Latest / The Curve / From 10-Year-Old Carer to One of NASDAQ’s Only Female CEOs.

Transcript

From 10-Year-Old Carer to One of NASDAQ’s Only Female CEOs. · The Curve

0:01
So my nan, she brought me up.
0:02
She was like a mum to me.
0:04
When I was 10, overnight, the relationship changed.
0:07
Healthcare and basic care needs is a simple human right.
0:11
I never wanted to see anyone that you love that much.
0:14
I was such a lack of dignity and respect, which is what I saw.
0:17
I had this idea always in my head around this company
0:20
that was based around what I'd experienced with my grandma,
0:22
me and my ex-co-founder.
0:23
He'd brought in a number of investors who were his mates.
0:26
Things got so bad, like to the point that I was basically bullied
0:30
out of the business.
0:31
I'd read some of the nastiest things I think I've ever read.
0:34
And I read these
0:35
prior to going on a webinar presenting to these exact same shareholders.
0:38
During this time, my face
0:40
was in every single tube stop, all the way up those escalators, every single bus stop, because
0:45
I'd be recognised in the United Nations as a woman that you can't ignore.
0:48
It was a 180 back to the
0:49
days when I was in my 20s and I'd experienced domestic abuse.
0:53
The guy almost tried to take my
0:54
life, like I almost lost my life.
0:56
I always say that life gives you things that you were meant
0:58
to have been given.
0:58
I want this product that we've built to get into hands of every single person
1:02
living with dementia and so I'm really committed to making sure this business is going to absolutely
1:06
change the way that dementia care is delivered and I'm not going to stop until that happens.
1:13
Just a heads up this episode will cover themes of loss and grief and mental health challenges
1:17
and it may stir up some pretty tough emotions for some of you so we encourage you to listen with care.
1:23
before we dive into today's episode we would like to just take a brief moment of your time
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Back to today's episode.
2:24
When I was researching for this interview, I must say, and same with the rest of the team,
2:30
I got a bit emotional.
2:31
I was like, holy shit.
2:33
For anyone that doesn't know about your career
2:36
and where you've been, you did a master's in healthcare, right?
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At Imperial College.
2:40
Yeah.
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You were involved in cancer research.
2:42
You then founded a tech company,
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had a really successful business and now are one of eight female CEOs of companies that are listed
2:50
on the Nasdaq like that is holy shit can you give us a bit of um insight into like what was the
2:56
thread that took you through health research into tech business like there's obviously an emotional
3:04
connection with the way that you've navigated your career what was that so always wanted to be
3:10
in healthcare since I was like very very little I think I always wanted to be a doctor for sure
3:14
my parents used to call me doctor toe I don't know why I used to just try to like solve their
3:19
problems all the time so every time there was something wrong with them I'd like try to bandage
3:22
it up or say it's going to be okay like I'll do this and to be fair my daughter does that now
3:25
really it's really weird my daughter does the exact same I used to when I was little she's like
3:30
mummy it's okay I'll get you a bandage mummy I'll get you a plaster mummy you need to sit down and
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that used to do yeah it's very like she wants to kind of and then she'll try to listen to my heart
3:38
So anyway, so I always wanted to be in healthcare, but where my life took me was, I obviously
3:43
got into Uni Kings to do my undergrad in anatomy, human developmental biology.
3:49
Like what even is that?
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All of that.
3:50
Those words.
3:51
How the body works.
3:52
Yeah.
3:52
So it was basically what that, it was the first three years of medicine.
3:55
Okay.
3:55
And you get to do like cadaver dissections or like body dissections.
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It was all about like.
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I don't know if I could do that.
4:00
Oh, it was, it was.
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Was it disgusting?
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Yes.
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No.
4:03
Yes.
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So you were kind of training to be a doctor.
4:06
Yes.
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Sort of.
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or giving it a go to see if it's what you wanted to do yes yeah and I did really want to do it but
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unfortunately I um and got into a very abusive relationship in my early 20s when I was at
4:15
university and it threw my path off slightly let's put it that way um and that's absolutely fine
4:21
because I think it's like full circle I'm now doing everything that I was meant to be doing
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I always say that life gives you things you were meant to have been given and so maybe it wasn't
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for me maybe it was meant for like different bigger things and that's absolutely fine but it
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threw me off course and it meant that I didn't get the grades I needed to to go do medicine at
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King's it's where I really wanted to stay but I did get accepted into doing a cancer research
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position at Imperial went into doing cancer research really loved the labs like loved working
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in science and looking at the kind of the details behind how we can analyze like cell pathways and
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we were doing I was doing triple negative breast cancer which is like one of the rarest forms of
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breast cancer and I was working with one of the most inspiring professors ever he didn't do things
5:01
by the book he was doing things like putting testing treatments on patients that weren't
5:04
through clinical trials yet because he realized people didn't have any hope left so why not trial
5:09
things out but that was kind of his ethos and I loved the fact that he took risks it was this
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risk-taking thing it was doing things differently and I was so inspired by him but what I realized
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was in the labs I just felt a little bit bored I felt silenced because you don't talk you're just
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so detail orientated and my first foray into technology was um I basically became an intern
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at Babylon which was the first ever digital health solution to come into the UK the first ever unicorn
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um to come out of the UK for those that don't know unicorn is like unicorn status is like a billion
5:41
it's really glamorized isn't it it's like people who are you know tried and true entrepreneurs who
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are like obsessed with business the idea is everyone wants to try and create a unicorn yeah
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But what this company did, Babylon, was really set the precedence for building out digital health solutions that were going to change the face of how healthcare was accessed.
6:02
And I got the opportunity to work with Ali Parsa, who is one of the most inspiring people I've ever worked with in terms of the way his brain thinks.
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And I remember walking into this office and there was like chalkboards everywhere.
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And the guy that was like the CTO, I think, worked in Spotify as one of their biggest like developers.
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And we were sat there and there was like a team of four of us.
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and we were designing the interface of the app of like how people were going to interact with
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doctors through the phone this is like back when I was 22 so this is what like 13 years ago now
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oh my gosh that would have been so bizarre like even explaining what you were doing to family
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and saying this is what I'm working on they'd have been like what yeah no one understood it
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because no one at that point even understand there was no uber or anything like that it was
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just so like really really early days and I remember speaking to the care quality commission
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which is the cqc and telling they all they kind of regulate and govern all the health care systems
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like our hospitals our care providers they have all the regulatory governance around how people
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prescribe and how you access services and you have to be cqc registered if you're going to deliver
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diagnose or treat for any patient and we were speaking to them i was speaking to them and we
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were telling them we need to prescribe over the phone like for the first time people were prescribing
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over the phone and sending remote prescriptions e-prescriptions and so they were like no you can't
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do that a doctor has to physically be present like what do you mean you're going to e-prescribe
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and then we went through this whole process of basically having to convince cqc that
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you can do this we need to do this and we need to come up with a set like process and governance
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that enables us to do the checks properly and that was the first ever time it happened and now
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look at look at society you can understand why at the time they'd be like no you know someone needs
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to be there because people would think oh well they could just take and give it to someone else
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or you know if you haven't seen the path end to end or you don't know how to regulate it that
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would seem like no the answer is no exactly but in any startup the answer will be no but you have
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to find a way to get the yes so being a part of a small team so early I imagine was quite
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informative in terms of how you then went on to think about business and and showing up in a work
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environment where roadblocks are opportunities to find a way around yeah and is that the guy
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the main guy at the business that was sort of leading that way of thinking yeah so Ali Parsa
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was the CEO of Babylon and he's like he's quite renowned for who he is and what he's achieved and
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what he's done and I have huge respect for him and I think he's inspired me to be on the journey
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that I am and I met him recently again and I sat down with him and he was like telling everyone
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like this is my first ever I hired her as an intern and now look at her and I say to him I'm
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like you know it takes that one person to inspire you in this world and it takes that one person to
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believe in you as well and I think that that initial level of belief in me that I could
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be part of this thing that was going to change the world in terms of health care gave me my first bit
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of confidence to be like maybe I can do something cool that it's so funny you say that about the
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inspiring person because if I think back in my life I think all of us could pick out a couple
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of really key people across like schooling or our career that have been there I've totally got
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that and every time I think about them it makes me feel emotional because they fully change the
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whole way that I show up the confidence that I have one of the things that you've spoken about
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publicly is the care for your grandmother am I right I think this started from like a really
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quite a young age yeah from 10 so my nan she brought me up she was like a mum to me my parents
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worked very very long hours full-time work and she was like yeah my best friend my mum like I loved
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oh she's the most amazing person as well the most inspiring person actually because she's like
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survived two wars come over as like a refugee had all of her family killed like during the partition
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in India and Pakistan and basically lost everyone apart from one sister and she's just always stayed
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so resilient and so strong and calm and kind which I think going through that much trauma to stay that
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kind is just a true magical power she never harbored any resentment or anger and I just
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think she was just the most amazing person and when I was 10 she had a first stroke and um all
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of a sudden overnight just the relationship changed she had to move in with us pretty
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quickly because she stopped being able to like communicate that well and um when she moved in
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with us she um quite rapidly started to kind of decelerate or accelerate and then sort of her
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brain power starts to decelerate and it very quickly became known that she had dementia
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and she was diagnosed with vascular dementia and then lewy bodies which is like the most
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aggressive form where you have sort of schizophrenia and you have hallucinations
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and so she would walk into my room and she would stand there and she would just urinate because
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she didn't realize that she was not in her not in the bathroom and she would just be so confused and
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you know and I'd have to clean her up and I'd have to clean her every morning because they'd
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end up wearing nappies because they'd lose their ability to understand what's going on and I think
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from such a young age I took it on myself to look after her because why would I not like she was
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everything to me and I just automatically did it but it what the other thing that I found really
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tough and I'll always remember this is that there was moments where I just wanted her to like
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talk to me or cuddle me or be there for me when things were really bad and she wouldn't sometimes
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be able to do that and I remember sitting across her sometimes and just saying like
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nan I really just need you to say something like to recognize me and um it was really tough
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and then that went on until I was 22 um we had a number of like we tried to get some carers to come
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in from the community like domiciliary care um we couldn't afford private care so we couldn't afford
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you know expensive care so we got some social funded care and the quality of care was really
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bad and they were sending so many different people in all the time people were over prescribing her
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medication so because there was no ways to communicate who was giving her antipsychotics
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and so she was ending up being over prescribed antipsychotics which meant that she was becoming
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completely like psychotic herself psychosis was setting in and there was like situations where
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she ended up we had to admit her into a mental a mental ward during the night at like 2 a.m we had
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to move house because we had to like her care became so extreme that we needed to have a whole
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kind of area for her and we had to have carers come in all the time and um she became schizophrenic
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and um started self-harming towards the end of her life which we had to then sort of restrain her
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in the middle of the night and that was really hard and I think the final point was when in the
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last kind of months of her life we couldn't do it anymore because I was at university and my mum was
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working or trying to work and doing all the care stuff and um we put her into a care home within
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I think it was like three months she passed away but um she passed away in my arms and it was just
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me and her and it's the most beautiful way that she could have gone but um I never wanted to see
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anyone that you love that much I was such a lack of dignity and respect which is what I saw
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I feel like so many things that you just said I mean being 10 and caring for you know like 10
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you're still a child you know and to think that that was just so natural for you to occupy a carer
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role when you were a kid yourself is beautiful but also like I think you know you're a mum now
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it's hard to understand how you became that person so primarily when you have parents there too you
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You know, I think, I guess growing up, your parents try and create the world around you
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and try and hold you in cotton wool to a certain extent to have a childhood, you know, and
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to see the world in a certain way and protect you from things like money stresses or mental
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health or, you know, particularly when you're really young, but that was so fast tracked
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for you.
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I think that changes you in ways that no one else would ever understand having not gone
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through that.
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I guess like looking back has that been almost like such an imprint on you emotionally that it's
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enough to spend your whole career wanting to improve the lives of for families for patients
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like is that sort of where your drive for health care has come from yeah it's um it's a hundred
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percent my why it's like the reason I get up in the morning it's why I have managed to persevere
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and have resilience through some of the hardest things I've experienced
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because I always remember her and I think back to her
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and I think back to what she experienced and what I witnessed.
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And I will never allow any other person or family member
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to experience what we went through.
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And the lack of dignity that she had when she was passing away,
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the lack of care, the lack of quality of life.
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People of that age group have given so much to society.
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You know, my nan survived wars, like I said at the beginning,
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and came here and set up a life for all of us.
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And we do this to every single older person.
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We don't give them the dignity they deserve
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when they've been the pillar of our society,
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they've been the heartbeat of our society.
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We just go and turn our backs on them and say,
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actually, it's okay because it's just old age.
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It's not.
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There are so many things we should be doing to support them
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and we're not.
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And it's so ingrained in me
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because I think just seeing her suffering
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is always just there in the front of my mind.
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I can never get that image out of my head.
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and so for that reason it's just my reason why now it's like why I get up and do things I do
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and it's why I started my first business when I was 26 it's why I'm doing this now with dementia
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care um but my passion has always been around helping people and like making sure that care
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is delivered effectively efficiently and and every person has yet has the access to it like it
15:44
shouldn't be a a thing that you can afford because you have money health care and basic care needs
15:51
is a simple human right and if we don't change that in our societies we will continue to see
15:57
epidemic levels of poor health equity um which is just not sustainable it's also it should never
16:04
have been you that had to step in and do that like yes of course to us to a certain extent
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you know she's your nan you love her you of course want to care for her but there's a difference
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between showing up in an emotional supportive way where you're bringing joy to her life and
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yes helping with things like meds every now and again but it shouldn't have been on you to
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be so responsible for such a huge like that's a that's a huge I can't even really imagine like
16:29
even being my age and and trying to find the emotional resilience to care for someone I love
16:35
that much and see them go through that I had a really like beautiful relationship with my granddad
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he's like my favorite person he lived to be like 104 wow and right up until he died he had like a
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sparkle in his eye he was so easy to make laugh and I think the amount of like love and care that
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I had for him he was so lucky that he had us and my dad would go and tuck him in every night he
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stayed living by himself until 104 wow because it was so important to my dad for him to have
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dignity and independence because he'd given him so much and I just think you know we're really
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lucky to be in a family where we could have done that and same for you you were able to care for
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your nan but there's a lot of people that aren't what happens to them you know like it's quite
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terrifying you just mentioned the business that you founded when you're 26 can we talk about what
17:21
it was how you came like how the idea came to be how the business was founded and funded yeah I'd
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love to hear how the whole thing started yeah so I co-founded this business feeder when I was 26
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um it came out of a guy called don perks had sort of spoken to me about building entrepreneurs in
17:42
residence into their investment company and what that meant was they brought in people who were
17:48
they believed to be talented to build businesses and it was kind of a thing back in 2015 when the
17:53
precipice of like you know startup space was really becoming big in in london and um this guy
17:59
don perks basically like saw something in me which is amazing how did you meet him he'd had somebody
18:04
that was kind of scouting for him and um her name was Rachel and she basically had contacted me on
18:09
LinkedIn I think she'd seen me because I'd worked at Babylon and I'd worked at another company called
18:12
Medifa and I did cancer research so I was a bit of like this healthcare side of things that they
18:17
were trying to bring these expertise into like you know building technology companies and so she
18:22
made me this appointment to meet with him and he'd created this amazing syndicate of investors that
18:27
wanted to invest in brilliant ideas and when I met him he was like he's painted this amazing
18:33
big bold dream that he was creating I was like this is going to be so cool like I was like this
18:37
is amazing like what is what is this and then as I joined it um I had this idea always in my head
18:44
around uh this company that was based around what I'd experienced my grandma my nanny and um
18:50
essentially it was sort of supporting how we communicated with carers um in a way that
18:55
supported family members and carers from the community that were coming into the house
18:59
and initially I thought why don't we have like a matching platform that was like a marketplace
19:04
that could match carers in the community and you could simply go on and find people that you would
19:08
need as and when you needed them because obviously the thing that we had was difficulty getting the
19:12
right people and it should be a matching so that it was like relevant like languages spoken relevant
19:17
cultural background so that there was a really nice mix between them the whole revolving door
19:22
of carers as well is really difficult especially if someone's like old and fragile and already
19:28
struggles to remember anyone the idea of not having a consistent person they kind of created
19:32
relationship was actually really problematic so yeah that would have been at the time I imagine
19:38
quite a revolutionary idea because even now like still people like we struggled that five years
19:43
ago with my granddad he hated everyone that came in and it was so awkward because like these poor
19:47
people are trying to do their jobs but like this hasn't been set up in a way where he feels
19:51
comfortable no and there's no there's no kind of thought process well back then anyway there was no
19:57
thought process to like how do we get the right person matched with you so that you have that
20:02
longevity that is a person-centered approach to care um and so yeah this was the kind of pretense
20:07
around it so had the idea sort of started working on it and um my co-founder who I was partnered
20:14
with I think he was in his mid-30s so I was 26 I was told that I shouldn't be CEO because I was too
20:22
inexperienced to be said ceo but it's not as though he's got like 20 years of experience
20:28
and he had no experience being a ceo so the the irony was not lost on me there so i'd initially
20:33
come up this idea of the marketplace but actually i mean the whole evolutionary piece was i'd come
20:37
at it from a lived experience when we started researching kind of what it could be and the
20:41
guys have been looking into marketplaces because marketplaces were this new thing
20:45
because you know these matching kind of find a cleaner online you know this marketplace
20:50
like facebook marketplace exactly and it was all a thing that was coming out and then we started
20:54
building the technology platform that essentially enabled us to power this domiciliary care agency
20:59
um through a logistics platform machine learning and um within the first year we did 2.1 million
21:07
pounds in revenue mad and we won contracts from seven local authorities like hundreds and hundreds
21:13
of thousands of hours of care we were delivering we had like thousands of carers on our platform
21:19
and we became like the most well-known brand for it is so amazing yeah i don't know honestly like
21:25
very few businesses that even make a profit ever let alone that much in their first year
21:29
yeah we were smashing it and the reason why i literally was out with every i can't tell you i
21:35
basically met every single family i pushed myself to the limit that i made sure that every single
21:40
family that we bought on that we were delivering care for i knew them and the reason why that was
21:45
so important was that I would come back to the care team and I would say to them this person
21:51
needs this type of carer this person needs to be looked after in this way this person I think needs
21:55
to have some extra care needs and it was like and I got to know the family members so that like if
21:59
anything was going wrong they knew that they could like speak to us.
22:02
Gosh that's so impressive because
22:04
like the amount of EQ required to be able to know what a family needs after spending an hour with
22:09
them is huge but secondly to be able to give someone or a family the that level of care and
22:17
like love is unreal so no wonder because when you start a business it's word of mouth really like
22:23
yes you can spend heaps of money on marketing but whatever someone's experience is that's what
22:27
follows on from family to family that's how you snowball anything it's like with our podcast like
22:32
we could try and put money behind marketing not that we have the budget for it but it would be
22:36
people sending it to their friends which is why it grows okay so it was having this huge boom and
22:41
success what was going on behind the scenes in terms of like the idea of it being funded how
22:45
did you did you own a percentage of the equity I'm assuming that you were able to have a decent
22:50
amount given it was your idea no no so the way that it was set up was um at the outset I was
22:56
given the least amount of equity between me and my ex-co-founder but I think that the problem
23:01
is that you need to be able to,
23:04
the founders definitely need to be incentivized
23:07
with equity to enable them
23:09
to continue to hold decision-making power
23:11
at the very least as they raise more funds.
23:14
And so by the time the four years later came,
23:16
which was, we'd raised about 7 million pounds.
23:20
And were you leading the fundraising for that?
23:22
Yeah, because my ex-co-founder left after a year.
23:25
Oh, so it didn't have that much grit and resilience.
23:28
No.
23:28
Interesting.
23:29
Yeah.
23:29
That's so interesting.
23:30
We had to get rid of it.
23:32
because he was a bad person um no i'm assuming it's a story for another time yeah we'll move on
23:38
from round two um so yeah so at the beginning we basically didn't have i didn't have as much equity
23:45
and so when it came to sort of being severely diluted because we were raising so much
23:49
cash um i had no control like zero control in the boardroom and alongside that when my
23:56
co-founder uh my ex-co-founder was um taken out of the business for his behavior which wasn't great
24:03
um he had brought in some investors into the business talk about that or is it like really
24:06
like nda sort of situation i mean to be fair like he basically was it sexual stuff yeah he was
24:10
inappropriate to our employees there was like bullying cases two of my female employees came
24:15
up with some pretty like not pleasant things about that how he was being towards them so
24:20
obviously i had to take that really seriously and pretty much overnight we had to get rid of him
24:25
and then we end up having to do a shareholder hearing but what is that it's so basically you
24:29
have to have like a quorum of shareholders the base he came and there was a whole like a lawyer
24:35
that was in between me and him and there had to be sort of a hearing about whether he should be
24:40
taken out almost like a court yeah it was awful it was the worst experience of my life because
24:45
the um he'd brought in a number of investors who were his mates from banking oh good and they all
24:50
thought I was a piece of on the floor and they thought he was amazing and I was um just trying
24:56
to create a problem for this well actually I was called you're just a carer oh amazing you're just
25:01
a carer you don't know what you're doing how to build a business and I was like okay well I guess
25:05
at that time as well anything that came up like that was just I mean until the me too movement
25:10
happened none of that was taken seriously like it was really hard to get anyone to listen it was
25:15
just like this big boys club right so amazing that it even got to the point where he was moved on
25:20
yeah it was it needed to happen and it was basically so toxic that uh yeah my employees
25:26
were there was like either no there was no they had to get rid of them or even yeah it was really
25:30
bad but then obviously i then ended up on the on the bad side of these investors and then i started
25:35
receiving like awful threats on emails on accounts that they were making that were like anonymized
25:43
what yeah full-grown mean bizarre really bad like i've still i still stupidly have screenshots in
25:49
my phone of like where they've made these fake accounts and they've like commented on my
25:53
Instagram or my LinkedIn about me as a person and the fact that I don't know how to run a business.
25:58
God honestly like to be able to work through that is so hard like I am such a sensitive
26:05
cellie I would find that really hard.
26:07
It's really hard and I think when you're so young I was like
26:09
in my like mid-20s and it was really hard to not believe it and I think also personally I came from
26:15
like a domestic abusive relationship in my early twenties.
26:18
Do you know what I mean?
26:18
Like that was,
26:19
that absolutely almost took my life.
26:21
And the more than that,
26:24
it stripped away any essence of my self-worth and my,
26:27
you know,
26:27
confidence.
26:28
And so when these people were saying these things about me,
26:31
men,
26:32
it,
26:33
I was just,
26:33
I was like,
26:34
okay,
26:34
well maybe it's right.
26:35
And it really took a lot to,
26:37
to keep going through.
26:39
And,
26:39
um,
26:40
towards the end,
26:42
things got so bad,
26:43
like to the point that I was basically bullied out of the business by a particular shareholder
26:49
sort of putting a piece of paper on the table that was facilitated by my you know chairman at the
26:54
time and my CFO and it basically said that if I don't step down as CEO he's not going to put money
26:59
into the business and it was like in we had about 24 hours to pay payroll and we'd already assumed
27:06
that he was going to be coming in and at that point I basically I remember turning around and
27:12
I got really emotional but we had a glass office so there was like a glass
27:16
boardroom really not good and like all my team out there but thank god all of my team knew me
27:22
like the back like we had such a great relation there's like 45 people in the company at the time
27:26
and lots of them had like seen me go through this even to this day they took they come up to me
27:30
they're like always like we we knew what you were going through we saw it like and I know that
27:35
because I was always so authentic and true I would be very honest about how tough things were
27:39
if they were tough and sometimes I couldn't hold it because I'd be my I was in my mid-20s I mean
27:43
like how do you hold those emotions when people are being so awful to you and I remember like I
27:47
turned around and I was like this is this is basically I was like this is bullying this is
27:50
disgusting and I'm not going to stand for it anymore my chairman at the time was like you're
27:53
being really aggressive you need to calm down and I stormed out the room I just walked out the room
27:58
and then I got on the phone to my mom and I like broke down in tears and I was on the floor crying
28:02
in old street I literally cry my eyes out old streets just being on that doesn't know it's not
28:06
the cleanest of streets in London at this time it was very pre when it was all nicely done up as
28:11
well like the roundabout wasn't so nice yeah and the massive irony about this whole situation
28:18
is that during this time my face was in every single tube stop all the way up those escalators
28:24
every single bus stop because I'd been recognized the United Nations as a woman that you can't ignore
28:30
she's like stuck to old street with like old chewing chewing gum around her like just like
28:35
and other people spurt like really just like not looking it was like i think it was like something
28:40
out of a movie i was like looking up you're like there's my face like quite literally on the floor
28:46
no no quite literally on the floor wow and then i was like i remember i was like trying every time
28:50
i was trying to get to places i was trying i basically called my mom and i was like mom you
28:52
need to come meet me i'm like i'm devastated and every time i tried to get through to like i had
28:57
to change tubes i'd go up an escalator and i'd be like my face was there again oh my god and i'd go
29:01
to the top of the escalator
29:02
and my face was there again.
29:03
This is like a movie.
29:04
You've got to be kidding me.
29:06
And there's actually a picture
29:07
because my mum came to meet me
29:08
and she was like,
29:09
oh my God,
29:09
your face is everywhere.
29:10
And I was like,
29:11
mother,
29:12
I can't do this right now.
29:13
It's really not that funny.
29:14
I was like,
29:14
I actually don't know what's happening.
29:16
Oh my God.
29:18
So did you have to leave?
29:19
So I basically had to get,
29:21
yeah,
29:21
a lawyer involved
29:22
and negotiate my exit
29:23
because I chose to leave.
29:25
I was like,
29:25
I can't do this anymore.
29:26
And I spoke to my CFO
29:27
and actually took him aside
29:28
and I was like,
29:28
this is,
29:29
I just want to clarify,
29:30
right, this is fully bullying and like harassment now to a point where it's like, I have to leave
29:35
my own business that I'd been running.
29:37
And I remember I wrote this letter that was really
29:40
poignant that was basically outlined.
29:43
It was to the shareholders, it was to my chairman.
29:45
And it basically said, I can't believe how you treat, it was so from the heart,
29:48
I can't believe how you're treating me.
29:50
Like what I've done for this business is built the
29:52
most recognized brand.
29:54
We've delivered like hundreds of thousands of hours of care.
29:56
I've
29:56
been every single Christmas for four years out caring for people during Christmas day and Christmas
30:01
night because carers haven't turned up I've missed Christmas my family I have made sure that I've
30:07
done visits during the night being on call being on shift built a marketing and kind of brand that
30:13
everyone knows because I've been the face of it and talked about this and I'm blue in the face
30:17
and and I was like and you're treating me with such disrespect and such disdain and
30:21
and actually it's misogynistic and it's sexist and I'm not gonna take it lying down and
30:27
I didn't.
30:27
Holy shit.
30:29
Okay.
30:29
So that happened and, you know, probably took a while to like
30:34
bounce back.
30:35
Did you take time just to chill and like think about it?
30:38
And I mean,
30:39
four years of kind of constant bullying slash abuse slash the most enormous pressure.
30:46
I imagine you took a sabbatical before going and doing anything else.
30:50
No, no, no, no.
30:52
You'd like to think one word.
30:54
So no.
30:55
So you think that that would be the normal
30:56
healthy thing to do and um I don't do that apparently what I did do was um stay in my bed
31:03
for five days refuse to leave I don't think I even brush my teeth I think I actually just and
31:08
I think I drank copious amounts of bottles of wine which I don't recommend and um it was bad
31:13
I think it was a dark dark time I had the same song playing over and over repeat as well I do
31:18
that a lot yeah I don't know what it is yeah and it was the song Spice Girls Two Become One
31:24
it's like that's also about sex and i don't know why to this day i can't tell you it is quite a
31:29
sad song there's a real like undertone of like yeah i know exactly what you mean there's a real
31:35
sadness to it it just fitted okay yeah so we did that and then it's quite iconic bottles of wine
31:42
in bed with that like playing on repeat quite good and then my best friend was like you need
31:48
you i need you need to stop you stop now we need to get you out come on let's go and she
31:51
booked me a flight to Ibiza and I was like I'm not going and then she turned up to my front door
31:56
with um with an uber and she grabbed my passport and basically was like go and got me in the car
32:03
and I was wearing my pajamas pretty much and um we arrived in Ibiza there's no I actually no word
32:09
of lie we arrived in Ibiza and I'd just broken up we're just basically left my business and broken
32:16
up with my third abusive relationship because the cycle just kept cycling and then um was like right
32:23
this is this is we're in a dire straits this is this is bad we're bad it's not great and i was 29
32:28
i was like is life gonna get better um got to ibiza and um basically within 24 hours then met
32:37
love my life you're now choking no no i'm joking must book a flight to ibiza immediately
32:45
and I think the moral
32:47
of this story is
32:48
it was almost like
32:50
every door
32:50
had like closed
32:51
and I was just
32:52
at the lowest point
32:53
and there was
32:53
I don't think
32:54
I could not have gone
32:54
any further down
32:55
like it was that bad
32:57
I hadn't changed
32:58
my underwear
32:58
for five days
33:00
it was really bad
33:01
you were on a plane
33:02
with the same underwear
33:03
for five days
33:03
yeah
33:03
wow
33:04
I am so impressed
33:05
that you met
33:07
the love of your life
33:08
with smelly underwear
33:09
everyone is
33:12
people can't quite believe it
33:14
because it was
33:14
I was a head case yeah wow there was concerns and within 24 hours I met this man who's now
33:20
loved in my life father of my child you know married but the moral is I think it was like
33:25
I needed these doors to close and for something so bad to happen for me to just be like and then
33:30
all of a sudden I just feel like I just stopped giving a shit I think it's just something inside
33:35
of me just went I'm just done I'm like actually done I met him and I'm not saying that he's like
33:41
changed my life because even at that time I think it was a bit like I was like very like jaded but
33:45
he just made me feel like I could do anything he just made he just told me how amazing I was
33:51
every second that he could in the day and I needed to hear that at that point because I was so low
33:57
and I think if it wasn't for him and this is not saying that men solve it because it's not that
34:01
it was that I needed that person that voice to come into my head to drown out the crap that I
34:05
was saying to myself and through him saying that all I've seen from that moment onwards is like
34:11
my life has just gone up and I needed that.
34:13
That's so beautiful.
34:14
Thank you.
34:15
Okay so we're
34:16
going to fast forward so you are now a mother and you are also a CEO of an enormous company
34:22
and for context the business that Davika is the CEO of Brain Plus which is a listed company on
34:28
the Nasdaq is helping deliver care for dementia patients.
34:32
I imagine there's quite a few stepping
34:34
stones along the way from rock bottom haven't changed my underwear in five days you know and
34:40
now uh you know in like an incredibly powerful position and a huge business how have you evolved
34:48
as a leader as a person who is showing up to lead a giant not only team of people but also investors
34:56
where were you as a leader maybe pre-underwear moment yeah to where you are now and has being
35:02
a mom influenced that or would you say it's predominantly been your sort of career path
35:08
that has because I I guess the reason I'm asking this question is we see so many stats around
35:13
there being more marks who lead companies in the S&P 500 than there are women you know like yeah
35:18
how have you evolved as a leader to be in this role and what kind of like learnings have you
35:23
had along the way?
35:23
So I think the biggest learning that I had was backing myself like learning to
35:30
truly back who I am what I say and what I believe I think that a lot of my 20s and in my roles I
35:37
I didn't really, because of the lack of confidence,
35:39
lack of self-worth,
35:40
I didn't really own my narrative or my story.
35:44
I think that I would come into conversations
35:47
and say things and that you could always hear
35:49
that there was an element of disbelief
35:51
and I wasn't really going in with conviction.
35:55
And that's the easiest way for people to attack
35:58
and bring you down.
35:59
If they see that there's a weakness,
36:01
they will play on that if people are not kind.
36:03
It's even small things like I think.
36:05
yes it's it's it's the language that you use that is coming from a place of I'm not 100% sure
36:11
yeah which is so many I'm exactly the same you know in your gut what the right thing to do is
36:16
but the way you communicate it and also I guess just to actually have the confidence to just back
36:21
whatever that decision is and knowing that if it's the wrong one you can figure it out anyway
36:24
yeah and I think it's the courage of your convictions using your gut instinct and learning
36:31
to know that you're really good at what you do and like you have a superpower my superpower has
36:36
become my resilience and my ability to come through challenges and keep going it's almost
36:42
like I always use the domestic abuse as like an example because when I went through that it was
36:46
like the guy almost tried to take my life like I almost lost my life and I had to fight my way
36:50
through basically a night when he almost tried to take my life and at that time I would say that
36:56
like that was my biggest weakness and I used to carry a victim around and I felt shame and guilt
37:01
and now I reposition it as like if I survived that I'm so powerful and that power has like
37:08
kept me going and I am so capable and more capable than I ever thought.
37:15
Is it trial and error like
37:16
has it been just learning over time I'm actually really good at this and I've proven to myself
37:21
time and time again so rather than sitting in a place of I think I just know now it's been a lot
37:26
of trial and error and it's been a lot of like overcoming some really really really hard time
37:31
since becoming a mum which is only two and a half years ago and obviously taking on a leadership
37:35
role at um in a publicist company and realizing how to myself how to navigate being a young mum
37:43
and a ceo when i think there's only eight female ceos on the nasdaq stock exchange out of like 600
37:49
men that in itself is like pressure to like try to prove to my daughter and every other woman out
37:54
there that you can do it but the thing that really impacted me was there's a public forum where you
37:59
can talk about freely whatever you want about the share price and about the company and it's all
38:04
anonymously done but I went on it because I was trying to understand what the sentiment of the
38:08
investors were prior to doing a webinar and we were doing the webinar in about half an hour so
38:13
I'd gone on to this and I'd read some of the nastiest things I think I've ever read things
38:19
like she's hot but that's the best thing about the company she probably spends more money on
38:23
designer handbags and clothes than she does on making revenue because I'd posted about being a
38:27
mom on LinkedIn one of them was about um I think she was a bit a little girl with a big dream that
38:33
thought she could fly and now she's realizing it's not it's not possible to do and I read these prior
38:38
to going on a webinar presenting to these exact same shareholders so the people who'd written
38:42
this anonymously you're about to have to present to yeah what gives you the goddamn right to say
38:48
things that are so personal and so misogynistic you wouldn't say that about a male CEO you
38:54
wouldn't talk about my looks you wouldn't talk about the way I dress but also it's just totally
38:58
irrelevant it's totally right if you're gonna pick holes in my leadership all the way that I run a
39:02
company then do that based on how I'm doing that not completely irrelevant things exactly tell me
39:08
that I'm tell me that I don't know how to sell and that and that's obviously fine then have a
39:11
conversation with me and I'll tell you that this is what I'm doing but don't hide behind a keyboard
39:16
and anyway I had to go on this webinar and before going on to it I had an absolute nervous breakdown
39:21
because it was a it was it was a 180 back to the days when I was in my 20s and I'd experienced and
39:27
the same you know not the same investors but investors had said those things about me
39:31
and I had a proper panic attack and I got PTSD and it was a trauma response fully and I just
39:35
couldn't pull myself out of it and I had to basically go like I had to take my screen off
39:40
and then we had like 30 seconds to go live and I just stood up and I was like jumping up and down
39:45
the spot and like going like like you've got this you've got this you're fine you're fine I was
39:48
trying to pull myself together and I was like wanting to like tears were like there like rolling
39:53
down my face and I was like I need to like dev you've got this and it was almost like in a split
39:57
second I sat back down put the camera on and I was like hi welcome to the webinar and it was like
40:02
and then I delivered the webinar I think the most eloquently I've ever delivered anything I put the
40:08
laptop down after it and I went outside and I genuinely could not breathe my body was shaking
40:14
it was almost like I'd gone into this like your your body's gonna do it now but then afterwards
40:19
it just went into shock and it was the weirdest experience and I was on the phone to my colleague
40:24
because she kind of knew and she had to like breathe with me down the phone because it was
40:29
it was that bad and that just goes to show that everyone is human like everyone has a has a story
40:34
everyone has something they've gone through and yes you have a right as an investor to tell me
40:40
that I'm not doing the right thing and I will always be there to tell you if I'm doing the
40:43
wrong thing and I'll always be honest and open with my communication but know that there's a
40:47
person there that is doing their best and that is every single founder and CEO that is doing their
40:52
best.
40:53
Where have you landed in terms of I mean you're still so young and you have so much career
40:58
ahead of you I guess what have been the biggest learnings that you've had now and how do you think
41:02
you will apply that in terms of where you see your career going from here?
41:06
My mission now is to
41:07
basically make the company that I'm CEO at absolutely successful but like more so than that
41:13
I want this product that we've built to get into hands of every single person living with dementia
41:17
I'm doing what I think I was born to do sounds really weird but I'm back in I'm back in like
41:23
families and talking to older adults and like talking to like these older people and like
41:27
helping them they've got dementia and I sit there and it's it's just everything that I love like I
41:32
go into care homes and I talk with them for like half an hour and get these cuddles from them and
41:36
And it just, they're the grandparents that I miss
41:39
that I don't have anymore.
41:40
And I get to spend those times with them.
41:42
And I think it's like filling a void that I always need
41:45
at the same time as helping them.
41:47
And so I'm really committed to making sure
41:48
this business is going to absolutely change
41:51
the way that dementia care is delivered.
41:52
And I'm not going to stop until that happens.
41:54
Okay, and final question.
41:55
There's a lot of women who listen to this podcast
41:58
who are navigating the really interesting experience
42:02
of being a mum and trying to keep their career.
42:04
And I think that that is, I mean,
42:06
it's something I've never experienced and hopefully one day I can but I guess what can be done like
42:10
you're a leader now you're in a position where you can make change within a business what can be done
42:14
to better help support mums be both or is there anything maybe that you might want to say to mums
42:19
that are trying to sort of survive both within a system that wasn't built to support yeah dynamic
42:25
it's so it's like the hardest thing in the world and I genuinely have my hats off to every single
42:31
mum that is just getting up and waking up or not waking up from they've had sleepless nights and
42:36
their child's been awake all night and they have to sit on a board meeting at seven o'clock and
42:40
they have to look like they've got their shit together and they don't and they can't remember
42:43
stuff and they've got a million one things in their head and they're sick and they're tired and
42:47
and they miss their babies because actually at the end of the day like we're going back to work
42:51
so early not as early as in the US but we're going back to work so early and my um my friend said to
42:56
me the other day she was like I remember you said something when you went back to work you were like
42:59
I've just I've just got to grips with being her mum and this is when Alba was like seven months
43:04
old and I just learned how to be a good mum like how I just felt comfortable and confident and I
43:10
had to leave her and that's what loads of us are doing on a daily basis and we then have to leave
43:15
that find ourselves again and become a new type of leader whilst at the same time missing our
43:19
babies at home and that is really hard I would say the biggest advice I can give is like you
43:24
have to find a community of like women around you which is why we created wealth women health
43:29
because I needed that community of women,
43:30
not just mums, every single woman
43:33
that's gonna be that person
43:34
that I need to like lean on to get support.
43:38
Like if I want to cry too,
43:39
if I need a massive laugh,
43:40
if I need a massive bottle of wine,
43:41
like they're there and they all get it
43:43
because they're all working in health
43:45
or they're all working in leadership positions
43:46
or whatever it might be.
43:48
And you need that camaraderie,
43:49
you need that sisterhood
43:50
because it's so tough
43:53
and we need to be there for each other
43:55
because who else will be?
43:57
oh my god i feel like i could sit here and talk to you for honestly hours and i'm just so aware
44:03
that we've already taken a lot of your very precious time but thank you so much for sharing
44:08
your story and everything you've learned and for anyone that wants to follow your journey and the
44:13
things that you're working on where are all the platforms that they can do that so um davica wood
44:19
on linkedin i've not changed my married name you know do you think you will no and then isla-care.com
44:24
for Brain Plus, which is our dementia care platform,
44:27
and then Women in Health on LinkedIn as well.
44:30
Thank you so much.
44:31
Thank you.
44:31
We definitely need to do a part two at some stage.
44:35
Yes, please.
44:35
Thank you so much.
44:36
Thank you.
44:37
Thank you so much for listening to Raising the Curb.
44:39
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44:58
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44:59
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45:00
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45:00
Love you.
45:01
Bye.
45:02
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45:06
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45:08
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