Hello everybody and welcome to the Squiggly Careers podcast. I'm Helen Tupper, one of the hosts of the podcast. And instead of being joined by Sarah today, I'm actually going to be talking to three different guests about the topic of race at work. We're going to be discussing how we can create cultures that embrace race and diversity and the conversations

that we need to engage in to support that. So first you're going to hear me talking to Zara

Mohamud and Vanessa Bellew about why these conversations can feel uncomfortable, whether

labels, help or hinderers and also the role of leaders, managers and individuals in moving the conversation

forward. And to tell you a little bit about them, Zara is the campaign manager for race at

Business in the Community where she supports over 300 organisations with monitoring and embedding

inclusive practices into their workplace. And Vanessa is the founder of High 15, where she wears

many hats. She's a business strategist, a future insights consultant, a coach and an

inclusion and belonging consultant. And in our conversation, they both share lots of

practical advice that you can go and take away and put into action. After that, you'll hear me

talk to Tolu Ferinto about what he has learned about creating sustainable culture change through his

role as head of ethnicity and social mobility at Utopia. They're a culture change business

focused on creating more purposeful, inclusive and entrepreneurial cultures.

So we appreciate that conversations about race at work is a huge topic to address.

And this is just one very small podcast in a very significant conversation.

It's going to take a huge amount of ongoing action for all of us to make sustainable change.

But our hope is that

in this podcast, you're able to identify and feel confident about the actions that you could take.

It's an episode that we would really love your feedback on. So please do get us in touch with us

at helen and Sarah at squiggly careers.com. We read all of your messages and it

helps us to keep learning and growing and making the podcast as useful as possible for you.

So I hope you find this discussion really valuable and let's get started with Vanessa and Zara.

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