Charlotte Hill OBE - CEO of The Felix Project - Leading the Fight Against Food Insecurity

In this country we have almost 14 million people living in food insecurity. A third of the food we produce globally is thrown away. It's not beyond the wit of man for us to solve this. I know it's not always the right thing to say, but I pretty much say yes. If I think there's an opportunity I can get something from, I'm like, yes please. Everyone thought I was absolutely mad. There's only one vowel difference between networking and not working. It took nine rounds of IVF to have my two children. So I basically spent all of my thirties doing IVF. And being a CEO at the same time. You try chucking anything at me that's harder than that, I defy you to. Welcome to the Great Women Podcast. I'm Franny. And I'm Ollie. Today we're joined by Charlotte Hill, CEO of The Felix Project, one of the UK's leading food redistribution charities. In just over three years, Charlotte has massively grown it, delivering nearly $16,000. She's brought in tons of food to over 1,200 community organisations in London, including 170 schools, and preparing over 1.3 million meals through Felix's Kitchen. Charlotte has led major organisations throughout her career, from UK Youth to Step Up to Serve. And she was awarded an OBE in 2019 for her contribution to young people. Today we'll explore her career journey, leadership lessons, balancing work and motherhood, and the future of tackling food insecurity. Welcome, Charlotte. Thank you so much for having me. Goodness, it's always really embarrassing when people introduce you. It makes you sound really grand. It's lovely to have you. You started your career, as such, in Whitehall, working for Harriet Harman. I just wondered what you remember most from those years and what lessons you can take away from them. Oh my goodness, I think as a young woman coming out of university into the world of work, you couldn't have a better boss than Harriet. Genuinely a trailblazer of a woman who, you know, when she arrived in Parliament decades ago now, I think she always used to say there were 3% women MPs. And, you know, her great, great crusade in the world has been around female leadership. She absolutely always made me believe that I could do anything and would give me tasks that now I look back and think, crikey, I wouldn't have given 20-something-year-old me that to do. That meant I learned so much. But also, so many of the leadership lessons that I now live by I learned from working with her. So, for example, she had this amazing thing called the Guardian – well, actually, it was the Daily Mail front page test. She always said to me, anything you say or anything you write down, whether it's on a Post-it note or in an email or whatever, could be quoted on the front page of the Daily Mail as the spokeswoman for Harriet Harman says. So in everything you ever, in any job you ever have, write down, always think through, would you be happy for it to be on the front page of Daily Mail? And actually, it's a brilliant life lesson that I use all the time now. And I've got so many of those. She had this amazing thing called the Usual Suspect List. So this was way before LinkedIn or social media. And the Usual Suspect List was basically her network. And she would say to me, if she did a big speech or something important, she'd say, send it to the Usual Suspect List. And it was her way of keeping her network informed of what she was doing. And so she was one of the very early people who taught me about the power and importance of building and maintaining a network. So honestly, I could just talk for hours about how much I learned from her. She was the most amazing woman to work for. It sounds like it was an absolutely fantastic experience and in a way amazing that she was your first boss. How lucky most people don't have that female role model to look up to, you know, from day one. Sounds like you enjoyed working in Whitehall, but what prompted you to kind of move away from politics? Did you always have a bit of a calling or was it a case of kind of right job, right time? What prompted that move? Do you know what? It was a combination of things. One is my mum was always an avid volunteer. And so from before I could walk, I was carted around to all sorts of different voluntary sector organisations. She was a single parent and therefore if she went, we went. That was always kind of in my DNA. And so I've always done volunteering in various things. But actually, what I realised working in Whitehall and in my early career is I'm a person who likes getting stuff done. And actually, Whitehall is not a very good and easy place to get stuff done. It's slow. It's like wading through concrete and treacle. You know, there's lots of great things about working in Whitehall, but there's lots of really frustrating things. And actually, I realised I wanted to get stuff done. And I was doing a job with Harriet at the time. A lot of what I did was being influenced and lobbied by the voluntary sector. And I thought, you know what, I think I want to sit on the other side of the table and go and be doing this stuff for a while. And I didn't know if I was going to do it forever. But it turns out I went to the other side of the table and loved it and really loved rolling up. Rolling up the sleeves and doing some delivery. But the power, I think, of having worked in different sectors is so important. I now interact and engage with whether it's ministers or officials or civil servants or special advisers in a completely different way because I've sat on their side of the table. So I actually think having worked in different sectors is such a gift to have because you can have empathy. You can understand what it is when people are trying to make decisions. It was a perfect move for me to move into the voluntary sector. But I absolutely loved it. I absolutely loved that the foundations of everything I learned were learned in the public sector. Charlotte, is it right that you had some time abroad? What perspective did that give you? And do you think it is a good thing for people in general to spend some time working abroad, even if they ultimately want to return to the UK? What value does that experience give? So much value. Again, if you're fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work in any different context, whether it is in a different sector, in a different country, like everything that makes you good at any sort of leadership position is one. I always think empathy, like being able to understand someone else's perspective and position or whatever, but also nicking other people's good ideas. So genuinely, whenever I've gone to other countries, I've been like, wow, they do this differently or they think about this differently or whatever. And you can bring that into whatever you do. And so everyone thought I was absolutely mad. I had this great job at the NSPCC doing policy and public affairs. I quit my job and sold my house and went over to the UK. Then I went overseas for two years and everyone was like, what are you doing? You're just getting your career going. But I did some really good policy and public affairs work in Australia and loved it. I learned so much. And also I've kept in touch with lots of the people I've met in all these different countries and now have this amazing global network of people. And the world is small, really. You know, you can get in touch with people and still connect and do things together. So, yeah, I've been really fortunate. I would say to anyone, I mean, I'm a person who I know it's not always the right thing to say, but I pretty much say yes. If I think there's an opportunity I can get something from, I'm like, yes, please. I got so much out of working overseas. I think it's a great gift if you're able to do it. Frannie and I met on our year abroad and 20 years later, we're doing this together. So you never know what life is long and you never know where all these different people you meet will take you. I bet you two when you met overseas, never thought you'd be doing a podcast together. Well, certainly not in our forties. So you came back to the UK and you became a CEO of UK Youth in your 20s and having I mean, I spent most of my career in the city and I certainly definitely suffered from imposter syndrome there. But how did it feel for you? Were you kind of very excited, really nervous? Did you think, oh, my gosh, how am I going to do this? Or was it off you went and no problems? Goodness, as with everything in my life, the combination of terrified and excited is I've realised my perfect juxtaposition. If I can find anything that makes me equally scared and excited, I know I'm in my sweet spot because that's like. So I always say to my colleagues, I want a sweaty palm moment at least once a day, like I want to be outside my comfort zone at least once a day, because that's how I learn. Right. And that's how I grow and develop. And so, goodness, no, I didn't know anything about running a charity and at 29 became the CEO of a big UK wide, you know, organisation and I was leapfrogging. I hadn't been a director, so I'd gone from being basic. I kind of a head of middle manager and became a CEO then managing people who had been in their jobs kind of 25 years, 17 years, 15 years. I was probably about 15 to 20 years younger than every single one of the people I was then line managing. And I'd never been a chief executive before. And so, goodness me, I learnt on the job and rolled up my sleeves and worked blooming hard and was humble. I think in these circumstances you have to be really humble. You have to learn from people who know an awful lot more than you. And as I learnt very early on in being a CEO, the key to it all is, of course, you've got to inspire and motivate people to go in the direction you're going in. But you have to really just recruit and hire people who are much, much cleverer and better than you at the jobs they do. So that all your job is, is to make sure they can do their job brilliantly and then you're fine. Like I think you just get out of their way, let them be outstanding at doing what they're doing, make sure you get them everything they need and inspire and energise them to get somewhere. But like recognise that they're much more expert in what they do than you are. That's the secret to everything. And did you, while you were doing that first CEO job, did you seek any kind of mentorship? Did you seek advice or.? All the time! My goodness, do you know what, I'm very lucky. I have still to this day got kind of mentors and coaches and supporters who I go to for people who have been there, done that. And I did then and I still do now. do now, but also the thing I did as I became CEO at UK Youth, which was a game changer for me which I formed an action learning set with some other chief execs of other charities and I'm a person who learns by doing like if you give me a textbook and say read this this is how you're going to learn I'll pretend I'm going to read it and it will sit on the side of my desk for absolutely ages and I won't read it whereas the live kind of action learning set coaching which is effectively as a group of chief executives you all bring your actual live current issues to the table and you you support each other to solve them you coach coach each other goodness that group of humans is what got me through that first chief exec job people who I could bring and we built such a deep level of trust in that group and actually we met at the group for about 10 years through three different jobs I did actually and some of the members of the group changed and some of us stayed the same and we laughed and celebrated together and we cried together and we supported each other through ups and downs and all sorts both personal and professional but it was the best sort of peer learning and support so I think of course having mentors is great but actually having other people who are peers who can support and coach and cheerlead and commiserate with you is the greatest thing you can have to help you through as a chief exec I'm just curious um obviously board compositions have changed considerably thank goodness over the last kind of decade but unfortunately you're a rarity in that you're a female CEO there aren't many of them how do you think we can change that because there's no doubt that things have evolved but they haven't kind of evolved enough if that makes sense yeah I think the first thing is like role modeling right those of us who are doing it have to go out and say to other people we're pulling you up with us like I think one of my big jobs is how do I support other women and I'll talk about women in this context but actually the context of diversity is obviously broader than that but in this context for females how do I support other women to know that they can do this too and some of that is about being a really open or authentic honest leader and talk about what it is like to be a mum and be a CEO or be a partner and be a CEO or try and you know all of those things I think people women particularly think are a barrier to you doing these jobs I think the more open we can be about it so I I do what I call it work very visible parenting so I talk very openly about the fact that on a Friday morning I've just done it I do a pickup and a drop off and I I talk about the fact I'm doing that and that you can be a CEO and a mum and still see your children and those sorts of things so I think there's some role modeling in it and then I think there's some blooming troublemaking and challenging for us all to do around saying this isn't good enough you know around saying no I won't be the only woman on your panel we actually need more women speaking alongside me you know about when I am on a board so for nine years I was on the board of BFL trust which is all the football clubs below the premier league and when I started on that it was a long time you know 10 years ago now I was the only woman and a huge amount of what I did on that board was around I made sure I chaired the nomination and remuneration committee and I was in charge of helping think through the recruitment of new trustees and we got to a stage by the time I left that it was almost 50 50 women and men on that football board not quite but near enough we had a lot of women on that board so I think it's for us when we step into these positions to think about how we open up the opportunities for others and yeah how we talk really openly and honestly as female leaders about whether it is imposter syndrome or all of those other barriers that sometimes we believe that support other women to do it and yeah be a troublemaker when you need to be around challenging people around why there aren't any other women sitting around a table I mean talking about role modeling and being open you've been really really open about your IVF journey I've been through something similar and I think it's great that more people are speaking out about their experience how did you cope with the kind of ups and downs of that process I mean it's pretty horrific let's be honest alongside kind of keeping morale up and being a great boss and all of that how did you balance all of that first of all I'm sorry you also went through the struggling with infertility in whatever way is really hard but the fact I'm talking about it means you've just talked about it and that has already opened a conversation yeah and I think this is one of the things that's been really important that I found is in whatever forum I talk about the fact it took nine rounds of IVF to have my two children so I basically spent all of my 30s doing IVF and being a CEO at the same time I've never known doing IVF and not being a CEO I've done the two together for like literally a decade and whenever I've in any forum talked about it people don't often feel comfortable talking about it openly in the forum but they might follow up with me afterwards and say it's so nice to hear you talking about it I've been through this too or actually that vulnerability you felt comfortable showing has made me realize it's fine to show you're vulnerable and still be a leader and it doesn't even have to be around IVF actually it I think it what it shows people is it's fine to talk openly even if you're not a leader you're not a leader you're not a leader even in a leadership position about what you're going through if it's something difficult and actually what that does is it builds trust with the people that you work with and it gives them permission to also say actually I'm struggling too and I need a bit of support about this or that and that's okay so I think just talking about something difficult sometimes is really good and then personally good lord when I was interviewed by the board of the Felix project for this job you know I had a one and three year old at the time I remember them they asked the kind of question what makes you think that you've got the kind of resilience to step in and do this job or something and I said to them the nine rounds of blooming IVF I'm not sure there's anything can show that I've got the resilience to do anything like which I think took them aback a bit actually I don't think they were expecting that answer but I genuinely think goodness it's really made me believe that I am titanium if I can do that and be a chief exec and go through all of the roller coaster that is both emotionally and physically that is IVF you try chucking anything at me that's harder than that I defy you to it has made me believe that I can weather a storm and actually that is such a transferable skill it is so transferable into any situation I now put myself in that's tricky I'm like I know that I have the robustness and the resilience to get through this and that's a superpower that is an absolute superpower and so even though it was a blooming awful and difficult thing to go through goodness me it's given me a superpower that I believe I can do difficult things and as women we should realize right whatever it is we're doing we're often doing really really hard things alongside doing our jobs and we can do it that's a superpower that brings me on to something else I wanted to ask you I mean you are living proof that you can do it go through nine rounds of IVF whilst being a CEO then you can have babies whilst being a CEO and everything that goes with being a mother I think I've heard you talk about this before but if you wouldn't mind just talking again about what advice you would give to people in their mid-20s late 20s thinking about having a family but also don't want to give up their careers and maybe want to go to the very top of their career what would you say to them two two things early on I got married just before about the same time I became chief exec at UK youth I was getting married to my long-suffering husband who was long-suffering I tell you and I think lots of people were probably thinking she's about to have a baby and she's like taking on a big job goodness should she be doing that or whatever and you know what both taking on that job and taking on my next job which was like five years later my next CEO job I still hadn't had a baby in either one and if I'd held myself back and not applied for either of those jobs because I was thinking oh I'm about to have a baby maybe I shouldn't apply I wouldn't have done either job because it took me so blooming long to have the blooming children anyway so I think we hold ourselves back at our peril because you might think oh goodness I'm not going to apply for the job because we're going to try and start having a baby soon but also you are denying the world all of your amazing capability and skills and holding yourself back when you could be doing something awesome in the world with that capability and skills and the world needs you you've got something great to offer in whatever sector or career you work in women bring so much in terms of different approaches to problem solving and all those things diversity is such a good thing but we need women to put themselves forward for the leadership position so I would always say to people look I'm not going to say to anyone it isn't blooming hard either going through IVF and being a CEO or having small children being a CEO or I've got a six and a seven year old now you know it's a juggle but it makes me a better boss and it makes me a better leader and it makes me better at my job you know I prioritize better I use my time better because I know today I know I want to finish work at 3 15 so I can walk down the road and pick up my kids so I've got to be really really efficient and effective with the time I've got but it's so important that people realize that you can do both and there's compromises and sacrifices and all of those things but if that's the choice you want to make and it isn't for everyone you can make it work and you just have to be like hyper organized and realize that it isn't always going to be perfect all the time but you can do it and Charlotte what are your kind of non-negotiable boundaries you say on a Friday morning you take your children to school which is lovely I'm assuming that's one of them but are there others that you're like absolutely not I'm not moving on this one my first rule in life is that people always think you're going to say that your children are the most important people in your life actually my partner is the most important person in my life because what I've realized is if our relationship is good and solid and awesome then they have the stability and happiness and joy of two parents who love each other and a team who are supporting them so actually the non-negotiables are in my life are the fact that if my husband doesn't play tennis and football on a Monday and Tuesday night he's a very drumpy human like basically he's very simple he needs to play sport and run around a bit like a dog he needs to be fed and he needs to sleep all of those things have to be enabled for a happy day I mean I hope you never listen to this but genuinely a big boundary for me therefore is like if for whatever reason I do have to go to a work event on a night he's playing sport then I will organize a babysitter it isn't fair that his sport is not enabled because of my job it works so boundary number one is is Dave playing sport and then boundary number two is is drop off and pick up on a Friday are really important to me and of course if there is something that the world will stop if I don't do for Felix on that day and there can be an exception to every rule but pretty much on a Friday people will know I work from home on a Friday because it's those days and then the other boundaries for me are really just around fun I am really lucky I do a job I love and there is a lot of joy in my life because I'm really passionate about the job I do and I love the people I work with. But I also am like I will always make sure there's enough joy in my life if it isn't fun and I'm not enjoying it then that's a pretty hard boundary for me if I get to an end of week I'm like crikey no it never happens I don't I don't think I've ever had a week where I've got to the end of a week and there's been not enough joy. You are a woman after my own heart Charlotte. So Charlotte can we now start talking about the amazing thing that is the Felix project brilliant charity could you tell people about it its origins and what it does? With absolute pleasure so the Felix project started almost 10 years ago now and before I tell you what what we do I'll explain why we're called Felix so there was a young man called Felix who was passionate about both food insecurity because he played football he was from a privileged background and he played football against boys who hadn't eaten and he said to his parents how can this be right that we've got people who haven't been able to afford to put food on the table and so it was a passionate kind of campaigner around it but he also cared about the fact that there was surplus food in the world and and so he as a young man wanted to do something about that so very very sadly he went away on a school trip and and died very suddenly of meningitis so heartbreakingly his parents thought rather than doing something in his name that was around meningitis they thought what would have been the impact Felix would have wanted to have in the world had he lived and so they set up the Felix project which was a small project in West London rescuing food from local shops and supermarkets that were surplus and giving it out to the local charities and our logo which I'm just putting there so you can see it is actually his last ever signature and his last Mother's Day card to his mum I say this about five times a day to people and normally I'm always wearing green in this logo because I want to have it close to my heart because actually I think my goodness god forbid something awful happened to my children I would have the strength and humility that Justin and Jane have had to build something so powerful and amazing in their son's name but I always say we're a world-class logistics company with a big heart and that there is a bit of Felix magic sprinkled in everything we do because it's it's this young man that we do it in the name of and that honestly is the magic that the whole organisation is run we have the most amazing community of people who this year will enable us to redistribute about 45 million meals to Londoners most in need and what we do is effectively work with every part of the supply chain farmers redistributors manufacturers retailers you name it we take their surplus food and we give it to about 1200 charities right across London who use that food for amazing social good they use it for their domestic violence refuges their homeless shelters their food banks their schools their people who are supporting the most at risk people and they're using that food to not only feed them but to support them around employability skills or to get out of that domestic violence situation they're in or to think through actually some debt advice that gets them out of their thing so it isn't just about feeding them it's about supporting them to get out of the situation they were in and they use food to enable them to do that we do this with warehouses we cook over 5000 meals a day in Felix's kitchen for people who don't have access to a kitchen we have something called Felix bakes where there's a million and a half bananas a day in this country thrown away I know it's insane and they've flown all the way from Brazil carbon footprint and it's such a waste surplus food and food waste is one of the third biggest contributors to climate change in the world it's an absolute tragedy a third of the food we produce globally is thrown away in this country we have almost 14 million people living in food insecurity and although there's over four million of children four million children every day in this country not knowing where the next meal is coming from and we're throwing a third of the food we produce away now that is just wrong that is just wrong on every single level and what we've shown in London with the Felix project is we've got a way to basically get supply and demand out of the food industry and we've got to get supply and demand out of the food industry and we've got to get supply and demand out of the food industry and we've got to get supply and demand out of the supply and demand together get the food that's being thrown away and the people who desperately need it linking those up and what's really exciting is we're now merging with our colleagues at fair share and we're going to be doing this right across the whole of the UK which is bonkers but it is the most magical and amazing organization to be part of it's doing something incredibly practical that both environmentally and socially is so important it's doing it honestly in the name of a young man that um I just think goodness me aren't I lucky to get to run an organization that's built on hope and optimism and and people believing that you can do good in the world and we had 13 000 volunteers just in London last year who came and did it alongside us because they believe that too and the world can feel bleak and dark out there if you listen to the news but I tell you the world is full of good amazing people who want to make the world better and we support incredible community organizations doing amazing stuff on very little every day and so I defy anyone to come and be part of our feeling it's community and not believe that we can all have the agency to make the world better because we can and we shouldn't believe that the world is broken and awful we should be part of making the world fixed and better and amazing and we can all do that can we talk a little bit about the merger and kind of what that means in terms of scaling the charity and also partnerships are integral to um what you've achieved at the Felix project how will that change or will it just get bigger just 10 or so years from now I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I think the absolutely joyful thing about the merger is fair share and Felix have worked alongside each other for a long time Felix delivering this brilliantly in London fair share delivering and working with an amazing network of partners across the UK both committed to a country where no good food is wasted and no one goes hungry we focus on London they've been doing it in the rest of the world but we have partnered so successfully for such a long time and actually what Chris who's the CEO of fair share and I sat down and talked about is the fact that we've been working together for a long time and we've sat down almost a year ago now was let's really properly have a look at whether doing this as one organization rather than two would help us achieve that mission better together and I give my absolute credit to Chris that we've always said right from the beginning we wrote down just a little simple list of principles of how we wanted to consider this merger and the first one was this has got to be about mission not ego this has got to be about if as two organizations we lift the do the proper proper work of understanding if as one organization we could do this better than two and if the answer is yes it's our actual responsibility as two CEOs to try and make that happen because running a voluntary sector organization should always be about achieving your mission not about perpetuating your organization or keeping your job so what we realized having done the work is goodness me we could be a superpower together like what we need in this country is a massive step change in food rescue and redistribution and actually having a framework to do that so I think it's really important that we do that and I think it's really important that we do that and I think it's really important that we do that and I think it's really. important that we do that and I think it's really important that we do that and I think it's really tax incentives changing they have something called a good samaritan law over there that means there's no litigation if a company gives out food and someone were to get sick they won't be sued there's stuff around mandatory food waste reporting in other countries we don't have any of it here and if you don't measure it it's very hard to challenge stuff around how we incentivize farmers in this country 750 million pounds a year is spent incentivizing farmers to send the food to anaerobic digestion to become animal feed or fertilizer there is no equivalent to send it into our system so all of these sorts of bits of stuff that we are now working with government will do it better as a united organization by the way we'll have a louder and more influential voice we need to get those things shifting and changing with government we need the food industry to step up and step in when once we remove those barriers we need to be efficient and effective and use tech better and all those things as an organization and we need to be much clearer on measuring impact and all sorts of stuff so it's genuinely going to be a cross-sector collaboration with government the private sector the voluntary sector for us to get to that step change but we can do it there's so many other countries where this is happening so it's not beyond the wit of man for us to solve this and i genuinely believe bringing felix and fair share together is the first step in us delivering that step change in this country it's fantastic it's so exciting as you scale up i mean it seems as you said the kind of culture at the felix project is really special and you're you've got a startup mentality and you want to keep that how do you safeguard that special culture as you become a much larger organization what plans do you have for the future because i think and i've experienced a merger and it wasn't great i think they got the deal done and that was that um they kind of hadn't really fought it through so just interested in how you how you nurture that amazing culture it's such a good question i always say this at felix of course i care about the what we do and the impact we have on all of that but actually the how we do it is way more important to me than the what we do and at felix i always say there's two things i care about are we keeping people safe and are we keeping people safe and are we keeping people happy and i think if people are safe and obviously in our context that's health and safety and food safety and all of those things but it's also psychological safety people have to feel psychologically safe in in their role and in the organization and are we keeping people happy do people feel energized and excited and motivated and invested in and all of those things they know where they're going they know the impact they're having all of all of that stuff and having fun if people are safe and happy everything else follows and i think you can set all the blooming kpis and things you want in the world but if people are safe and happy they will perform and they will produce brilliant things so that is a kind of guiding principle for me but in terms of creating the new culture for our newly merged organization chris and i've talked about this a lot which is it's got to be a new culture for the new entity and what a great opportunity to bring the best of both because it's not honest in any organization there's things you love and there's some things you'd probably love to leave behind it's a lovely moment in merger to say to all of us that we're going to have a great time and we're going to have a great time and we're going to what do you love what do you love about being in your organization and how do we take that forward but actually what are the things that you don't love what are the things that we can use this as an opportunity to leave behind and that's exactly what we're going to go through as we go through we're still going through the merger and what is it what what is it we want to be as this new entity i love change i know not everyone does but i think it's such an opportunity to like make things better to improve things and there's loads about felix that's brilliant and there's loads about fair i think it's a great opportunity for us to grow up a bit as a young organization and for fair share to like bring a bit of puppy energy that we bring and those two things together are really incredibly powerful and will be powerful and i absolutely think in all of it we we at felix at the moment have four values which we talk about all the time and every communication i send out to people i do it against our values which is we solve it differently we make it happen we do it together we do it with heart those are the things that we're going to have a great time with our four values they pretty brilliantly describe the way we do everything and the innovation the blooming commitment to delivery the kind of compassion but also the collaborative spirit through which we do everything and i think as a new organization we'll figure out what are our values and then it's around always for me as a leader being them genuinely living them of course you can write these things down or whatever but how you behave is really what people see and feel and how you make people feel and how you walk the walk and not just talk the talk is really the only answer right you've got to actually then well do it lead by example which you seem to be doing brilliantly and actually you talk with such passion and just joy about your job it's hard to imagine that there have ever been any challenges but i'm sure there have every day can you think of anything in particular that came up and then you solved and it's been a real sort of valuable learning process for you every single day the joy of running a really operational business is like you have to like problem solve constantly literally constantly so shane who's the chief operating officer at felix on a friday has a i can't use the expletive because it's a swear word and mess up friday session where basically we all talk very openly about what's gone wrong that week and what we've learned from it and so we built a culture around accepting that failure isn't bad and in fact i'll show you a this is um this sits on my desk and i look at it every day don't be afraid to fail be afraid not to try oh that's brilliant that is honestly it sits in front of me all the time and if i need it i'll give it a little squeeze it's much worse not to try than to fail like failure isn't a bad thing that's how we learn that's how we get better so i think we've got a really bad attitude to failure in this country we should embrace it so we do this thing at felix called the full benefit so it's a something that's gone disastrously wrong in an exercise when you're a marine they always say at the end right have we got the full benefit out of that failure which means have you taken every single bit of learning you can out of the fact that something on the face of it was a disaster if you've taken the full benefit out of the disaster it's not a disaster because you've taken all of the learning and all of the experience out of it and it kind of comes back to the ivf conversation right which is on the face of it it looked like an absolutely horrendous and awful thing but i really feel like i took the full benefit out of it right i took all of the learning out of the hard stuff and it made me better out the other side and so yeah there's honestly just so many examples of things i didn't do brilliantly and i learned from and i think it's our approach to it as long as you learn from it then it's okay if you keep making the same blooming mistake over and over again and you don't learn from it then it's not fine now charlotte it sounds like you're you're going to have your hands full with the merger and you're going to be leading the merged entity which is absolutely amazing but in sort of five ten years time you're going to be when you feel like you need to change again and you know people do need change and you said you love change basically we need more feisty amazing ladies like you in politics so my question is would you ever go back would you would you consider it so back to ground rule number one which is is dave happy we we very early on in our relationship had a conversation about me going into politics and he said it's it was one of the things he was like not massively keen on politics and family life are really hard to do together and i've always been really respectful of the fact that that's a kind of red line for him i love running a charity i love it so i can't imagine a world for now in which i wouldn't want to do it that's fair enough and you're making change happen as you say you're not frustrated by the political system yeah so going on i just can't imagine what you do to relax and if you ever have a minute to relax um i know that you like football is that this is going to make you laugh out loud so at the moment going through this merger i got to halfway through this year and realized basically all i'd done was work because it's really intense getting to the merger point it's a lot of a lot of work and a lot of diplomacy and a lot of bringing lots of different people with you and so to mitigate that i signed up to run the london marathon in april and i know this sounds mad so this weekend i'm running the royal parks half in two days i know this sounds insane when you're an incredibly busy person to layer another thing on it but actually it has been the thing that i think is keeping me sane which is what i've learned and i'm not a runner at all by the way but what i've learned is exercise really helps me relax and and it helps me physically and mentally like it really does like putting on my headphones and a pair of trainers and getting out the door and going for a run gives me the only bit of solitude i have in my entire life because i'm not with people at work or with my children or whatever like i'm not alone i'm not alone i'm not alone like other than being in the shower running's all i got giving myself the ginormous challenge or for our newly merged charity running the london marathon next year is actually really helping me even though it is adding another layer of stuff of like fitting in training it's it's helping me a lot mentally and physically feel better so at the moment running is the answer to that question it's amazing franny once taught me into doing a half marathon and she got all the benefit because she actually did some training for it i turned up on the day and did it not not ever not fun oh god that's the other thing right which is motivating me which is i want to enjoy the london marathon next year like i want it to be a joyful and fun experience and i know the only way for it to be a joyful and fun experience is to put in the to put in the work you have to put a time in you have to and so we ask everyone this question and it's it's really meant to be a bit of fun but if you could share a cocktail with one great woman from either history or today who would it be oh great question Do you know what? got so many people i could say to that do you know what i'm gonna say i'm gonna say baroness dame louise casey it makes her sound really posh and she's not at all louise casey for anyone who doesn't know her is an absolute force she is just the most amazing kick-ass woman who i've had the absolute privilege to work alongside in a various different ways so she and i did this mad freezer project for the king getting 850 fridges and freezers out to community organizations she sits on the board of the king charles iii charitable fund and has worked with the king for a really long time and we've seen martina milburn set up something called the coronation food project with the king but whenever i spend time with louise i feel equally inspired and engaged and energized to believe i can do more to make the world better but also i have so much fun she's just one of those people that like sitting down and having a cocktail with louise would be like both amazing and energizing inspiring and i'd learn a lot but it would also be really really really fun because she's really fun so i would pick her she's also a troublemaker that's what i like about her she's worked with like the last five prime ministers doing big reviews like she's doing the big social care review at the moment she's done them for literally every persuasion politically she's worked for them and she's not scared to speak truth to power and that's what i love about her so anyway she would be my cocktail buddy he sounds amazing and lastly if you could give your younger self a piece of advice is there anything that you reckon she could have benefited from yeah i think i'd always say just say yes to everything like i i know that this is not a popular thing to say now and people say to me all the time you need to say no more that's why i've built my network you talk about all this collaboration and the things that make all of this possible everything happens in the world because of relationships and you build relationships by being in the room another brilliant woman dame june clevedon said the most brilliant thing to me which is there's only one vowel different between networking and not working which is the most brilliant saying going into a room and working that room blooming hard and getting every single bit of the network you can out for your organization is something she taught me as a young woman saying yes to things being in a room but then really squeezing the juice out of the orange is the thing i'd say to my young self work every room and i've got much better as i've got older but i think it's something that younger women have less confidence in doing and i think it's something that i've got much better as i've got older but doing and going into a room where you don't know anyone and just having the confidence to go around and talk to lots of different people honestly i think that's the key to success is like building your network and then working your network hard to achieve what you need to charlotte thank you so much it was such a pleasure to have you on and we've learned so much and taken away so many little nuggets for life shall we say so yeah huge thank you thank you charlotte that was amazing thank you so much for inviting me