Hi, I'm Helen Tupper and I'm Sarah Ellis.

And this is a Squiggly Careers podcast where each week we talk about topics to help you work through the ins, outs, ups and downs of your career and share ideas and actions to support you with your development.

And today we're going to be talking about the importance of role models in our careers.

But before we do that, we wanted to recognise

someone who has been a support to us behind the scenes who has very sadly passed away. So I wanted

to share with you a little bit about a man called Robert Phillips. And Robert Phillips was probably

most famous as a leader in the world of PR. But that's not really how we knew him. We knew him because he was one of

the earliest squiggly career advocates and supporters. He really believed in what we were trying to do

with squiggly careers. And I spoke to him over numerous coffees and he went out of his way to find

opportunities to spread the squiggly word. He was so generous in sharing his connections.

He was so well connected.

He seemed to know everyone and he knows someone who knew someone.

And lots of our guests on our podcast, and most people wouldn't necessarily know this,

people like Margaret Heffernan and Kath Bishop would not be on the podcast if it wasn't for Robert.

Their connections that Robert made behind the scenes and he was always just trying to find

ways to help us to make things better. He was always open to giving us some feedback or just

helping in any way he could. And, you know, he wasn't someone I'd known

for years and years. He sort of, I've probably known him now for like six or seven years as we

were first starting Amazing If. The thing that also I personally really loved about him is that he

took his work really seriously and what we were trying to do really seriously, but he never took

himself too seriously. And he had a perpetual twinkle in his eye, and he was so cheeky,

and I just always felt like he was always kind of just got a wry smile for me,

...