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From Ideas to Action: The Impactful Projects of Mindfully Wired · How To Protect The Ocean

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Imagine being able to design your company, a
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company that you came up with to be like, hey, I want to help the planet. I
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want to help the oceans, especially, and be able to come up
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and design projects that actually help the ocean. Not in your traditional
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ways of saving a reef or going out and doing marine
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biology and science stuff, but actually helping conservation, helping
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policy, and building a company that has all
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those people, that has scientists, that has policymakers, that has communications people.
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It's just a great company. Imagine building that. Imagine being
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able to work on projects that you want to work on, that even you come
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up with yourself, as well as help others with. Well,
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that's who we're going to be talking to today. We're going to be talking to Katrina Ryan,
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who is the founder and in charge of
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Mindfully Wired. We're going to talk about some of the projects that she's been able to
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do and some of the projects that she hopes to do in the future. It's
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going to be a great episode. Let's start the show. Hey
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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
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your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean,
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how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean
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by taking action. Now, today's episode, usually
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on the Wednesdays, we usually talk about science communication. And I
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thought that's what this episode was going to be about. I
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hit up Katrina Ryan on LinkedIn. We hadn't spoken in
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a few years really, off and on, like through email,
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but not really online. Though I first connected with
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her, we talked about how her Mindfully Wired
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company was helping market a straight-to-consumer,
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a direct-to-consumer seafood plan from the
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fishermen and fishing villages in Cornwall, UK, really
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being able to offer a plethora of like 40 different
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sustainably fished species to the UK people in
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and around the area of Cornwall so that they can have fish during the pandemic because
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imports weren't coming in properly because of the whole pandemic and the shutdown and
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everything like that. So she was able to help keep a lot of
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those businesses open just through Mindfully Wired with
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her colleagues. And now she's built up her company to almost 20 people.
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That's amazing to be able to say, hey, in a few years, we're going to start to work on
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these different projects. We're going to assemble the team, not just of
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marketing people and communications people, we're going to put some policy makers
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with this, we're going to put some lawyers, we're going to put some
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scientists, we're going to put all these different people in and we're going to be able
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to have this company that can offer a plethora of different services
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and I think that's amazing and I want to have Katrina on to
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talk about some of her projects, which she did. And some
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of the projects she's actually, you know, with the help of her colleagues,
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been able to design herself and have them
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funded. And I think that's something that's really admirable about the companies
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that are coming out now is really a for-profit being
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able to design something that is insanely wonderful.
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And so that's what we're gonna talk to Katrina about today on
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this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Here's the interview, and
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we'll talk to you after. Hey Katrina, welcome back
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to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to
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Hi Andrew, it's lovely to see you again. I've missed our
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Absolutely. It's been a long time since we've actually chatted. We've
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communicated over email and over LinkedIn a number of
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times, but I'm really happy you were able to come on
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the podcast again today. This is a bit of a catch-up call for both
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of us, as we love chatting with each other
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and catching up on what type of work we've been up to and things
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like that. But today I want to share that with the audience and just be
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like, look, your company has grown in number of people. the number
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of diversity of projects. You know, we first
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interviewed you when it was during the pandemic and you
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were talking about helping, you know, fishing communities in
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Cornwall, you know, basically save their businesses in
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a way with your communication strategies and I feel like that's
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just grown from there into all different sorts. And
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going on your website now, you know, you see you have linguists, you have
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policy people, you have communicators, And it's just great to
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kind of just get to know how you build a company like this,
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how you build a firm like this to serve the marine conservation
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and science community. I think it's something that is unique. And
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I wanted to share that with people to show that you don't
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always have to go the quote unquote traditional way with joining one organization. You
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can create your own and develop it from there. So I'm
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looking forward to that. But before we get into all of that, Katrina, why
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don't you just remind the audience of who you are and what you
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Yeah, happy to. Although I'm never great at doing this in a super pithy
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way despite my job. So my name is Katrina Ryan. I
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am the founder director of a company called Mindfully Wired. We're
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a specialist communications consultancy working in the kind of ocean,
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marine protection, marine biodiversity and fisheries space.
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I guess we'll delve into a little bit more about what that means, but really we work
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with such a broad church of stakeholders. It could be fishing industry, seafood
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sector, governments, research, NGOs,
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retail, the whole mix, and we work all
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Yeah, it's quite interesting to see how diverse
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you've gotten. I think when we first met and discussed on
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the podcast, a lot of it was essentially seafood, right?
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I think was that the first sort of iteration,
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I guess, or first types of clients that you had, but you've grown quite a bit
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since then. You've grown in the number of people as well. Can you
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kind of just take us through a little bit of that growth
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through the pandemic? Not a lot of people had their companies grow in
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people, especially during the pandemic. Can you
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just kind of talk a little bit about sort of how things have
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changed since the last time we've talked? I know we probably don't
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have the amount of time that it takes to go over how all those changes happened
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Yeah, of course. And the first thing I'll say is, yeah, we've always worked with the seafood sector and
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fishing communities. But the mission at
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the heart of Mindfully Wild has always been about, you know, a better future for
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people and the ocean. So it's about, I really believe that we
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can't just have conservation conversations in isolation. You've got to work with the
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people that live on the coast and that make a living on the sea. You've got
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to include industry in conversations around conservation. And
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that is the slightly complex space that we've always
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tried to hold for the projects that we work on. You know, it's
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not flying a flag in one direction or another. So as you said, you
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know, we first came across each other during the pandemic when Mindfully Wired
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pivoted quite abruptly to kind of targeting
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all of our efforts on supporting coastal communities here in the UK during the
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pandemic. Obviously, as with elsewhere, their
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markets were closing off, fishermen weren't able to sell their catch into restaurants.
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And as I'm sure you're aware, you know, the lifeblood of coastal
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communities is often their fishing industry and coastal communities
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are 75% more likely to be deprived than inland communities. So
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it's essential to maintain this kind of jobs and employment and people need food.
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So we kind of overnight became fish merchants
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working with some of our clients in the southwest and redirecting healthy
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sustainably caught seafood to people's houses contact free and
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that was obviously that was wild for us that was really odd
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really exciting really energizing completely restructuring the business working
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with new partners But behind all of that, there was still important
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advocacy and communications work to be done. The bigger seafood and
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fisheries and marine conservation organizations still needed to advance their
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agendas during the pandemic. But because they were larger and
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often government funded bodies, they were more likely to have to furlough
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big chunks of their staff. mindfully wired
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as a nimble consultancy at the time of about six staff, we
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decided we would kind of try and outpace the economic shock of
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the pandemic and be there to service those projects as a
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more nimble bolt-on. And, you know,
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it was a time for a lot of growth in the company because there was a lot
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of important work to be done. And I think we closed out the pandemic
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with about 20 staff. And our projects during that time
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was everything from supporting governments and facilitating international
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meetings with their peers on important marine science issues through
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to furthering the work we did in coastal communities on marketing locally
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caught and sustainable fish, helping universities with communications
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training for their science graduates. developing new
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coastal connectivity initiatives and new geographies, just
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a bit of everything. It was really exciting, but it was almost
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a time of such rapid growth that you couldn't keep track of it, you just had to keep going, you
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Well, that's what I was going to ask. I mean, that's a lot of work to be able to, you
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know, if you're starting off with six people and then pivoting so
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many times, you know, you pivot for the seafood industry, helping them
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basically redefine the industry there. That's essentially what you
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did there, not only redefining the industry, but also reintroducing the
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people of the UK to their own species because a lot of the times,
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I've covered stories on this, where most of the fish that they have is imported and
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then now here you have this fishery in Cornwall
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being like, look, we have about, I think it was like 40 species, 40 different species
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of fish that could be fished and you're offering it to the people of the
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UK and so they kind of got to rediscover, which could happen
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not just in the UK, it could happen in Canada, it can happen in the US, We just
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tend to eat the popular types
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of fish that we know and we're comfortable with.
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But there's so many different fish species that could be sustainably fished
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and offered to us. We just don't know because it's different and it's change
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and things like that. Well, the pandemic was all about change. You offered that in
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a communication style and the people of Cornwall and the fishing community
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offered that in product and it worked out really well. So
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love to hear that kind of stuff. But then to be able to offer
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the services that you do to a number of different organizations, you
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know, in and around the UK or internationally. That's
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a lot of work to be able to do that. Did you have to, did you have
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the network at the time to introduce Mindfully Wired
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to these, these organizations? And can you just maybe mention a
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couple of the ones that you did work with right off the bat, like during that
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time? Did
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No, that's my, it happens every once in a while, it gets cut, so I apologize for
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that. Essentially what I asked is like, did you have the network
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of people where you could introduce MindfullyWired to,
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or did you have to sort of go out and find, like
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develop your own network during that time online, of course, because
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you couldn't do it in person as much because of the pandemic. And
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then, you know, Was that a difficult thing
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to keep up with, all that work to keep up with, and
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be able to do the work for those organizations?
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Yeah, there's so much to respond to that. I think one thing I'll say is that it's
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always difficult to keep up with all the work that we're doing. There's so much to
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do. It's all really exciting, as I've kind of already alluded
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to. It's often quite complex, the work that we're undertaking. And
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that's partly about the DNA of who we are as a business. I can come back to
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that because we're by no means the traditional comms consultancy. But
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in terms of that work coming to us during the pandemic, I think MindfullyWired
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already had one really important key
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USP, which is that we've been specialists in our area from day one.
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We're 10 years old now, and we've always known fisheries
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inside out and the marine world inside out, we can engage with science. So
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there's very few bolt-on agencies that can also bring
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creative thinking that can engage at that level with the
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complexity of marine management and fisheries management. So we
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had a good network in the sense that people knew kind of who
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we were. And I think what the pandemic was, was a time for us
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showing the breadth of what we mean when we say
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communication. So I don't mean an off-the-shelf PR
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package. I mean, we can build your website. We can make
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you an incredibly moving film that we'll also script and package and
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distribute. But we will also, you know, develop your long-term
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strategic vision for your organisation and write a comms and governance strategy that
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sits alongside that. We'll help interpret your science and communicate that
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better. We will hold events for you, whether that's online or in person. It's
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kind of anything that helps bridge gaps between groups
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and that helps people communicate more effectively is
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what I include under my umbrella definition of communication. So it's
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kind of much broader. And in that sense, we're almost like
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a blend of an NGO and a traditional comms agency. We've come
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to think of it as a cause and effect agency. So we
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try and create change with the way in which we communicate about these things. And
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the pandemic was a real time for testing and proving that. I
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just, another thing that we had to do as we grew during that
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time was become bolder in the work that we went for. And,
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and that was a huge thing for us as well kind of living. our
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values through some larger projects like during that time
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we were invited to pitch for a project on promoting
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safety in fishing communities amongst fishermen. It's
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the most deadly profession in the UK and globally
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it's an enormously deadly profession so anything to
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improve safety at sea is vital and I remember getting the tender on
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my desk in the middle of the pandemic and being so intimidated by this big piece of national
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work and you know could we actually bid for it, could we win it
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and talking to my kind of second-in-command at the time,
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Harriet, and saying, oh, do we have the guts to go for this? And thinking, yeah, we're
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gonna do it. We're gonna flip the safety narrative on
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its head because all people do at this point in time in terms of safety comms
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to fishing communities is tell fishermen they're gonna die and that they should wear a
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life jacket so that their body is brought home for their wife. And
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we wanted to talk to them about reasons they had to live. So we
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went out and spoke to fishing communities about what they care about, what they
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come home for. and developed this campaign called
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Home and Dry. And that was, again, that was a real mission that energised us
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during the pandemic. And that campaign went on to create an enormous
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amount of impact in fishing communities. It was seen by 77% of the fleet. You
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know, around 70% of people took action as a result of it. We've won
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awards. We had an award-winning artist, Johnny Flynn,
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write a song especially for us to be the track behind the video. You
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know, it's been one of those campaigns we can feel really proud of,
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because at a time when fishermen were perhaps more desperate to get
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out to sea to catch when they could during the pandemic, we
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wanted them to be safety minded as well. So when I think back on that
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time of crazy growth and the pandemic, it's also a time when we
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were perhaps more or most fully expressing our values in the type of
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Well, and this is what it really comes down to, I feel, and
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this is a lot of other companies that I've noticed. I
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want to reiterate this point that I've been putting together for
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a number of episodes is it comes down to
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the business's values, right? I've talked to a lot of businesses around
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here. I've looked for a lot of businesses. I've always looked for eco-friendly, sustainable businesses.
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And not a lot of businesses will necessarily sell for
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environmental reasons. They're like, oh, well, buy
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us because we're sustainable clothing, or we're this, we're good for the environment. It's
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buy us because our product's the best. That's why here's the
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coolness factor if it's a company that sells clothes or
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things like that. But it really comes down to their base values. When
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you go to the About page on their company, I've never gone to more About
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pages on companies now where it's like, what's their intrinsic value
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of starting this company? Was it to make the world a better place and
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offer their values in that product? And I find the product
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becomes better that way. It's more eco-friendly. It's more sustainable in
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that way. I feel the same way just talking to you, Katrina, about your company.
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It's, look, We talk down a lot
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to the fishing community. You know, you can't do this. You
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can't do this. You can't fish here. You can't fish. That's what a
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lot of times when I speak to fishermen, that's what they hear. But
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they love the environment. They love fishing. It's a
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cultural thing for many of them that I've
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spoken to. It's something that they love they take pride in
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and when somebody says you can't you can't you can't it's almost like hey
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you can't go out there without being safe like you need to be safe you
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need this it's no no why like what are your values
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you know what are the fishermen's values like You want to come home and
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you want to be with your family. Fishing is life, but it's also your
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family's life too. And sometimes we all need to be reminded
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of that with work and things like that. You and I need to be reminded of
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that. We have a life outside of work and we want you to
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enjoy that life. So how about you come home safe? Let's flip
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the switch and put it into a positive manner and sort
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of tap into their values of family. You
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know, you want to be able to explain to your next generation of
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how to be able to fish. Well, you can't do that if you're not around. You
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know, you can only do that if you're around. And I think by putting
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that message together, that just it flips everything. If you
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One thing we'll never do is negative campaigning. We
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are always trying to tell a positive story because I think that's where
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you create change. We're trying to shine a light on things that are positive so
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that people want to travel in that direction. Yeah,
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that was a real lesson for me as well in just how much people can
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exclude groups from conversations that are about those groups.
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So no one had thought previously in developing these safety campaigns for the fishing
17:50
community to go and talk to the fishing community in depth about what
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might motivate them. And I'm
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not one for people being excluded from conversations. I think that's very much
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where MindFleaWide has grown up from, is that idea that we all work
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better if we're collaborating and if things are inclusive and positive. So
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that's just one example of how that carries through in our work, but it's certainly one that we're
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So for the work that you've been able to do, you mentioned the
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work with the fishermen, that was a bid, like you had a tender and you bid on
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it against other companies who wanted the same type of
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job. Are most of your jobs, you know, from grant
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writing or from bidding on specific things or some of
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them just from relationships that you've built with some of the companies or
18:34
organizations over the years? Because I mean, if you think about a lot of non-profit organizations
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where most of the work you would think would come from, from marine conservation. They
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don't necessarily have a lot of money to be able to pay an organization
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where it's profitable for, you know, your company to do that. I
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might be way off base here, but I was just wondering, like, where, how
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do you land a lot? And I don't want, don't
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take any secrets, so don't tell any secrets here, but how do, does a
18:59
company like yours land a lot of the jobs? Is it through tender? Is
19:06
So there's three pillars to this, and no secrets at all here. The
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first one is word of mouth. We've always benefited enormously from
19:14
that. We get a lot of organic outreach from potential
19:18
clients. We get a lot of repeat business. That's our stickiness factor. Lots
19:22
of our clients stick with us for years on end, which we're very grateful for, and we love building
19:25
those long-term relationships. Then we have the tenders
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where we'll see something and we think, God, that just feels so mindfully wired.
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We're definitely gonna, we're gonna go for that one. And
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I think it's not just me on the team. Lots of us love a pitching moment.
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So those can be lovely, creative times in the team when we're coming up
19:42
with a vision for a project. And then the third one is the one that maybe excites me
19:46
the most. And it's again, perhaps an area where we're slightly
19:49
odd or rare as a business is that we'll identify an
19:54
issue that exists, something that we think needs addressing and resolving, or isn't getting
19:57
enough attention. And we will develop a project that
20:00
we think can plug that gap, we'll see who we think we wanna work
20:04
with on that, and we'll go out and find the funds, and then create
20:08
that project ourselves. We'll introduce that into the ecosystem,
20:11
the landscape that we're working in. And those
20:24
So the first one, our oldest one, is kind of a concept we
20:27
developed and then went out, got funded, and is still running to this day, which is
20:31
six years later, is we run something called the All-Party
20:34
Parliamentary Group on Fisheries in Westminster. So that is a
20:38
fully cross-party platform within the system of parliament
20:41
that holds events and conducts research to
20:45
basically increase the knowledge base on fisheries and marine issues within
20:48
parliament so that the legislature can make more informed decisions
20:52
around policy and law. That was something that I
20:56
had in my mind well before Mindfully Wired
20:59
that I wanted to do. And then when the Brexit vote came
21:03
around and fisheries was such a totemic issue in the UK, but
21:06
it's so complex and it's so different depending on where you are. it
21:10
felt like a real moment for parliamentarians to need to have access to
21:13
some free, broad, sector-wide source
21:17
of information brought to them so that they could comment in
21:20
an informed way on these important issues that are at the heart of Brexit. So
21:24
we secured some funding to run that within Parliament, and we do run
21:27
that. I should say at the moment we technically don't exist
21:31
because we've just had a general election over here, but we are out.
21:35
recruiting new MPs to come on board with our all party parliamentary group
21:38
and we have an enormously ambitious program of research and events moving
21:41
forward. And that is about open access to democracy, it's about
21:44
open access to power for the sector, it's about our
21:49
decision makers being really, really well informed and it's about there being a
21:52
space for everyone at the heart of Parliament. So I love that
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and we've been very lucky to secure continued funding to keep that going. So that's
22:01
Even just to have that level
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of federal government, not influence, but you're
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putting that together at the federal level, that's
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And for us, the importance is that our role is neutral. This isn't lobbying.
22:21
And again, that speaks to a personal passion of mine, which
22:24
is that lobbyists are expensive. You're talking a minimum $25,000 a
22:28
month plus. I used to work in Westminster, so I know I
22:33
just choose not to use that because it's an exclusive form of access and
22:37
I think people should be able to approach their decision makers on
22:40
an equal footing. So by creating this all-party parliamentary group,
22:44
we can have fishermen from Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, the East Coast there
22:48
with academics and yet people who would never have a lobbyist can be
22:51
there having the conversations they need to have. Then
22:55
a really exciting project, I feel like you'll like this one, is a
22:59
piece of tech development that we formed a consortium around
23:03
a few years ago with a government science body
23:06
called CFAS, the Zoological Society of London,
23:10
and an engineering firm called Arabada, who are amazing. to
23:14
think about how to improve at-sea monitoring systems for
23:18
fishermen so that they're less burdensome for scientists to
23:21
interpret the data from. At the moment, you just get 24 hours of video footage. They're
23:26
expensive, big, chunky pieces of kit, 15 grand a system, that
23:29
kind of thing. And specifically, we wanted to work on one that might work to
23:33
capture better data about interactions with endangered species like dolphins, porpoises.
23:38
And so that project, again, is ongoing, but we're also now kind of
23:42
really testing out in the field a product that we call Insight 360, which
23:46
is a small kind of plug-and-play machine learning device that
23:49
has a voice-activated node, an underwater acoustic recorder,
23:53
and continuous video monitoring. As I say,
23:57
it's continuous learning. It's AI, so it's better with time, and fishermen can
24:00
speak directly to it. And effectively, therefore, annotate the
24:03
video footage that is bounced back to scientists by a satellite. So it's much more
24:07
efficient. But at the end of that project, that all
24:10
the designs, all the specs will be made totally open access for other people to build the
24:13
same thing. The point of the kit is it should cost just 100 quid or
24:16
so, you know, really, really affordable. And we want it to go global because it
24:20
can help fishermen, it can help the marine environment, and it shouldn't cost so
24:23
much money to monitor effectively at sea. So that's another one. That's
24:28
been incredible to work on because I'm no engineer, but we each
24:32
tripped in our little bit of expertise. And
24:36
then the third one I wanted to mention just quickly, because it built on that coastal communities
24:40
and spreading knowledge around seafood, kind of improving
24:43
a seafood palette from a breadth perspective, you know, tasting local. We
24:48
also secured some funding to do a brief pilot study in Cornwall after the
24:51
pandemic, working with a processing company, a local
24:54
fleet, environmental consultants and a
24:57
chef to identify two top species where, you
25:01
know, if we ate more of these, they're totally sustainable, it would take pressure off
25:04
other slightly less sustainable stocks, and the consumer doesn't know
25:07
anything about them, how do we introduce them? What are
25:11
the constraints from a processing perspective? How much does the fleet need to
25:14
make per kilo for these to be viable target fish? What
25:17
can our chef do to introduce these to a broader audience? And we did a
25:20
three-month feasibility study on these two fish, megram sole and
25:24
spider crab. We rebranded them as Cornish sole
25:27
and Cornish king crab. By the end
25:30
of our three months, yeah, love that. By
25:34
the end of our three-month blitz of research, menu
25:37
testing, consumer tasting, processing, engagement retailers, I
25:41
think Megram sole or Cornish sole was maybe the second most sold fish
25:45
in Cornwall. And there was a contract for Cornish king crab
25:48
to be sold into one of our major retailers here in the UK. So that's
25:52
had real longevity. That was only a three-month project, but it's kind of rolling and
25:55
rolling. And we hope that the Cornish fish producers organization down there is
25:58
doing more on that front. Yeah, so just three
26:02
examples there of things where we were like, there's a need here, we think we can do something to
26:07
Can I just say something? First of all, unreal.
26:12
Oh, like all three of those projects are projects, you
26:15
know, as I was thinking, I've had conversations with people,
26:18
not obviously about those specific projects, but conversations with people like
26:22
ideas, like, you know, when you're at conferences and you're with other people that that are in the
26:25
same business, you throw around ideas and you're like, oh, that would be really
26:28
cool if we're able to do this or that would be really cool if we're able to do this. But
26:31
here are the challenges and here's the thing. And it's like, The
26:35
ideas that you mentioned feel very similar, obviously not
26:38
the same, but very similar to be like, yeah, there are a lot of challenges in this
26:42
way. You know, but if we partner with the right people, we collaborate with
26:45
the right people, or we speak to the right people, we can really get this going.
26:48
And if you if you have that network, or you have that ability to
26:52
be like, let's This is a great idea. Let's find the funds to get it.
26:55
Let's do, you know, let's put all this together. Let's put the collaboration. Let's
26:59
put everybody in the same room or on the same computer in the same zoom call or
27:02
whatever that might be. And let's have, let's have this talk and maybe we can
27:05
get this going. And then three projects right there that you're able to get
27:08
that going. This sounds more like NGO type
27:12
work, you know, where it's like you have your own projects, you're just able
27:15
to do it because it comes from your audience. All of them have
27:20
Or it will continue to create change, you
27:24
know, in whatever they are. Like you're marketing
27:28
new, or not new, local types of food. How
27:31
do we get this local type of food into a market? How do we get
27:35
access to data and equipment that's affordable?
27:39
How do we get to do that? Boom, we've done it. That
27:43
just like just those two alone, you know, it's just
27:47
like it's unreal to just think from idea to actual put into place.
27:50
And it seems like Mindfully Wired is just that's what you guys do.
27:53
It's like you take the ideas and you're like, OK, let's talk about these ideas. Let's
27:57
formulate, you know, a plan. Let's put it together and let's put it in place. Three
28:01
month project. Now, all of a sudden you get like a contract to put into one
28:04
of the major retailers. Come on now. That's
28:09
awesome Katrina. That's fantastic. I mean it obviously like, you
28:12
know, you have the people to do that, right? And
28:16
that helps, right? You invest in your people. So you
28:20
mentioned at the beginning, it's a very unique company because
28:23
you don't just have comps people. You have all different types of
28:26
people. Can you just talk about how that
28:30
came to be, where you have so many people
28:34
from different sort of professional backgrounds coming together to
28:37
work on these and solve these problems, essentially, is what you do.
28:40
You guys are problem solvers in the marine conservation world. Yep. Can
28:46
Of course, and I think there's something to be said there, just a broader point about
28:49
the fact that it's one of the luxuries of being a small business versus
28:54
a big NGO or a government department. There's never been any constraints
28:58
in my mind about how nimble we can be on acting on something. There's
29:01
no bureaucracy because we've been tiny and
29:05
we're less tiny now, but there's still... There's
29:08
no need to have meetings for meeting sakes and put things through a system. We can kind
29:11
of just see something and jump in there and get going and we have the confidence to
29:15
do that. I think partly because of the structure. But
29:19
yeah, in terms of the team, it's a great question and it's actually something
29:22
I've only reasonably recently realized. is quite
29:26
strange, right? It's that we're a comms consultancy, but the
29:29
vast majority of our staff are not people from a comms or PR background.
29:33
To me, it just made perfect sense because we're talking about
29:36
technical environmental issues, whether
29:40
it's offshore wind or seafood supply, or even we
29:44
do some things on forestry. it's good to have
29:47
that science base in the team. It's a real luxury, but we look for
29:50
those scientists that also have
29:53
a way with words, have a way with art, have a kind of
29:57
desire to make their work more accessible. Because
30:01
it's something that I believe is so important more broadly, right? When the biggest issues of
30:04
our time are environmental, we have to be able to communicate them. Then, you
30:08
know, drawing in linguists and people with policy experience, it's the same
30:11
thing. I feel like we've been able to incubate comm skills because
30:16
that's about connecting to people, it's about using words and art and design
30:20
and digital in a specific way, but having that knowledge base behind it
30:24
has been incredible. More recently, in our kind of more
30:27
recent expansion, we now also have the luxury of some seriously
30:31
impressive and experienced agency communications experts
30:35
in MindfullyWide as well, lending that kind of senior
30:40
dimension from across the more traditional communication space.
30:44
And so now I feel like MindFleaWide is in its best iteration yet, because
30:48
we have that almost like a hub of scientific and policy
30:51
knowledge delivering on complex and technical projects. And then we have this
30:55
wraparound of creative vision and traditional communication skills. And
30:59
we're able to bolt the two together and work on projects in a way that means You
31:03
know, as I've said, we're starting to see ourselves as a cause and effect agency
31:07
because we can develop the projects and work on the science, then we can also communicate them.
31:11
We can have those big mass market skills and expertise that
31:15
you get in larger agencies, but we have them in our small, nimble, environmentally
31:19
focused agency. But yeah, the breadth and diversity of
31:22
the team's expertise is one of my favorite things about working at Mindfully Wired. It's
31:26
never a dull day, and there's always someone that is a subject expert on
31:32
Well, and what I love, too, it's like, as you mentioned before, it is
31:36
you are putting together positive, optimistic projects
31:40
that may not necessarily, I mean, mind you, you've
31:44
put together something that has potentially a federal impact on
31:48
fisheries. So that's pretty big from a national perspective. But we
31:52
look at the problems that we face With
31:55
our oceans, climate change, you look at overfishing,
31:59
you look at plastic pollution, all these major
32:03
things that can really provide people, give people anxiety. You
32:06
know, we call it climate anxiety or ocean anxiety, and it's
32:10
very difficult. But you are focusing on these projects that
32:14
provide results and positive results
32:18
in the way, like even in their potential from a futuristic
32:22
point of view, but also from sort of the impact level.
32:26
And you're kind of like cutting away at
32:30
some of this anxiety, like taking it away and kind of giving people sort
32:34
of this positive outlook. Like that's how I see it, from my perspective
32:37
anyway, in terms of the work that you're doing. I
32:42
know a lot of the work is focused around helping these organizations
32:46
and helping a fishing community to get
32:51
more access and things like that. Do you talk
32:55
to the public, or do you have mechanisms to talk
32:58
to the public to provide some of the, like, information on
33:01
some of these projects that you're doing to show some people,
33:05
like, in the UK? Like, I know the UK, you've gone through a lot of changes over the
33:08
last couple of weeks, and people are asking for change.
33:11
You know, Just Stop Oil, one of the organizations that making headlines around
33:15
the world with their protests and people wanting change, In
33:18
Europe, you have the Greta Thunbergs of the world who are
33:22
trying to make change, but oftentimes it gets aggressive
33:26
feedback, let's just say, from deniers
33:29
and naysayers. The work that you're doing, do you have those
33:33
mechanisms to the public to just kind of say, hey, check out what we're
33:36
doing here. It's pretty cool that we're doing this, because it's such a positive thing.
33:39
So that's a really interesting question. We don't go
33:43
out and do a lot of proactive storytelling about our work, because what
33:46
we do, is for the vast majority,
33:50
it is the work of our incredible clients. We are lucky to
33:53
be bolt-ons to their teams and so we want their projects to become visible
33:57
and for some of those that is a general public audience, that's a consumer audience. For
34:02
some of our projects it's governments, for some of them it's science. So
34:08
I guess we always try and stay slightly out of the limelight in
34:11
that way. It's actually unusual for me to talk about Mindfully Wide, and it's a treat.
34:14
It's really nice to talk to you about it, but it's not my normal kind
34:18
of speed. I'm more used to talking about a client's mission than my own, or
34:22
our own, because it certainly is collective within the team. But
34:26
we also try and engage the public in ways that help them craft and
34:30
deliver their own mission. So a really brilliant piece
34:33
of work we did a couple of years ago was with Surfers Against Sewage. to
34:38
facilitate and bring together I think it was 200 youth activists
34:42
for climate and co-author the first youth
34:46
ocean and climate manifesto to deliver to 10 Downing Street and so
34:50
that was a lovely way of kind of directly engaging with a new constituency of
34:53
the public and oh my goodness these youth activists knocked
34:56
my socks off they were like seven up and They were so well informed, so
35:00
charismatic, so clear on what they wanted in their manifesto and
35:03
how they wanted to be expressed. So that was
35:06
an incredible piece of work, reaching a kind of new sector of the public. And
35:10
I'd say another thing we do in terms of public
35:15
outreach is we go into universities and run training courses in
35:20
normally for kind of masters or PhD level scientists in the environmental space
35:24
and helping them think about what their work is, the impact it could have
35:27
and how they might want to communicate that impactfully as they develop their
35:31
own careers. So I like to kind of spread this gospel of you
35:35
know, don't work hidden away, don't work in a silo, reach
35:38
out, connect, collaborate, communicate. If you don't know how, find someone
35:42
who does work with them. You can make amazing change if
35:45
you can develop partnerships and that's, you know, good communication
35:51
I completely agree. I do think you should talk about Mindfully Wired more
35:55
often, just as from a personal standpoint, I would love
35:58
to see the behind the scenes of a lot of the things. But
36:02
I think, I think you're right. You know, your work speaks for
36:05
yourself and your work speaks for your clients. And, you
36:09
know, when you talk about, you know, 200 youths coming out
36:12
and saying, you know, we want to make sure that we have clean water
36:16
and clean access to water, for, especially for surfing, um,
36:20
that's a, that's a huge, that you, you have a huge impact on
36:23
not only the people, but to say, hey, not only are we putting this,
36:27
are we activists in putting this protest together, but we're putting a manifesto so
36:30
we're heard, and it's going to the right people, and you have the way to
36:33
get to the right people. And I think that is, you know, that's the
36:37
communication that I think really matters in this, in
36:40
this point of view. Um, but, because you speak for your clients, I think
36:43
that's, that's the, the beauty of, of this whole thing. I
36:47
know we're coming short on time, but just a last
36:51
question. Do you have a project or
36:54
a couple projects that are sort of developing that
36:58
you're excited that you're able to talk about just to kind of give us a little sneak
37:01
peek? Because obviously I'd love to have you come back or some of
37:04
your staff come back to be able to talk about this or partners and collaborators.
37:08
But do you have anything that you're excited about? I'm
37:15
Yeah, I should say at the outset, I, of course, have no favorites. All of my clients are
37:18
my favorite clients, and I will certainly run over time in order to talk
37:22
about my clients. There's kind of like a stable of clients I want
37:25
to talk about briefly, which is about the market acting in a really interesting way
37:28
to push for better conservation and environmental outcomes. And then there's one
37:31
project that's making some exciting announcements in the
37:35
near future that I can give you a little sneak preview on, but I hope might also speak to
37:38
you about their work in lots of detail, because it's fascinating. So
37:41
in the first instance, just to talk about Again, talking about
37:45
the kind of complex space we occupy that isn't always about working with an
37:48
NGO on a pure conservation issue, but looking to how other people
37:52
can act in a way that benefits people on the planet. We've
37:55
got a kind of three-client stable at the moment at MindfullyWide of
37:59
big, pre-competitive collaborations between huge
38:03
companies in the supply chain, retailers, buyers, processors. literally
38:08
billions of pounds of global purchasing power. And it's
38:12
fascinating to see this movement now. These coalitions forming around
38:16
specific environmental and social issues where they want to drive positive change
38:19
and they're saying government isn't moving fast enough. We the
38:23
supply chain are going to try and use some of our heft, our perspective, our
38:27
point of view on this to help push change in a positive direction. And
38:30
that's been a new form of project for Mindfully Wide in the last two to three
38:33
years. They're very advocacy focused, but we've got
38:37
three clients we're working with at the moment. One, the North Atlantic Pelagic
38:40
Advocacy Group is pushing hard for Europe
38:44
and Iceland, Greenland, the UK, Norway,
38:49
Russia, all vested coastal states to come together and
38:52
act responsibly follow the science and fish three
38:55
pelagic stocks in line with sustainable science-based management in
38:59
the Northeast Atlantic. That's a big mouthful, but we're talking about Atlantic Scandian herring,
39:03
mackerel, and blue whiting. Iconic stocks in the most data-rich fisheries
39:07
on the planet that are currently being fished beyond scientific advice
39:11
due to a lack of political agreement. And that client is
39:14
a bunch of businesses putting their competition to one side to come together and think
39:18
about new ways to campaign and drive change. for
39:21
those fisheries so that we hope, as soon as possible,
39:24
the coastal states negotiators come together and come
39:28
to a science-based sharing agreement. It's change on an
39:31
ecosystem scale. If it goes wrong or right, it is generationally
39:35
impactful. So there's no option for it
39:38
to go wrong. But it's tricky because it is the most intense and entrenched
39:42
politics you could work with. So that is a really fascinating project. And
39:46
we have other clients using a similar model to advocate for better human
39:50
rights protections and avoiding social labor abuses as
39:54
part of the seafood supply chain, and advocating for
39:57
better tuna management. So again, huge issues, but over the
40:00
horizon, offshore, out of sight, easy for people to ignore, and therefore all
40:04
the more important to communicate about and advocate for.
40:08
And then the one I'll give you a little sneak peek on is a client, the Blue
40:12
Carbon Action Partnership, which is really, you know, we
40:16
love action at MindFleaWide, and this is a really action-focused collaborative
40:20
initiative hosted by the World Economic Forum, but to
40:23
drive high quality blue carbon projects
40:27
around the world. So blue carbon is amazing environments like
40:30
salt marshes and mangroves where they store, they suck in
40:34
and store carbon. They're beautiful, they're precious, they're often very fragile, have
40:38
enormous importance to local communities. And
40:42
it's a very complex project. Again, it's about creating pipelines
40:46
for investment and protection. It's working with NGOs. And
40:49
at the heart of it is the importance of local communities. And
40:53
that project's got lots of exciting stuff around the corner, some announcements to be made. So I'm
40:57
hoping that you would have a chat with some of the scientists and
41:00
the people involved in that, because that really is another project that
41:04
is, on a global scale, trying to make exactly the right kind of change and
41:07
bring to life these blue carbon environments that are just so precious. So
41:11
yeah, you can hear from how I talk about them. It's all too exciting. There's
41:19
I love that. I'm excited. Maybe we could have
41:23
some of your partners on to talk more about those projects
41:26
on in the future. And of course, Katrina, we'd love to have you
41:29
back on to get updates and talk more
41:33
about science communication. And I think
41:37
what you've built and what you continue to build with
41:42
the people that you have in the company is
41:46
not just communications, it's change. And
41:49
I think that's really, really huge. And it gives me
41:53
a lot of hope in this industry of communications and
41:57
conservation and inclusivity. and
42:02
diversity. I just think it's really great. I really
42:06
love what you continue to build here and I'd love to
42:09
have you on and talk more shop and
42:13
so forth on the podcast and maybe off the podcast but definitely on
42:16
the podcast so the audience could get to hear about all the wonderful projects
42:20
that you're working on and that your company's working on. So thank you so much for joining us.
42:27
Thank you Katrina for joining us on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean
42:31
podcast. I just love the fact that
42:34
I got to hang out with Katrina. There's so many more things that
42:37
I wanted to ask her and I'm hoping that she'll be able to come back on soon to
42:40
be able to talk about more of the projects that she's working on through Mindfully Wired
42:44
and why. I think when you start to look at the way people
42:48
are building out their projects, people are building out their firms, and
42:52
their companies and what they want to do around oceans. I've met a lot of
42:55
people in different avenues from storytellers to
42:59
people to startups to scientists and
43:02
they're all doing different things but with the goal of protecting
43:06
the ocean. And over the next number of months I'm going
43:09
to be trying to interview people who are working with
43:13
companies, working or building their own company to
43:16
provide options alternative options to what
43:19
we think are wasteful options in fact on friday's episode
43:23
next episode i'm going to be talking to regan kelly who is one
43:27
of the founders and people like of her family that work on
43:30
better for all which sell is a Or
43:49
like companies and organizations working towards this common goal of
43:52
just being sustainable and putting it out there not expecting You
43:55
know handouts from the government not just saying hey, you know what? Here's a
43:58
problem that we see we're trying to solve it That's what business people do and
44:01
we're trying to solve it in the right way that they can feel good and follow their
44:05
family Values and I think that's really important. So we're being
44:08
able to do that we're able to do that with Katrina Ryan and next episode we're
44:11
gonna be able to do that with Reagan Kelly and and I'm super excited to be able
44:15
to present that to you. So if you don't want to miss the next
44:18
episode or episodes after that, don't forget to follow or subscribe on
44:23
your favorite platform. And just to let people know, those of you who have
44:26
listened all the way through, those of you who are listening through Spotify,
44:30
you can now add comments. I think they started to add out comments.
44:33
I'd love to hear your comments if you're listening through Spotify or
44:37
if you don't normally listen through Spotify. maybe you listen to it
44:40
later on and so there's options there that you
44:43
can use. So there's comments, we're gonna put polls together
44:47
in the future and there's just a much more interactive way to engage
44:50
with people through Spotify with your favorite podcasters like
44:54
myself, hopefully I'm your favorite. But you can check that out and
44:57
you can also see I'm actually started to put up video podcasts on Spotify
45:00
because they're now allowing that. So a little different way of doing things, but
45:04
it'll be a lot of fun. So I hope you enjoy that. Let me know your
45:07
experience on Spotify if you normally listen to it or if you're converting over
45:11
to that. Love to hear your experience with that. But it doesn't matter how you
45:14
listen to the episode. I just want you to hear it and share it with your favorite people so
45:17
that they can get the most out of this podcast, and you can get the most
45:21
out of this podcast, and we can share that message of how
45:24
to protect the ocean. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode
45:28
of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, and have a great day. We'll