Welcome to the XTech podcast

Hello and welcome to XTech. I’m Ben Fox, co-founder of Fox Agency and the guest host of this introductory episode of our all new XTech podcast. Today I’m joined by Debbie Forster MBE, the CEO at Tech Talent Charter. Debbie is an advocate and campaigner for diversity, inclusion and innovation in the tech industry and the host of the XTech podcast. In this episode, Debbie and I will be discussing her career to date, exploring the current and future state of tech and much more. Debbie Forster, welcome to XTech.

Thanks, Ben.

Lovely to have you here. You’ve got a fascinating story. Growing up in Texas, moving to the UK, a career in teaching, operating at the highest levels of UK and international tech scene. Organizations of all shapes and sizes. Tell us about it.

Oh, so it is a bad journey, isn’t it? And I’d love to pretend it was all strategic, but it is just been an adventure of, oh, that sounds interesting. Let’s do this. So I grew up all over the Southwest. My father had a construction company, so we lived in about seven or eight states out in the Southwest of the US. And while I was at university, I qualified for a scholarship to come and work on my master’s degree in Leeds. So I went from Texas to Yorkshire, which is not as far in stranger journey as you might think. There was a lot more in common than I had expected. And while I was up at Leeds, working at my master’s degree, that’s when they were screaming for teachers the first time back in the ’90s, early ’90s. So I took a job at a boys’ grammar school and went into education, was in education for 20 years. And during that time, if you think back in the ’90s and the two 2000s, if you were in education and you knew how to use a computer, you pretty quickly found yourself in charge of tech.

You were head of it, you were head of all things tech, right?

Exactly. Well, it was, “Oh, you know how to use the computer, so okay.” I can remember my brother when I told him I’d been made the head of technology, his supportive comment was, “And what did the monkey die of?” So I can remember grappling with the millennium bug, if you remember back in those days.

Yeah. Yeah. The world was going to end, right? The world was going to end.

[inaudible 00:02:16]. Well, the computers certainly were, all right? And roll forward, I think through it, tech, I’m one of those people like a lot of people, a lot of women in tech in particular. I didn’t get into tech because I fell in love with tech. I became really interested and fascinated by what it could do. So when I was in education, it was new then and I loved what it did for my students. I loved watching the lights go on and changed their learning in that point. And because I didn’t just work in grammar schools, I worked in more challenging schools. I loved that tech opened the doors to careers that a lot of my kids would never have thought of. So went through education, became a head teacher and enjoyed doing that. But you’ll find there’s a restlessness I have. Once I’ve done something for three to five years or think I’ve figured it out, another thing grabs my intention.

So while I was in being a head teacher, deputy head teacher, then a head teacher, started noticing the boys were pushing forward to the computers, and the girls were getting edged out. I heard of a program called Computer Club for Girls, and I was one of those daft head teachers that said, “Well, let’s try this.” I was one of the first schools to start doing that. And in that, found myself getting pulled into conversations where I was talking to policymakers and I was talking to big companies about how do we get young people in tech.

So while I was a head teacher, had been a head teacher for five years, got the invite, why don’t you come help us work with policy makers and business? I did that for two years, discovered policy is fun, but I liked getting my hands dirty. The way I found that I could get my hands dirty was there was a not-for-profit called Apps For Good that I’d heard about. And I love the idea it was taking a group of young people, teaching them skills and then letting them choose any problem or issue that they cared about, and then teach them that tech and entrepreneurial journey from problem to prototype to market. And I love that.

So I sat down with the founder at the time and said, “I think you’ve got a great idea. Yeah, I think you’re thinking about how you want to get into schools. I still speak fluent educationese. Let me help.” She said, yes. I quit my job and then had an, oh dear God, you’ve only done this in two schools. So I got in my car, I got onto social media. Back then Twitter was new and edgy and interesting. Teachers were there. And we grew that from doing something in two schools just in London. Five years later, we’d done that with 75,000 young people. We had pilots in Spain and Portugal in the US and loved that. So did that for five years, you’re going to start noticing a pattern of five years.

And when we were doing that, the model was based on, we were going into schools, kids from 10 to 18, but we used experts from Tech as volunteers. Now 50% of our students were girls, and 40% of our expert volunteers were women in tech. Now if you know anything about tech, you never hear 40% and 50%. So I found myself getting pulled into discussions about diversity in tech and the fact there wasn’t any, I was just exiting running Apps For Good in a moment of insanity or genius, depending on what day you asked me.

I was part of a founding group that had been starting the Tech Talent Charter to drive diversity, inclusion and tech. And so I was setting up portfolio career, said, all right, I’ll put it in the middle of my desk for a while. Because we’d all been doing it on top of our day job and you can’t get far doing that. That was 2017 and that has exploded in a good way. And so five years on, running the charter, still keep a little bit of my hand in with some education things, still keeping my hand in with social entrepreneurs. But Tech Talent Charter has very firmly sat in the middle of my desk, but we’re about 730 companies now, so that’s grown as well. So that’s my mad, mad journey.

It’s a fascinating story. It’s a great story.

It’s a great story, but scary. It’s sometimes a horror story, sometimes a comedy. But yeah, an interesting story.

Always. Well, a few world changing events along the way there as well, have no doubt, accelerated things, changed things. But we’ll come back. I want to talk about the TTC, the Tech Talent Charter, further in a second.

But let’s just go back to Apps For Good. I think it’s a great story. I mean, bringing opportunity around technology and apps to 75,000 young people. What did you learn during that experience?

Lots of things. I think the first thing that we really learned was a way to try and reach young people when we talk about tech. And the first thing is that you don’t start by talking about tech. We need to remember the more we are talking to young people, tech is ubiquitous, and they don’t even understand that term. And for us to say, “Would you like a career Tech?” Is to previous generation, “Would you like a career in electricity?” What does that mean? Tech is everything.

And by starting with the idea, the simple one of what do you care about, what are you passionate about? What are the problems that matter to you as a young person? And showing them stories, showing them ways that tech can be used as a tool and showing the how. Once young people can own the why, they’ll do all manner of things, however difficult to learn the how.

And so it was realizing that once we set them free, in that sense of you choosing the problem issue, that you’re not going to study it because we told you it’s important, and you’re not going to do it because we’ve told you theoretically how. You start with why, the lights go on. And then you know, just try and get out of the way to let them figure those things out.

And I think the other thing is that powerful partnership where industry can lean in to work alongside teachers. I think too often we position it of schools are bad guys not doing this, et cetera. They’re keen, they’re busy, and they’re trying to keep up with a field that we can barely do when it’s our full-time job. I’m obsessive about connecting the dots, not reinventing the wheel. So where you can bring together those partnerships of companies and tech professionals with passionate teachers, with young people, that’s powerful. So it’s still going on. And I love hearing about how it goes from strength to strength. They’re really focusing, and I think for young people there’s a lot of passion around the environment. So Apps For Good is still out there, still pioneering new ways, because young people are hungry to try and learn about how they can use tech to solve problems.

I’m assuming through the challenges and the solutions that they found, that you experienced during your time at Apps For Good, they bring a unique perspective to things as well. But perhaps older people, adults, whatever you want to call them, don’t necessarily have those perspectives, right?

Absolutely. I mean, I loved watching because when we would teach teachers how to deliver it, we’d make them do the course as it were. And I remember one real contrast was both the teachers and the kids would often want to look at the problem of bullying and watching the really different response, because teachers were immediately about, and how do you get adults in to come in and fix this for kids? Whereas kids were very much, how can we help us find out how to do these things? But that’s true of tech. The best solutions come from people who live in and experience the problem, the situation, the issue.

And we had kids coming up with apps on how to help you not sleep through your alarm. I loved one app that was about, if you are LGBTQI+, how can you find out things on your app in a safe way? And one of the things I thought was really clever, the way they did it is they came up with an icon, because initially when people were trying to help, they were coming up with very LGBTQI+ icons. And the kids are immediately saying, “Absolutely not.” Because if you’re a teenager, somebody will always pick up your phone in a way that we don’t as adults. And so they said, “Everything about this has to allow it to be undercover, to protect the privacy.”

And it’s when we let people really know the problem, start with the problem, not the tech, you get the real innovation, the really interesting ideas. And we had everything. We had cattle, we had sleeping through alarms, we had getting home safely. And that’s why we had such support from experts because they would come away so buzzed about how the young people would think and approach problems in such a different way.

Well, those great examples, they’re approaching real life problems or challenges that they face in their own lives, right? So it’s relevant to them, it’s not imposed on them-

Absolutely.

From above by adults, et cetera. So great examples. So I just want to flash forward a couple of years, a few years, 2017. 2017 was a big year for you. Well in big year anyway, and we’ll come back to that in a second. 2017 awarded an MBE for services to digital technology and tech development. Tell us about that experience.

I was mad. It was in my last year at Apps For Goods, these sorts of things, anyone that has experience as it comes from nowhere. So a letter came in to my house and my partner called me and said, “Why is Buckingham Palace sending you a letter?”

Everyday occurrence, right?

Well, me and Liz used to really chat. We were pen pals for a long time. It was an incredible honor. But I have to say when my partner first opened it and said, “Go somewhere privately so I can tell you this because you’re supposed to keep it top secret.” I thought it was a practical joke, Ben. I literally thought, “No, now turn it over. Really, no, who’s it from? What is this hilarious joke, but who did it?” So it came really from nowhere.

And then the pomp and circumstance around it, I’d loved that bit where you’re waiting to go out and you’re talking to other people and just amazing people from every walk of life. Incredibly humbling. Hearing all the stories in the room as you’re waiting, faintly terrified to go in and to think, try not to fall over when you curtsy. Because bluntly where I grew up out in Texas and Arizona and New Mexico, we didn’t learn how to curtsy, not a big thing on the curriculum.

No.

Yeah, so incredible honor. But for me, but I think also for all of us at Apps For Good, it was that nod that we had made a difference in terms of opening doors.

You’ve had numerous accolades over the years since then as well. Oh, prior to that and since as well. But I said that 2017 was a big year because that’s when I believe discussions around setting up or founding what has become the Tech Talent Charter, TTC, happened.

So just prior to that, in my last years at Apps For Good. As I said, I’ve been pulled into these discussions. And again, I think you’ll notice, I’m not the great founder. I’m not necessarily the person who has the great idea. I’m really clear. I’m the person who can say, “My God, that’s a great idea. We can make it work.” So someone called Sinead Bunting had the idea about the Tech Talent Charter, had written it and gathered a few of us together and there may have been some glasses of wine in discussing it. And really wanted to, let’s stop just sitting around and thinking someone should do something about diversity and inclusion. Let’s do something. And I was one of the ones that just said, “If I have to go to one more round table event on why there’s no women in tech, my head’s going to explode. I’m so sick of talking about the problem when there’s solutions out there. And I’m so tired of going to another big corporate event where people have spent thousands of pounds and hours and energy to reinvent the same down wheel that the company around the corner. So as long as we’re not going to do that, let’s figure something out.”

And so the birth of the Tech Talent Charter was 2015, 2016, but it was a group of us doing this on top of the day job. But there were 17 amazing companies who were there with us all along the way. And doing that proof of concepts, so a startup. 2017 came along, I had just left Apps For Goods, had been talking to [inaudible 00:14:30] about this and saying, “Well, okay, while I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do next, I’ll lean in.” So that was 2017.

2017 was Harvey Weinstein, #MeToo, and gender pay reporting. So from the perspective of tech and industry and gender equality, et cetera, a crisis. I love Churchill’s never waste a good crisis. So when there were a whole lot of woken terrified tech companies because they could not get women into tech for love of the money, we could lean in.

So we made sure we were in the right rooms. Government asked to see us, a few of us had put together for this meeting with government, a proposal. They gave us some seed funding. That was March of 2017. And we started. And by Christmas we had a hundred companies, by the following year we had 250. And throughout this, we’ve never wasted a good crisis. When COVID was coming in, we could be talking about, and this is what you can do as people are losing jobs, this is how you can use retraining to get people into jobs. So I don’t want crises, but when it happens, we do our damndest to be there and figure out how do we use that as the next wave to push things forward.

I love that. I think it’s great, the whole never waste a good crisis perspective. And it’s true though, isn’t it, right?

Absolutely.

It creates the opportunity as much as anything.

And it cuts through the noise. It cuts through and clarifies what’s important. And these are the actions. And I think also for inclusion and diversity and anything around this social space, whatever people’s good intentions are in business, good intentions, and just doing the right thing never gets past Q2, unless it also solves a business problem. So whenever we’ve positioned things, whether it was Apps For Good, now with Tech Talent Charter, we position it as this is social justice, yes, of course, but it solves a business problem. And if you can show how this solves a business problem, companies will lean into that from Q1 to Q4.

Quick question, is it diversity and inclusion or inclusion and diversity?

Oh, well there you go. And my team are always trying to get… Because there’s also, is it EDI? And I think what’s interesting is quite often we will say diversity and inclusion because that is what if you’re early on journey, that’s where you start. But from my perspective, and when we talk about companies, when companies just start with the lens of diversity, that is usually that panic, wild eyed, I call it the diversity takeaway window. That, “Oh my God, can you find me two women. A black person and a disabled person, maybe a neurodiverse person and an order of chips to go?” And that feeling that you can hire your way out of this never works.

It’s so much more than recruitment, right?

Yeah. If your culture’s not right, even if you can hire them in, they don’t stay. They bounce through and there’s more damage on both sides. The best companies, the most effective way approach it by let’s look who and what we are first. Let’s get our culture right first. Inclusion. Now, if you do that, that will begin to make sure that you have diversity. But that’s again, that’s the foothills. If you want to do that, and if you really want to transform your business, it’s about then going on to equity, to equality of opportunity.

So am I creating a place where people can come in the room? Am I making sure that I’m getting everyone in the room who is different from me? But then, am I making sure that they have a voice? Can I make sure that I’m letting them bring their whole selves? We’ve seen so often where companies said, “Look, we got our three women,” but the way those women survive is they have to act like blokes. That’s not diversity and inclusion. This is that inclusion, equity, is do they have voice? Can they bring their difference to who and what they are in an honest and transparent way? That’s where the rocket fuel comes. That’s where the transformation. And we know from the business case, that’s where you get great innovation. That’s where you can retain people, grow people get great products and services.

So for the last seven years you’ve been CEO of the Tech Talent Charter. Tell us about it. What is its purpose? How does it work? And I guess more important, well equally as importantly, how can organizations of all sizes get involved?

I think some key things to think about for the charter is we’re not-for profit. All right? And people will say to that because behind the scenes, we’re six to seven people at any given time running this organization with 700 organizations. So our role is to bring together the whole ecosystem. So it is free for companies to join, and people always go, “Really? Is it free?” No, it’s free. It’s absolutely free to join the Tech Talent Charter.

Companies when they join are part of the ecosystem. So I have employers of tech. So yes, I have Microsoft and I have Cisco and I have Salesforce, but I’ve got Lloyds Bank, I have Sky TV, Cancer Research UK, I have Domino’s Pizza, I have SMEs, I have startups. And it’s not just the London bubble, these are companies from across the UK.

But where it’s interesting is we also have what I consider our suppliers into the space. So we have consultants, we have training providers, we have recruiters, you and I both know there are recruiters and there are recruiters and some are part of the problem and some are part of the solution. I’ve got some great recruiters who are trying to do this differently. We have then those organizations who interact with less represented groups. So we have Code First: Girls, we have Black Women Who Code, we’ve got the British Computing Society, we have government departments, anyone who has a vested interest.

And the great thing is, remember I said I was tired of talking about the problem, if you join the Tech Talent Charter, you are never going to hear us just focusing on the problem and ringing our hands. This is about talking about what works. This is a real deep focus on the practical. And our companies come really honestly and wanting to collaborate. So you will hear big name companies, the Bank of England, HP, who will be willing to talk about, “Well, this is what we did and this is what didn’t work. This is what we haven’t figured out, but this is what we have learned.” And there’s that willingness to collaborate. What’s great is because the whole pipeline is broken, and if you really understand that, then you have to accept that treating something, if you figure out an amazing way of changing culture or recruiting or promoting and treat it like a trade secret, all you’re doing then is investing in a really expensive fishing rod and going to the same leaky barrel everyone else is. So this is companies who are willing to collaborate, to share ideas because we’ve got to change the shape of the barrel. We’ve got to change the whole pipeline. And so companies do that.

And what I pride myself on is we are not the font of knowledge. We are not the sole expert. We convene, we connect, we amplify. And so if you came to me, Ben, and you were saying, “You know what, Debbie? You’ve got to fix what’s happening in schools.” I would say, “Ben, you’re absolutely right. Let me introduce you to TechSheCan.” Or, “Debbie, this is universities. Universities broke.” And I would say, “Super, let me introduce you to our members of the Institute of Coding who are working across universities.” We connect the dots. And we make no apologies for preaching to the choir. This is where the choir come.

So joining is easy. Companies can join a session, we have a session where we explain what this means, but you’re committing to having a senior signature, you’re committing that you’re going to have a plan, you’re committing that you are going to collaborate and share best practice and that you’re going to share data. And that’s the other piece.

Each year, everybody in the Tech Talent Charter hates me in September. Okay? Because that’s-

Data collection.

Data collection. I come knocking on the door to say, “It’s time to share that data,” because if you do, you’re in, and you’re in for the year for free. And if you don’t, I smile and I kick you out. So each year since we started, and every year, it’s really painful because you get to 730 and you’re going to have to kick people out. And each year we kick between 10 and 15% of our signature is out for not submitting data, but we know data is the heart of what goes forward and drives this. And it is that price of admission. So what my team joke about, I strap on my grumpy boots the end of every September and go knocking at the door saying, :I will kick you out.”

I guess for yourselves, for Tech Talent Charter, that’s the cost of credibility, right?

Absolutely.

You need to be a credible organization. People need to provide their data. And if that’s what they’re signing up for, then you have to behold them to account for that.

It’s funny, when I’m getting companies to join, they love that idea and they go, “That’s impressive. I respect you.” Now come September into September, they’re like, “Oh God, she really is going to kick us out. I’m not sure, I’m myself fond with that real.”

But it means, I think if you join the Tech Talent Charter, that collaboration, that sharing of data gives us a really powerful free toolkit. So companies can come and they can look at our open playbook. And so if you want to figure out how to change your culture, how do we become better allies to our Black employees? How can I set up an effective apprenticeship scheme? Our open playbook has examples from companies, so it’s really practical. Our data turns into our annual report and benchmarking tools. So companies are getting better at having their own data. But other than comparing historically, what does that mean? We have benchmarking tools. That means companies when they join can compare themselves inside. It’s all anonymized and aggregated, and to compare themselves against companies of their sector, their size to understand where they’re ahead of the game or behind the game.

When we do this, we’re a small organization, but I describe it as we’re not the carrot, we’re not the stick, we’re the toolkit. And so we are equipping companies to work together to learn from each other, to really change the sector.

And I love the fact that you involve organizations from across the whole tech ecosystem so that it’s not just focus on concentrated on one area. I love the fact that it’s about sharing rather than reinventing the wheel. So if somebody’s solved that problem over here, let’s share it over here so we can [inaudible 00:24:52].

There was something else I picked up on in a previous conversation that we need to focus on. Not finding enemies but identifying alliances, or I think you chose better words than that, but the premise of that.

It’s that shifting. I think what often you can have in the for good space is we can come at it from a for-profit mindset is what’s the competitive landscape? Where in fact, we wanted to from our earliest days to say, how do we make this an ecosystem and collaboration? Because bottom line is, there’s plenty to do and not enough time and not enough money. So why don’t we? And I love when my companies, that aha moment, where they say, you and I Ben, if we were in Yorkshire and we’re talking about things, if we both share ideas, it may mean that you hire them first, but after a few years they come to work for me. It’s that sense of we all win. If we can move this forward, if we can change this, if we can change the sector, everybody wins. And what is it? A rising tide lifts all boats. Someone on my team, Lexi, often talks about that. And so this is companies who get it, who get that this is smart business, and who get that the only way we change it is if we work

Together. Hopefully some of the wider trends in tech and business will play to this as well. I mean most of the tech companies are co-creating, collaborating, partnering on building alliances to deliver solutions to customers, right? So if you’re doing that over there, then why would you not do that in every other area of your business?

I think we’ve got much more chance of being able to achieve this than a lot of other sectors for three reasons. One is because there’s just not enough talent, all right? So when we talk about diversity inclusion, it’s not a zero-sum game. It’s not white middle class, cis man bad, everyone else good and therefore I’m going to fire all the white men. There’s just not enough people. So it’s a joint solution within tech and room for everyone.

The second thing is, as you said, tech is quite smart at learning that there are times and places and ways to collaborate where everyone wins. And the third thing is, the companies, it’s interesting what you were talking about before, learning from each other. Tech is more comfortable with innovation and the fact that innovation is messy. What I love when we do our events, I joke about that there’s size envy because my little companies look at the big companies say, “Oh, I’ve only had the money and a big DNI department, I can do that.” And my big company say, “Oh God, if I only had a hundred people, I could wrap my arms around that and fix it.”

And so there’s that cross collaboration. But for the big companies, the great aha moment is we have to think a startup. Corporate quite often is much more used to and comfortable with, “We shall find the perfect policy and we shall announce it on the 3rd of July and it shall trickle down perfectly.” Whereas for real innovation and to really make a difference on inclusion diversity in good time, this is about starting small innovating, messing up, cleaning it up, pivoting, and then cascading across. So the big techs as we see all through tech in all factors, when they think like a startup, they’re at their best.

So I guess where do organizations go? Where do individuals go to get involved?

You go to techtalentcharter.co.uk. There’s the information that you need. It’ll tell you who we are, what we are. There’s a downloadable resource, so you can have a deck to show and going to find out more. You can sign up for a session where I can talk to you about what the ins and outs are. And you can go through the, “Oh my god, what do you mean data? What does that mean?” We can walk you through that.

And then signing up is ridiculously easy if you get the sign off. And I think the hard part is not signing up for us, it’s getting that internal buy-in. And you do have to get that sign off at the top. They have to get it at the top table. This is why we share data. This is why we’re going after diversity inclusion. But we ask for four contact points, a senior signature, a principal day-to-day contact, someone for data, because remember they’re going to hate me. And somebody on PR. Because being part of the charter, there’s some great opportunity for good PR. We get some information and then we onboard you. It is just that simple. And then you’re in that journey and as long as every year you give me my data in September, your ticket to the all you can eat buffet, you get as involved as you need to be. It’s not a set menu. Some companies come in and get really involved, sponsoring events for us, coming to events, sharing things with the open playbook, others start more slowly. They just want to consume. “I want to hear a few things. I want to use your report. I want to use your open playbook.”

But it’s horses for courses because I think the other thing about the charter is we have companies at every stage of the journey. We’ve got some companies who are newly woken, terrified and want to figure out what to do. We’ve got some companies that are doing it as on the journey. And then the great thing is we’ve got companies that have been doing this for 10 or 15 years and have some fantastic insights to share. But nobody has said to me yet, “You know what, Debbie? Here’s all the answers. Here’s the answers to the exam question. This is what we do.” Everybody is trying to figure out and broaden it because this isn’t just women in tech is it? This is looking across all of the lenses. And I love hearing how companies are really digging in deep to think about how are we more inclusive for neurodiverse people? How are we removing the barriers for our LGBTQQI+? How are we looking at retraining schemes. A lot of people out of the jobs, how can we use apprenticeships, boot camps, all the different programs to bring in people from those side doors or retrain internally?

I’ve got a lot of people that might be heading out the door or I might have to get rid of, but they know my company, they know my product, how could I retrain them to bring them in? So it’s a job. I don’t think that’ll ever be done, but it’s a job that we also, we would love to work ourselves out of a job. Each year we’ve said if we’re doing the same thing five years time, we’ve failed. And so the horizon keeps moving ahead. We keep going after it, the numbers go, but there’s still so much to be done.

And I talk about never waste a good crisis, but also never underestimate that there’s a new crisis. COVID through open some doors for inclusion, diversity, it proved things like yes, people actually can work from home, people can work flexibly, but it also has driven people back to first principles and old ways of thinking. So it’s nothing that we can get complacent about. Every year is a new year in inclusion diversity.

And there’ll be unforeseen events and situations and groups.

Absolutely. And pushback. And pushback. I think there’s something we always need to know. We need to take people with us. We’ve seen, haven’t we? In the news, where in certain companies, so there’s been this blow up from represented people feeling threatened. And so I think one of the powerful things, we said from the earliest days when we first just focused on gender, if all we’re doing is talking to a room of women, we’ve not got this right? The men have a role. And where men have seen they can be allies, they can be champions. And actually if you get the culture, if you get inclusion right, men win too. This a win for everyone.

And I love when we would talk about things like family flexible working and when we would talk about those sorts of things, the women nod openly and the men come up to you quietly and whisper, “Yeah, that’d be really great. We could never do that in my company as a man.”

So it is that sense of this is a problem we’ve all been a part of. This is something we all have to be part of a solution, and if we do it, we all win. Managers will have better teams, companies will have better products and everyone can be happier and healthier at work, but it takes hard work and it takes joined up thinking and partnerships with everyone. We need allies, we need champions and we need to be allies and champions. I’m a White woman of privilege, I’m a White cis woman of privilege. So I need to be on the journey to understand how am I an ally to Black colleagues? What am I doing to be really inclusive with LGBTQI+? I’m on a journey of trying to learn to understand what does neurodiversity mean? How can I make that easier, not harder for people who are neurodiverse in that respect?

There’s this idea that we all need to be comfortable with having these uncomfortable discussions, right?

And that’s it. And that’s at the heart of it. And when we can get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and when we can understand, nobody has all the answers.

I was at an event with Lloyds Bank that was looking at LGBTQI+ and someone on the panel I love said, what’s the first thing you can do in becoming a great ally or champion? Was learn how to apologize well because you’re going to get it wrong and learn to accept that and how to put it right as quickly as possible, not make it about you. That’s that first step. And so I have got it wrong. I’ve misgendered people, I’ve said things that I look back and think, “Oh God, I’m sorry.” So it’s that being willing to learn that that makes it exciting and makes it interesting.

I just want to move on to talking about XTech because we are delighted that you are going to be a new host for XTech. I guess the starting point for this is, what was it that piqued your interest?

I loved the idea. So I am in tech and I work with a lot of tech companies, and I love the opportunity to start talking to people who have great products, great services, great ideas, great innovations. I’m Snoopy, I’m nosy. I want to understand the why. This is a great opportunity to start talking to people to understand how did that happen? I’m always reading about this new product, this new company, but I’d love to understand how did they come up with that idea, what did they do? And we’re such an interesting point in technology because it is now just a tool and my God, we can use a tool in a lot of different ways.

And I think what’ll be interesting is to go from that theoretical, what is quantum computing? What is AI to how can I make it work in my company? How did you come up with that idea? It’s always about great ideas, problem solving and people. And so the guests that were getting lined up, I’ve got a thousand questions to find out how did they get where they’re going, how did they have that idea, what didn’t work? And to really try and get some practical insights on how I, how anyone could use that thinking, that idea to build on in our own companies and our own products and our own services.

Yeah, it’s fascinating. I mean it’s such a vast world, right? As well. So all the different aspects and facets of it. And all the catalysts for all of the solutions and all the organizations and the tech that comes, What’s the starting point? It’s fascinating.

What I love, you’ve got that. I’ve got a restless imagination. I like knowing lots of different things. And if we have that golden thread of tech, that gets me into every room, doesn’t it? We can be talking about just about every sector, every kind of thing because it’s tech, but it is, it’s problem solving. And I love a cunning plan. And to hear how people are finding those and think about how we could do that. When we’re young, didn’t we all kind of want to be inventors? Didn’t we all want to be that person that was the creator of something. Tech is a set of tools that means any of us could invent something, could come up and create something interesting and different. And I think this is a great time where that’s happening just about everywhere, every sector.

You will have some amazing perspectives to bring along to those discussions and the conversations. Final question and on plan, so I apologize.

She says now nervously sipping her tea.

Okay, we’ll put it in the context of XTech. One, two, three, dream guests that you’d love to speak to. And they don’t have to be individuals, there could be organizations or people with different perspectives.

My dream guest will be the guest I haven’t thought of yet. What I’m already doing now. I have this lovely opportunity of every time I’m reading the news, every time I’m reading the different magazines and stuff, I’m starting to drop down. “Oh, I’d love to talk to them. Oh, I’d love to.” I want to understand. I want to see some real use cases for Web3. I got to say, I look at things on web three and I think, “Mm, they’ve tried it with Google Glasses. They’ve tried it with those things. What does that mean?” I want to see some powerful ways. I’m tired of the horror stories. I want to hear some really interesting examples on concrete ways on how people are using AI in a really different way.

I want to understand, I think we’ve got a lot of terrible, terrible stories on how tech and social media, et cetera is hurting people’s mental health. But I also know there’s some powerful stories on how people are using tech to build people up, to support mental health, to help people. So I want some good news stories there and I want to know how they did it. And for me, it’s less a dream guest. I think what’s happening in tech is fewer revolutions, more evolutions. I want to start hearing how company A and company B came up with an idea with something from company C and made something. I want to hear the magic, the aha moments of, “Oh my God, I’d never thought about that.” To me, the great guests are probably people I haven’t heard of yet. That’s where I want, I want the stories. I want to feel like I got to hear this and I had never heard of that before and that’s amazing. That’s really interesting.

I think we’re into some fascinating conversations.

I hope so.

Debbie, thanks for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Thanks so much. It’s really been great and it’s going to be an exciting journey, Ben.

You can join us on our journey by following along with the podcast. We’ve got amazing guests lined up from the world of global tech, so make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We’d love to receive your thoughts on what you’ve heard. Or if you’d like to be a guest on the show, drop us an email at xtech@fox.agency.

A special mention to the people that make this show possible. Zoe Woodward, our executive producer, Hannah Teasdale, our podcast producer and the whole team of tech experts at Fox Agency. I’m Ben Fox and you’ve been listening to XTech from Fox Agency.