Relationships at Work - The Leadership Mindset Guide to Creating a Workplace We Love

How To Activate Activism in Employees to Improve Culture with Jessie MacNeil-Brown

August 15, 2022 Russel Lolacher Episode 28
Relationships at Work - The Leadership Mindset Guide to Creating a Workplace We Love
How To Activate Activism in Employees to Improve Culture with Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with activist and IKEA Campaigns Manager Jessie MacNeil-Brown (formally the head of Global Activism and Corporate Responsibility for the Body Shop and the Global Campaigns Manager for Amnesty International) on encouraging activism in employees improves the world and workplace.

Jessie shares her thoughts and experience with...

  • Are companies prepared to onboard younger generations looking for purpose in their work?
  • The importance of building community to attract talent.
  • Activism and its connection to corporate values.
  • How hiring by value connects to purpose.
  • What it looks like for a small or medium business to embrace activism.
  • Activism's connection to employee empowerment.
  • The importance of sharing your activism story internally.

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Russel Lolacher
And on the show today we have Jesse McNeil-Brown and here is why she is awesome. She’s the campaign’s manager at ingka Group, which is IKEA, formerly the head of global activism and corporate responsibility for the body shop, and the global campaigns manager for Amnesty International. She’s a founding member of the Women’s Equality Party which champion various causes. And she’s also championed various causes, including fighting animal testing and stopping sex trafficking. Important things. Fun facts here about Jessie she was the club winner for area six for the Toastmasters International 2012 humorous speech contest, she’s probably going to hate me that I’m even including that. And also a fun fact, I used to work with Jessie years ago, the keg in Melbourne, Australia. And one of my best memories ever was that she invited me to come back to her hometown in Ballarat, and get to meet her family and hang out at one of the coolest pubs I’ve ever been to in my life. Hi, Jessie. Welcome to the show.

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Hi, Russel. Oh, my gosh, what an amazing introduction. And I bet my pub in Ballarat was the best pub you’ve ever been to? My gosh, that’s hilarious.

Russel Lolacher
Okay, so before we get into all the goodness, that is activism, which you were so involved in, and I’m really curious about this from an employee experience standpoint, but we need to know a little bit more about Jessie, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience you’ve ever had?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
I’m gonna go with my best. And let me try to frame this in a way that works perfectly into into our conversation. I spent all my time working at the body shop, and also now working at IKEA, focused on our staff and our co workers, and how can I bring exciting and fun and interesting things for them and help them really live the values of the company. And I have to say, the best employee experience, I’ve one of the best, actually, I’ve got so many. But it has been when I’ve been running campaigns. And we’ve been at the UN in New York, and we’ve had our store members Speaking at the UN, or when we were handing over a petition to the Irish government on to stop the sex trafficking of children and young people. And we went to hand the petition over. And the minister called out for the store manager and said, Where is she Where is she and I found out that she had cold called this minister got to the point where she was having cups of tea with the minister in her office, talking about how we needed to end sex trafficking of children and young people. So to me, that was the best experience of just showing that you can bring the company values, you can bring purpose to work, and that your teams will constantly surprise you in how they take that forward and make an impact. And impact is really what I want to talk about today because it is such a personal thing. But then taking that into the workplace, which I find fascinating. So out of the gate, what got you interested, I know you’ve always been a very passionate person when it came to causes and things you were really invested in. What was sort of the transition from leaving university going into the workplace. And bringing that part of yourself into work. I want to get to the origin story of Jesse. Yeah, I guess if I think about it, from the age of 15, I worked and I worked in retail. And while I was also waitressing with you at the Cape, I was also working in one of the biggest department stores in Melbourne. So I always had that feeling and you know me, I’m always thinking, how can we do things better? Or how can our bosses be doing things better? And I kind of went from that, you know, having the very basic customer service job, being very junior? And then how can I use that influence? Or how can I influence where the company is going and what it’s doing? And because I’m such a passionate person, how can I make sure that you have fun and that you bring purpose to what you’re doing? Because I’ve always been such a strong believer that business should be a force for good. So why don’t you use your business influence for good as well. So I guess that’s that’s kind of where it started. And then, yeah, it was a little bit selfish, wanting to bring some joy and purpose to work. And then as I started building my career, realizing that I can have that influence in the company as well.

Russel Lolacher
And how easily is that adopted? Because there’s a lot of opportunities for people to come in and go, this is what I’d love to do. Social Good is great. Here’s what I’m passionate about. And a lot of corporations going “that’s great. You can do that on your own time.”

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Yeah, exactly. And that that’s why I’ve always thought very carefully about where I work. And I’ve always been drawn to values driven workplaces. And I think we’re seeing this in abundance right now. And we get a lot of reports, we get the Edelman Trust Barometer, for example, there are a big global communications agency. And they measure trust several times a year. And we started to see this change, particularly during COVID, where coworkers and stuff, were starting to trust the information that their companies were giving them more and more. And also, when Black Lives Matter happened, we started to see that coworkers expected their CEOs and their companies to show up and stand up for the values that they have. So we’re seeing this becoming so much more relevant, and particularly for dri said, those buzzwords, millennials and Gen Z. These these people who are graduating universities right now, we had our young leaders come and talk to the top 300 leaders of IKEA last month, and they’re all activists from around the world. And one of them made a really good point, she said, Greta Thunberg is 22. Now she’s graduating uni, she’s looking for a job. Are you ready to hire these kinds of activists into into your company? Do you? And do you have those those values? And are you prepared to take people on with those kinds of deep values as well. So I think this is what employers really need to consider. But I also think it’s a huge opportunity for business right now as well.

Russel Lolacher
Before we started recording, we had sort of mentioned the great resignation, which is such a repeated thing over and over again, where people are looking for a bit more from their crappy cultures and bad leadership. Purpose seems to be the reoccurring thing that comes over and over again, as people aren’t feeling purpose in their work. Activism certainly seems like a way to tap into this. And I love that you mentioned the millennials thing, because Millennials now go to the age of 45. So you rolling your eyes that those kids, those children that are millennials them, like that’s middle management. Now, that’s not even entry level anything anywhere?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Yeah, exactly. And also, I’ve been, I’ve been reading this great book at the moment about the kindness economy, and one of our leading retail experts here in the UK, she’s been doing a lot of reflection on what happened to business during COVID. And moving forward. And it’s such a great, such a great book, I’d really recommend people reading it. But she makes a really good point in the book, people are looking for community, people are looking for places where they feel that they can belong. And I don’t know about you, but when I go to work somewhere, I want to feel like I belong and that I have like minded people around me, I’ve got people I can trust, I’ve got friends, like you and I work together so many years ago, in Melbourne, wherever I work, I take friends with me that that’s the biggest gift that a workplace can can give you. So I think that it’s just natural that values will come with that because everyone is looking for community and now more so than ever. And how do you create that community by sharing values, and showing that it’s not just about the go into work every day and, and earning money, but it’s about more than that. It’s about giving back. And it’s about having an impact on the world and feeling that you’re, you’re doing something good.

Russel Lolacher
Now you’re looking at your title, it says campaigns manager, and I’m gonna put on my cliched marketing PR hat for a sec. And think of campaigns. A lot of people just think, oh, that’s thing you do from start date to end date where you brag about how great your organization is. And then you’re over and you move on to the next thing where it’s very much about marketing and ad sales and so forth. It sounds like it might be a little different for you because you work within a larger group called the Public Affairs and Advocacy Group. Can you explain a bit about what you do?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
No, I think this is a great thing. And actually, the team and I are looking at how redoing our name at the moment, because campaigns is very confusing. And like you say people think it’s marketing campaigns. But it’s not worry about societal impact. And how do we bring together the great things that the company is doing? The opportunities that we see in the world and things that are most relevant to our customers and co workers to have an impact? So yeah, we’re not about where we try to have a start and finish date. But I tell you, what are the issues that we work on climate change, we’re never going to have an end date to that we’re always going to be trying to mitigate climate change from now. So when we’re always going to have to be running a climate campaign, unfortunately, with the rising inequality that we’re seeing around the world, that there’s always going to be campaigns that we need to run to improve a quality for people. So we what we do is we focus on the areas where we have the biggest business commitments. And then we we talk to our customers and our co workers about that. But also we look at where we have great partnerships, whether that’s in their local communities of our stores, all our IKEA stores, and I’d recommend anyone in your audiences go and reacquaint themselves with an Ikea if they’re not already familiar, we have a new store in downtown Toronto, if anyone’s heading over to the East Coast, and just have a look at what the the teams are doing with their local communities. During COVID, we did emergency responses from every single one of our stores to support the most vulnerable in our communities. So what we tried to do is we tap into what are the most relevant issues for our stores, and the most relevant issues for our business and our business commitments? And then how do we run campaigns that our customers and co workers can participate in to have an impact? So yeah, that’s what we do at the moment. Our focus areas are climate, refugees, and we’re looking at inequality in the home, so life at home. So we’ve got some things were that are bubbling away, that I can’t really don’t want to spill it spill the beans on those, but you can stay tuned on that.

Russel Lolacher
Thanks, Jess. Now, if I’m like a PR hack, I’m thinking, “well, look at all that great PR, you’re doing. Oh, my goodness, you’re out in the world. And it’s just making the brand look better and better.” Which Yes, that is the fringe benefit of doing this well, and being consistent in it. But there is that reflection in I want to talk about, which is what does that make you feel like as an employee doing these things? Has there been light bulb moments where sort of a CEO or an executive is like, oh, no, this is why we do this from an internal standpoint.

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Not at IKEA. No, I care is a super values driven company. And it’s the very founding of the company came out of wanting to support as they say in Swedish, the many, so supporting the community, it came from a very poor community. And that’s why you know, everything’s flat packs, how can we make the most accessible furniture in the most affordable way so that everyone can access it, even those with very thin wallets. So the company has always been very focused on its coworkers, on the many customers and trying to be as accessible as possible. But I think I’m gonna pull you up in this whole PR campaign, what we do, it’s not about PR campaigns, and the very first thing that we start with and what makes us different to say, a communications or a marketing campaign, is we start with what’s the impact we can have? So are we changing attitudes and behaviors? Or are we going even further than that. So we can have a huge impact with our coworkers on just changing attitudes and behaviors. And I love the idea that if you come to work, you can learn about issues, you can participate in issues. If I give you an example, of one of the most incredible campaigns that our country’s did recently was on domestic violence. And it was in the the Czechoslovakia and Hungary region. And they realized that one in two women were impacted by domestic violence, and no one was talking about it, not even the government’s. And of course, during COVID, this became really a really big issue. So the IKEA teams, they teamed up with some partners, and they started to talk about it. And people took notice, and they suddenly got phone calls from one of the presidents of the countries, they’ve been invited in by the government to look at legislative change. But most importantly, what did that what did that team do? They started by letting everyone know, what’s the helpline number, not only for customers, but also for coworkers. What do you do if you know someone who has experienced domestic violence or need support, trying to fund and support the organization to approve providing services for those most impacted? So that’s the kind of impact that we can have with and for our co workers. When we focus on our purpose and our societal impact campaigns.

Russel Lolacher
And from the PR perspective, I’m just doing that jaded side of things.

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
I love it. Love it.

Russel Lolacher
So as a values driven organization, when you’re hiring people, are you hiring Hey, are you an activist? Hey, do you have a cause you want to support? Is it part of the hiring practices?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Absolutely. at IKEA, it definitely is we hire on values first. When I was at the body shop, we are So hold on values but more so at IKEA your values come first we want to know that you’re a great fit for the company that you meet our values. And then we’ll look at your your CV and your expertise and what you can do. And I think, actually, I don’t know if you’ve got credit monitor in in Canada, it’s a big kind of sandwich chain, here in the UK and the CEO of preda mangia put it perfectly that some someone was asking what do you look for when when you hire? And you said, I hire happy people? Why don’t you hire happy people? Don’t you want people who are experts at customer service? Or who make good sandwiches or coffees? No, because I can train them in that. But if they don’t have the right attitude, they don’t have that smile. I can’t train that. That’s something that comes naturally. So I think maybe that’s a bit of a shift as well, that we’re seeing these values come first.

Russel Lolacher
If there’s such a benefit to employees, and I’m sure they’re, you know, they show up to work, they enjoy what they’re doing, because they feel a purpose. Why aren’t more organizations doing that?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Well actually Russel, I think, more and more. This is something I’ve seen in the many years, I’ve worked in this industry. And prior to the body shop, I was working at L’Oreal, and then now I’m working at IKEA. And I really seen that shift. When I first started on this track, we started with cause related marketing. So it was just you focus on having a nice product that does a bit of a donation. Oh, aren’t you good? That’s fantastic. Then customers. And the public started to say, Well, if you do that, what’s happening in your supply chain? So how do you operate your business? And can you show us what you do and how you live up to, you know, more than than just donating money. And now what we’re seeing is people expect it to be right through your whole organization. They want to know that you’re not just you know, mitigating the worst effects that you can have, but actually, you’re having a positive, a positive impact. And also, I mean, there’s been so many reports, I think, even Larry Fink at Blackrock with the annual letters that he sends out, he really gets to the heart of this. If your brand, if your organization doesn’t have purpose, if it doesn’t stand for something, you’re not going to have the competitive advantage. There have been a lot of studies to look at the commercial success of businesses who have a purpose and live to their purpose, as opposed to those who don’t. And if you look at the long term growth, it’s now clear that you need to have a strong purpose and stand for something to have that long term growth, it’s no longer about, you know, having the quick sales promotions, that’s very short term growth, you’ve got to focus on on your brand and who you are your values and what you stand for.

Russel Lolacher
Do you feel there’s a challenge with resources times and the reason I bring that up is because all the organizations you mentioned that you’ve worked for and been passionate about your advocacy, L’Oreal, Body Shop, IKEA, these are big companies with lots of resources and global reach. So there might be somebody listening going, Yeah, but we’re only a state, a province wide, or a mom and pop shop or something like that, where their their level of work is small to medium business. And they may not feel that this is something within reach for them, even of all the benefits, what would you say to them?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
I would say it’s absolutely within the reach of everyone. If I think about my local cafe, at the end of the road, they’ve got what half a dozen staff, they are so values driven, they have started running coffee mornings, where you can go in and talk to an expert about dementia, they have loyalty cards where you can pay it forward. So instead of you getting the free coffee at the end of your loyalty card, you put it in a jar at the counter. And that gets paid for it. There are little things that you can do that will be visible that will just help everyone your your co workers, your staff and your customers see that you are a values driven company, do what you can. And also listen to what people working for you want to do, what are the issues that matter most to them and see how together you can find a way of doing that within the resource that you have. I think it’s possible for everyone.

Russel Lolacher
Can an organization screw this up? Like they come in with the best intentions, but they’re like, you know you missed the mark?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Oh, 100% You can? Absolutely, absolutely. And this is where my biggest recommendation is. Listen to your staff. Ask them and never speak for a group of people without having them represent it. So for example, it’s pride. It’s just been Pride Month. Here in Brighton in the UK, we’ve got the 30 year anniversary of Brighton pride and everyone’s standing to show their rainbows and everything. For example, do not go out and talk about pride and talk about your position on LGBTQI+, without talking to those within your, within your co workers or staff population, who are part of that community, ask them what they want, what they want you to do as an organization and what they want you to talk about. And that’s also where the magic happens is when you hand that over to your staff, like I said, when my best experience has always been seeing where our staff, take the values and take the campaigns, it’s absolutely brilliant. And it just brings that connection closer between you and your staff as well.

Russel Lolacher
And it can hammer home on the… at the end of the day there’s also that part about making money, and I’m sorry, but your customers aren’t stupid, they’ll see the misstep publicly. But it also will disenfranchise your own employees, because you’re like, I don’t want to be part of an organization that’s doing this as a publicity stunt.

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Yeah, 100%. And also, it’s okay to make money. And this is this is the thing where with purpose, don’t be afraid of making money don’t use, like sometimes, you know, you’ve got to be careful that you’re not commercializing very serious issues. So that’s a whole nother whole nother topic we could talk about. But what I want to get back to is, as a business, you have to make money. And as you make money, you can use your business to have a positive influence. So this was something that came up a lot at the body shop and a lot of IKEA. Yeah, we are a business. And we are going to try to we need to be a profitable business. But guess what, the more profitable we are, the more we can invest in the amazing programs and work that we do. And we can continue to have an influence and try to lead with our business influence as well.

Russel Lolacher
Can an organization do this without having a dedicated team to it? You are part of a group of campaigns focused (I know we’re going to remove campaigns, we’re not talking about what you might think you’re talking about). But there is a dedicated, passionate movement. I know the whole organization’s values driven, but there’s only one group that feels more social good. Is that the right structure for an organization?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
It’s, it’s a really good question. And I think this comes down to you and your organization and what resources you have, because you raised a really good point, we want the smaller organizations, we want your your local shops to be able to do this. So I think you need to look at your organization, and the best way to organize this for you. But if you are asking people to do this in addition to their everyday job, then please give them the time to do it. Don’t expect them to do it, in addition to or above and beyond what their busy workload already is, make sure you carve out the time for them. And maybe that could even come down to a manager working through that with you as well. Ideally, you have a dedicated team, but that in especially with the economic times we’re hurtling into, it may not be possible. And I would look at that as an organization.

Russel Lolacher
How do you communicate back the great work that your team does back to the organization? Because we do organizations do sometimes great work that larger organizations may never even hear about because they work in another geography base or another work silo? So is there a way of communicating back to sort of I guess we do social good. Did you know we do social good in an internal communications piece?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Yeah, and this is a really good point. Because I think this is the thing that everyone forgets to do. And I will put my hand up and say, I’ve been here many times, you forget to tell people, your customers, your staff, your internal teams, oh, look what we did. Look how great that was, or thank you for your contribution. And look at the impact that this had. So it’s so important that you do that. And that you plan that from from the beginning. Again, I would listen to your internal teams, how did they receive that information? How did they How did they want to be communicated to so at IKEA, as you mentioned, a very big organization, we’ve got a lot of resource, but we’re seeing more and more people want to watch film, they want to see moving content. So we’ve actually we’ve got and because of COVID, we set up an internal broadcast studio. So we have an internal communications team. And we have a very small team whose full time job is to go out every week and record stories around the business and send that to everyone. And that’s like a 1015 minute film every week. But it could also be our communications director. She does an Instagram post to camera every week to talk about all the amazing things that are happening in the in the company. So again, I would look at what’s the best way to communicate with your internal teams, how do they want to receive that information? And then what resource do you have available to do it? But it’s so important that you do you factor that in, when you start the planning from the get go.

Russel Lolacher
What’s it meant to you, to bring your full self to work to be able to do this work in a professional setting?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
To be honest with you, I’ve always brought my full self to work. So I don’t know any other way. I love what I do. It’s made me very happy person. And also, I feel very proud of the impact that I’ve been able to have and to help the company do that. And also, now I’m getting to that point where I feel that my role is more to mentor or coach, others and to help them benefit from my experience. And I get so much so there’s not satisfaction, but fulfillment out of that it’s really rewarding work. And also, actually, I think, no, sorry, there is one thing. I’ve been really loyal to my workplaces, and I’ve stayed there for, you know, the body shop, I think in total, I was there for 10 years, just because I loved it. I was so committed to the business, I was so connected to the business, I really believed in the business and where it was going. And it was only having an old colleagues call me up and say, Hey, do you want to come and do this at IKEA and thinking, Oh, my gosh, wouldn’t that be super exciting that I took the leap? So yeah, I think you get a very loyal, happy, highly productive workforce.

Russel Lolacher
So I asked the question, because that’s not normal for most people to be able to be their full selves at work. You’ve been very lucky. And you’re very, you’ve always been very focused, and very, what’s the word ambitious about what you want? And how you want to go about it. But not a lot of people are like that. That’s why I’m kind of curious about bringing your full self because not everybody gets that opportunity.

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
No, I think that’s a really, really good point. I think there’s so many different examples that we could bring to that kind of conversation. And I do feel, though, and maybe I hope I’m not being super naive in saying this. But I do feel that you can speak up a lot more in workplaces now. Or maybe it’s just me, because I’m older now. And I look back and I think, “oh my God, why didn’t I ever say something about this? Or why didn’t I? Why didn’t I always have such low self-confidence about this or that? Or…” I do… I do find within people in my teams or people that work around me that they do speak up a lot, a lot more and, and like you said, the millennial, and now like 45, so then that some of them and the managers as well. And they’re really open and receptive to these comments and wanting to do the best for their teams as well. And the only encouragement that I could give is to say something and to speak up and try to find someone that you can trust, to, to broach these subjects with to try to drive some change in your organization. And if Yeah, if it doesn’t go the way that you think it should, or with the respect that it should, can you find somebody that will respect you. Because work shouldn’t be a one way thing. It’s a two way thing. You’re giving them all your amazing expertise and your hard work and they should be giving the the respect in the right conditions.

Russel Lolacher
I mean, basically, we’re just talking about activism, but just being an activist for yourself sometimes. What is some of your favorite examples of your team, being activist for your organization, to just basically improve the experience?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Oh, my gosh, best experiences of my team, gosh, I have such a great team. And they just do the most amazing things. And we also have a lot of fun doing it as well. I did one of my highlights actually was last November, we took a team to cop 26 to Glasgow. And it wasn’t just seeing them hitting the ground running like we’ve everyone had been what locked in locked down for a year and a half. We’ve not been anywhere. And suddenly we’re in Glasgow, were a team that hadn’t worked together. And they just hit the ground running. And they made the most of every opportunity available to them. But the best thing about all of it was they looked after each other and they supported each other and they had each other’s backs. And they were not only having fun, but they were also helping each other learn and to progress themselves in their learning on how to have that impact and how to drive that advocacy. And it was an absolute joy for once in my life to step back and not be the ones running around and doing all of that and just being there if they needed me. But I have to say that was not was a big one. And recently for World Refugee Day, we put on a lot of activities in Sweden. And again, it was bringing the teams together. And we flew in a colleague of ours, who is a refugee, and had gone through our skills for employment program. And seeing him talk. And he spoke all day, he had interviews, and he was recording podcasts and doing everything all day. And just hearing from him, and giving him that platform to talk about not only his experiences of being a refugee, but also what work has meant to him and having that opportunity to work in his new country. It was so powerful, and it just gave so much to everyone. And again, everyone just came together as a real team to really get behind those issues and trying to get those stories out to have an impact.

Russel Lolacher
What would you say to a leader that is hesitant to support things like this, that they see this as possibly just a cost center as opposed to something that they really want to invest in? In their organization? What would you say to that leader?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Do you want the abridged version? Or do you want the Jesse’s being professional in a board version?

Russel Lolacher
I like the first version better!

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
Yeah, my abridged version would be, “you are going to be left behind my friend. Your business is going to become irrelevant. You got it, you got to get with this program. Now all your competitors are doing this. All the best brands and companies in the world are doing this. Not only you’re going to lose sales, but you’re going to lose the best people, and you’re not going to be able to recruit the best people as well.” Because people don’t turn up to work for profitable companies anymore. They want more than just a p&l sheet. So that’s my abridged version. But if I, if I was sat in a meeting, and this is this is a great question Russel, because I get this all the time. And the number of conferences and panel discussions I’ve sat in and it comes up again and again, how do you convince the C-suite that they need to put the resource here, there is so much research research now to prove that brands with purpose, as I mentioned before, are the most successful and retain and attract the best stuff. So get hold of that research and get it in front of your senior leaders?

Russel Lolacher
Jessie… If there was one simple action people could do right now to improve their relationships at work? What would you want them to do?

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
You know, right at the moment, I want people to have fun, I think we’ve gone two and a half years of just running from crisis to crisis. Being in the unknown, trying to be super agile and flex the business or the organization and what you do, I think it’s time to have a bit of fun. Now, look around the teams that you have. And let’s bring the fun back. I think that’s it’s time to relax, it’s time to just take some time for your team and to enjoy the people that that you work with. Do that bonding again, get to know each other in a in a fun way, again, that that’s the first thing that I would say. And then the second thing it would be Listen, chat to your fellow employees, chat to your teams, what are the issues that are most concerning them? And where they feel that the business could maybe have an impact, and whether that’s, you know, maybe you get together and you will do some fundraising or you run a charity marathon or something together? To Okay, let’s go and ask the CEO if we could have have a special program or do a special initiative focused on this issue. I would say listen, because also that that ownership, so for your staff to feel like I was listened to and this is something that we’re doing together. It brings people together and give them that real ownership and loyalty to our company as well.

Russel Lolacher
That is Jesse McNeil-Brown, who’s a campaigns manager and her Twitter account is literally called @activistJess. So thank you so much for your time. Just I love hearing your voice and it has been far too long. Thanks for doing this.

Jessie MacNeil-Brown
My pleasure. Russel, thank you so much. And thank you for the podcast. I think it’s so important we have these conversations. So great.