00:00:57.000We obviously know exactly who you are, but tell us a little bit about For Our Viewers.
00:01:01.400What's your journey through life? How are you where you are?
00:01:03.760How have you ended up sitting in the chair in which you currently sit?
00:01:06.780Oh, the short version. I'll give you the short version.
00:01:10.220I'm from the Midlands. I've worked very hard at losing the accent.
00:01:15.060I am the product of a very happy middle class upbringing, two siblings, very supportive parents.
00:01:24.840And I've been in London since graduation.
00:01:28.340I had the scrappiest, messiest CV ever where I kind of jumped jobs every two years because I'd get bored or I couldn't be managed.
00:01:38.960But there was a theme to all of it, which was one of just really enjoying working on the front end,
00:01:46.740as in the sales and the marketing of disruptive new businesses, businesses that were trying to change behaviors.
00:01:52.560And I guess what I always was and which I now am, to cut to the end of the story, is I always wanted to be an entrepreneur.
00:01:58.660I always wanted to build businesses. I always wanted to be my own boss, I guess.
00:02:02.440But it took me a long time, I guess, to get the confidence and, of course, the golden bullet of an idea to do that.
00:02:08.000So I kept riding the coattails of all these other entrepreneurs in my 20s in a very scrappy way and learning from some of the best and also some of the worst about how to build businesses.
00:02:20.000And then I met my business partners at my first company, which was Blippa, which I started in 2011.
00:02:29.260And that was, for some years, one of the big tech success stories that came out of the UK.
00:02:34.660We were the global pioneer in the augmented reality space.
00:02:39.500My job, again, sales, marketing, communications, building brands and media interests, helping with investment.
00:03:46.260I'm a woman in tech and I'm a female entrepreneur.
00:03:48.740So I am double intersectionally oppressed with those two labels.
00:03:56.920And yeah, and I guess because I, the journey between Blippo and Tick involved a couple of years where I stepped out of the front seat of that business because I had three children in four years.
00:07:25.500special favors because I'm a woman but I always felt this slight sense of
00:07:30.000conflict because obviously I do have a product to sell so if there's positive
00:07:34.060discrimination to be taken advantage of then absolutely I will do that and I
00:07:40.620also feel a conflict because it's not like I'm saying the whole narrative is
00:07:44.460is wrong I do believe that women respond very well to role models and I
00:07:50.980I understand a lot of the initiatives behind these awards and the publicity and the media
00:07:57.720narrative around getting more women into the public eye and getting them to share their
00:08:01.500story because younger women, including myself when I was younger, are hugely affected by
00:08:08.200seeing people like them succeeding and that is very empowering as far as being able to
00:08:14.080identify with that and see yourself in that position.
00:08:17.580And of course, we come in all different shapes and sizes. It's not the sort of Deborah Meadon-esque dragon in business. It's, you know, sort of scrappy skateboarding girls and pink haired girls and every color, every age, introverts, extroverts.
00:08:34.700you know, it's really important. I think women do get influenced by that. So a lot of what's
00:08:39.700happening within, I guess, the diversity industry in my two fields, I support and I'm actively
00:08:47.040involved in. But I stop or draw the line when it comes to the overemphasis around discrimination
00:08:54.000and disadvantage. Because I think when you start tipping into negativity and definition of
00:09:01.800ourselves around our gender i i have less time for that because i ultimately don't think it does
00:09:08.020girls and women any favors and do you think there is a problem uh with the tech uh industry and
00:09:15.520women in particular and attracting women do you think it's it's male dominated and you know and
00:09:21.860therefore it's harder for a woman to make her way i know you've got your story but somebody else's
00:09:26.340story can be different for example yeah um oh there's no question it's male dominated there's
00:09:31.320no question about that to the second part is it harder for a woman to make their way no I don't
00:09:36.440believe it is I mean if they if they're going to feel uncomfortable in a majority male environment
00:09:41.920then they might feel less inclined to it but I don't believe it's harder I think that there's
00:09:46.940been an overcorrection there and there's a lot of positive discrimination for women coming into the
00:09:53.400technology space which I don't agree with either because I'm perhaps naively a meritocrat and I
00:09:58.420believe it should always be best person for the job but it's a vibrant buzzy exciting sector and
00:10:05.680very few women that I know that come into it you know have day-to-day anxiety within that sector
00:10:12.300and also tech isn't really an industry I also get a bit cross with that as a definition everything's
00:10:18.760tech there's no business in the world right now that isn't tech in some in some way and there's
00:10:24.780so many creative media communications,
00:10:29.320product opportunities that aren't pure coding.
00:10:32.460But we seem to obsess on that under-representation
00:10:35.900within the technology job specifically,
00:10:38.840and the fact that that's apparently having an impact
00:10:41.460on how products are designed, and they don't have women
00:17:20.680we distill people down and then we exacerbate the difference and that's of course all identity
00:17:24.940politics not just the gender debate. Do you think it's a problem as well with these types of
00:17:29.660messages where somebody would go oh I'm not going to go into tech because somebody like me isn't
00:17:34.200welcome or there is a problem with it? That's where my angle is entirely so I did a TEDx on
00:17:41.100this and this is what I was alluding to earlier the fear I felt for putting myself out there on
00:17:46.280this line my my argument is that firstly I'm an optimist I do believe that women have many many
00:17:53.280more opportunities than the narrative would have you believe and secondly I feel that this
00:17:59.200victimhood narrative is really damaging for how women perceive themselves so I think it's only
00:18:06.380going to exacerbate the confidence gap that is already existent in more women than men as a trait
00:18:13.000you know as an average trait women are much more subject to imposter syndrome the confidence gap
00:18:18.440than men are and i was a woman with all the opportunities in the world a fantastic education
00:18:23.400a great upbringing you know i i still had that imposter syndrome i shouldn't have had that so
00:18:28.120if i'm having it and i see it amongst so many of the women that i mentor that i work with
00:18:32.300you know there is this sort of we say what we're good at we don't oversell ourselves you know we
00:18:39.120ask for what we want we don't ask for more than that you know we we apply for jobs where we can
00:18:43.400do 80 percent of the job spec whereas a guy is more likely to do it at 30 40 percent there is
00:18:49.060there is this just sort of more innate risk aversion in women and I feel that the narrative
00:18:55.020encourages that further it does two things one it will make them more anxious about certain fields
00:19:00.800where they're told they're going to be discriminated against you know they're not going to be walking
00:19:04.560into those quite as bullish and as confidently as I think they would otherwise. And what was the
00:19:11.680second thing? Oh, the second thing is that this narrative lets them off the hook. And that's not
00:19:17.880good for them. You know, in my field, when I meet with young female entrepreneurs, the number of
00:19:23.900times I've heard people say, oh, I didn't get that funding because, you know, they don't invest in
00:19:29.960women or they're not you know that it was a gender reason why I wasn't taken as seriously in that
00:19:35.680scenario I've now got I guess the experience the age of gravitas I'm mentoring them to actually
00:19:41.040say to them no actually I was in your pitch it wasn't good you know don't let yourself off the
00:19:47.980hook you know you need to take feedback and as an individual and you need to constantly self-improve
00:19:55.060and look at what you can do and even arguably even if it was due to
00:19:59.980discrimination the most productive reaction to that is not wounded
00:20:05.500insecurity you know go cry to someone about how you might have been you know
00:20:09.280gender discriminated against but it's to actually go well come on then I'll show
00:20:14.740you and take the onus to circumvent the situation in some way you know resilience
00:20:21.460It should be about resilience and I feel that the narrative of discrimination and victimhood undermines both that confidence and also that resilience and also the individual onus to take ownership of how you put yourself forward and to mould yourself, change yourself to the circumstances as required, which everybody needs to as an individual, man or woman, that's not gendered.
00:20:46.600The point you make is really important, I feel,
00:21:11.940And that's another area of the debate that's incredibly fraught with nastiness and unpleasantness, because obviously in reaction to a lot of the feminist line, you've now got men's rights trying to draw attention to where those disparities exist.
00:21:30.460But the data does speak for itself, and I find it pretty compelling, whether it's outperformance at university, whether it's the fact that women in their 20s and 30s are earning just as much, sometimes more, than men.
00:21:43.080And it's really striking when, in my field, again, when you look at STEM data and, you know, the ratios, they're apparently being so off whack.
00:21:52.280But they are off whack if you only take a very narrow definition of STEM, which is engineering and computer science and, you know, that type of science.
00:22:02.760If you take in social science, behavioral science, medical science, anything of a biological nature, women are 75% within those fields of science.
00:22:13.420And yet nobody's saying we need to level up both sides.
00:22:17.940You know, we're only saying there aren't enough women in computers.
00:22:20.120I agree. I would love to see more women in computing and engineering.
00:22:24.160I think they have so much to contribute and different balance of the types of products that we're building.
00:22:31.700but in order to achieve that we need to talk them out of other they're not going to just create these
00:22:36.420women you know out of nowhere we need to talk them out of the other choices that they're making
00:22:40.880um and you know i would certainly personally err on the side of choice you know i don't believe
00:22:46.500women should be talked out of things that they want to go into and there's certainly the sort
00:22:50.800of women that are picking those behavioral or biological sciences as opposed to the technical
00:22:56.140hard sciences are pretty bright women you know if they're picking those sciences so i i trust them
00:23:01.840to make those judgments um and i don't either want to be talking women out of careers in arts and um
00:23:08.100you know social work and media and you know the the creative fields and edge hell no not out of
00:23:14.060education but nobody's saying less women in teaching please let's have more men in teaching
00:23:18.800so it's because men are toxic but all the conversations are being had in silos in the
00:23:24.800underrepresented fields you know whether that's in finance or it's in tech and that's that to me
00:23:30.720is you can't have them in isolation and the boys arguments and the men's underrepresentation is
00:23:37.640is never discussed and indeed you know the different lifestyle disadvantages that men
00:23:43.120as a group experience you can't even bring up like what there's so many there's so many and
00:23:50.840And there's suicide rates, there's homelessness rates, rates of depression, rates of school
00:23:57.400dropouts, workplace deaths, deaths in service, of course, on the front line.
00:24:03.720You've got sentencing court disparity, men receiving 60% longer sentences for the same
00:24:09.800crimes as women, child custody, paternity cases, domestic abuse, which actually a heavy
00:24:17.420percentage of men you know suffer from that and we never hear about that but it's I don't know
00:24:23.980that it's helpful to fight fire with fire yeah I think sometimes the context is required to help
00:24:30.240broaden and open up the Overton window a little bit and I think that's where some of the more
00:24:35.760moderate voices like myself are trying to just say well hang on let's look at the full picture
00:24:41.520before we dive deep into one particular area but then you get into a stage where there's this sort
00:24:47.400of competitive victimhood, which I think is where the men's rights movement falls down.
00:24:53.480There's a lot of very smart people trying to make these arguments, and I guess just
00:24:56.680as the feminists or the progressive feminists would say, we've got to overcorrect in order
00:25:01.540to get back to a normal, I suppose the men's rights feel likewise, you know, overcorrect
00:25:05.440and overstress these things in order to at least get some awareness for them, particularly
00:25:09.500in this sort of clickbait, you know, headline-grabbing media world and online world that we now
00:25:17.040living but it's just it's victimhood by another name. That's my biggest worry with it. That's my
00:25:22.920concern. That's my biggest worry with it because it encourages people to go to the other extreme
00:25:27.840as well and for men's rights movement is never going to be a particular success because people
00:25:31.880don't tend to feel sorry for men in the same way that they feel sorry for women. It's just a fact
00:25:36.700of life you know. I feel sorry that we don't feel so I feel sorry for men that we don't feel sorry
00:25:42.160but that's again you talk about realities it's a biological reality in my opinion because you
00:25:46.940look at uh you talk about male deaths in the workplace and all the rest of it men evolved
00:25:52.140we evolved to be disposable in a way that women are not if you think about two tribes of 10 people
00:25:56.920each right let's say five men five women in each tribe the tribe that sent its men off to war
00:26:01.480only one man comes back you can replenish your tribe at the same rate if you send your women
00:26:05.900off to war it's not the same so men are disposable biologically in a way that women are not
00:26:10.840And I think that until we have no war, until no one needs to be a firefighter or whatever, that will not change because that's how men evolved to be and women evolved to be different.
00:26:23.200You talk about risk-taking, et cetera.
00:26:24.880We've had evolutionary psychologists on the show talk about where that comes from, the risk-taking, risk-aversion, differences between men and women.
00:28:27.400I mean there's a counter argument to that where there is unconscious bias in that you're not aware that you have a bias but you know you only hire people that you know look or sound like you or have the same background as you hence why everybody at the BBC comes from the same college at Oxford or Cambridge or whatever else.
00:28:43.660Do you believe that it doesn't sort of counterbalance that and force people to look outside the box as it were?
00:28:50.420Well, yeah, I mean, this concept of unconscious bias is now accepted.
00:28:57.680And yet I understand it has been entirely debunked scientifically.
00:29:02.240It's just nobody wants to report that.
00:29:05.160I've read articles that have actually done the research and say it's been debunked.
00:29:08.760However, I do believe there's a little bit of people like me hiring that goes on.
00:29:13.500But I don't believe that that is around identity boxes.
00:29:18.300I believe it's around upbringing, values, you know, social behaviours.
00:29:25.920You know, if they went to schools, you know, that you know, you've automatically got that point of reference with that individual.
00:29:33.700And you might know some of the same people.
00:29:35.220You know, London's a small place in many respects.
00:29:38.140So I do think it happens a bit, although, you know, I have read that that unconscious bias is massively overstated.
00:29:45.320And I want to give people the benefit of the doubt that there is more meritocracy and judgment employed in those things.
00:29:53.180But it's the lack of diversity on ideology, people type, and background and viewpoints, socioeconomic diversity that I think is the biggest risk.
00:30:06.160And the diversity that I think we should be focusing on as opposed to the visible diversity boxes.
00:30:13.340It should be much more about getting more psychological diversity.
00:30:18.360Because at the moment, the identity box ticking only serves to help the people of colour or the women.
00:30:31.460I've gone to the same universities that have had the fortunate, well-supported upbringings with parents that believed in them.
00:30:38.960And I've heard the argument that, well, that's where you start and then you create the role models to bring more people through the system.
00:30:46.420But at the moment, I see the recipients of a lot of the diversity industry are those people that were doing pretty well already as a result of how fortunate they were with education or with attitude.
00:31:01.020Some people are just born more intelligent, born more driven.
00:31:05.460and so how do we get access to those types of people so you know the people who grow up who
00:31:13.080want to achieve but don't always come from the most affluent backgrounds don't always have the
00:31:16.940wealth of opportunity because i one thing that really angers me is the whole internship culture
00:31:23.200that i see happening now and that it didn't happen when i graduated university but after 2008
00:31:28.660i think it gave companies a little bit of carte blanche to start going i'll come and work for
00:31:34.280free and then we'll see if you get a job or not okay i think from what i've seen and i'm not an
00:31:40.400expert at this and you've just asked possibly the biggest societal challenge question of all
00:31:45.580how do you bridge socio-economic uh background i don't have the answer i don't have the answer to
00:31:50.940that how do you get you know a better melting pot of people from all those different backgrounds
00:31:55.300i do know that there's the tide has turned on that free internship thing now no serious business
00:32:00.720offers a free internship anymore because they have recognized that that is not the way it's
00:32:05.780not fair and it only rewards those that can afford to do it as opposed to those that can't and you
00:32:10.260know I'm very encouraged by the people I know within the business community that absolutely
00:32:16.440accept that and go out of their way to engage with schemes that are about access for those that
00:32:22.680aren't fortunate enough to have lots of parents you know within the school community that can
00:32:27.480offer those those free work experiences there's some brilliant initiatives whether it's the
00:32:30.940founders for school initiatives or the work finder app or access aspiration i think it's called
00:32:35.280that are deliberately around creating networks of mentors and schemes and opportunities for those
00:32:42.520that that don't have them within their existing community and school networks i'm a big a big
00:32:48.380big fan of those and do you think we should obligate companies to i mean maybe look at
00:32:54.000if you're making a certain amount of money in profit
00:33:19.840strongly saying you need to get involved in your communities
00:33:23.360in better ways but it doesn't have to be companies coming into business it can be can be companies
00:33:26.560going into schools yeah and that's the big wave that i'm witnessing and i'm a big part of now
00:33:31.940actually um on the advisory board of this fantastic initiative called founders for schools
00:33:36.400which is now too narrowly defined it's not just founders it's all business people now going in
00:33:40.920and it can be the 21 year old graduate um you know uh scheme um guy or it can be a 60 year old ceo
00:33:50.480that goes in because everybody's got some mentoring that they can offer to those further
00:33:54.800down the ladder to them whether we need to mandate it I'd say probably not but I think if you're a
00:34:01.600responsible business and you do it it makes you more appealing to people that then want to apply
00:34:06.320to you you know it's actually self it's self-promotional in some ways to do more of this
00:34:11.380it's getting your brand into these schools for the talent to be aware of as they as they get there
00:34:16.000as they graduate and this is a question that I've always wanted to ask because I'm a former teacher
00:34:19.820you're someone who works in business you're a leader what do you think about this generation
00:34:24.540of young people because it seems to me that a lot of people in the media say oh you know these
00:34:29.760the education system it doesn't produce you know good workers you know the next generation they're
00:34:34.420awful they're dreadful where do you stand on this new generation do you think they're ready for work
00:34:38.540when they come out or do you think which generation are talking about millennials are obviously already
00:34:43.320in the workplace? Are we talking about Generation Y, Generation Z, iGen? I'm an optimist. I think
00:34:52.100there's going to be so much talent coming through. But my biggest concerns and another debate that
00:34:58.920I've tapped into after I started going down the rabbit hole of feminism was, and also now as a
00:35:04.360parent, is how we're bringing up children. And my concern, and obviously I'm very tuned in also to
00:35:12.360the sort of snowflake culture conversation and this culture of safetyism that is in universities
00:35:20.580now. So the generation at university now is the one that was kind of brought up with smart devices
00:35:25.540and social media and below. And I've really started going into depth now on what's happening
00:35:32.600to teenagers, how are devices and social media and screen time affecting their upbringing and
00:35:39.780um you know their their sense of self and I feel sorry for them in many ways you know I think they
00:35:46.680think that this is the most fun and as far as technology is concerned ever but it's also created
00:35:51.180this culture of um sort of always on um mental health anxiety desire for dopamine and um you
00:36:01.680know the kids now kind of have to have a personal brand from the age of sort of 11 12 13 um and
00:36:09.760And there's this constant focus on self that really worries me.
00:36:16.860And I think what we're doing, and there's some fantastic research done by a woman called
00:36:21.520Jean Twenge in the States, which I stumbled across through a fantastic book, which has
00:36:26.220been a big influence on me, Jonathan Hates and Greg Lukianoff's Coddling of the American
00:36:31.240mind, that talks about how an 18-year-old today is now more like a 15-year-old 10 years
00:36:41.580ago because they've been kept so safe, not allowed to go out, not allowed to have Saturday
00:36:46.660jobs, not allowed to walk to school before the age of 12, 13. There's this sort of terror
00:36:52.300that there's so many evils in the world now that we really want to protect our children
00:36:56.920and we're no longer preparing our children for the road but the road for the child
00:37:01.060and that this coddling has dramatically impacted how resilient children are
00:37:07.320and made them nervous of bogeymen around every corner
00:37:11.700and really had a big impact on the maturity levels when they reach university
00:37:16.720which is why a lot of them want protecting from bad words, nasty conversations, ideas
00:37:22.820that they don't want to confront by the time they get there.
00:37:27.100And I think that's a very, very real phenomenon.
00:37:29.560Some people say it's overstated, but I think it is a real phenomenon.
00:37:33.180And I think that technology has been a big factor in that.
00:37:36.600Although I also think it's down to parenting styles
00:37:38.920and the things within the educational system that no one has to win anymore.
00:37:44.120We've all got to be, we've all just got to take part as teams.
00:37:47.580And, you know, there's so much going on around how we're bringing up children and educating children.
00:37:54.760And I think when you've thrown this massive missile of a 24-7 weapon of a smartphone for teenage girls to exact passive aggression on each other in the middle of the night by leaving them out of photographs or groups.
00:38:09.040You know, there's a very, very toxic, massively, rapidly changing environment that kids are being brought up in now.
00:38:18.500And how much responsibility do you think the tech companies have to these types of users?
00:38:23.080Because there's a huge debate going on now.
00:38:44.000The first thing I'd say is I think some of these are inadvertent byproducts and a lot
00:38:49.520of people will say that they're mirrors on behaviours, they're just made more accessible
00:38:53.420for the behaviours that teenagers engage in anyway.
00:38:58.940And I think they have to look at how they moderate content, what they allow in the behaviours
00:39:04.960But the fundamental problem with all of big tech is their business models, particularly social media business models, which are determined and reliant on dopamine, dopamine, eyeballs and time spent online.
00:39:18.320So ultimately, the longer you're online and it's dopamine that fuels the amount of time you spend online, the more money they make.
00:39:25.600Now, that is a problem. And I don't see how they can correct that overnight because, you know, we need children to get offline.
00:39:34.220it's been scientifically proven that mental health and online poor mental health and online time is
00:39:41.720directly correlated more time offline you know a better mental health um and i think you know
00:39:47.820the social media neuroses um the the neuroses that's caused by social media is a massive problem
00:39:54.620so i think tech is the problem i think parents need to watch this i think it's caught them
00:39:59.860unawares you know because a lot of it's been happening in the bedrooms and you know we're
00:40:03.080all playing catch up on how quickly these behavioural trends have happened. But I also
00:40:07.920think tech is the solution. So there's my entrepreneurial optimism for you. I think
00:40:15.800that different business models, different communications around what's happening, and
00:40:21.600I also think that there's a new narrative and appreciation of the dangers of tech that's
00:40:29.060only just starting now to get serious the last two years we've had this sort of whimsical oh god
00:40:35.160i'm addicted to my phone isn't it awful i sleep with it by my bed and you know there's too much
00:40:39.200time and then looking at your screen time reports and thinking god what else could i have done with
00:40:43.620that four and a half hours today that i is that just me um probably more for us yeah absolutely
00:40:49.840but the tide has moved from that sort of whimsical sort of incredulity about our tech use to actually
00:40:56.060now thinking, I resent this. There's something really not quite right about this. The fact
00:41:00.960that people aren't looking at each other on the street. The fact that we're constantly
00:41:06.740being distracted whilst we're in the middle of something and we're happy to be distracted
00:41:09.600about it. The fact that you can walk around the Louvre and 80% of people have got their
00:41:14.300back to the art, taking selfies of the art and not looking at it. There's something profoundly
00:41:19.220depressing that I think people are now realising about the negative by-products of these sorts
00:41:24.840of behaviors. And I think that this will result in a lot changing. And I believe consumers
00:41:32.200vote with their eyeballs. We've already invited all our parents onto Facebook and have left
00:41:37.460them there. It will change the behaviors and platforms will go as quickly as they've come.
00:41:46.900And I believe that new tech will come up, like my business, which empowers altruism,
00:41:54.140which empowers knowledge and passion sharing and inspiration
00:43:12.280And if somebody sends you that image or the video, what they've created off the back of something that you taught them how to do, you're just going to have this sense of, oh, you know, that child got that toy that their parent made for them or they had that party and they had that really fun game because I told them what that game was and they found it out because of me.
00:43:30.000So I'd love, I don't know how naive it is to think that we're going to shift the tide immediately because that people, somebody likes me, somebody loves me.
00:43:39.960Dopamine hit is the most powerful motivator on earth.
00:43:44.220You know, everybody, it's got status in it.