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Difference Makers Discuss - Best of Season 4 · Difference Makers Podcast

• 0:14
  Sinead Donovan: Hello there, and welcome to a very special episode of Difference Makers Discuss.
• 0:19
  Sinead Donovan: I'm Sinead Donovan and I'm coming to you as Series 4 comes to a conclusion Over the past few months, we have been fortunate enough to sit down with some truly remarkable individuals.
• 0:33
  Sinead Donovan: Entrepreneurs, Olympians, community builders, and finance professionals who are doing things differently.
• 0:41
  Sinead Donovan: Today, here in the edit suite, we have woven together the best moments from our first six episodes.
• 0:49
  Sinead Donovan: Conversations with Kingsley Aikins, Aster Thackery, Manuel Rodrigues, Caitriona Jennings, Nick Reimer, and Liswaniso Namatama.
• 1:00
  Sinead Donovan: You may have heard some of these episodes before, or perhaps you are joining us for the very first time.
• 1:06
  Sinead Donovan: Either way, I promise you there is something here that will stay with you.
• 1:11
  Sinead Donovan: So let's start by meeting Kingsley, the doyen of networking.
• 1:16
  Sinead Donovan: Here he talks about how a 12-person dinner club in Sydney went on to become the largest Irish business network in the world.
• 1:26
  Kingsley Aikins: Um, so after that w- episode was all over, I went to London, I did a post-grad, and I joined, Sinead, you're too young to remember, Coras Iarachta, which is the Irish- I do export board.
• 1:37
  Sinead Donovan: I remember
• 1:38
  Kingsley Aikins: it.
• 1:38
  Kingsley Aikins: You remember it.
• 1:40
  Kingsley Aikins: And what you normally do is spend a few years there, and then they post you overseas.
• 1:44
  Kingsley Aikins: That's what I really want.
• 1:45
  Kingsley Aikins: I want to po- I was very keen to get out of Ireland.
• 1:48
  Kingsley Aikins: You know, I, I think, you know the old line, who knows Ireland, who only Ireland knows.
• 1:52
  Kingsley Aikins: In other words, if you wanna know your country, you gotta go away and spend time away.
• 1:55
  Kingsley Aikins: So I was very keen to go away, and I put my name down for a posting.
• 1:59
  Kingsley Aikins: I'll never remember… I'll never forget what happened.
• 2:02
  Kingsley Aikins: There were five cities up for grabs.
• 2:04
  Kingsley Aikins: It was Moscow, um, Sydney, um, Lagos, Glasgow, and then the glamour posting, Limerick, right?
• 2:12
  Kingsley Aikins: So I got Sydney.
• 2:15
  Sinead Donovan: Oh
• 2:15
  Kingsley Aikins: my goodness.
• 2:16
  Kingsley Aikins: By chance.
• 2:16
  Kingsley Aikins: Wow.
• 2:17
  Kingsley Aikins: Now, dirty job, somebody's gotta do it.
• 2:18
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah.
• 2:19
  Kingsley Aikins: And when your country calls.
• 2:20
  Kingsley Aikins: So off I went, and I spent eight years there in Sydney, and it was fantastic.
• 2:25
  Kingsley Aikins: But when I arrived there, I didn't know a sinner in Australia.
• 2:28
  Kingsley Aikins: I met a lot of sinners when I was there, but I didn't know anybody there.
• 2:32
  Kingsley Aikins: And I, my mom gave the name of a neighbor's son who lived in Sydney.
• 2:35
  Kingsley Aikins: I rang him and I said,"I don't know anybody.
• 2:37
  Kingsley Aikins: Can you introduce me to the, to the local Irish business network?" He said, "There isn't one." So I said, "Look, why don't we set one up?" So we got together, like 12 people one night, and we had a dinner.
• 2:47
  Kingsley Aikins: We called ourselves the Lansdowne Road Club- Mm … because we were rugby guys.
• 2:51
  Kingsley Aikins: And then in the spirit of sort of sporting ecumenism, we dropped the word road.
• 2:56
  Kingsley Aikins: Mm. So it's the Lansdowne Club, and it's there today.
• 2:58
  Kingsley Aikins: It is.
• 2:59
  Kingsley Aikins: It's the biggest Irish business network- Yeah … in any city in the world.
• 3:01
  Sinead Donovan: Yeah.
• 3:01
  Kingsley Aikins: They have their St. Patrick's Day lunch next week.
• 3:04
  Kingsley Aikins: I was talking to Theresa Keating, who worked with me and has been running it ever since, and she said that they put out the call for people who wanted to buy tickets, and 1,000 sales were done in, in 20 minutes.
• 3:16
  Kingsley Aikins: So, so it was a wonderful kind of… And for me, it was a nice kind of legacy I left.
• 3:19
  Kingsley Aikins: Mm. And I met, when I was over there- I was trying to find somebody who'd be a great name to head up the, the Lansdowne Club, and I wrote a letter to a guy called, another name you'd probably remember, Tony O'Reilly.
• 3:30
  Kingsley Aikins: Mm-hmm.
• 3:30
  Kingsley Aikins: Head of the H.J.
• 3:31
  Kingsley Aikins: Heinz food company in the United States.
• 3:33
  Kingsley Aikins: And he, a huge, big name, me, a nobody, and I wrote to him, and I couldn't believe it.
• 3:37
  Kingsley Aikins: He wrote back and he said,"I'd love to be involved.
• 3:40
  Kingsley Aikins: I'm building networks of Irish people in business all around the world." And thirdly, he said, and I couldn't believe this, he said,"Would you be free for lunch?
• 3:47
  Kingsley Aikins: 'Cause I'm coming to Sydney." Would I be free for lunch?
• 3:49
  Kingsley Aikins: I was gonna say, "No, I'm busy, Tony," but- Yeah.
• 3:52
  Kingsley Aikins: But I said, "Love to meet you for…" I met him for lunch.
• 3:55
  Kingsley Aikins: We talked about rugby for about two hours, and lots of other things, and I ended up working for him for 21 years.
• 4:01
  Sinead Donovan: Kingley's story is a reminder that one letter, one lunch, one conversation can change the entire direction of not just one career, but perhaps the careers of many that come after you.
• 4:14
  Sinead Donovan: Now, what happens when you take that same spirit of community-building and apply it to starting a new life in a new city?
• 4:22
  Sinead Donovan: Astrid Thackray moved to London pregnant, during a pandemic, knowing nobody, and what she created from that starting point might just surprise you.
• 4:32
  Aster Thackery: Yeah.
• 4:33
  Aster Thackery: So it's funny, community… 'Cause we spoke about community, uh, when we chatted the other day, right?
• 4:38
  Aster Thackery: Mm. And, um, I guess when I reflect on what I've been up to over the last few years, community is a huge theme.
• 4:45
  Aster Thackery: And I would say that I wear three hats, so I've… Well, three hats plus also I'm a mom.
• 4:51
  Aster Thackery: But so three hats being the work that I'm doing with the Italian government at the moment.
• 4:55
  Aster Thackery: So I'm, I'm working to attract investment into Italy, and that, that in itself is a bit, is a bit community-based because essentially you're trying to connect the Italian business community in London with the investment community and the, and the business community, right?
• 5:10
  Aster Thackery: So how do you build those relationships?
• 5:11
  Aster Thackery: The second community is, of course, the Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand.
• 5:16
  Aster Thackery: Uh, we have 4,200 members in the UK.
• 5:19
  Aster Thackery: So as chair, I'm not… I'm a volunteer, but we luckily have a brilliant paid team that do all the actual work.
• 5:25
  Aster Thackery: But as chair, I often am thinking, "How do we do more to bring our community together?" So, um, like, what kind of events can we do?
• 5:33
  Aster Thackery: Things like that.
• 5:33
  Aster Thackery: And then the third, which is what you are referring to, is I live in Greenwich in London, and when I moved here five years ago, yeah, five years ago during COVID, um, I didn't know anybody, and I was pregnant with my second baby, and I just did what I think many pregnant women or, or, or like mothers do, which is try, try to connect with other pregnant women and mothers.
• 5:58
  Aster Thackery: So I had this coffee meetup that I started.
• 6:04
  Aster Thackery: Pretty, pretty normal.
• 6:05
  Aster Thackery: But the thing is that this coffee meetup just grew.
• 6:08
  Aster Thackery: It just didn't stop growing.
• 6:09
  Aster Thackery: So it's just grown and grown and grown and grown and grown.
• 6:12
  Aster Thackery: And it got to the point where we now have about 2,000 active parents in our local community who are part of this group.
• 6:20
  Aster Thackery: So we're not affiliated to a, to, you know, to a religion or a school or any kind of, um, any group.
• 6:26
  Aster Thackery: We are just a community of parents.
• 6:28
  Aster Thackery: And it got to the point where COVID had lifted, and that's why I thought,"Well, we should, we should do something.
• 6:34
  Aster Thackery: Maybe I should organize a party or an event." So in 2024, I thought, "I'll organize a village fair," because- It felt to me like where I'd grown up in New Zealand, there were often community events, and in London, yes, there are community events, but they're huge, right?
• 6:49
  Aster Thackery: So I thought, well, Greenwich is essentially a village.
• 6:51
  Aster Thackery: I mean, we are, we're in zone two, we're central, but we're essentially a village, so let's, let's put on a village fair and invite all the families and the children.
• 6:58
  Aster Thackery: So we had this big event, and it was free, and people came, and h- and everything was, like, just for families, little, little children.
• 7:06
  Aster Thackery: And everybody said, "Oh, that was great. You should do it again." And it's the same, same this year.
• 7:10
  Aster Thackery: "Oh, it was great. You should do it again." So it's morphed now.
• 7:13
  Aster Thackery: This, this community has morphed.
• 7:14
  Aster Thackery: But just to tell you, um, a really, I guess, most recent story is that yesterday, yesterday was International Women's Day.
• 7:22
  Aster Thackery: Yes.
• 7:22
  Aster Thackery: And yeah.
• 7:23
  Aster Thackery: And so I thought, well, actually, yes, we'll do a fair again.
• 7:26
  Aster Thackery: Sure.
• 7:27
  Aster Thackery: And we can do other events, too.
• 7:28
  Aster Thackery: But for the first time, w- I decided to organize, uh, a family morning tea for International Women's Day.
• 7:34
  Aster Thackery: So a lot of the… We had… We sold out, actually.
• 7:37
  Aster Thackery: We didn't… And I say sold out as in we only had capacity in the venue for a certain number, and we had too many.
• 7:43
  Aster Thackery: So we had about 80 parents and children come yesterday morning.
• 7:47
  Aster Thackery: And I did some call-outs to some of the amazing women that run businesses in our community, and they, they donated, like, spot prizes.
• 7:54
  Aster Thackery: And we had a children's entertainer come, and she did a bit of, you know, women, girls rule the world.
• 7:59
  Aster Thackery: And it was just this really fun community event.
• 8:02
  Aster Thackery: But, but yeah, essentially- I mean, you could, we could talk for hours about how motherhood and, um, parenthood and the family unit and the cost of childcare, I mean, that's a whole wormhole, right?
• 8:13
  Aster Thackery: Mm-hmm.
• 8:13
  Aster Thackery: But drilling it right down to what is it that, I guess I felt like what is the very least that I can do in my position?
• 8:21
  Aster Thackery: And that is just connect people.
• 8:23
  Aster Thackery: So a lot of the people that come to all of the meetups and events and things that we organize or I organize, they're just s- parents that are a bit similar to us.
• 8:32
  Aster Thackery: Um, they probably don't have family here in London, and they just want to connect with other parents and, and, and, and bring their child to something that they know it's gonna be fine and yeah.
• 8:42
  Aster Thackery: So that community is now, um, I actually incorporated it, which sounds really, uh, formal, but the reason I did that is because I wanted it to be its own thing and not linked to, to me and my bank account, right?
• 8:53
  Aster Thackery: So it's incorporated as a social enterprise, a nonprofit social enterprise.
• 8:57
  Aster Thackery: And once I did that, I then realized that we've now got the foundation in place which enables us to empower others in the community to do things as well.
• 9:07
  Aster Thackery: So one of the moms, she's now been running for a year moms in business networking, free networking, free, uh, workshops for women in the community.
• 9:16
  Aster Thackery: I've got another one who said that she'd like to get some events experience, so I've been supporting her behind the scenes, and she can run events.
• 9:23
  Aster Thackery: And then I've got another one who she, uh, wanted to run a charity event, but she is just, you know, she can organize it and hire a hall, but, but we're helping, I'm helping her out with all the ticketing and all of that sort of base infrastructure.
• 9:36
  Aster Thackery: So yeah, it's been a really fascinating project, and people have said…'cause I never set out to create a, a group or a community or whatever, but people have voiced it, "Oh, where are you gonna take it next?
• 9:47
  Aster Thackery: What are you gonna do next?" And I'm like, "Well, actually, we're community led, so what do you guys want, and what are you guys prepared to help with?" Because something that… sorry, I'm going on, stop me if I'm going on a tangent.
• 9:58
  Aster Thackery: It's just to me- No, it's brilliant.
• 9:58
  Aster Thackery: It's great … I think it's so important.
• 10:01
  Aster Thackery: Like, this has been floating around on socials recently, but people are saying,"Oh, we don't have a village anymore.
• 10:07
  Aster Thackery: You know, I don't have a village," especially in the, the world of parenting, "Oh, we don't have a village." But then also what's been going around, which I fully, when I s- read this the first time, it's resonated with me so hard, is people say that they want to have a village, but they don't wanna be a villager, right?
• 10:24
  Aster Thackery: They don't, people don't wanna put in the effort to be a villager, you know?
• 10:27
  Aster Thackery: 'Cause being, being part of a village means that you also need to contribute and, and take part.
• 10:31
  Aster Thackery: So I am pushing back to people a lot now to say, yeah, like we can do all that stuff.
• 10:38
  Aster Thackery: Let's, let's do it together and see, and see what comes out.
• 10:42
  Sinead Donovan: Aster's story is a beautiful reminder of what becomes possible when you simply start something, when you make a move to actually do an action.
• 10:52
  Sinead Donovan: And sometimes it is that one action which starts something big, starts a movement that literally changes thousands of lives Manuel Rodrigues has been doing something exactly that in Mozambique.
• 11:08
  Sinead Donovan: He is an inspiring CA that is building a microeconomy from the ground up.
• 11:13
  Sinead Donovan: His actions have fundamentally transformed one of the poorest regions on the continent.
• 11:19
  Sinead Donovan: Inspiring and definitely learnings for us all.
• 11:22
  Manuel Rodrigues: Um, yeah, so it's a, it's a Portuguese phrase called Escolha do Povo, which means the people's choice, and, um, we started that project, um, in 2014, and over the years it's grown and developed, and I think some of the, some of the listeners have followed the, the, the project's progress.
• 11:41
  Manuel Rodrigues: Uh, but effectively what the, the project does, it's got a network of small-scale farmers that produce maize and soya in a very rural village called Vila Longue in the Tete Province of Mozambique.
• 11:53
  Manuel Rodrigues: So we've got about fifty-five thousand s- uh, small-scale maize farmers on the books and about, uh, fourteen thousand soya farmers, and what these guys do is they grow maize and this… They grow soya, and we buy all that, that product back from them, and we process, um, or make products for the formal market, um, with those raw materials.
• 12:14
  Manuel Rodrigues: And, um, when we did the analysis initially, um, in terms of, of the needs of the market as well as the, um, uh, commercial viability, we decided to then go into poultry.
• 12:27
  Manuel Rodrigues: So what we then did was we annexed a, a commercial hatchery where we produce stale chicks, um, and we… At the feed factory we produce now a chicken feed using the maize and soya that comes from the small-scale farmers.
• 12:40
  Manuel Rodrigues: And effectively what we've done is we've started this training program where we teach the small-scale chicken farmer how to buy their chicks and their feed and to grow a, a, a chicken, um, that they then sell in their various communities, um, as a protein source.
• 12:57
  Manuel Rodrigues: Um, so this was backed by the government.
• 13:00
  Manuel Rodrigues: We've had a lot of government support, uh, because not only is it, uh, creating opportunities for small-scale farmers, farmers to start their own businesses but also, um, you know, it, it helps with the, um, uh, nutritional intake of your local Mozambican where, you know, sometimes protein sources were a little bit more difficult to come by.
• 13:20
  Manuel Rodrigues: Um, now, you know, we're starting to get a lot more, uh, protein availability in, in the market.
• 13:27
  Manuel Rodrigues: Um, so through the years, you know, that's really been our focus, and we started off with one little retail store, uh, a small community of farmers that we were, that we were training, and at this point in time this month, we actually opened up our 11th store.
• 13:41
  Manuel Rodrigues: So we've got stores now all over the central part of the country, as well as the northwestern side, as well as the northeastern side.
• 13:49
  Manuel Rodrigues: So I suppose central, central and north.
• 13:51
  Manuel Rodrigues: And, um, similar type, type of, of process where we bring in these farmers, we run, uh, lectures and training, uh, you know, we upskill these farmers, and then we supply them the inputs for them to start, to start their, their business.
• 14:03
  Manuel Rodrigues: And that's sort of been what we've been doing over the, the past couple of years now.
• 14:08
  Manuel Rodrigues: Um, last year we then ventured out into a completely new side of the business.
• 14:12
  Manuel Rodrigues: I suppose it's, it's a bit of a vertical integration.
• 14:15
  Manuel Rodrigues: So what we were doing in the past is we would import these fertilized eggs from Zambia and hatch the chicks and then distribute the chicks.
• 14:22
  Manuel Rodrigues: Uh, now we're investing in our own, um, internal fertilized egg production.
• 14:28
  Manuel Rodrigues: Um, and we've done that in, uh, conjunction with two of the communities in, in our areas.
• 14:34
  Manuel Rodrigues: So effectively what we've done is we've built a little, uh, what we call a breeder house for them.
• 14:39
  Manuel Rodrigues: And over a period of time, we're gonna teach them how to produce these fertilized eggs, which in, in turn, they will sell to us.
• 14:46
  Manuel Rodrigues: We will then hatch the chick and sell those out to the small-scale farmer.
• 14:51
  Manuel Rodrigues: So at the end, end of the day, what's actually happened is we've managed to create a little bit of a microeconomy Where the small scale farmers who produce maize and soya into the project, they obviously earn cash.
• 15:04
  Manuel Rodrigues: We produce chicks and chicken feed, which we sell back to them, and they grow a chicken, and they then sell that chicken and earn cash.
• 15:11
  Manuel Rodrigues: And so this little micro economy sort of circulates.
• 15:15
  Manuel Rodrigues: Um, one of the reasons why government was very much behind the, the project, uh, from an entrep-entrepreneurial point of view is because a lot of the farmers in the area were growing maize and soya at the time.
• 15:30
  Manuel Rodrigues: And, um, you can imagine that you harvest maize and soya, and you do that once a year, so your income potential is annually, um, maybe twice a year if you're lucky and you're one of the, the, the savvy farmers.
• 15:42
  Manuel Rodrigues: Um, but with poultry, um, the farmer then buys their inputs, and they're able to churn that, that capital every thirty-five days.
• 15:51
  Manuel Rodrigues: So you've now gone from a month or an annual earnings to, to making a profit on, on this type of business, um, monthly.
• 15:59
  Manuel Rodrigues: So it's made a lot of, uh, social impact in, in the area.
• 16:04
  Manuel Rodrigues: And naturally what happens as the volumes for the feed grow, so does the volumes for the maize and the soya grow.
• 16:11
  Manuel Rodrigues: Um, and so we're able to support more and more people.
• 16:13
  Manuel Rodrigues: So this little world or this little s- you know, flywheel of microeconomy that we have just continuously keeps, keeps churning and, and keeps growing, so the impact just continuously becomes bigger.
• 16:26
  Manuel Rodrigues: Um, so yeah, that's, that's in summary what we are and what we've done over the past twelve years.
• 16:34
  Sinead Donovan: Manuel's work is a masterclass in combining commercial discipline with genuine social mission.
• 16:41
  Sinead Donovan: It takes real resilience to hold that line.
• 16:44
  Sinead Donovan: And what a segue that is, because resilience is something that Catriona Jennings has in abundance.
• 16:51
  Sinead Donovan: Indeed, has it to such a degree that she has broken world records in endurance running.
• 16:56
  Sinead Donovan: However, to build resilience, you need to experience challenge and pain.
• 17:01
  Sinead Donovan: Catriona qualified for the 2012 Olympics whilst working full-time at PwC, and here she shares with us what happened on race day.
• 17:10
  Sinead Donovan: It's not a story you'll forget quickly.
• 17:13
  Caitriona Jennings: So during the time when I was, um, training to qualify for the Olympics, I was working full-time.
• 17:19
  Caitriona Jennings: Um, I think as a chartered accountant, everyone can probably, um, sympathize with, you know, you start your first job, but you're also studying.
• 17:27
  Caitriona Jennings: Mm-hmm.
• 17:27
  Caitriona Jennings: So you become very good at organizing your time and making sure that you have allocated the right amount of time to whatever you're actually focused on at that moment.
• 17:36
  Caitriona Jennings: And to me, running was just another one of those items that I needed to fit in or wanted to fit in, I guess.
• 17:42
  Caitriona Jennings: So when I qualified, I continued just to be as, um, you know, I suppose disciplined with my time as I had been, and I was training at a pretty high level, but also I didn't want it to impact my career because that was also equally important to me.
• 17:58
  Caitriona Jennings: I ended up being incredibly just organized at the weekend so that I planned ahead for the week and, you know, that would include making all my food for the week- Mm … preparing all my outfits that I was going to wear to work, dropping them into the office.
• 18:14
  Caitriona Jennings: You know, I was, I was kind of regimental in what I prepared for at the weekend to make sure that I was allowing myself the time to train, but also to work during the week And, uh, then I qualified for, uh, well, I achieved the qualifying standard in the Rotterdam Marathon in April of 2012, and at that point, I had a chat with the guys in PwC, and- Okay they very kindly let me take some time off work- Mm-hmm … so that I could focus on the Olympics.
• 18:41
  Caitriona Jennings: Um, so I trained full time then from probably, I think it was early May until after the Olympics in August.
• 18:50
  Caitriona Jennings: Mm. So that was great, but interestingly, I suppose I had done a lot of the work to actually get there when I was q- when I was also working full time, and for me, that just suited me well because I think there was something nice about, you know, knowing exactly.
• 19:05
  Caitriona Jennings: I was, as I said, organized, that I knew exactly what I was going to do and when.
• 19:09
  Caitriona Jennings: Of course, you know, you get a curveball.
• 19:12
  Caitriona Jennings: Mm-hmm.
• 19:12
  Caitriona Jennings: You, you, you're working on a project, you have to work late, so you do have to adapt- Mm … your best-made plans, but at least you're kind of following a structure that, for me, just worked really well.
• 19:20
  Sinead Donovan: And PwC were very good in the way that they en- enabled you to juggle, juggle things, you s- you said.
• 19:26
  Caitriona Jennings: They were when I qualified, yeah.
• 19:27
  Sinead Donovan: Okay.
• 19:28
  Sinead Donovan: Yeah.
• 19:28
  Sinead Donovan: Okay, so yeah, so, so, so forgetting you had study, you had lectures, you had all that, so gosh, fair, fair play to you.
• 19:34
  Sinead Donovan: Um, sorry, I have to pick up on one comment you said there.
• 19:36
  Sinead Donovan: You dropped the outfits into the offices.
• 19:38
  Sinead Donovan: That's 'cause you ran into the office?
• 19:39
  Caitriona Jennings: Yes, I used training.
• 19:41
  Caitriona Jennings: Sorry, that was part of my training.
• 19:42
  Caitriona Jennings: Oh, brilliant.
• 19:43
  Caitriona Jennings: And I would run in and run home.
• 19:44
  Caitriona Jennings: Oh, nice.
• 19:44
  Caitriona Jennings: Or, you know, you're trying to, I suppose, ma- maximize your, the time in your day.
• 19:49
  Caitriona Jennings: So I was, uh … And back in those days, you know, running now is huge.
• 19:53
  Caitriona Jennings: It's completely, um, exploded in Ireland, and you often see people running into work with little backpacks on.
• 19:59
  Caitriona Jennings: Mm-hmm.
• 19:59
  Caitriona Jennings: Back though, in those days, it was very rare.
• 20:02
  Caitriona Jennings: You didn't really see people running around with bags on their shoulders.
• 20:04
  Caitriona Jennings: Okay.
• 20:04
  Caitriona Jennings: So, you know, I was probably a little bit strange to, to some people that would be observing.
• 20:09
  Caitriona Jennings: But, um, yeah, like, and, and, and, you know, while I would run in sometimes with a backpack- It does impact your stride- Okay.
• 20:17
  Caitriona Jennings: Okay … and I just didn't, I was very conscious of b- being injury-free.
• 20:21
  Caitriona Jennings: So for me, it was important to just allow myself the- To run … the time to run as, yeah, as free as I could.
• 20:26
  Sinead Donovan: Okay.
• 20:27
  Sinead Donovan: So let me, I, there's so much that I wanna cover here.
• 20:29
  Sinead Donovan: Yeah.
• 20:29
  Sinead Donovan: So let me get the sport, um, bit out a- a- a- at first, and then we'll, we'll come back to the profession, if that's okay.
• 20:35
  Sinead Donovan: Sure.
• 20:35
  Sinead Donovan: 'Cause I'm really interested to hear about your, your um, your profe- the professional life.
• 20:40
  Sinead Donovan: So you, you qualified for the Olympics.
• 20:42
  Sinead Donovan: Um, the Olympic race didn't really go to plan, did it?
• 20:46
  Sinead Donovan: And, and whilst I don't want to dwell on that, I think there was, you kinda got learnings from that and built up a huge amount of resilience, I'm guessing.
• 20:54
  Caitriona Jennings: Absolutely.
• 20:55
  Caitriona Jennings: I mean, yes, it didn't go to plan.
• 20:57
  Caitriona Jennings: I ended up picking up an injury in the weeks leading into the race itself.
• 21:02
  Caitriona Jennings: Um, it was plantar fasciitis, which is a ligament injury, and one which, you know, I would've been sure at the time w- I would've been fine running the race with, because it would just warm up as I ran, and I'd just deal with it, the consequences afterwards.
• 21:17
  Caitriona Jennings: But as it turned out, I got a stress fracture in my foot as a result of kind of compensating for that original injury, and that came about during the race itself, which was a nightmare, to be fair.
• 21:28
  Caitriona Jennings: And, um, it turned into a, a, a really negative experience for me at the time, unfortunately, and took me quite a while to really come to terms with that race-
• 21:40
  Sinead Donovan: Okay
• 21:41
  Caitriona Jennings: and that experience.
• 21:42
  Caitriona Jennings: But when I did, I started to see the positives, and now I can look back and see the positives.
• 21:48
  Caitriona Jennings: But absolutely, as you said, I can really see the, the huge amount of resilience that I showed, and just being able to adapt and pivot when something wasn't going right.
• 21:58
  Caitriona Jennings: I knew what my ultimate goal was, and that was to finish the race.
• 22:02
  Caitriona Jennings: And even though it wasn't as I had planned or expected, I was still able to deal with what was thrown at me on the day and, you know, ultimately still get, achieve the goal, maybe in a slightly different way.
• 22:15
  Caitriona Jennings: Yeah.
• 22:15
  Caitriona Jennings: But I do believe that if I had have dropped out of that race, it would've been a lot more difficult for me to come to terms with it, because at least I was able to say,"But I got, I did finish," you know?
• 22:26
  Caitriona Jennings: So I think for me, that was, uh, that was powerful and, um, yeah, I can, I can see the benefits of it now, even though, as I said, it took quite a while to get
• 22:34
  Sinead Donovan: there.
• 22:34
  Sinead Donovan: Took, it took quite a while.
• 22:35
  Sinead Donovan: No, and, and I, and I can imagine that.
• 22:37
  Sinead Donovan: And when, when you do look back on that, y- okay, so one of the learnings is that you absolutely kind of grafted it out and finished, 'cause you knew that you kind of had to.
• 22:46
  Sinead Donovan: Was, was there other learnings?
• 22:47
  Sinead Donovan: I mean, was there, was there an element that you maybe shouldn't have started the race, or?
• 22:52
  Caitriona Jennings: No, because I did believe when I was at the start line- Okay … that I would be fine, that I'd get through it.
• 22:56
  Sinead Donovan: Okay, so it was just a real unfortunate incident.
• 22:59
  Caitriona Jennings: Yeah.
• 22:59
  Sinead Donovan: Oh my goodness.
• 23:00
  Caitriona Jennings: Yeah.
• 23:00
  Caitriona Jennings: And I mean, I have to say, going, if, if I was to turn back the clock knowing what I know now, would I have run it or not?
• 23:07
  Caitriona Jennings: I think I'd still run it, because ultimately I can- Yeah, yeah … I can say I'm an Olympian.
• 23:11
  Caitriona Jennings: I think if I- Yeah, yeah, yeah … you know, if y- if I didn't, y- it's a once in a lifetime chance.
• 23:15
  Caitriona Jennings: Of course, we all hope to get there again, but you have to take your opportunities when they're in front of you, and-
• 23:20
  Sinead Donovan: Catriona's ability to push through the unthinkable is rooted in mental preparation, in visualization, in training the mind as rigorously as the body.
• 23:30
  Sinead Donovan: All skills which are needed to be a difference maker That same spirit of preparing for the future rather than being swept along by it is at the heart of what Nick Reimer has been building in South Africa.
• 23:44
  Sinead Donovan: His company is using AI to make education more accessible, and his take on how AI should and should not be used in assessments is one of the most nuanced things we have heard on this podcast.
• 23:57
  Nick Riemer: Yeah.
• 23:58
  Nick Riemer: So I think, I mean, it's, it's a great question.
• 24:00
  Nick Riemer: It's such a topical question.
• 24:02
  Nick Riemer: I get it all the time in, in the different panel discussions that we have.
• 24:05
  Nick Riemer: And I think for us as a business, if we just think about what AI has unlocked from a tech point of view, I came from a business we set up where we typically have to gather data while the student wrote.
• 24:18
  Nick Riemer: And post that student completing their exam, upload all of that data to a server to process and generate a report in terms of understanding the behavior of that exam.
• 24:30
  Nick Riemer: Now, with AI, we've been able to move to AI running locally on students' devices.
• 24:37
  Nick Riemer: Meaning we actually don't need to upload these big files anymore and process that information on server side.
• 24:42
  Nick Riemer: We can actually utilize devices to unpack what needs to be uploaded and discard good behavior, because a teacher doesn't need to see you sitting there behaving, doing what you need to do.
• 24:53
  Nick Riemer: They typically need to see when you do something that you shouldn't be doing, and that's typically what's used then for the disciplinary process or the disciplinary report.
• 25:00
  Nick Riemer: And I think what we've been able to do with the use of AI is train our models to understand what good behavior looks like, what bad behavior looks like, and move to a point where we can be hugely data efficient, monitor a student for the entire time, even though we can run completely offline and reduce the upload to a 5 or a 10-megabyte file, as opposed to live streaming a student the entire time, uploading that full file and processing that full file.
• 25:28
  Nick Riemer: So what that means is it allows all students to make use of the tech, doesn't exclude anyone because it's hugely data light, and it also means the price point comes right down for institutions, because processing power and servers are the expensive aspect in terms of monitoring and processing that data.
• 25:45
  Nick Riemer: So for us, we've been able to make our solution extremely lightweight, but rival what your big full proctoring solutions are doing in terms of live and continuous streaming.
• 25:55
  Nick Riemer: So for us, it's meant more access to our product for in- institutions that have never been able to move blended or never been able to move online.
• 26:03
  Nick Riemer: So a huge progression for us in, in moving, ramping up credibility, but keeping that inclusive aspect So I think from, from that point of view, it's been, it's been, uh, you know, hugely beneficial, and we've just jumped on it straight away in terms of training our own models as quickly as we can, continuing to refine them so that we're able to give lecturers, teachers, professors the visibility they need but to do it in a way that doesn't exclude any parts of the population globally from utilizing our tech.
• 26:28
  Nick Riemer: So hugely beneficial for us.
• 26:31
  Nick Riemer: In terms of ethical AI usage, I think it's very important that there's a combination between what AI thinks you're doing and a final human being or teacher saying, "I agree with this. It needs to be looked at. There needs to be a disciplinary process." And that's always been part of the Invigilare in that we are 50% a tech company and then 50% an academic company in that we've got a blend of 50% academics, 50% tech experts or software engineers.
• 26:57
  Nick Riemer: So what this means is that our AI would flag you are talking… this is what we think you have talked about, and we've been able to generate those recordings as a result.
• 27:05
  Nick Riemer: But there would always be the academic, the human being that would go through that data once it's been flagged, once it shows you exactly what you need to look at, and that would then rely on the academic giving the final decision, and I think that's the right approach.
• 27:18
  Nick Riemer: We don't want to solely rely on AI.
• 27:20
  Nick Riemer: AI is good.
• 27:21
  Nick Riemer: You can certainly train it to do a lot of things, but it's a guidance tool, especially when it comes to something as serious as a disciplinary process.
• 27:29
  Nick Riemer: So there would always be the teacher, there would always be the professor that would review the data as a second set of eyes and make sure that what we have flagged is correct so that there is no false flagging.
• 27:39
  Nick Riemer: The third aspect is obviously the use of AI in education And that's also a very t- you know, sort of topical conversation at the moment.
• 27:48
  Nick Riemer: Should AI be banned?
• 27:49
  Nick Riemer: Should it not be banned?
• 27:50
  Nick Riemer: Are there actual accurate tools that can detect AI language?
• 27:54
  Nick Riemer: So we've got a, I suppose, a blend.
• 27:56
  Nick Riemer: We've got the opinion that, you know, at certain times in life you have got to study hard and you have got to write a closed book assessment, and in a scenario like that, AI should not be used.
• 28:07
  Nick Riemer: So we have got all the right tools to mitigate that risk, whether it's monitoring what you're doing on the PC, whether it's locking you down to the LMS only, or whether it's some of our AI detection tools.
• 28:17
  Nick Riemer: We can absolutely monitor that and give academics the report post the assessment.
• 28:22
  Nick Riemer: That gives them all the information they need in terms of the student's behavior.
• 28:25
  Nick Riemer: But there's also then the, the, the case of AI should be used because it's a tool that's gonna be used post-school, post-university, but it needs to be used in an ethical way.
• 28:36
  Nick Riemer: And what I mean by saying that is it doesn't serve any purpose if an assessment or an assignment is requiring a student to copy and paste directly from AI and receive a mark.
• 28:48
  Nick Riemer: That is not a skill set.
• 28:49
  Nick Riemer: What a skill set is in terms of utilizing AI is practically applying AI to a scenario.
• 28:56
  Nick Riemer: So how… What is that student prompting?
• 28:58
  Nick Riemer: How much of an answer has a student copying and pasted from an AI tool or from a re- uh, sort of paraphrasing tool?
• 29:06
  Nick Riemer: Those are the types of things that our tech can also look at so that you can have more open book type styles of assessment where you can say utilize AI, but it's not, you know, any model.
• 29:15
  Nick Riemer: It can be you're only allowed to use ChatGPT, and our solution is gonna then lock you to one specific large language model.
• 29:22
  Nick Riemer: And then when you are doing your piece of work, we are gonna check how well are you actually utilizing that AI tool in practically completing the assignment because we don't want students to over rely on AI and not actually test their critical thinking skills and just copy and paste from AI sources.
• 29:38
  Nick Riemer: Like I said, that's not serving any purpose.
• 29:40
  Nick Riemer: So we've also got to equip academics with the right tool set to conduct these types of assessments in the right way, and these types of tools are obviously fantastic in being able to have a blend between a closed book assessment when you should study and you should write with no resources and when you should be allowed to practically apply some AI to a scenario but make sure you're doing it in the right way and still develop or developing critical thinking, yeah.
• 30:05
  Sinead Donovan: Nick's clarity about AI as a tool, not a replacement for human judgment, is to be really celebrated, and it shows us the huge opportunity that AI is bringing to our profession.
• 30:17
  Sinead Donovan: The opportunity to showcase and maximize our human skills.
• 30:22
  Sinead Donovan: This is something that Liswaniso Namatama would agree with completely.
• 30:28
  Sinead Donovan: As an auditor in Zambia, Liswaniso has been making the case that audit is, at its core, a deeply human profession.
• 30:36
  Sinead Donovan: Let us hear him explain why.
• 30:39
  Liswaniso Namatama: Okay.
• 30:39
  Liswaniso Namatama: Thank you.
• 30:40
  Liswaniso Namatama: So I'm very passionate when it comes to audits.
• 30:43
  Liswaniso Namatama: I've been auditing for over six years now.
• 30:47
  Liswaniso Namatama: So one thing I love about audit is that, um… And, let me first of all start with, um, certain misconceptions that people have about audit, which is, uh, that it's, you know, all about number crunching and ticking boxes or fault finding.
• 31:06
  Liswaniso Namatama: But I'm here to say it's… that's not the case.
• 31:08
  Liswaniso Namatama: That's not the picture of audit.
• 31:11
  Liswaniso Namatama: So audit is, um, bigger than that, and the bigger picture is that, um, audit is about understanding businesses, it's about assessing risks, it's about professional judgment, as well as helping organizations improve how they operate.
• 31:27
  Liswaniso Namatama: So as an auditor, one of the best things about audit is that, um, it gives you an opportunity to understand how businesses operate.
• 31:38
  Liswaniso Namatama: And in this case, you tend to work with different, uh, businesses in different industries.
• 31:44
  Liswaniso Namatama: And because of that, you get an overall understanding of how things operate out there.
• 31:50
  Liswaniso Namatama: So at one point you can be working with a non-governmental organization.
• 31:55
  Liswaniso Namatama: The next thing you're working with either a mining or in this case a manufacturing organization.
• 32:01
  Liswaniso Namatama: So there's, um, that learning that you, you tend to do in audit.
• 32:06
  Liswaniso Namatama: And, um, part of audit is, um, we tend to interact a lot with management and other key staff in an organization.
• 32:15
  Liswaniso Namatama: So you get to learn, exchange ideas, and that's also part of networking 'cause, um, those are contacts that are being created, and you can always communicate with these people out, outstay there.
• 32:28
  Liswaniso Namatama: So it really lays a strong foundation in terms of career 'cause, um, like I've said, um, it's very diverse in terms of industries that, um, one works with.
• 32:40
  Liswaniso Namatama: Um, I think that's the beauty of audit
• 32:45
  Sinead Donovan: Yeah, and you put it really well there.
• 32:46
  Sinead Donovan: So there's probably two, two key things that you, you pulled out there.
• 32:49
  Sinead Donovan: One was the ability to audit so many different sectors and, and, um, industries, um, with, with the one, with the one common thr- training, and I think that's fascinating.
• 33:00
  Sinead Donovan: I, I love that as well.
• 33:01
  Sinead Donovan: But also it's the meeting of people, and, and I think that's something that, that we really should, should drill, drill down on.
• 33:08
  Sinead Donovan: There still is a huge amount of human-to-human interaction in the auditing profession, and the need to meet with clients and interpret their find, you know, the findings and their, their commentary.
• 33:20
  Sinead Donovan: Um, I know it's, I know it's supplemented by AI techniques, but talk to me a little bit about that importance of human-to-human, um, skills.
• 33:29
  Liswaniso Namatama: That's something that's, uh, very important, the human-to-human skills.
• 33:34
  Liswaniso Namatama: I know we've got, um, AI that has come in, and, um, with AI, you're able to perform some routine transactions as well as just some analysis of large sets of data and, um, all that.
• 33:48
  Liswaniso Namatama: And you're able to produce reports more promptly 'cause of the use of AI.
• 33:53
  Liswaniso Namatama: But then, um, there's certain aspects such as the human-to-human interaction, which is very important, and that's something that's key in audit.
• 34:02
  Liswaniso Namatama: So apart from the normal analysis that we do as well as the producing of reports, there are aspects such as, um, professional judgment, which is very important.
• 34:12
  Liswaniso Namatama: And, um, this can only be done by interacting with, uh, with client, with management 'cause it's from such that one is able to assess.
• 34:23
  Liswaniso Namatama: Then, um, there are also other aspects of risks that can only be assessed by interacting with the client directly as opposed to relying on AI.
• 34:33
  Liswaniso Namatama: As well as, um, in terms of communicating our findings, as well as, um, so that's something that's also very key and, um, it's better when it's human-to-human interaction that you sit, uh, with management and go through some of these things and just explain to them.
• 34:51
  Liswaniso Namatama: At times they might have some questions or need to know proper understanding, and we're simply there to communicate this to them
• 35:01
  Sinead Donovan: Liz Waneiso's conviction that sitting with a client, reading the room, and building trust is something no algorithm can replicate brings us beautifully back to where this episode started.
• 35:14
  Sinead Donovan: Yes indeed, a full circle moment.
• 35:18
  Sinead Donovan: At the start of this best of episode, we heard Kingsley Aitkens tell us the story of a letter and a lunch that changed his life.
• 35:27
  Sinead Donovan: Now let us hear what he really believes makes the difference between people who move forward and those who stay still.
• 35:36
  Sinead Donovan: His answer will make you think twice about how you listen.
• 35:40
  Sinead Donovan: When
• 35:41
  Kingsley Aikins: you think about it, I mentioned at the beginning, like schools and colleges don't teach soft skills.
• 35:46
  Kingsley Aikins: They teach hard skills.
• 35:47
  Kingsley Aikins: Mm-hmm.
• 35:48
  Kingsley Aikins: And, and you have to have these hard skills.
• 35:49
  Kingsley Aikins: Hard skills get you on the ladder.
• 35:51
  Kingsley Aikins: Soft skills get you up the ladder.
• 35:53
  Kingsley Aikins: But if, uh, progress in school or college is a function of a grade, a score, a mark, a metric, and it's got nothing to do with the person sitting beside you.
• 36:03
  Kingsley Aikins: And, and then you get into the real world of work.
• 36:06
  Kingsley Aikins: And there's a whole series of things that count but can't be counted.
• 36:09
  Kingsley Aikins: So resilience and determination and grit and attitude and humor and, as we say here, craic, they all count a lot.
• 36:16
  Kingsley Aikins: They all matter a lot, but they can't be counted, so they tend to be discounted, and that's a gap.
• 36:22
  Kingsley Aikins: That's a shame, you know?
• 36:24
  Kingsley Aikins: So I think that that's sort of first point would be that.
• 36:26
  Kingsley Aikins: I think there's a series of things, skills if you like, um, that go to make up this f- this kind of mosaic of, of soft skills.
• 36:35
  Kingsley Aikins: I think being a really great listener is one, which again, listening's not taught.
• 36:40
  Kingsley Aikins: Most people listen… I say they listen for the gap.
• 36:44
  Kingsley Aikins: Most people listen purely to wait to jump in with what they want to say.
• 36:50
  Kingsley Aikins: Most people are narcissistic listeners.
• 36:52
  Kingsley Aikins: In other words, you know, i- if, if you said to me, "I'm, I'm thinking of buying a car, you know.
• 36:58
  Kingsley Aikins: I bought one last weekend.
• 36:59
  Kingsley Aikins: The guy wanted 20,000," I'd jump in and say, "I got one the week before for 30,000.
• 37:03
  Kingsley Aikins: It's a fantastic car." I mean, we tend to hijack conversations.
• 37:07
  Kingsley Aikins: We wanna jump in.
• 37:07
  Kingsley Aikins: We wanna give advice, advice, advice, but it doesn't work 'cause it's not their advice, it's your advice, you know?
• 37:13
  Kingsley Aikins: So listening as a form of activity, listening not just to what somebody says but what they're gonna say next, being curious.
• 37:21
  Kingsley Aikins: I, I act- often think we live in a strangely uncurious world.
• 37:25
  Kingsley Aikins: People don't really show much interest, et cetera.
• 37:28
  Kingsley Aikins: So being a great listener I think is an incredible skill in networking.
• 37:32
  Kingsley Aikins: Um, I think the other one I love is the notion of serendipity, luck, and chance, and the question is can you make luck happen for you or does it happen to you?
• 37:43
  Kingsley Aikins: You know, and of course there's bad luck out there.
• 37:45
  Kingsley Aikins: We could get cancer or kno- get knocked down in the street, et cetera.
• 37:49
  Kingsley Aikins: But I am a believer that you can actually make these things happen for you.
• 37:54
  Kingsley Aikins: Or put it this way, luck, serendipity, and chance don't happen lying in bed or sitting at your desk.
• 37:59
  Kingsley Aikins: They happen when you're out and about, when you're in motion, when you put your talents on display, when you talk to strangers, when you seek out unlike-minded people and opinions and ideas.
• 38:09
  Kingsley Aikins: You know, all of those things, I think they increase the possibility, maybe probability of luck happening.
• 38:16
  Kingsley Aikins: And when you look back on your life, luck plays a role in all our lives.
• 38:19
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, Daniel Kahneman, the great writer, says success is about luck and skill.
• 38:26
  Sinead Donovan: And that is a wrap on our highlights episode.
• 38:29
  Sinead Donovan: Six conversations, six perspectives from Sydney to London, from Olympic tracks to the maize fields of Mozambique, from online exam halls in South Africa to audit rooms in Zambia.
• 38:43
  Sinead Donovan: What strikes me when listening back is that the common thread running through all of this is the importance of human connection To succeed, we must have the courage to connect, the willingness to show up, and the humility to keep learning.
• 39:01
  Sinead Donovan: A huge thank you to Kingsley, Aster, Manuel, Caitriona, Nick, and Liz W- Mwenso for sharing their stories so openly.
• 39:10
  Sinead Donovan: If any of these clips have sparked your curiosity, every episode is available in full wherever you get your podcasts from.
• 39:18
  Sinead Donovan: And if you know someone who you think should be on this show, a difference maker in the world of finance and beyond, please do reach out to the team at Chartered Accountants Worldwide.
• 39:28
  Sinead Donovan: Until next time, I'm Sinead Donovan, and this has been Difference Makers Discuss.