Latest / Low to Grow / Getting Fired 5 times with Karina Robinson, Redcliffe Advisory CEO & The City AI and Quantum Summit

Transcript

Getting Fired 5 times with Karina Robinson, Redcliffe Advisory CEO & The City AI and Quantum Summit · Low to Grow

• 0:00
  Having a sort of a legendary financier turn to you and say
• 0:04
  let's start something and being a typical woman, and I bet you
• 0:07
  no man would ever have said this.
• 0:09
  I said, surely if you want to start a head hunting firm, you
• 0:13
  should do it with somebody who's got more experience now.
• 0:16
  Right now, I would tell any woman, don't ever say something
• 0:19
  like that, even if it's true. If you've ever wondered what it
• 0:22
  looks like when someone effortlessly bridges high
• 0:25
  finance, deep tech, and global security, and do it with equal
• 0:29
  parts gravitate, task and good humor, then you're about to meet
• 0:33
  a woman who embodies exactly that.
• 0:35
  I am delighted to welcome Karina Robinson, a leader whose career
• 0:40
  reads like a master class in influence, insight, and global
• 0:44
  impact. Karina is the CEO of Radcliffe
• 0:47
  Advisory, where she works shoulder to shoulder with top
• 0:50
  chairs and CE OS, navigating some of the most complex
• 0:54
  strategic landscapes. I was involved in as one of many
• 0:58
  designing natives quantum strategy.
• 1:01
  She has a reputation as a benign disruptor and sits on the board
• 1:05
  of Atlante as well as advising Multiverse Computing, which is 1
• 1:09
  of Europes leading quantum and AI scale UPS.
• 1:12
  Karina also founded the City Quantum and AI Summit, which is
• 1:16
  now a key hub connecting a quantum ecosystem in the City of
• 1:20
  London. Karina's chaired the Lord
• 1:22
  Mayor's Appeal Advisory Board, served as a past Master of the
• 1:26
  Worshipful Company of International Bankers, and she
• 1:29
  is of course, an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute for
• 1:32
  Securities and Investment. Her earlier chapters include Co
• 1:36
  running Robinson Hambro with the legendary City financier Rupert
• 1:40
  Hambro, journalism at the Banker and Bloomberg and Rolanda School
• 1:44
  of Economics. It's very easy to feel
• 1:47
  compassionate for your friends, for the people you love, but
• 1:50
  it's much more difficult people you don't like or who don't seem
• 1:53
  to like you. And one of the things it taught
• 1:55
  me was that. Quick note before we start, if
• 1:59
  you have enjoyed this podcast and want to support our
• 2:01
  incredible guests, please follow Low to grow podcast on Instagram
• 2:05
  and TikTok. Welcome to Low to grow, the
• 2:09
  podcast transforming life's toughest moments into
• 2:12
  opportunity for growth. I'm Annie A Forbesander, 30
• 2:16
  technology founder who's entrepreneurship journey brand
• 2:19
  parallel to a mental health awakening.
• 2:21
  In every episode, I sit down with inspiring individuals and
• 2:26
  delve into how they managed to turn their personal or
• 2:28
  professional challenges into opportunities for growth.
• 2:32
  If you're facing uncertainty in your life, feeling down, or
• 2:36
  simply need a kick of inspiration to keep moving
• 2:39
  forward, this is your space for the honest and uplifting
• 2:42
  conversations that you will want to hear.
• 2:45
  Hit follow so you never miss an episode and let's dive in.
• 2:49
  Karina, welcome to the Low to Grow podcast.
• 2:51
  Who do you want to be listening to our conversation today?
• 2:56
  Honey, I think I'd like anybody who's faced challenges in their
• 3:00
  personal and professional life, and even more so if they've
• 3:03
  faced the two of them together. Karina, where does your journey
• 3:08
  start? My journey, arguably, I mean
• 3:12
  started. I was a journalist for many,
• 3:14
  many years and loved being a journalist.
• 3:17
  And then I got 45 and I thought, well, I don't want to be a 60
• 3:20
  year old journalist and I'm now 63 so I'm not OK.
• 3:24
  So I got there but it wasn't straightforward at all.
• 3:28
  Half of my life should be about giving back.
• 3:31
  And I went to see the the chairman of a head hunting firm
• 3:36
  about being a trustee and a charity.
• 3:39
  And then he said come and join me and Co lead the board search
• 3:42
  because you spent your time interviewing finance ministers,
• 3:45
  presidents, you know, you're comfortable at board level.
• 3:48
  I had not the slightest idea what headhunters did other than
• 3:53
  what anybody else does who hasn't really dealt with them
• 3:56
  much. But that's sort of how the
• 3:58
  professional journey, which became very different, started.
• 4:01
  But at the same time as that happened, we were in the middle
• 4:06
  of the financial crisis and my husband died.
• 4:10
  He committed suicide and it was obviously incredibly tough
• 4:16
  emotionally because I'd found my soul mate and to lose your soul
• 4:21
  mate was pretty difficult. And we had a boy, a 7 year old
• 4:28
  boy. Now, the reason I'm talking
• 4:30
  about it is because if I think about 2008 versus now, 2026,
• 4:37
  we've come a long way in talking about mental health.
• 4:41
  And at that time, a lot of people didn't know how to
• 4:46
  respond to me. Everybody, everybody was loving
• 4:50
  and kind. Strangers were loving and kind.
• 4:52
  But people don't know how to talk to somebody who's lost
• 4:56
  somebody through their love, through suicide.
• 5:00
  And one of the things I did, and this is interestingly just
• 5:03
  coming out now talking to you, is at his memorial, I talked
• 5:08
  about what a wonderful man he was.
• 5:10
  But I also made a few jokes about when we met and a few
• 5:14
  misunderstandings we had, because I think when bad things
• 5:19
  happen to you, don't ever forget all the good things.
• 5:22
  It's such a cliche, but I was very grateful that I had him in
• 5:27
  my life for 10 years. And if you have to suffer, well,
• 5:31
  better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.
• 5:37
  The other challenge that came out of that is I needed to earn
• 5:40
  a living. I'd had a great life, do lots of
• 5:43
  interesting jobs, but none of them paid very well.
• 5:46
  I didn't really know how to find something that would pay well.
• 5:52
  So anyway, I joined this head hunting firm and I Co led the
• 5:56
  board search and then I was fired after nine months.
• 6:00
  So that wasn't great. And to be fired at the at that
• 6:05
  age, you just think, I mean, I've been fired when I was
• 6:08
  younger, but to be fired at that age when things are really
• 6:12
  terrible because you need, desperately need the job was
• 6:17
  horrific. In the end, it worked out and it
• 6:21
  will. I think it always works out if
• 6:24
  you count on friends, on family, if you have a positive outlook,
• 6:30
  therapy, definitely. And do all the things they say
• 6:34
  you should do to keep your mental health in place, which
• 6:39
  includes exercise, fresh air, good food.
• 6:42
  It's all the very basic things, but also the love of your
• 6:45
  friends and family. That was hugely important.
• 6:49
  Anyway, so I was fired and I can now say it with a bit of a
• 6:52
  smile, but it was not funny at the time.
• 6:56
  And then I I went to lunch with a chap who was very well known
• 7:00
  in the city called Rupert Hambrough.
• 7:03
  And I said to him, well, who should I join?
• 7:05
  I've learned how to be a headhunter, so I better join
• 7:06
  somebody. And he said, let's start
• 7:09
  something. Now.
• 7:11
  This is having a sort of a legendary financier turn to you
• 7:15
  who's been doing head hunting for nine months and say let's
• 7:18
  start something. And being a typical woman, and I
• 7:21
  bet you no man would ever have said this.
• 7:25
  I said surely if you want to start a head hunting firm, you
• 7:28
  should do it with somebody who's got more experience now.
• 7:32
  Right now, I would tell any woman, don't ever say something
• 7:35
  like that, even if it's true. He, he didn't especially want to
• 7:38
  start a head hunting firm, but he thought it might be quite
• 7:41
  fun. It had come out because that's
• 7:43
  what I knew how to do anyway. Luckily he ignored me and I went
• 7:47
  off to put together a business plan.
• 7:50
  I had written about the Mexican financial system, the Pakistani
• 7:55
  financial system. I'd interviewed central bank
• 7:57
  governors, but I'd never done a business plan in my life, ever.
• 8:01
  I had written about the Mexican financial system, the Pakistani
• 8:06
  financial system. I'd interviewed central bank
• 8:08
  governors, but I'd never done a business plan in my life, ever.
• 8:14
  So I was still in the offices of the firm that had fired me, and
• 8:18
  I asked their CFO to help me design a business plan, and he
• 8:23
  very sweetly did. And it's very sweet because
• 8:25
  let's be clear, I was setting up a competitor.
• 8:29
  But people, I think this has been the biggest, one of the
• 8:32
  biggest revelations is how lovely and kind people can be.
• 8:36
  So we started this head hunting firm called Robinson Hamburg.
• 8:40
  It was head hunting for boards of directors and also CEO
• 8:44
  chairman advice because both of us have done lots of different
• 8:49
  things in life. It was very bespoke that part of
• 8:52
  the business. We only ever had about 3 clients
• 8:56
  and they tended to be things like executive chairman of a
• 8:59
  Spanish bank because I'm half Spanish and it kept my contacts
• 9:04
  or CEO's of start-ups. Rupert was very much in that
• 9:08
  world of start-ups as an Angel investor.
• 9:11
  And on the back of that is how I got into Quantum because at one
• 9:16
  point I was introduced to Ilyas Khan.
• 9:19
  And for obviously there'll be a lot of people listening to your
• 9:22
  podcast who are from the world of Quantum and they will of
• 9:24
  course know him. For those who don't, he's one of
• 9:27
  the great figures in Quantum. He started something called
• 9:31
  Cambridge Quantum, which was a spin out, which he then merged
• 9:34
  with Honeywell Quantum, now called Quantinium, and it's
• 9:38
  going to IPO at the end of the year.
• 9:41
  So I started working with Ilyas, and he gave me a book which
• 9:45
  wasn't exactly called Quantum for Idiots, but it was pretty
• 9:50
  much quantum for anybody who hasn't studied science,
• 9:54
  technology, whatever. And I got to Chapter 2 and I had
• 9:57
  to confess to him I couldn't follow beyond Chapter 2.
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  But what happens in life is it's not always about being the most
• 10:05
  knowledgeable person in the room.
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  And I think one of the things that journalism teaches you is
• 10:11
  how to be a translator. I understood enough to see how
• 10:16
  revolutionary quantum could be in its different forms for GPS
• 10:22
  or for portfolio optimization or in cybersecurity, enough to
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  understand that all these quantum firms, and remember this
• 10:31
  was seven years ago, they were all start-ups talking to each
• 10:34
  other in funny places where you would never get a board
• 10:38
  director. And who are the people who were
• 10:40
  going to buy these services? Board directors, So with the
• 10:45
  Lord Mayor of the City of London, who's like the
• 10:48
  ambassador for the City of London, and every year there's a
• 10:51
  new one. And I'd been quite involved in
• 10:54
  the City of London, the financial centre.
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  I said to him, let's do a quantum conference in your home
• 10:59
  called the Mansion House, which is typical British
• 11:02
  understatement. It's a palace in the middle of
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  the City of London. And let's make it for those
• 11:10
  board directors who need to start understanding quantum
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  investment possibilities for them, but also how it might be
• 11:17
  relevant to their banks, to their asset managers.
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  And so we started this conference called the City
• 11:23
  Quantum and AI Summit and it took off.
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  So it's now in it's six year. The idea behind it was, well,
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  there's three accessibility. So we used to make it free.
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  Now it costs a little bit. We also broadcast all the panels
• 11:41
  online afterwards and we stream it for free so people can
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  listen. Secondly, gender balance panels
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  we generally manage, but not always, but we always try.
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  And thirdly, no lingo, no jargon, plain English only.
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  And this is because you know that if a quantum scientist is
• 12:01
  talking to another quantum scientist, only other scientists
• 12:05
  will be able to understand them. And because the audience was
• 12:09
  also city people who were very clever and on boards, but they
• 12:13
  weren't going to understand that and they needed to understand
• 12:16
  how quantum might be relevant to running their bank.
• 12:21
  So the way we did it, which has worked very, very well, is to
• 12:26
  have a non scientist, non technologist chairing the panel.
• 12:31
  So for example, last year the finance panel was chaired by the
• 12:34
  CEO of HSBC. He's not in quantum, but he
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  understands his PNL, his revenue, the security of his
• 12:42
  clients. So the questions he answered
• 12:45
  very much about how could I implement some of what you're
• 12:48
  doing? Then three years ago, I think it
• 12:52
  yeah. When Ukraine was invaded, I
• 12:54
  brought in the defence side of it because it became obvious
• 12:58
  that a, we need to defend ourselves much more and that
• 13:02
  this would also be a source of funds for some of these quantum
• 13:07
  start-ups. We've also brought in a bit of
• 13:10
  AI because I do think, I think there's separation of AI and
• 13:13
  quantum is very artificial. I think they will, they need to
• 13:17
  work together. They will work together.
• 13:19
  They are working together and having silos isn't very helpful.
• 13:24
  So we got that going. At the same time, Elias had
• 13:28
  merged his company a few years later with with Honeywell
• 13:32
  Quantum. I wasn't really needed anymore
• 13:36
  and I thought I would see where else I could be useful.
• 13:41
  And two people I really respected said to me the best
• 13:43
  science is a firm in Spain called Multiverse Computing, and
• 13:48
  that's how I joined Multiverse. I mean, I love the fact that
• 13:52
  they were in Sante Bastian, which has the best food in Spain
• 13:55
  and all of Spain and the way they got there.
• 13:59
  And actually, this is a lesson about ecospheres.
• 14:02
  San Sebastian is really, you know, a small, small city or a
• 14:08
  big town, if you will. They have ended up with a
• 14:11
  quantum computer, one of IBM's quantum computers there because
• 14:15
  the Bass government realized that quantum was going to be
• 14:19
  big, gave great, a great deal to multiverse computing.
• 14:23
  So they moved from Barcelona, which is a more obvious place
• 14:27
  for a quantum firm to be, to San Sebastian.
• 14:30
  And now all these other firms doing biotech, doing quantum,
• 14:34
  doing AI, have moved there. They get great concessions on
• 14:38
  taxes and things. It's a lovely quality of life.
• 14:42
  And they've created, I mean, all these amazing jobs in the Bass
• 14:47
  country, which is, you know, I remember talking to the the
• 14:50
  minister of an Indian state where the Basque Country would
• 14:54
  fit in a tiny little corner. And I just said they knew what
• 14:58
  to do. And that's exactly what you need
• 15:00
  to, to reproduce, but at a larger level anyway.
• 15:03
  So I also advise multiverse computing, which is Europe's
• 15:07
  largest quantum AI scaler. We're just raising our latest
• 15:14
  round Series C, probably €500 million.
• 15:19
  One of the outstanding things we do is we compress large language
• 15:22
  models because right now we're going to eat out the planet in
• 15:24
  terms of energy with large language models and let alone
• 15:27
  the cost. Karina, VAT is such a
• 15:30
  trajectory. And thank you very much for
• 15:32
  sharing about your husband's suicide.
• 15:35
  I know so for sharing quite in depth and giving some color
• 15:38
  about your personal journey in how you navigated the aftermath
• 15:42
  of that and also how you started and also you're thriving in your
• 15:46
  second career. I actually really wanted to ask
• 15:49
  you, Karina, because what you do now spans quite a few core
• 15:53
  industries of defense, quantum and finance.
• 15:56
  And the roles that you play has gone from being a journalist to
• 16:00
  helping with executive search to advising CEOs and also chairs of
• 16:05
  boards. What do you think changed the
• 16:08
  most for yourself over, say, the past five to 10 years?
• 16:14
  I think what's changed is, I think to realize how useful you
• 16:20
  are. I mean, one is because there's a
• 16:26
  sort of transition between you're young, you're middle-aged
• 16:29
  and then you're older. You have a lot less to prove by
• 16:33
  now. I'm, I'm always very comfortable
• 16:36
  saying I don't understand what you're talking about.
• 16:38
  Can you explain it in layman language?
• 16:41
  So that gives great confidence and also to realize what your
• 16:46
  purpose is. I always wanted an interesting
• 16:51
  life. That's what I'd asked for when I
• 16:53
  was 14 and a friend of mine said what you want out of life and I
• 16:57
  said I want an interesting life. And it has been.
• 17:00
  But one also wants to give back and I realized that bringing
• 17:03
  people together is one of the ways I can do it.
• 17:06
  You mentioned defence. I was involved in as one of many
• 17:11
  designing NATO's quantum strategy.
• 17:14
  I have then become involved in a great organization called
• 17:17
  Mission Link and what it is is in the UK but it's based on AUS
• 17:23
  one people who are ex intelligence services, ex
• 17:26
  military, ex Air Force. They've come together and it's a
• 17:33
  not-for-profit and you mentor and you help the CEOs and
• 17:39
  founders of start-ups that have technology that can either be
• 17:43
  defence or civilian or dual use. And that is an amazing thing to
• 17:49
  be able to do. And I did want to mention these
• 17:52
  two books that did help me on my journey a lot, and they're very
• 17:57
  relevant to this in that they're about compassion.
• 18:01
  So let me just go off to it a little bit to the side with
• 18:03
  this. The one thing all monotheistic
• 18:07
  religions, in fact all religions share is compassion as an aim.
• 18:13
  Compassion is something you should do and I happened to pick
• 18:16
  up a book called The Compassionate Mind by Paul
• 18:20
  Gilbert and it's life changing. In fact I wrote Lockdown 2020
• 18:28
  life changing. What it is is teaching you about
• 18:33
  compassion towards yourself, which is the most difficult one,
• 18:36
  but also towards others. It's very easy to feel
• 18:40
  compassionate for your friends, for the people you love, but
• 18:43
  it's much more difficult people you don't like or who don't seem
• 18:46
  to like you. And one of the things it taught
• 18:49
  me was that you never know where somebody's coming from, what
• 18:53
  they're starting from, what's happened to them that day.
• 18:57
  And rather than judging them immediately on that, assume they
• 19:02
  have the best motives. Assume they're doing it right
• 19:06
  with the right idea. Try and put yourself in their
• 19:07
  shoes. It doesn't always work and not
• 19:10
  everybody is nice, but it's been the most the book that's had the
• 19:15
  biggest effect on me and it's an AIM 1 doesn't always manage, but
• 19:20
  I try. I try very hard and that has
• 19:23
  helped in the whole journey because all of a sudden you
• 19:26
  start to realize putting people together, that is helping.
• 19:33
  That is a form. Compassion is probably the wrong
• 19:36
  word, but it's a form of creating value.
• 19:39
  If you want to put in capitalist terms, either people enjoy each
• 19:43
  other's companies or things like the City Quantum and AI Summit.
• 19:48
  I love it when somebody says to me afterwards I found a job
• 19:51
  through it, or I signed a deal, or I got a bit of funding for my
• 19:55
  company. You don't make any money out of
• 19:57
  it, but huge, huge satisfaction. Karina, thank you for sharing
• 20:05
  that. And I do remember going to one
• 20:07
  of your city Quantum and AI summers, I think probably one of
• 20:11
  the earlier iterations. And I've just been watching it
• 20:13
  grow year on year. And that's really inspiring to
• 20:15
  see because it's a destination and it's one of the events that
• 20:19
  people do talk about in the UK quantum calendar.
• 20:21
  So thank you very much for doing that for our particular
• 20:23
  ecosystem. I also really like how you
• 20:26
  brought about compassion and I'm really curious to understand how
• 20:31
  have you experienced giving compassion to yourself as you've
• 20:34
  gone through your various careers in different stages of
• 20:37
  life? Well, as I mentioned, Annie,
• 20:40
  it's the most difficult is to be compassionate towards yourself.
• 20:44
  That's always the most difficult.
• 20:46
  On a good day, it's great. But there are other days where I
• 20:50
  think why haven't I managed to this or that or the other?
• 20:54
  But one of the good things about that book, and also there's
• 20:57
  another one by a woman called Karen Armstrong, she's a writer
• 21:04
  about spirituality and religion. She won a Ted talk or something
• 21:09
  and she got a prize and she wrote a book called 12 Steps to
• 21:12
  a Compassionate Lice, and that's another book I would thoroughly
• 21:17
  recommend. And she used a sort of a rabbi,
• 21:20
  a priest, a Bishop from all the different religions to come up
• 21:24
  with what it should be. I think it's an underlying
• 21:29
  theme, Annie, rather than anything else.
• 21:32
  And then once in a while, you just think, actually, it's very
• 21:36
  relevant to doing this, coming to, you know, agreeing to do
• 21:40
  this podcast. I could have just talked about
• 21:42
  the fact that I've been fired five times in my life.
• 21:45
  So that was a low. It's funny now, but it certainly
• 21:48
  wasn't funny all the different times.
• 21:51
  But in terms of helping others, probably talking about my
• 21:56
  husband would be more help than just talk about being fired.
• 22:02
  Can we talk about that actually getting fired five times?
• 22:05
  Because I think in today's current economy, getting fired
• 22:07
  is something that is more common than not.
• 22:10
  And I'm sure about some of our listeners would be really
• 22:12
  intrigued to hear from you how you navigated picking yourself
• 22:15
  up again after each time. See, the first time I was fired,
• 22:19
  nobody at that time was getting fired.
• 22:21
  People just didn't. And it was 1986 and I just
• 22:25
  started in the city as the Spanish and Italian equity
• 22:30
  analyst among Grenfell. Now everybody was going to the
• 22:33
  city. I had no idea what it was going
• 22:36
  to be about. And all of a sudden I realized I
• 22:39
  was going to be looking at balance sheets all day and
• 22:41
  profit and loss. And I'm not numerous, so it was
• 22:45
  a bit of an oopsie. I'm in the wrong job.
• 22:48
  But I couldn't think of anything else to do.
• 22:50
  What I was good at was the morning set, talk to the
• 22:54
  salespeople, what's going on in Spain, etcetera.
• 22:57
  There was no Internet so you had to talk to people in Madrid and
• 23:00
  you interacted. So when I was fired, and I got
• 23:04
  along very well with my boss and afterwards, you know, we've
• 23:08
  bumped into each other, it's been fine because he was
• 23:10
  absolutely right to fire me. But at the time, nobody was
• 23:15
  being fired. I'd left the LSC with all my
• 23:18
  friends, all of whom were successfully navigating whatever
• 23:21
  their careers were. It was a very low time because
• 23:26
  again, people didn't talk about mental health then.
• 23:28
  They didn't talk about that. I felt like an absolute loser.
• 23:31
  And then I wrote an article for the Financial Times about the
• 23:36
  art scene in New York and I had just gone to them and said your
• 23:40
  art pages and nothing about contemporary art.
• 23:44
  I mean, I knew a little bit I'm interested, but I wasn't an
• 23:48
  expert. Anyway, I read an article for
• 23:50
  them, they published it. And I thought I have had more
• 23:54
  fun writing this article, researching it, seeing it
• 23:58
  published, talking about it than I have had, you know, in my year
• 24:02
  at more grandfather. And so then I would I got into
• 24:06
  journalism. It took a long time.
• 24:09
  That was again something where all my friends were climbing
• 24:12
  their little ladders and I wasn't, and I was doing
• 24:15
  freelance, but you know, freelance barely pays and it's
• 24:21
  not a job you go to every day. So then I got a job at a sort of
• 24:25
  string shoe weekly newspaper, but then it was closed down a
• 24:30
  year later and it took me another year and a half till I
• 24:36
  found a job at Standard and Poor's and I started being a
• 24:40
  journalist. And then from then on it was
• 24:42
  Bloomberg and so forth. I did.
• 24:44
  In the interim, when I was trying to make some money, I
• 24:48
  joined a conference organizing company.
• 24:51
  After three months, the woman there fired me.
• 24:55
  She hadn't quite been told that I had been brought in as her
• 24:58
  successor, and she didn't want a successor.
• 25:01
  So I was out, but I didn't want to be a conference organizer.
• 25:06
  And yet here I am organizing a conference.
• 25:10
  So every single experience you have in life will come back and
• 25:15
  be useful. Everything.
• 25:17
  And so, you know, I wish I'd enjoyed doing it more at the
• 25:22
  time. I mean, now I enjoy it
• 25:23
  tremendously because you meet amazing people and you bring
• 25:28
  them together. But at the time that was, yeah,
• 25:31
  that was difficult. Yeah.
• 25:33
  These are some of the times I've been I've been fired and I'm
• 25:37
  still here. You are and back to your point
• 25:40
  about how life is so circular, it really is true.
• 25:43
  The skill sets that you have do come run around and also they
• 25:46
  allow you to pitch yourself and also be good at different
• 25:50
  opportunities when they do come along as well.
• 25:53
  Karina, can I ask what actually kept you going on that path of
• 25:57
  getting to become a journalist in those early days when you
• 26:00
  started off doing freelancing? Because someone with your
• 26:04
  background, you could have easily gone to another corporate
• 26:06
  job that had been steady and just stayed there and had a
• 26:09
  steady paycheck. What was it internally that was
• 26:12
  really driving you to go after this dream of being a
• 26:15
  journalist? I think it's curiosity.
• 26:19
  I'm very lazy. So if you say to me, you know,
• 26:23
  go off and learn about quantum or something, I find it really
• 26:26
  difficult. I mean, I'm not good at look up
• 26:29
  documents, whatever. But if you say to me write an
• 26:32
  article about how quantum is going to be useful in life
• 26:36
  sciences and I have a deadline, I will go and find out.
• 26:42
  And I think the happiness I get from, I mean the happiness I get
• 26:47
  from having written something, not necessarily writing it
• 26:50
  because it's tough is, is really worthwhile.
• 26:55
  And I love learning things and it forces me to.
• 26:58
  So right now I've got to write a piece on social mobility in the
• 27:03
  workforce, and it's a very difficult topic and I'm trying
• 27:08
  to figure out how to do it. But you know, you're on fire
• 27:11
  with trying to figure out how. I think it's the intellectual
• 27:14
  stimulus and also meeting fascinating people because as a
• 27:18
  journalist, you can take little shortcuts to knowledge by
• 27:24
  talking to the most knowledgeable people.
• 27:27
  And that is a lot of fun. That's quite similar to why I
• 27:31
  really love doing my podcast, actually.
• 27:33
  It's getting to speak to people like yourself who have done
• 27:35
  really incredible and really inspirational things in their
• 27:38
  lives. Karina, I have to ask you, what
• 27:41
  AI tools do you personally enjoy using the most currently?
• 27:46
  I use Gemini but I and I use a little bit of ChatGPT.
• 27:52
  But do I enjoy it? I mean, I wrote an article the
• 27:56
  other day, it was about what was going to face us in geopolitics
• 28:00
  this year. And somebody said to me, you
• 28:03
  know, you're struggling with it, why don't you just ask chat or
• 28:06
  Gemini? And I thought, no, because the
• 28:09
  struggle has got to be part of the writing of your learning and
• 28:14
  of using your mind. Now having said that, I read my
• 28:18
  piece, then I had chat write it's piece.
• 28:20
  And of course it's piece was better than mine, Annie, which
• 28:23
  is really irritating. On the other hand, you don't get
• 28:27
  anything out of it. So I think we've got to be
• 28:29
  careful a use it much more. And I wish I had a friend who
• 28:34
  would just take me through a couple of hours of teaching me
• 28:38
  how to use AI better. But I also very much believe
• 28:42
  that without a mental struggle, it's it's like you can't
• 28:47
  outsource your muscles to somebody else.
• 28:52
  It's rather like, yeah, all this Ozempic, whatever, you're trying
• 28:58
  to outsource stuff, I can see it as an aid, but I think you've
• 29:02
  got to be really careful because you're outsource part of what's
• 29:07
  being human. So I'm probably not.
• 29:11
  I'm not the best example of. I'm an example of somebody who
• 29:14
  thinks is going to do amazing things, but also who's a bit
• 29:17
  wary. Can I turn that pression around
• 29:20
  then? If you were back at the
• 29:21
  beginning of your career and you're just starting out in your
• 29:24
  career as a journalist in the current day, how do you think
• 29:28
  you would use or would try to use AI to really jump start that
• 29:31
  career? I mean, I would not recommend
• 29:35
  anybody become a journalist right now.
• 29:39
  I think there'll be fewer and fewer jobs.
• 29:42
  There are not many anyway now. And if you look at what's
• 29:46
  happened to journalism, there's very little responsible
• 29:49
  journalism. There used to be a certain
• 29:51
  idealism about it, about getting the story right, about trying to
• 29:55
  be objective. And that's gone out the window
• 29:58
  except for very few newspapers. I mean, the Washington Post has
• 30:02
  just become, yeah, they've fired everybody.
• 30:05
  And it's just become a rag that supports Trump.
• 30:09
  I think I would. You can use it for everything.
• 30:12
  I mean, in journalism, you can use it to write your stories.
• 30:16
  You can use it to research your stories.
• 30:19
  You can put in whatever a little bit of research you might have
• 30:21
  done. It'll come up with a great story
• 30:24
  in whatever star you want. Whereas humans, we become
• 30:29
  irrelevant. I don't think that's right.
• 30:31
  So I would say for anybody young starting out in journalism, I
• 30:35
  wouldn't recommend it. But if you can't help
• 30:37
  yourselves, go for it. Go for it.
• 30:39
  And you can use it for everything in journalism.
• 30:42
  Very useful. Very useful.
• 30:45
  Got it. Going back to an early point
• 30:48
  that you brought up, Karina, about navigating geopolitics and
• 30:51
  also your efforts in helping nature to draft its quantum
• 30:54
  strategy, I realized that you also have some involvement on
• 30:57
  strengthening relationships between the UK and India.
• 31:00
  Could you share a bit about how you became involved in that and
• 31:02
  I said what you're looking to achieve there?
• 31:05
  Yeah, I'll give you a little Side Story and IT, which is
• 31:09
  about a mentor I had called Fiona Wolf, Dame Fiona Wolf, who
• 31:15
  became the second board mayor of the City of London to the second
• 31:19
  sort of female ambassador for the City of London.
• 31:22
  And there have been, you know, about 698 men.
• 31:27
  And she said her career, which would have been a very
• 31:30
  distinguished career as an energy lawyer, she said, always
• 31:34
  lift up your hand and say yes when somebody asks for somebody
• 31:38
  to do something. And then she said afterwards,
• 31:41
  you can regret and think, what have I done?
• 31:44
  How am I going to do this? But you'll, you'll, it'll force
• 31:49
  you to grow and, and do things. And so I've always followed that
• 31:53
  principle ever since I met her and the India opportunity came
• 31:57
  up because, you know, as you know, India and the UK have
• 32:00
  signed a free trade agreement in July last year and nothing much
• 32:06
  has actually happened in terms of output from that trade deal.
• 32:12
  There are a number of reasons why not.
• 32:14
  And I think we need to shape the international trade system
• 32:18
  differently. We need to lower dependence on
• 32:21
  the US. India is a fascinating growing
• 32:24
  market with a huge educated population and we should
• 32:29
  definitely be doing something more with them and they should
• 32:33
  be doing more with us. So I was asked to join a group
• 32:35
  called the Global India Business Corridor.
• 32:39
  And although it's called Global India, it mainly figures is on
• 32:43
  the state of Maharashtra, which and by the way, it took me like
• 32:49
  a year to learn how to say Maharashtra properly.
• 32:52
  It's the wealthiest state in India.
• 32:55
  It encompasses Mumbai, Pune, Bollywood, all of this.
• 33:00
  And they are have a very active government and they're looking
• 33:03
  to grow their quantum side. I'm also involved with the
• 33:07
  London School of Economics where I'm an emeritus governor and
• 33:11
  that's where I went to school. And I really would like the LSE
• 33:14
  to be more present in India. So on the theme of sort of a say
• 33:19
  yes to everything and be bringing people together, it
• 33:23
  just seemed like an obvious thing to join and see if I could
• 33:26
  help with it. And it's certainly something
• 33:28
  that you're very good at, Kareena, and making
• 33:31
  opportunities for collaboration to happen.
• 33:33
  That's something that really gives some sense of personal
• 33:35
  satisfaction for you. And I didn't quite realize that
• 33:38
  until we've had this conversation.
• 33:39
  Actually, Kareena, it's been a pleasure to have you on my Load
• 33:42
  to Grow podcast. Let me end by asking you one
• 33:45
  question, which is what is one thing that you believe will
• 33:49
  allow more people to have better mental health?
• 33:53
  The most important thing is to talk about it, to talk about it
• 33:57
  with friends and family. But Annie, I can't answer your
• 34:02
  question because you're saying one thing.
• 34:04
  And the one thing I've learned is that you need a collection of
• 34:09
  things. You need the friends, you need
• 34:11
  the therapy, you need nature, and you need loving friends and
• 34:17
  family and exercise. So I can't answer your question.
• 34:21
  OK, I'll answer with all those things.
• 34:24
  All those things. You're not the first one to say
• 34:26
  that to me. And I think it really, really
• 34:29
  reemphasizes the point that mental health is a part of our
• 34:32
  human condition and it's part of physical health, eating well,
• 34:35
  nutrition and sleep. So I'm actually very happy that
• 34:38
  you were able to also emphasize the importance of that point.
• 34:42
  Karina, thank you so much for your time today.
• 34:44
  It's been a pleasure to have you.
• 34:46
  Thank you Annie, it's an absolute pleasure to be on this
• 34:50
  and I hope this, like all your other podcasts on this theme,
• 34:55
  managed to help some people. That would be great.
• 34:58
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• 35:02
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• 35:06
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