Yeah, it sounds good, but so what?

Melody Moore:
Yeah, it’s almost like, do you do the things to back it up? You know, because that’s something very visible, isn’t it? If you’ve not got the other things happening in your organisation, it’s like you say, it’s a tokenistic rather than meaningful.

Nadia:
I always say there’s three levels to Dei. One is reacting, one is responding and one is embedding. And a lot of people, they do the reacting and they don’t think about the other stuff. If you just react to surface level, nothing comes of it. But sometimes you do have to react. So on the back of black life matters, yes, we did have to react. It was. It was very topical.

Nadia:
You react, but you make sure you know that you’re just. If you’re just reacting, make sure you’re aware that you’re just reacting and don’t think you’re doing this and that’s going to change the culture, because the cultural change is such a. Is a much longer kind of longer journey. But just understand what you’re doing and then make sure you’re doing the other stuff to embed the actual changes you want to see.

Melody Moore:
So you moved into Dei because you had a sense that you could do it better, that it wasn’t being done in the way you thought it would. Is that right? Or should be, rather.

Nadia:
Yeah. So I had the opportunity to join the organisation I’m with currently, having seen it for my pre, on the other side, my previous job, inspecting. So I moved inspecting this organisation to become part of it because I saw they had some really key issues and big issues. They actually just completed a culture review and out of that culture, some really, really significant issues. And I knew that where I was, I could, I could. The changes that I could, I could, I could do were just wouldn’t be enough. It’s more a theory based role, whereas this is more actually putting the theory into practise. And I had the experience enough to know that actually I know what good looks like here.

Nadia:
I know how I could actually really make meaningful changes. And so I. Then the reality, I’m sorry, the opportunity came up for me to join the organisation and I took it and I just left the civil service and I thought, I’m going to do this, I can do this. I thought I had the skills, I had experience and I thought, actually, I haven’t seen other people around the public sector in particular trying to do this. I know I can do this. And I’ve been really fortunate to have leadership team in place who have trusted my vision, who have really supported me in achieving this and I think we are making some real advancements in this space.

Melody Moore:
Tell me what you think about. You know, it’s in the news, it’s everywhere, about a backlash against Dei. What’s your thoughts? Is there one? Is it real?

Nadia:
So one of the things that we’ve been exploring in my team, I have a really, really great strategic lead in my team. I’m going to butcher. She’s written a whole paper about this and I’m going to butcher it. Sorry. It’s called agonism and it’s about finding the middle ground. So I think what’s. I think the backlash, my perception of the backlash has been that there’s certain factions that felt attacked, that felt excluded from the DEI space and it felt like it’s been done to them. And agonism, it’s about understanding their realities.

Nadia:
And I think Dei is all about understanding other people’s realities, not necessarily making everyone’s reality be the same, because that’s impossible. And I think that’s where people are going wrong. That’s where you get your tokenistic stuff, where it’s just knee jerking. We all have to do this now. No. And I think if you do that, you really lose in the crowd. So one of the things that we’re leading with in my organisation at the moment is that we have put in a programme where we lead with emotional intelligence. In our Dei teaching, we’ve developed a thing.

Nadia:
It’s called an allyship spectrum, where it’s about empowering people, be part of the conversation, not telling them, not making them feel bad, or excluding them. I always say so my organization’s 95% white, able bodied heterosexual male. I cannot do Dei without them, so there’s no point in not including them in the conversations. I have to make sure these people are included. So we always say we lead with the I, the inclusion, and also it’s inclusion for all. It’s not inclusion, the minority, it’s inclusion for all. So with the allyship spectrum, what we do is, it’s a spectrum. It starts with the bigoted behaviour.

Nadia:
So when we did a culture review that large, that majority was, you know, that doesn’t happen here. I’m not racist, I’m not misogynistic. And we’re like, that’s fine. We start with, you’re not. That’s fine. If you’re not, that’s fine. Anybody who is, they’re not part of this conversation. We don’t want them to be part of this.

Nadia:
Of our organisation. And then you go from the bigoted. We get that out of the way. So you know that we’re telling them, okay, you’re not. You’re including this conversation. Then we go to the anti. So your anti race is anti misogynistic. Then you have the anti.

Nadia:
Then you have. From there you go to. I forgot, I’m sorry. This is my. This is actually my framework. I’ve forgotten.

Melody Moore:
I do that all the time.

Nadia:
Oh, no, no, sorry. No, no, no. So you got. You got people who are just bigoted, then you got people who say, I’m not racist and I’m not. I’m not misogynistic. We say, that’s fine, you’re not. That’s what most people say. We say, but that’s quite passive.

Nadia:
If you’re not, that doesn’t actually stay what you are. So then I. We go into more active space, which is the anti. Which is actually. If you’re anti something, that means you actually proactively doing something. So what are you doing? And we talk about the difference between not being something and being anti something. And often we help them to understand that when you’re not something, sometimes it means that you can actually be allowed poor behaviours to happen around you because you just say, well, I’m not doing it, but they’re doing it. I’m not.

Nadia:
But we’re saying, but then is there a way we can get you to the anti space when actually you can actually start for actively disrupting some of those poor behaviours? And then what we find about that is that we find a lot of people are scared to go to the anti space because the repercussions on them, because these are their peers that also they don’t have the skills to not disrupt. You know, what do I do when I see that? Then we talk about. Sometimes when we talk about the anti, they go into. Oh, no, they go into the textbook. Oh, yes. So I should go in the challenge and do this and be like, well, actually, let’s just read it back. Is it actually safe for you to do that? You know, can you, if you see something, can you literally go to your peers, somebody who you may have been on a job with for like, you know, tens of years, you know, you, these are your friends outside, can you actually go and say something? They’re like, well, you know, probably not. It might affect my career.

Nadia:
Like, oh, let’s see, what else can you do? So we talked about micro interruptions, micro challenges, you know, can you change the subject? Can you just even, just go and talk to the person who you think is being recipient of poor behaviours, is checking with them so that they know there’s another ally in the room they can talk to? Just something really subtle that disrupt that behaviour, that’s anti. And then the full spectrum is allyship. So I think people ban the word allyship around. I don’t think. I think the majority of people are not allies. I don’t think we’re anywhere near allyship. So whenever people say allyship might my skin calls, I’m thinking, no, no, no, allyship is where actually, I don’t have to, if I’m in a room, I don’t have to talk because you understand it and you’re talking for me and I don’t have to be the voice that’s always saying, oh, but, oh, but, oh, but. Because that’s the voice I am right now.

Nadia:
I’m the voice that people don’t like to hear. I’m the voice that people cut out when I say something. I’m the always that voice, you know, bring people back down, you know. So allyship is when I’m not, when I’m not in the room, that’s what allyship is. They don’t even need me. So I think when I see allyship, I’m like, no, no, you can’t, we’re not there yet. We’re really not there yet. So anti, it’s not.

Nadia:
But those are where we’re adding at the moment.

Melody Moore:
What’s your view on. I’ve seen a number of people be criticised, you know, men criticised for talking about women’s issues, white people criticised for talking about things that affect black ethnic minority people. And in my mind, they’re demonstrating allyship because they’re talking to their audience, which are likely to be like them, and they are, you know, they’re trying to, I guess, amplify their voices, but I’ve seen people leap on them and criticise them for that because they’re not from that background, therefore they shouldn’t speak about it. You know, it’s a man, he shouldn’t speak about women’s things. And I’m curious as to your view on that.

Nadia:
I always say dei is about understanding your context. I mean, if you’ve gone into a room and that’s the reception you’ve got, then I’m thinking maybe you haven’t understood the room you’re in. And I think it’s all about context. Virtual signalling never goes down, right. So if your room aren’t receiving what you’re saying, then maybe you need to understand more about where they are. So I always say with me, the way my eye CI is, I go where I meet my audience, where they are and we have the conversation that’s actually applicable to them. There’s no point having a really great strategy or really great outlooks that are way up over here and they’re completely different in the spectrum because it just won’t land. And if it doesn’t land, then you’re not really communicating, not really engaging, you’re just talking at people.

Nadia:
So for me, it’s all about context. One of the things I’ve noticed going through this is that my role models, my key people who have actually shaped my journey, which is me to the EI, are not what people would probably expect, not typical role models. They’re all white men and they have given me a black woman, something that actually has changed my life and something that I’ve taken, it’s empowered me and made me a better person. So I do think that you can receive knowledge and empowerment from different spaces, people who don’t look like you, but I do think you have to. It’s all about context. You have to really know your.

Melody Moore:
You’ve got in some of your notes here about your permission to be you and your relationship with God. I’m curious, you know, tell us a bit more about that.

Nadia:
I think from my civil service days, like I said, I, a lot of it was about people defining me and putting me in a box and telling me what I can do and what I couldn’t do. And I think I’ve moved into a space now where I’m a lot, I have a lot stronger understanding of who I am. And one of the things I used to do as part of my kind of gap now there’s a lot of psychometric tests and what came of them was the fact that I was never strongly in any kind of criteria. I was always quite mid mid and it kind of showed I was very adaptable to myself environment. So I’m a person, I can adapt and I can really just work well in different environments and without losing a strong sense of myself because I think that’s one of the things I felt the civil service was doing, was I was trying to be, to fit in, be a part of that culture when actually I got from is actually, no, I’m not fitting in here. And that’s my brand, that’s who I am, that’s my strength. And I think that’s what Dei has given me. The fact that actually Dei is about different and I’m here to champion different.

Nadia:
I see that I am different, therefore there’s no one better than me to do it. So a lot of people come to me for mentoring, coaching, and I always say, well, it’s not about you being me or you following my footsteps. It’s about you understanding who you are and you actually setting that to wherever you go. People have to buy who you are, you have to understand who you are. One of the things I did a lot in the civil service is codeswitch. I did it so much. And when I left treasury, I actually got offered a job at number ten, which I subsequently turned down. And my line manager was like, I think you might be the only person in history who’s actually turned down in the job number ten.

Nadia:
But the reason why I did it at that time, why it was so important is because I was actually burning out, because I was co switching so much. Being the Treasury, I loved being a treasury. I learned so much, I grew so much. But actually there was a cost of doing it.

Melody Moore:
Say some more about what you mean by codeswitching because some people might not be familiar with that term.

Nadia:
So from how I understand it, and again, I’m not the most eloquent. Codeswitching is where I’d say from my perspective of being a black female. So obviously, once I got out of my junior operational roles, there are fewer black people around. I’m going up the leadership ladder. And so what you kind of do, you start to assimilate to the culture that you see. So I am meeting more middle class white people. And so I’m. I’m code switching to a kind of like, to fit into that, to that group.

Nadia:
You know, I’m laughing at jokes I don’t quite understand. I might be going out to the pub more. I might just be, you know, just. It’s different being professional. You can be professional, not codeswitch. But I’m kind of assimilated to a culture that’s not quite authentic to myself. And it kind of takes the toll a little bit. It really does.

Nadia:
You know, you might dress differently, just do different activities. And I think it probably came easier to me because I said with the psychoanalysis test, I am adaptable. But I think maybe I might have gone a bit too far. But I had to turn on that job at number ten because I felt like I can’t do. I can’t do it anymore. I need to be in an environment where actually I can just be myself. And so I went into another operational role because I felt as though actually I can just be more of myself there. I still be professional, still be a leader.

Nadia:
But I know that if I say something in this way, other people understand me. You know, other people. I could take shortcuts in my interactions with people, whereas I felt that I probably couldn’t if I stayed in kind of Whitehall, kind of government service.

Melody Moore:
It’s interesting you say that about DNI, because I think, you know, D and I is very much. It’s about being a change agent. And I’ve spent most of my career being a consultant, which is also about being a change agent. And I have a theory that you have to be similar enough for them to let you through the door and different enough to be a catalyst for change. And if you’re too assimilated and too similar, then actually you can’t make those changes because you’ve lost that ability to be maybe a bit more spiky or a bit more see the problems. So, yeah, it’s really interesting that you’ve found in that DNI role that you’re able to be much more yourself.

Nadia:
And it’s interesting, you said, about not being too different, because I. What I do, I’m a leader. So I actually don’t. I don’t think I. I’m a jack of all trades, being a journalist and civil servant. So my key skill is leadership, is just leading my teams, people focus leading my teams, and I hire in the experts, so I hire in the SME’s for Dei, different aspects of Dei. But what I found is that, that they get frustrated quite a lot in this space because they do want to see change immediately. They are very frustrated of the slow rate of change, I have to say.

Nadia:
Okay, we have to. I understand that, you know where we need to be. I understand that your frustrations, but we have to understand where everyone else is as well and where we’re working. You know, we have to meet people where they are. And I think that’s where you get, like, the high level of burnout I think you have in a Dei space. Just because it’s so hard to communicate, people just don’t get it and you have to. I feel for me, when I’m building my team, I have to find people who have that kind of emotional intelligence to understand that this is a slow burn. And also you are talking to people who aren’t as knowledgeable about this subject as you are, who you know.

Nadia:
But for the most part, I do feel as though people are trying their best. But people also have their own vulnerabilities where actually they do feel attacked. And they do feel, though, they are getting pushed out of a state. Obviously, you’re taking power away from people, which is scary to them. They still means they’re being harmed, but no, no, no. It’s not that we want to harm you. It’s one of the. Share the power amongst all people.

Nadia:
That’s all.

Melody Moore:
But, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nadia:
It’s an interesting space to be in.

Melody Moore:
Yeah. Tell me what’s next? What’s next for you? Do you have any thoughts on what’s next for DNI? Curious.

Nadia:
Well, what’s next for me? I’ll start with that one. I’m actually quite. I’m really happy with the space I’m in. Like I said before, I have leaders who I wouldn’t have joined this organisation, but for having a leader who I think is authentically supporting the DEI space, I think without that, there’s no point doing it. I wouldn’t have done it at all. I also have a line manager who is really. He’s really empowering. They’ve given me the space to do what I want to do.

Nadia:
So I’m the voice who pushes back on tokenistic knee jerk stuff. And I kind of say, no, we’ve got to hold our nerve. So I do all. I always say that Dei is actually about the boring stuff. It’s about doing all the boring stuff, right? And what I say about that is that people think Dei, like, it’s a step for a yemenite thing, that this happens. I’m like, no, it’s not. Cei is about having really faced and secure HR systems, because if you have HR systems where people can. People can trust, like, if they have any problems, they can report things, they know it’s going to get resolved.

Nadia:
That’s when you create the psychological safety, which then lets people come with their authentic selves, whatever that is, you know, it fosters. But if you have the. The right HR functions in place, it fosters an environment of psychological safety where you get people who have talked to each other and just like to trust the culture, you build the right culture. Another thing about Dei which I think people don’t understand is that data, for me, I always say, like I said before, is that, so what? So you’re doing this? Why are you doing this? What is the reason? What is the data to support you doing this? And then the so what? So you’ve done that? What have you achieved? And I don’t see that enough in Dei space. It’s all quite nebulous. People just. It’s quite anecdotal sometimes. And I’m like, I want to see the hard data, just like any other areas of the business.

Nadia:
Show me the data. So that’s what I. That’s where I think Di has to go, has to be data led, has to be supported by data, and you have to meet people where they are, really, in terms of what’s next. For me, I really want to. I want to help to professionalise the kind of Dei space. And I want to go into psychology. I really think it’s about has to be people led. You have to understand.

Nadia:
You have to understand people to be in Dei, you really do. So there’s a thing called cultural intelligence. I think that’s a really interesting space right now that just professionalises the Dei space a little bit. So I think my problem with Di at the moment has been too many people going through it because they like it, or just because. And I don’t want to come out the wrong way, but when I recruit for Dei professionals, for most of my team, I have a team of about 15 in my dei space, only three or four of the roles. I actually want Dei expertise in the rest. There are other hard skills that I need you to bring, because a lot of the time when I’ve recruited in the past, people have led with, I think I’ll be good in this space because I come from a diverse background. That really isn’t good enough.

Nadia:
It really isn’t good enough to be in this space. For me, we really need some really strong skill sets and expertise around data, around reporting, around education, around teaching. There’s some really hard skills that you need in this space.

Melody Moore:
I totally agree. What about. I’m just going to ask you a few questions that I ask all of my guests. What about any books that you recommend?

Nadia:
Oh, I wish I had. I forgot about this, but I wish I had another book. But for me personally, in terms of my life journey around identity, around purpose, purpose making, it has to be the alchemist. Just because I’ve gone all around, I’m a huge traveller. I’ve gone all around the world trying to find answers about everything and come back to the beginning. And, like, my answer was right at the beginning. It’s like, either started with, it starts with you. It starts with your belief system.

Nadia:
It starts with what you hold dear, and that’s where you find your answers. So it has to be the alchemist at the moment, for me, it’s such.

Melody Moore:
A strong element of your story comes through, I think, around values and how important they are to you. And I love this, the fact that you now feel that you’re able to be you, because it sounds to me like you’ve been coding, switching your whole life. Right? From a very young age, actually. But it’s really lovely to hear that you’ve kind of come, found a place where you feel you can be yourself and linked to that. Then what, from this place, what advice would you give to your younger self?

Nadia:
So I’ll say two things. So is this part of the strap line?

Melody Moore:
No, that’s the next one.

Nadia:
What advice I give to myself. Oh, I would probably say, oh, Lord.

Melody Moore:
I mean, it may turn into your strapline.

Nadia:
I would say it has to be, don’t let anybody define. Don’t let anybody define you. It’ll have to be that one, because I think I had a strong sense of self, then I kind of lost it. I’ve had, like, white noise around me. Let people like, you know, interfere with what I knew was true to myself. So I think it’ll just be that, don’t let anybody define you.

Melody Moore:
Would that also be your strap line, your title for your story?

Nadia:
I guess it would be. Really? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Now I’ve gone through everything. It has to be that one. Yeah.

Melody Moore:
Don’t let anyone define you. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for this. Apologies for my dog barking in the background at various times, but I’ve really, really enjoyed hearing your story. It’s absolutely fascinating, really varied. So thank you so much for giving me the time, and I’m sure the listener’s going to love listening.

Nadia:
Well, thank you. And thank you too, Melody. I really appreciate you giving me this time to speak as well and seeing something in me that you thought was worthy.

Melody Moore:
You’re welcome. This podcast is brought to you by Liberare Consulting. If you enjoyed today’s show, why not click on the subscribe button? So you are among the first to hear about new episodes, and we would love for you to do survey and click on the share button and share this episode with one of your friends.