Toby Mildon 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. Before we dive in, I want to tell you about something that I’m really excited about, which is our being free membership. We’re developing an online community which is designed for people who are interested in personal growth. If you’re navigating career transitions, maybe feeling stuck or burnt out, or simply seeking more meaning in your life, then this is for you. Membership gives you access to a range of resources, a supportive community and monthly group coaching calls.

Melody Moore:
It will allow you to explore what freedom means to you on your own terms. Head to liberareconsulting.co.uk/beingfree to join the waitlist. And now back to the podcast. So, my guest today, I’m absolutely delighted to have Toby Mildon here with me. Toby, do you want to introduce yourself?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, it’s lovely to see you. Thanks ever so much for inviting me. So, I’m a workplace inclusion consultant. I work with heads of hrs. Sorry, I work with heads of HR, typically in medium sized companies, and help them create their EDI strategies. And we do that in order for them to attract and recruit diverse talent, to avoid falling into groupthink amongst their senior leadership teams, to create a great brand where people want to stay and continue working, and it’s all to help them thrive as an organisation.

Melody Moore:
And you said medium sized companies, do you specifically target medium sized? And are they uk, global?

Toby Mildon:
So I predominantly work with uk companies, although quite a few of my clients have got operations outside of the UK that I get involved in. I tend to work with medium sized companies because large companies, they usually have quite a mature or sophisticated approach to diversity and inclusion. So large companies, they may employ ahead of diversity and inclusion and they may even have a team working on it, whereas medium sized companies, they’ve kind of reached this level of maturity where they’ve got a HR function, but they don’t necessarily have the in house capability or expertise around equity, diversity and inclusion. So that’s where I kind of step in and help them with that. But I do also work with small companies, but I tend to work with small scale up companies where actually the founder is really passionate about the culture of the company and they want to make sure that as the company grows, the culture remains a good, positive culture and doesn’t kind of come around to bite them later. But, yeah, I mean, I’ve worked with over 100 clients now. My smallest client is I’ve got 16 members of staff all the way up to working with the NHS. As you know, we’ve got tens of thousands of employees.

Toby Mildon:
Amazon again. Hundreds of thousands of employees. I think so, yeah. It’s all fun.

Melody Moore:
Let’s take a leap back in time, shall we, from talking about what you’re doing now, right back to when you were a child and an important person in your life was your maternal grandmother. Do you want to tell us about her?

Toby Mildon:
Yes. I was born with a neuromuscular disability, so I’ve been a wheelchair user since, well, all of my life. And my grandma was a real important figure in my life. She was a very fun woman and. But she just allowed me to be who I am and tried to encourage me to just grow up like any other normal kids and get involved in normal activities. Yeah.

Melody Moore:
And was that unusual, to have someone to be encouraging you in that way?

Toby Mildon:
Yes and no. I mean, I’ve been really fortunate that I’ve grown up with a very encouraging family, but I do know that I’ve got lots of disabled friends and colleagues and associates in my life, that that’s not always the case that, you know, there are disabled kids that grow up without that support. And I think sometimes it’s almost two ends of the extreme. At one end of the extreme, you’ve got very hands off parenting. The other end of the stream extreme, you’ve got very kind of hands on, Molly coddling type behaviour, wrapping you up in cotton wool, and I don’t think that’s healthy when you reach adulthood.

Melody Moore:
And so what was it that she did to particularly encourage you and what impact do you think that had on you?

Toby Mildon:
I think she was just really good, enabling me to express myself and be creative. She was a very musical person. So she. I mean, she was a trained teacher and she used to run. She had her own nursery in her back garden for kids. So my granddad was an accountant, he had his own accountancy firm and my grandma ran her own business as a. As a nursery for, you know, little kids, toddlers. And in the back of the garden there was this big shed and that.

Toby Mildon:
That’s where. That’s where the nursery was held. So by very nature, she was a very kind of creative person. She played lots of different musical instruments, interested in arts and crafts and things like that, and she just really encouraged me to express myself in ways that I wanted to and just.

Melody Moore:
I know I’m kind of jumping back and forth from timeline. You grow up, you were saying, you know, we talk about here maybe in the eighties. Do you have things changed a lot from a disability perspective in terms of, you know, disabled kids in schools, how, you know, access to things that people need? What’s your view on how much has it changed? How much more does it need to change for kids with disabilities?

Toby Mildon:
It’s a yes and no answer. Things have changed. So, for instance, the disability Discrimination act didn’t come into effect until 1995. So for the first, what, 13 years of my life, if I’ve got my maths correct, maybe 14. Maths was never my strong subject, by the way.

Melody Moore:
Me neither.

Toby Mildon:
So, you know, for the first 1314 years of my life, there was no legislation around disability discrimination. In fact, when it was time for me to go from primary school to secondary school, the head teacher of our local secondary school said that he point blank didn’t want any disabled kids in his school. So I couldn’t go to my local comprehensive school and I had to travel to a school that was an hour away. And I ended up actually because. Because mainstream education wasn’t accessible at that time. I ended up going to a school that was run by Barnardo’s special educational needs school. And I think compared to nowadays, I mean, disabled kids tend to be more integrated into mainstream education than they were in the eighties and the nineties. There is still segregation going on, so things have improved.

Toby Mildon:
But I still have conversations with young people who’ve got the same disability as me, and they are still being told similar things that I was told when I was a teenager. Very limiting careers advice, for example, very having low expectations on them that they can’t go off and go to university and live independent lives and get great jobs working for big companies like I have. And it just really saddens me that they are still receiving this kind of advice.

Melody Moore:
And did your parents have that attitude that you could go off, live independently, have any kind of life that you wanted?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My parents were very encouraging. And I grew up in the west country, in Somerset. So I went to this Barnardo school. But actually, three years later, the school closed down because of the change in the legislation part, mostly with the introduction of the Disability Discrimination act in 1995, the school actually closed down. And then I could go and do my GCSE’s athlete, a mainstream school. And. But again, it was still an hour away from where my parents lived.

Toby Mildon:
And I lived in a hospital, I lived in a hostel in order to be closer to the school because otherwise it would have been like 2 hours of travelling a day.

Melody Moore:
How old were you then?

Toby Mildon:
So, I mean, I went to the Bonardo’s boarding school. It was a boarding school as well, so I must have been eleven or twelve at that age. And then I lived in this hostel at the end of my school doing my GCSE’s and then when I did my a levels and until I left Somerset to go to university in the midlands when I was 18.

Melody Moore:
So you lived quite, I guess, quite independently from your parents then from quite a young age?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah. Yeah. And that gave me the skills to. To be able to live independently when I went off to university and then after university I moved down to London and I lived in London for 20 years working for various companies and live independently. Got my own apartment.

Melody Moore:
What was it like going from your Barnardo school to a mainstream school? What were the kids like? How do the kids behave towards you?

Toby Mildon:
The kids were fine. I remember being scared and I think it was. I mean, at the end of the day I realised I had nothing to worry about but going from a special school to a mainstream school. I kind of. I always had this. I had this like vision of Grange Hill, basically, and that it would be like Grange Hill. It turned out to be nothing like Grange Hill. So I was worried and anxious to begin with.

Toby Mildon:
But I had really great friends at school. I had no problem making friends and I was never bullied. School friends were great, teachers were good. The school that I moved to in 1995 was a brand new school. So it was very modern back in the day. Pretty, you know, pretty accessible compared to other schools that were using old stock. And that was a, that was a big bonus.

Melody Moore:
So there were lifts and wide doors.

Toby Mildon:
And ramps, decent doors, no steps. It was a pretty accessible school.

Melody Moore:
Yeah. Fantastic. Okay, let’s. We’ve got loads to talk about and I’m just so excited to talk about all the different things that you’ve done. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to move you on to talking about Lloyds bank. I’m going to leave that as open as you and just tell us about that and why that was important to you.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah. So I was a teenager. My friends were getting jobs working for supermarkets and shops and things and I wanted to get into the workplace as well. And at the time it felt like I was receiving quite a few rejections. And also I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do a job like my friends were doing. I don’t have the muscle strength to pick up a can of baked beans. So I can’t stack shelves in a supermarket. And so therefore I knew that I needed to do a desk based job and I was applying and trying to get various work experience wasn’t really getting anywhere.

Toby Mildon:
And then I went to open up a savings account in Lloyds bank in my mum’s village. And as I was leaving the appointment, the bank manager who I actually had the appointment with said, is there anything else that I could do to help you? And I said, well, actually, I’d quite like a job, please. And to my surprise, he said, yeah, sure, we can arrange that for you. And he went out of his way to help me to get work experience in the bank. He spoke to a bank manager in another town that had a bigger, more accessible branch because he was in a small, rural branch that wasn’t very wheelchair accessible. And I worked for Lloyds bank during my school and college holidays and also throughout university as well. And I initially started off working in the back office processing cheques, but I wanted to be client facing or customer facing, and they allowed me to work on the desk, working with customers and. Yeah, and having Lloyds bank on my cv was really a stepping stone for me to then get further jobs with the like of.

Toby Mildon:
With the likes of British Airways and Accenture and the BBC.

Melody Moore:
Intensely curious about what made you say, I want a job like, that’s such a bold, courageous thing to come out with. When he asked you that, what made you do it?

Toby Mildon:
I’m really not sure. I think, obviously back at that time, it was on my mind that I wanted to work somewhere and get work experience and I was always attracted to working with big companies and well known brands. So maybe the combination of right time, right place in front of the right person. If a cashier had asked me that, or I doubt I would have had the same response, but it was probably because I had a meeting with the bank manager that he obviously had some influence and persuasion, his level in the company.

Melody Moore:
Do you think he was surprised when you asked him?

Toby Mildon:
I don’t remember. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. He seems to take it in his stride.

Melody Moore:
Maybe he got asked it a lot.

Toby Mildon:
I don’t know. I don’t know. But it’s lodged in my memory. Is a good example of one of the very few inclusive leaders I’ve worked with. He could obviously see something in me. He could perhaps see potential, and he also took a risk because a lot of people are afraid to talk about disability or even talk with disabled people. Scope, who’s a national disability charity have found that over 30% of the UK population don’t know how to talk to or feel that they don’t know how to talk to a disabled person. So he.

Toby Mildon:
He was kind of beyond the norm and then he advocated for me, he acted as a sponsor. And when we talk about inclusive leadership, sponsorship and allyship are hugely powerful.

Melody Moore:
And you said that you went from working in the back office to working in the front office. What was that shift like?

Toby Mildon:
I loved it. I wanted to be out front working with customers. I was getting bored working on the first floor, away from customers, processing cheques.

Melody Moore:
It’s quite boring.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, it gets a bit boring after a while, but I wanted to be out front, I wanted to be talking to customers, I wanted to be helping them with their banking inquiries. And again, I had a really supportive bank manager that I was working for, who facilitated that for me, and what.

Melody Moore:
Was the reaction of the customers?

Toby Mildon:
Totally fine. I dont remember having any customers that took issue with that. I got on really well with customers. I dont remember having any issues. If anything, they might have been surprised by my age.

Melody Moore:
I was going to say, actually, because you were young, right?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, yeah. I was about 15 or 16.

Melody Moore:
What’s a kid doing here?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why is a kid looking at my.

Melody Moore:
Bank account and do I trust them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s amazing. And do you think, you know, what was it, do you think, that made that bank manager, you know, take a real interest in you, you know, really advocate for you? Did you see him do that with people in other minorities? Do you think it was a real passion for him? What do you think it was?

Toby Mildon:
I do think it goes back to the culture of the company. Lloyds bank, for a long time, has a good reputation around diversity and inclusion. Even nowadays, they’re one of those organisations that I often reference as a gold standard when it comes to disability inclusion. They do some really good things and I know there’s probably a bit of bias there because I started off my career working for them, but, I mean, the evidence speaks for itself. They’ve won lots of awards, an external accreditation acknowledging what they do around disability inclusion. So, in hindsight, I think it was probably part of the culture of the bank for a very long time. And I do remember having a conversation with somebody in the bank even then, they had set targets around employing disabled people and I don’t think many organisations back then we’re setting targets.

Melody Moore:
No. Amazing. Let’s move on to your first proper job. So that was what you were doing when you were in school and maybe when we. Did, you do it whilst you’re at college, during the holidays as well. But what was your first real job? Not that I’m dismissing that as a real job, it clearly was, but.

Toby Mildon:
So there’s a couple of examples. My first. My first proper job was either British Airways or accenture. So I worked for British Airways for a year as an internship. As part of my degree. I did a sandwich degree.

Melody Moore:
What was the degree in?

Toby Mildon:
So I did it in marketing management and then, which I’ve never done since, other than, like, obviously, I run my own business.

Melody Moore:
You do it now, so I do.

Toby Mildon:
A lot of marketing now, but I never really did it as a career. So I took a year out of my degree and I worked for British Airways for a year and I was working in business development of engineering services. So British Airways has got engineers and hangars all over the world, fixing and repairing and servicing aircraft, and they sell any spare capacity that they have to other airlines or I don’t. At least they did when I was there. And I loved working for BA, and I do consider that my first proper job, because I was working full time, full time hours, I was on a proper salary or an internship salary, and I would have loved to, and I think I could have continued working British Airways if it wasn’t for the 911 events that happened whilst I was there. When 911 happened, BA went into a tailspin, had to make layoff a lot of people. There was a lot of disruption and uncertainty within the airline industry, so I just wasn’t able to continue working for them. But I would have definitely continued working for them if I could have, because I loved working for BA.

Toby Mildon:
Such an amazing company to work for. Yeah. So. But then the job that I did do after university was to become an IT consultant for Accenture, which was my first proper job as well.

Melody Moore:
Let me just take you back just slightly, to before you worked for BA, you were on benefits, is that right? You weren’t being encouraged to go out? Yeah, yeah. Tell us about that.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, this is interesting. So I. Because of my disability, I was entitled to receive, I think, back at the time, it was called disability living allowance, which doesn’t exist anymore. I think the equivalent of it would now be PIP, what they call personal independence payments. But I was on disability living allowance and I think I was also eligible for income support and there were limitations. So if you’re on those benefits, you are limited in how much you can earn or how much you work. So when I was working for Lloyds Bank, I wasnt allowed to work more than 16 hours a week for them and I wasnt allowed to really make a proper salary. So, actually, between you and me, the bank used to pay me in gift vouchers back in.

Toby Mildon:
Not very much. I mean, you know, if you calculated it, it would have been like, well below minimum wage. But for me, it was about getting the work experience was more important. I needed to keep hold of the benefits because I was living in that hostel and I had to pay rent, so I couldn’t afford to lose benefits. And I think it’s one of the really sad things that the limit, the limitations that were placed on me at the time did not encourage me to go into work. And I do know that disabled people now face a similar dilemma. There are loads of disabled people that want to get into work, but it can become unaffordable for them to get into work if they have to transition off the benefits. But when I was working for British Airways, I think there was a change in the rules because basically I was allowed to work for the airline for a year and receive a normal salary.

Toby Mildon:
I stopped receiving my benefits, but I had a guarantee that I would go back onto my benefits at the end of the year. I can’t remember exactly what the deal was, but I do remember that change in rules coming in just as I was about to start working for BA, because I remember thinking, this is just perfect timing, that I could go off to work for the airline at Heathrow airport for a year, get a salary and afford to live in London and then have the security of going back onto my benefits when I finished my degree.

Melody Moore:
It gives you. Allows you to take a risk, doesn’t it, in a way that you maybe wouldn’t have done if you were worried about it finishing and not being able to get that additional support.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Melody Moore:
So let me go back then to. Sorry I interrupted you and took you slightly back, but let’s talk about accenture. You went to. So, having studied marketing at university, done business development at BA, you went to do it. Accenture, I think. Yes.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah.

Melody Moore:
Tell me about how that came about.

Toby Mildon:
I was just applying for various graduate programmes with, with all sorts of companies and I applied to the Accenture graduate programme and I don’t know what attracted me at the time. I mean, it was a well paid graduate programme. That certainly helped, but I just fell into working in ithood. I applied, went through the process, got an offer and then that was really the beginning of my it career.

Melody Moore:
Were you applying for other jobs? Was accenture something that was, was it the it, that was interesting. It, was it the salary, you know, how, how did, how did you choose Accenture?

Toby Mildon:
Yes, I was applying to all sorts of different companies, different graduate schemes. What attracted me to Accenture was it felt quite exciting at the time. I was excited about the opportunity to work with different organisations. That’s what I like about consultancy, working with different organisations, not being stuck inside one business. And I was really interested in the types of projects that Accenture did because Accenture is a big technology consultancy company and it’s all about business transformation through technology. And I was really excited about the prospect of working with really well known companies. I ended up working with BT, with Microsoft, with Vodafone, AOL back in the day, and it was really exciting to work with these really well known companies and help these big companies with it. Transformation.

Melody Moore:
Do you think some of what you learned then I noticed when you spoke about what you do in your EDI work, you talked a lot about culture. Do you think that was kind of the beginning of you thinking about the business of an organisation, about the strategy?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, ive always been interested in the human side of technology rather than the back end. So when I was working for Accenture, I worked on various projects, but the ones that I enjoyed was me working with the end users and thinking about their needs and requirements. After Accenture, I then went to work for a healthcare technology company, which is now owned by Oracle. But this technology company, the main attraction was my main motivation was working with doctors and nurses, freeing up their time so that they spent less time on admin and processes and more time with their patients. And that’s why I went into that company and that line of work, because.

Melody Moore:
It felt more purposeful?

Toby Mildon:
Definitely, yeah, a lot more purposeful, a lot more impactful. And that’s what I was attracted to.

Melody Moore:
And was that missing, do you think, a bit at Accenture just because of the types of clients you were working with?

Toby Mildon:
A bit, because some of the projects that I got involved, when involved in, I didn’t feel gave me that sense of purpose. So one of my projects was that I was implementing a customer relationship management system for a big technology company and I didn’t find meaning in that, really, other than it made the business more efficient and effective. It didn’t feel like it had the same type of impact.

Melody Moore:
And so it was a conscious choice then to go into the healthcare tech company.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, yeah. So I actually came across Cerna, which is the healthcare tech company, which is, they’re now owned by Oracle, but I came across Cerna because actually Cerner was a client of Accenture and I got to know about them and I guess through the relationship that we had with them and I jumped ship and went to work for them.

Melody Moore:
Very common.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah.

Melody Moore:
I’ve spent 20 odd years in consultancy and I’ve seen that happen so many times, people going to work for clients. It also tells you, I think, who you don’t want to go work for as well, doesn’t it? It gives you a really great view into different organisations.

Toby Mildon:
Oh, yeah. When you work as a consultant, it’s the perfect opportunity to work inside other people’s businesses and to learn what you don’t like and what you like. And I found a good fit with Sena.

Melody Moore:
I remember working with one client and I think it was just the contrast. This is quite early in my consulting years and I’d worked with one company. I used to do these in the olden days, do five days long training, you know, nobody does that anymore. Five days in a row. And I remember working with one client and just having an absolute blast and we laughed our way through the week like it was really, really great fun. And then, you know, in contrast, a few months later I was working with another client where it was just like pulling teeth and you just think, I really couldn’t work with this company because this is the representation of the people in this company. It was just dull. So what made you then move from the tech company? You went to the BBC, is that right?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, yeah.

Melody Moore:
You just like, you’re ticking off all the brand names here, aren’t you? There’s more to come as well. It’s quite impressive. So how did the BBC thing come about?

Toby Mildon:
So whilst I felt I found meaning at Cerner working in healthcare technology, I wanted to work in a more creative environment and that’s what attracted me to go at the BBC and I worked in the technology side of the BBC, not the tv programme making side. And I wanted to work in a more creative environment and actually a close colleague of mine at Cerner left before me and got a job working for the BBC and was just raving how good it was to work at the BBC and also how inclusive he felt and because he himself identified as coming from a minority background and I think thats something that we had in common and he was talking about how inclusive he felt the culture at the BBC was. And that was really appealing for me as well. So I just applied. William, and the funny story is I went through the interview process at the BBC. After my interview, I got an email saying thanks for coming in for your interview but we’re sorry to inform you that you were unsuccessful. If you would like feedback because I got through to the final round. If you would like feedback from your interview please reply and let us know and we’ll arrange a meeting between you and the hiring manager.

Toby Mildon:
So I was disappointed getting that email because I really wanted to work for the BBC and I think it was about two or three weeks later, it felt like a long time. I got a phone call from the hiring manager saying we’re really embarrassed but you shouldn’t have received that email. We actually selected you for the role. It was an admin error. You got the wrong email.

Melody Moore:
That’s some error.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah so I was like wow. And yeah so I said well that’s good I guess I dont need to have any feedback now. And they said no, if you want the job its yours then well get the ball rolling.

Melody Moore:
Had they offered it to someone by mistake then? Like had two emails gone to the two wrong people?

Toby Mildon:
No. So what happens is the BBC have this system. I dont know if other companies do this but they have this system that if youre, if you’re like the runner up in the recruitment process so you don’t get the job but you’re maybe the second or third in line, you’re tagged as, what do they call it? I think they called it also suitable for. Or something like that. Something like that. I don’t know what it was but basically what they do is they kind of then put you into like another talent pool and if their chosen candidate doesn’t take the job or doesn’t start the job for example, then they come to you as the second or if a similar opportunity comes up you basically jump the queue for the other jobs and what they had done is they had kind of allocated me as also suitable when I should have got the job.

Melody Moore:
It’s like you’re putting the wrong number against somebody interest. That actually happened to me. Not that but some. I didn’t get a job, an NHS job, interestingly. And a few weeks later they came back and said oh the person we offered it to didn’t accept it. Would you accept it? And I had that kind of real kind of ego battle whether they’d tell them to stop it because they hadn’t chosen me in the first place but I didn’t let my ego win and actually really loved, really loved the job. But yeah it was an interesting situation. I was in the also round category.

Melody Moore:
Yeah yeah but it worked out. In the end. So tell me about the BBC then. Obviously everybody knows who the BBC is. Tell me about your experience working there.

Toby Mildon:
I loved it. I worked there for ten years. So I started off working in technology, so I worked on various projects. I started off working on a back end system, so a system that journalists use to submit new stories to the newsroom, which then ultimately get published on the news website. So that was my first project. Then there was a change in our technology stack, so I got involved in building out our new technology stack. So what I mean by that is implementing the tools that the developers use to build websites and apps and things like that. Then I moved more into the user experience and design side of things.

Toby Mildon:
So I got involved in lots of accessibility projects. I worked with the creative directors project, managing the redevelopment of the news website and the creation of the BBC Sounds app. So I was able to get involved in quite a lot of projects. And then I changed my career halfway through from technology into diversity and inclusion, and that’s how I made the switch.

Melody Moore:
How did you switch from technology into diversity and inclusion?

Toby Mildon:
So at the time, the senior leadership team of the technology department where I worked were concerned about the gender imbalance that we had in tech. And this is a challenge across the whole technology and science and engineering sector. And they created a plan to get more women into technology roles and they needed a project manager to execute the plan for them. And I volunteered and it started off as a part time role. It’s something I could do like one or two days a week, and then the rest of the week I was working on the websites and the apps, and then from there it just turned into a full time job because that’s a really valuable lesson. So one of the first lessons that I learned was that actually diversity is much broader than focusing on one characteristic like gender, that actually we needed to think about how, what kind of employer we were for people from other backgrounds, whether that’s race or ethnicity or disability or sexual orientation, faith, belief and. And all sorts of identities that we have.

Melody Moore:
What made you volunteer for that project that was focused on gender?

Toby Mildon:
I was getting a bit bored working on websites and apps.

Melody Moore:
That’s the consultant in you, isn’t it? Just wanting the change. Yeah.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah. And I think, yeah, I was getting a bit bored working on the techie side of things and I think there were a number of combinations. I mean, I had a really good relationship with the chief operating officer that I used to work closely with, and he was the one that came up with the plan with the rest of the senior leadership team. So I already had that connection with the senior leadership team of that division. And also, I think I had always had an interest in equality and diversity anyway, with my own personal lived experience of being disabled. And something we havent touched on yet is me coming out as gay when I was later on in life, when I was just about to turn 30. And I used to also run the BBCs disabled staff forum. And so I think I just naturally had an interest in equality within the workplace.

Melody Moore:
And had you come out as gay when you were at the BBC? Is that.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, yeah. So when I was 29, I came out. That was after. So I had a really big health scare. So I basically spent two months in a coma after I got pneumonia. And to cut a long story short, the shit hit the fan. My body just went in to shut down. Multiple organ failure and I was in intensive care for three months, in a coma for two months.

Toby Mildon:
And it was really touch and go. But when I did come round and I started recovering and I got back to work, there was something that I was hiding from the world and that was my sexuality. And I guess something inside me was just decided I couldn’t continue to hide that part of myself. So it took a lot of doing. It was not hard, it was not easy to come out. I had a lot of things to process. I went through psychotherapy to help with that. But I think working for the BBC helped, because the BBC is a very inclusive culture.

Toby Mildon:
It’s a very inclusive place for lgbt individuals to work. And so working for an employer like that certainly helped, because I know that there are many lgbt people in the country that work for employers where they feel that they can’t be out at work.

Melody Moore:
And do you mind if I ask you, I’m curious, what is that experience of being in a coma and coming round from a coma? Two months. I’m really curious as to that experience of, you’ve lost two months. What is that like?

Toby Mildon:
It was weird. I mean, to begin with, I was so out of it on drugs. Not illegal drugs.

Melody Moore:
The good spider hospital issued drugs.

Toby Mildon:
I was so out of it on various medications. I mean, honestly, like, the list was endless. Like, the stuff they were pumping into me. So things were really hazy. I mean, some of my early memories were. I remember coming round and I remember, like, a nurse was looking over me and she said, it’s okay. Your mum’s on her way into the hospital. And then at the time, I remember thinking, my mum’s here.

Toby Mildon:
Like, that’s because my mum lived in Somerset or lives in Somerset. And I was in London, so it’s like 130 miles away. And I thought, that’s really odd. My mum’s here. I hadn’t realised that mum had basically relocated to London for two months and was living out of my flat for two months and had. She was working at the time as well and her employer, very thankfully, was very flexible and allowed her to take that time off. And my first thought was, oh, shit. You know, and then the other thing, I remember I had these really vivid dreams whilst I was unconscious.

Toby Mildon:
And I. And I could re recall those dreams really vividly even now. There were some dreams that I remember I had. I remember there was this one dream where I kept dreaming that I was flying into space on a spaceship and the space shuttle, and I was about to go on a space journey and they said, this is the last journey that you can do because you’re only limited to a certain number of journeys. And then when I went into the spaceship and into space and I was looking out of the portal of the spaceship, it looked like that old Microsoft Windows screensaver. Remember the kind of the triangles that would. I don’t know if you remember that, but, like the screensaver where there would be, like, triangles changing shape?

Melody Moore:
Yes.

Toby Mildon:
And I remember I went out into space and that’s what space was like. Oh, just these triangles changing shape.

Melody Moore:
Amazing.

Toby Mildon:
And then I remember coming back to Earth and the memory. That was my last space flight. Yeah, yeah.

Melody Moore:
Wow. I had no idea that people who were in comas jumped. That’s amazing.

Toby Mildon:
Don’t know if that was normal or not, but that was my experience. And I think the other experience that I remember was when I was sort of coming around, when I was getting stronger and stronger, they. The hospitals sort of said, okay, it’s time you can leave the intensive care unit for a little walk. So there was basically me in my wheelchair attached to various machines with a doctor and two nurses following me.

Melody Moore:
That’s an entourage.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah. And I was strapped. I was like, I don’t know, I was connected to various devices, but I went in my wheelchair for a walk to the lobby of the hotel. Sorry, not the lobby of the hospital. And in the lobby was this massive fish tank full of tropical fish. And I just stood there completely mesmerised and taken aback by these tropical fish, as if id never seen a fish in my life before. And just really taking it in. It was like being really in the moment, hyper aware and just really taking in the colours of these fish.

Melody Moore:
Well, I guess your senses had had quite a long rest, haven’t they?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah.

Melody Moore:
You know, two months of not having to work, I suppose.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, I guess. I had done a major meditation retreat.

Melody Moore:
Yeah. That’s quite some serious retreat. Yeah. That’s amazing. Absolutely. Honestly, I could ask you about this for hours, but I won’t because I want to. I want to ask you about coming out as well. Was that.

Melody Moore:
Was that coming out to your family and friends and work? Was it a work coming out? Was it everyone?

Toby Mildon:
It was everyone. I was more worried and anxious about coming out. To friends. Not friends. Sorry, to family and friends. In a way, work was kind of the least of my worries because I didn’t feel it was necessary to come out of at work or to colleagues. I felt like I wanted to come out to my family and friends. And my experience was fear was really holding me back.

Toby Mildon:
I was worried about how people would react. The reality was that it was no issue whatsoever. That’s my personal story. I know that’s not the same for everybody, unfortunately. But when I did come out to family and friends, they were supportive. Yeah.

Melody Moore:
But the fear of rejection was what was holding you back.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, definitely the fear of rejection, the fear of being judged. Because I grew up in the eighties and the nineties, where we had through the Thatcher government, when lgbt matters could not be taught in schools, and we had really unhelpful tv ad campaigns around the AIDS pandemic that were creating a certain perception around gay men as well. So I grew up in that culture where I suppose there was a lot of inherent shame that came with that. Yep.

Melody Moore:
Did you feel shame? I mean, I was also. I grew up in the seventies, eighties, nineties, and remember very much, AIDS and all the adverts and everything. Did you feel shame?

Toby Mildon:
Yes. Yeah. And to some degree I think I still do, because it’s so embedded in my psyche. But its not just around shame of being gay, its the shame around disability as well. And one of the most informative books I read as part of my coming out journey is the velvet rage, which is written by a psychologist over in America. And he talks about shame that gay men experienced growing up. And as I was reading the book, I just felt like every time the author mentioned Gay Mandev, I could have just replaced that with disabled person and it would have just been as applicable to me as a disabled person. And what I learned, really, was that we develop shame when we start to notice that we’re different to other people, and then we start to develop coping strategies or unhelpful behaviours.

Toby Mildon:
So all sorts of isms. So various. Yeah. Unfortunately, there are gay men that become alcoholics or rely on drugs. I’m a workaholic. I think that’s been my response to. Yeah, to not only being gay, but also disability for, I suppose, my need to feel like I have to prove to the world that I can do what other people do and that I’m just as good as other non disabled people.

Melody Moore:
Yeah. Is there a sense of proving that you have value, you know, through that workaholism? Is that workaholism?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, I do. I do. And I feel like also. It’s almost like. I feel like I need to work harder to demonstrate that value, because people do place lower expectations on disabled people. And it goes back to when I was a teenager and I was asking for some careers advice. And at the time, I was told that I could probably, if I entered the workplace, bearing in mind that doctors told my parents not to expect me to even finish school, let them get a job or live independently. That was their prognosis when I was diagnosed, when I was a kid, but when I was then going to get careers advice as a teenager, they said I could probably get a job working in a factory peeling eggshells.

Melody Moore:
And that’s random.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah. And I was just like, hang on a sec, right. I’ve got higher aspirations than that. I mean, no offence to anyone who is working in the factory peeling eggshells, but for myself, I wanted to do something else. I wanted to work in a big, shiny glass tower in the city of London.

Melody Moore:
Where do you think that. I mean, we talked about the adverts and the shame that went with the Abes epidemic. What about the shame around disability? Where do you think that comes from?

Toby Mildon:
All right, so it’s historical, it’s. Honestly, it is how disabled people are portrayed in tv and film. If you just look at how disabled people in the past have been portrayed in tv, films and books, they’re often portrayed as villains, victims or heroes. So my role models growing up were to either become a James Bond villain, most of them have a disability or some form of disfigment, a benefit cheat, or a paralympic hero. And so those are the kind of messages that the media create, and then those messages infiltrate our senses and then they end up running as this secret, silent script in the back of our brains. And that’s how our unconscious biases get formed through. Through what we’re exposed to. Yeah.

Toby Mildon:
It is very complicated and it’s very complex and it also goes back to even back before then, in one of my workshops around disability awareness, I talk about actually how, at the time of the industrial revolution, disabled people were. We started to see greater marginalisation of disabled people because people were migrating from agriculture work into urbanisation and factory work, and those factories weren’t conducive of disabled employees. And, I mean, there were just no employment rights anyway for anybody, let alone any form of inclusion around disability. And then, because disabled people weren’t in the workplace, we started to see a greater segregation of them in society, in education, housing, transport. And there was no reason why, I suppose, people needed to make public transport or public buildings accessible, because disabled people were segregated, living separate lives in institutions and care homes and hospitals. And we’re still feeling the effects of that today in terms of how our buildings are accessible and not accessible. Public transport, accessibility, it’s a huge historical thing and we’re still feeling the echoes of that today.

Melody Moore:
I experienced absolute rage one time going across London on YouTube, and, you know, I had a dog and a suitcase with me and it was a struggle and I got this absolute rage about what it must be like to be less physically able than me and how I honestly spent the entire journey across London in this absolute rage about how in this day and age, we don’t have a transport system in our capital city that is accessible to everybody. And, yeah, it was one of those moments of just, you know, I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I was having absolute anger about people who find it so much more difficult than I did.

Toby Mildon:
I mean, yeah, only 30% of the London Underground is step free up to the train door. So if you are on wheels, whether that’s your wheelchair user or you are a parent with a. With a push chair or you’ve got really heavy suitcase, it makes the underground system very difficult to navigate.

Melody Moore:
I think it’s from being a parent. I lived in London when I had my daughter and having a pram that gave me my love of travelling by bus because it was so much easier. You didn’t have to deal with, you know, with this lack of step free access. And I’ve always carried that on. I think, other than liking seeing the scenery, I’ve kind of got addicted to the buses rather than going underground, if I can possibly avoid it. Let’s, if you don’t mind, we’re going to move on to. You left the BBC and then ticked off another big name in terms of an organisation that you worked for. So you went to Deloitte, is that right?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, I did, yeah. Yeah.

Melody Moore:
So why did you go to Deloitte? What caused that? What did you do there?

Toby Mildon:
So by this time, I’d been working at the BBC for ten years. I had really transitioned into working into diversity and inclusion full time and knew that that’s what I wanted to do going forwards. And so I left my kind of technology career behind. And I’d been at the BBC for ten years and I was getting itchy feet. And I also was really interested in why a commercial organisation like Deloitte was so interested in diversity inclusion. Because at the BBC it was really simple and straightforward. Because the BBC is a universal public service. It’s funded by the licenced fee payer.

Toby Mildon:
It’s really important that the BBC reflect the diversity of the country that it serves. And the business case is as straightforward as that. And then I was really interested, well, why would one of the big four accountancy firms be so interested in this? And I wanted to go and find out. But also Deloitte had much more of a focus on culture. So when I was working for Deloitte, we didn’t really refer to it as diversity and inclusion. We called it respect and inclusion. And it was about creating that foundational culture of respect and making sure that it was inclusive, where people felt like they could belong.

Melody Moore:
And what were the, you know, what did you learn there? What was great about being there?

Toby Mildon:
So what I enjoyed about going to Deloitte Washington, going back to actually a more commercial environment where I had to think about data and the business case and, yeah, just working in that kind of commercial environment and, yeah, I felt like I really had to step up and sharpen my skills, which I think had got a bit rusty at the BBC.

Melody Moore:
And were you working internally on Deloitte or were you working with clients?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, yeah, I was working internally out of the HR team and I reported into a partner who was the, at the time, the kind of the partner for talent and culture. That wasn’t her exact job title, but I. That was what she was responsible for. So I worked with her and we were focusing on, internally on the culture of Deloitte, the firm.

Melody Moore:
And was it during this time that you started to then think about working for yourself, setting up your own business? Was it a side hustle at first?

Toby Mildon:
No, no, it was a complete leap of faith. I worked for Delaware for two years and I think one realisation I had is I was feeling excluded. Even though the work I was doing was around inclusion at the time, I felt like, as a disabled person, I didn’t feel. I didnt feel included. And that really grated with me, but I think I was spoiled at the BBC because the BBC is like phenomenal for disabled people. Its such an amazing company to work for if youre disabled. And theres a lot of disabled people working at the BBC. And so I went from one organisation where on a daily basis I would bump into other wheelchair users.

Melody Moore:
Literally, literally bump into them, literally bump into them.

Toby Mildon:
And also other people who were visibly disabled and lots of people who had invisible disabilities as well, to then work at Deloitte, where I was the only wheelchair user in the building. And it really grated with me.

Melody Moore:
Yeah, I often think of that. It’s like cognitive dissonance. It’s like you really feel that, you know, maybe what you’re saying and what you’re feeling and experiencing are not, not the same thing.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Melody Moore:
So you took a leap of faith.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah.

Melody Moore:
Thought, I’m going to do this on my own.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah.

Melody Moore:
How did that feel like?

Toby Mildon:
It was scary. I had to really build myself up to that moment. I had to build a safety net around me so I made sure I had enough savings in the bank so I could live without any income for a while. I’m in a relationship with somebody. I’ve been in a relationship with him for a very long time. He was and was supportive of me doing the move as well. I think there was also a mental, there had to be a mental shift for me. It’s almost like as an entrepreneur, we need to take risks, we need to make difficult decisions.

Toby Mildon:
And I also had this, I suppose I had this mentality that I’ve got a parachute on my back and I just needed faith that if I needed the parachute to deploy, it would. So I took the leap of faith. Thankfully, I didn’t need the parachute and I landed on my feet.

Melody Moore:
Amazing.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah. I mean, in my first year of trading, I made more money than I did the previous year working in the city.

Melody Moore:
Wow.

Toby Mildon:
Yeah. And that was with no marketing strategy, no business plan. Yeah.

Melody Moore:
Incredible. And tell me your thoughts on the DEI landscape at the moment. You know, we hear talk of pushback, you know, we. My personal observation was a huge rise in focus during the pandemic, you know, George Floyd’s murder, really. You know, I worked for an american firm at the time and that really placed a huge focus and that seems to be waning, for want of a better word. What’s your perspective?

Toby Mildon:
Yeah, it does ebb and flow at the moment. I’m not going to lie, it is really tough. This year has been really difficult. We haven’t made our revenue this year has been the worst ever. Lots of companies are not progressing with projects after they said they wanted to. Theyre taking a very long time to sign projects off and get budget approved, and it is a very difficult economic climate at the moment, I think, and we know that in any difficult economy, quite often consultancies and training companies get hit first as companies look to save money and streamline things. And I think we felt the effects of that this year. Having said that, the organisations that we do work with are doubling down on their efforts and they’re doing what we want them to do, which is taking it seriously and really trying to embed it into the DNA of their company.

Toby Mildon:
So what we have noticed is that the companies that are doing the kind of superficial box ticking type activities are scaling back, which I dont mind, because those things dont really have an impact. And the companies that are taking it seriously are doubling down on their efforts because theyre really worried about the culture of their company going forwards, even beyond the economic slump that were feeling at the moment, because they know this is just a short hit. Companies and businesses will bounce back. And, I mean, it’s interesting, I read a really interesting report recently about HR priorities. So last year, the HR priorities were around. Leadership development was number one. Diversity and inclusion, I think, was third on the list. And halfway through 2024, the number one priority is organisational design, which, as you know, means redundancy, restructuring, all that kind of thing.

Toby Mildon:
Diversity inclusion is slipped down to fourth position. Leadership development is at number two. So it’s still quite high. And so one thing I am now starting to do, and I’ve just developed a webinar around this to help my clients, is to think about how they doing organisational design in inclusively, because I don’t think a lot of companies are thinking about it with that philtre. So we know, for example, that when people are made redundant, when organisational restructures happen, there are members of our society that are disproportionately impacted by that and are more likely. Disabled people are more likely to be made redundant than non disabled people. We saw during the pandemic, women were leaving the workforce at a higher rate because of the caring responsibilities and maintaining the house responsibilities, on top of holding down a full time job whilst working from home. And so I think companies, if they’re serious about inclusion and diversity, need to have that.

Toby Mildon:
Philtre over any organisational design work that they are doing.

Melody Moore:
Yeah, I often think of it as unintended consequences. People don’t think about the decisions that they’re making. But absolutely, I’ve observed exactly the same as you have in terms of the impact of organisational changes. So building on that, then what do you think is next? What’s next for you? What’s next for your business?

Toby Mildon:
My focus right now is because of the downturn in business. My priority is serving our clients that we do have incredibly well and being the best partner that we can be to them. Thats my kind of number one priority. And next year, I want to go back to basics. I want to figure out why is it that I existed as a business? Why do our clients like working with us? What makes us different and unique? Because the diversity and inclusion industry is quite saturated. There’s lots of people working in the sector now, ranging from, you’ve got big companies like McKinsey and Bain and Company and the Kerry Group. These are big consultancy companies that are doing EDI work. Youve then got some well established consultancies working in the field.

Toby Mildon:
Youve then got lots of specialist organisations that focus on a particular demographic, like disability or race or social mobility. And then youve got a whole army of just independent EDI consultants out there working as freelancers or independents. And I want to make sure that my business strategy helps me position myself as an expert in what I do.

Melody Moore:
Nice. I like that. What would be your advice to your younger self?

Toby Mildon:
Be yourself.

Melody Moore:
Yeah.

Toby Mildon:
Come out a lot earlier in life than you did. That would be some advice, yeah.

Melody Moore:
Lovely. Other than your own book, tell us the title of your book first before you tell us about what other books you’d recommend to people.

Toby Mildon:
So, I’ve written two books.

Melody Moore:
Okay.

Toby Mildon:
My first book was called Inclusive growth. And then my second book, which came out very recently, is called building inclusivity. The book I would recommend, I’ve already mentioned the Velvet rage, highly recommend that even if you don’t identify as being a member of the LGBTQ community, read it, even if you want to be an ally of lgbt people. But I think anyone who identifies as being different in some way, whether that’s the colour of your skin or your ability or your gender or anything like that, I think it’s still a useful book to read. I’ve really enjoyed reading radical candour recently about how to work with people and be direct with them, but also care at the same time. That’s a good one. And then I’ve just finished a really good book at the moment called buy back your time, which is really good for any entrepreneur in terms of helping you grow your business and not get stuck in the business.

Melody Moore:
Yeah. I’m not trying to be the person who does everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes a lot of sense. And last question. What title would you give to your story?

Toby Mildon:
If I can, anyone can.

Melody Moore:
Nice. Love it. All right, I’m just writing that down. Brilliant. Toby, this has been absolutely fabulous. I have enjoyed talking to you so much. We’ve covered a huge range of things, I think, but it’s been really, really enjoyable. So thank you so much for coming on the secret Resume podcast.

Toby Mildon:
Thanks for inviting me.

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 us a favour and click on the share button and share this episode with one of your friends.