What do you do at A New Normal?

I'm a D&I Strategist, which means that I work with our clients supporting them in their journeys to creating and sustaining really inclusive workplaces. What that means in practice is that every single day is different. I could be running workshops, discovery interviews or focus groups, coaching leaders of businesses or sitting down with stakeholders to help them work through what their long term strategy is for the organisation. As the Founder of A New Normal, I'm really invested in setting our direction as a business, with the support of our incredible team. 

How has your career path led to D&I?

I spent around 20 years working with various corporations, both in-house and as a consultant. During that time, I had roles throughout talent management and culture change, and D, E & I were always huge (and my favourite!) parts of my roles. I realised about 10 years ago that I really wanted to spend my working days trying to impact the wider world and came to the realisation that the best way for me to do that was to support companies in making their workplaces truly inclusive. I took the plunge and set up A New Normal four years ago, and I can honestly say I've never loved a job this much before (there's a reason the team refers to the company as my third child!). 

Why do you work in D&I?

I'd describe myself as a pragmatic idealist. I want to change the world, and I know that we can have a huge amount of impact through the work we do with organisations and individuals. We spent some time at the end of 2021 reflecting on how many people we'd influenced through our work to date, and our focus for 2022 is to expand our "ripple effect" even further. We work with some amazing clients and seeing the changes they make to their products and services after the work we do is a huge buzz. 

What do you like about it?

It's the ripple effect. I love seeing the impact of what we do, whether it's individuals who tell us they feel safer being their authentic selves at work, teams who do things completely differently or being able to witness the differences in magazine covers our clients put out, or content they share, or the ways they advertise their products. It makes me so proud that we are trusted by our clients to help them make huge differences in the way they work. 

It also helps that I work with the most amazing team of people. We're so different from one another in a lot of ways, which brings huge benefits; but we are united by our passion for what we do, and the values we bring to our work every day. I'm not sure who said it, but I'm taking the advice to "surround yourself with people who are cleverer and more talented than you" to an absolute extreme - our team is incredible!