Aoifinn Devitt: This podcast was made possible by the kind support of Guylaine Charles and Charles Law PLLC, a law firm representing clients in the negotiation of a wide range of financial trading agreements based in New York City.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Redress the imbalance and all else will follow. What I mean by that is try and give improved access to education opportunity to everybody, and you’ll bring the best out in them. And you know, what more can we do in the world than try to bring the best out in other people.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investing and beyond by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Dr. Margaret Casely-Hayford CBE, who is Chancellor of Coventry University, a role she has held for close to 4 years. She’s had an extensive career in law, having been a partner at Dentons for close to 20 years, and has held roles as NED of the NHS, as well as, as a special trustee at Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, chair at Shakespeare’s Globe, and as a board member of Co-op, to name just a few. Welcome, Margaret. Thank you for joining me today.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Thank you very much, Aoifinn. It’s really a pleasure to be here. Thank you for asking me.
Aoifinn Devitt: So let’s start with your career journey. You’ve had a fascinating career journey that started with studying law at Oxford Can you talk us through your early career moves, and were there any surprising turns in there?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: It starts off with something probably quite bizarre considering I ended up being a lawyer, in that I really wanted to be a ballet dancer. And so albeit that I was studying law, I had in my heart that I wanted to dance. So what I did was to work in local government legal offices whilst doing dance classes for quite a time, and What that did was gave me an insight to the administration and systems, and probably set me on the pathway for.
Speaker C: Being planning and development lawyer, because that.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Was probably the best example of where the, the system really organises our lives, if you like.
Speaker C: You Because, know, if there are going to be houses, where do you put them? How does that impact on impact on where the people work, and if there are going to be retail developments, where do you put them, and how does that impact on, you know, the people’s.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Ability to access, and so on, and.
Speaker C: Consulting the individual, and so on. And so the interaction of the state with the individual became really stark and really apparent to me, and I just suddenly realized how much I actually enjoyed that. So working in local government actually gave me such an insight, not just into what was possible, but also how individuals ought really to engage more with the system to be able to determine the relevance of our own future. So that’s how I sort of embarked on that, and I went into the planning and development set of chambers and basically realized that I wasn’t very well suited to that, and so went into a city firm of solicitors as a planning and development lawyer, and that’s how I, I got in. To Dentons and we specialized in a lot of retail development. And so, you know, we did a lot of work for Sainsbury, Marks Spencer, Co-op, and Virgin and so on. And so I developed huge insight into how these businesses ran because you obviously, if you’re going to be a decent lawyer, you make it your business to understand the client’s business. And really understanding the client’s business then I think was what gave me the ability to transition into an in-house lawyer in a retail enterprise. And so that’s how, after 20 years Dentons, when I was asked whether I would go into John Lewis Partnership as Director of Legal, it didn’t seem like too mad a transition because I’d been so steeped in, you know, what it is that makes retail development work, what it is that makes a retail enterprise work. And then also because of understanding systems. I understood governance and so on, so all of it, everything seemed to sort of inspire to make that next step not too daunting and somehow logical. So yes, and then I went there for 9 years as Director of Legal Services, which was wonderful because it’s a fantastic organisation.
Aoifinn Devitt: Then you went into a plural or portfolio career role with many board roles and committee roles. When did you make the decision to do that?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Well, in fact, I had been on boards during my time as a solicitor, so it wasn’t just when I retired after being a lawyer, after 30-odd years as a lawyer, that I went on.
Speaker C: To boards, because I’d been on trustee boards.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: You mentioned Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital Charity, and I was also on the Jeffrey Museum whilst I was an associate solicitor. Those were really— gosh, it was such.
Speaker C: A steep learning curve, because at that stage I didn’t know I didn’t know very much about how boards operated, but being a trustee on charity boards is a really great insight into the relationship between the executive and the— I would say those in supervisory, but it’s not so much supervisory support and challenge roles on the board.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: And then when I went to John.
Speaker C: Lewis Partnership, of course, because I was also company secretary, I was obviously involved at board level all that time as well. So all of that gave me a lot of insight, and it was then really not too artificial then to go plural, as they say, once I did retire. And it was fantastic to be given the opportunity to chair ActionAid UK, and not least because it just has such a fantastic ambition to eradicate world poverty global poverty through focusing on the rights of women and girls and helping women and girls out of poverty. So it was just a brilliant time in my life to transition into some great boards and going onto the board of The Co-op after being at John Lewis. Again, there was a logic to it and it was another organization with a fantastic ethic and wonderful values. So I feel I’ve been blessed as well in the transitions that I’ve been enabled to make because I’ve been able to work with organizations that reflect my values.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s an interesting point. I was going to ask you then what you seek to bring to these board and chair roles. What do you think makes an effective chair?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: I suppose starting with an effective chair, one’s got to be able to listen, and becoming chair of ActionAid UK helped.
Speaker C: Me to realize the importance of listening.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: ActionAid challenged itself, saying, if we are promoting the rights of women and girls, are we ourselves a feminist organisation? In other words, do we allow opportunity to those whose interests and opportunities are normally marginalised? And so we realised that there was a really fundamental shift that we had to take in making sure that we checked the way we ran our enterprise so that we opened up opportunity for people to be heard appropriately, for people to be appointed fairly, recognising that even the way in which you set your criteria can at times exclude certain people. So I suppose being a good chair is understanding the ethic of the organisation, working with the ethic of the organisation, really listening to people, giving people the opportunity to bring their whole selves into that boardroom. I’ve been in some boardrooms that have been quite hostile and heard the executive on leaving saying, “Did you survive?” And I think that if people feel like that, then you’re not running the Board appropriately. People should feel supported so that they can come in and really explain what’s happening within the organisation so that the Board can add value in terms of giving the right direction. You can’t give the right direction if you’re not hearing the whole story. And people can feel if they’re frightened or worried and don’t trust. So you— a good chair needs to build trust and a feeling of openness, needs to make sure the organisation recognises who are the key stakeholders. And the key stakeholders, of course, need to include the people working within the organisation all the way through, the employees, as well as those within the supply chain and those who are our neighbours and those who are meant to benefit from the way in which the organisation runs itself. Making sure that there are, I suppose, metrics set so that everybody is aware of how best to protect and promote the interests of the different stakeholders is critical, and in particular making sure that there’s a proper balance between those who are investing their money and want a commercial outturn, and those who are investing their time because they work within the organisation, or those who are impacted by the way in which the organisation operates.
Aoifinn Devitt: That is a very interesting point. Speaking of bringing one’s whole self to the board, what are your thoughts on some of the recent initiatives such as the 30% Club to get more diversity onto boards? Have you seen progress in this respect and do you welcome it?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: There has been progress. It’s very slow. I mean, it’s really interesting that you started off by talking about the 30% Club because, of course, that’s focused on women. And those who champion diversity have done.
Speaker C: Really well in making boards understand the need to bring women onto boards.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: We’ve done less well in widening diversity to ensure that there are ethnic minorities within the pipeline and on the board itself, and even less well to champion the interests of disabled people who can also obviously be sensibly accommodated within enterprises and on boards. And I’m actually quite pleased that now there is a much louder voice on the part of some groups, and there are charters emulating the charter that was set up for women, particularly trying to get women onto boards of the FTSE. The charter that was set up in that regard has been something that’s been copied by, I think, Mary Mativu, who’s a barrister, has done this for ethnic minorities, for Black and minority ethnic people, to try to get them into some of the big corporates in the city and into the bar at higher levels. And I know that Lord Billimoria, Karen Billimoria, has also established a charter for the CBI. And what we need next is to see the charters move into implementation so that it’s not just a statement of, well, we recognize we need to do something, It’s actually articulating what we’re doing is and putting a timeline against it so that everybody else can check the progress that’s being made. Because it’s not systemic at the moment, it isn’t properly monitored. So as a consequence of that, the progress isn’t linear. You’ll get a blip when something goes wrong and everybody gets terribly excited about it, and then it all sort of subsides and disappears. And it can’t be down to one champion CEO or a good-hearted chair, because of course if either of them leaves, resigns, retires, gets run over by a bus, all the good intention disappears with them. It’s got to be systemized and within the enterprise in order for it to take hold and be properly embedded. So Yes, progress, but not fast enough, and in particular moving into making people understand that if you do nothing, you’re actually condoning a negative. And the shift that we’ve seen recently into organisations having to look and think about whether they were actually anti-racist by doing something positive has been a really, really helpful one because it’s made people really think differently. So there’s a lot to do, but we are moving forward.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I want to go back to talk about your current role, but just since we’re on the topic of diversity, you spent over 20 years practicing law and have probably seen quite dramatic shifts in the diversity of that profession during the course of your career. How was it for you in the early days? Were you in an obvious minority in the practice of law, and what kind of progress have you seen there? And where do you think, if you were to give it a scorecard, the legal profession now, how would you think it would rank?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Well, when I was made a partner at Dentons, the Law Society told me that I was the first Black female partner of a City law firm, and I hoped that things would change quite quickly. I think it was 2 years ago I was asked to speak by the Black Solicitors Network to a group of young people who were partners in city law firms, and there must have been about 30 people around the table. And I asked them at the beginning of the meeting how many of them were the only Black partner within their law firm, and apart from one person, every single person put their hand up. And I I just, just couldn’t believe it you that, know, 20 years later the situation was so you feeble, know, in terms of its progress. So there is progress, there is movement, but it’s just glacial, and it’s worrying because one of the things that’s very clear is that until we properly acknowledge the talents of young people, as soon as we give them a chance to recognize that they can become something that gives them confidence in themselves and their peers, they will remain outside of public service because you’ll feel there’s no point in participating because nobody’s going to take me seriously, nobody trusts me, and The interesting thing about that is it does have wider repercussions. We’ve seen it with the pandemic. We’ve seen that Black and minority ethnic people are far less likely even to want to have an injection, a vaccination, because of the lack of trust in the societal structure. And so that’s not only jeopardising the health of the individual, it’s jeopardising the health of the whole community. So, you know, it is really interesting that unless you make people feel part of the community, feel recognized, respected, they won’t trust. And if they don’t trust, the system breaks down. So it has a really, really wide benefit to bring people into the equation, quite apart from the fact that you’re obviously fishing in a wider pool of talent. And there is a, there’s a concept that a number in science and tech world have been discussing, and that’s the invisible Einsteins. And, you know, just on the basis that X percent of any population will be incredibly bright people, if you’re excluding those people from getting into the pipeline, you’re actually limiting your own ability to fish in that pool of talent, which seems ludicrous. And it’s been proved that this is absolutely true. And Tommy Loubey, who started a school in Ghana for girls, because of course girls are least likely to be supported in education if there isn’t money. And it was for really talented girls. And he has found that these young women can take an A-level in one year and get an A*. They, I mean, it’s really just the most remarkable success story, just by virtue of the fact that he’s demonstrating that you can pull people out of the ordinary system and give them support and they will shine. So, you know, we are actually doing ourselves a disservice by not allowing these.
Speaker C: Young people to come through and to participate appropriately.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: And I’m ashamed of the legal profession.
Speaker C: In this country for not actually having.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Moved forward more quickly, but I do.
Speaker C: Recognize that there are some really great people and there is a diversity index and there are law firms like Hogan Lovells and so on that have a really, really good Everest had some good presence on the diversity index, and the work that they’ve been doing has been highly regarded.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: So, you know, it’s happening, it’s, it’s changing.
Speaker C: We just have to keep on asking for metrics and monitoring the metrics so that we can see that the progress is actually moving forward with the right level of impetus behind it and energy.
Aoifinn Devitt: Those are very powerful observations there, and I think you mentioned that the trust and maybe the lack of a take-up of, say, vaccinations, and I think I think that does come down to perhaps lack of role models and lack of examples, say, Black people as doctors on the front lines, you know, actually on television, you know, validating the safety of these vaccines. It really takes— I think there has to be an element of role modelling as well, and even more reason for the professions to become more visibly diverse. So thank you very much for those thoughts.
Speaker C: There are huge numbers of Black and minority ethnic doctors, of course, In fact, it’s almost criminal how many there are here by comparison to the countries from which their forebears.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: But your point about there not being high profile is a really good one, and there is a tendency to use.
Speaker C: The Black and minority ethnic people almost as cannon fodder, and you, you never get them to go into the high-profile roles, you never get them them to be the spokespeople. And it’s that, it’s the lack of visibility that makes people not trust the system, because they know perfectly well that their brothers and sisters are going into the profession. But if they’re not being treated well, it makes one not have trust in the system. So that is actually a really important point.
Aoifinn Devitt: Just going back to, to the role of charities, I’d love to ask you currently Clearly many of these charities are going to be suffering some severe stress at the time of COVID and what have the charities you’ve been working with, how have they been coping with the current strain?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: The theatre world has been probably quite well publicised. As you know, I’m chair of Shakespeare’s Globe, and we have— the Globe runs two types of enterprise really, in that we’ve got an education education an side as well as a performance side, and the education side runs workshops for schools, it runs performances as well as the research and graduate and postgraduate level through relationships with King’s College London and Guildhall. And we transitioned quite dramatically online, and for the education side we ran almost industrial-scale workshops, which I think were really well received by parents and teachers. But obviously we haven’t been able to open, and what a number of people didn’t realize until that first lockdown was that we don’t get any government subsidy as a charity. So we’re wholly 100% reliant on either donations or our own revenue-generating capability through people coming through the doors. And once the doors were closed, that was really worrying, and we had significant reserves just through the prudent organisation of the Chief Executive and finance team. We lived on the reserves for as long as we could, and then it got really difficult. We had to rely on government furlough, and then we made a pitch for government support, and we were We were so fortunate in being given £3 million, almost £2.9 million, towards the end of last year, which helped enormously. But by then we’d had to cease our operations so considerably that we just had a few socially distanced performances on the indoor stage of the Wanamaker Playhouse, which we live-streamed and hoped that people would give us some donations, and we— the public have been fantastic in supporting us. But obviously, as I think people’s budgets got tighter, less and less money came in. So that was really nerve-wracking. But we’re looking forward to being able to open up in this summer. We’ll start rehearsing very shortly, and hopefully with the government loan that we’ve managed to secure, we’ll be able to limp on until we can open the doors throw them open, and we hope that then people can come in in significant numbers. I mean, we still obviously can’t get people in maximum capacity because of social distancing, so even when we open, it’ll be some time before we can generate the sort of income that we need to keep the full contingent of people that we would like to have and to bring back all our freelancers. The The university I’m chancellor of, Coventry University, has an incredibly visionary chief executive.
Speaker C: And he had already moved the organization 2 or 3 years ago towards blended education. In other words, some of it on campus live, so to speak, and some of it online. And so because we already had that online capability, For us, transitioning online wasn’t nearly as dramatic as it’s been for some of our sister organisations, and I know that students have found online tuition really easy to access. And then we— I think probably because we had this sort of advantage of being ahead of people, ahead of the game, we were able to think about things like how do you create that, the community ’cause that’s what being at university is all about. It’s not just the education side of it, it’s also being part of the community. So for example, we have a brilliant.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Scheme of sort of peer-to-peer discussions about the quality of tuition, and it’s run.
Speaker C: By a specific piece of software, and it’s almost like TripAdvisor for tutors.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: This must be pretty nerve-wracking for the.
Speaker C: Tutors, but apparently they get some really great feedback from the young people. And if they get— if there’s part of something that they’re doing that gets really brilliant feedback, they know that they.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Should do more of that.
Speaker C: And that helps the community because they all discuss it amongst themselves. And so even though it’s obviously not the sort of on-campus, let’s all go for a drink sort of discussion, it still creates a degree of vibrancy that’s not just, oh, let’s just get our heads down and get stuck into this work. And we partnered a particular enterprise that’s enabled this community to work. So we’re quite ahead, but it doesn’t mean that we haven’t suffered financially. I mean, Brexit is utterly terrifying for universities because so much of our income.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Came from students from Europe feeling that.
Speaker C: They can come over here and work easily and study quite readily and move backwards and forwards across the the borders. So that’s going to create a big hole.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Then another big hole will be just.
Speaker C: Post-Pandemic, because of you course, know, we’re not going to get the free flow of people traveling for quite some time. So again, even if we come to useful arrangements such as substitution for the Erasmus scheme of student exchange to Turin, even if that works really well, and I don’t know how well that is going to work, it will be time before there’s confidence and people are back traveling with ease again. So all of that is going to put quite a lot of pressure on us, and so, you know, we have to tighten our belt quite dramatically, and.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: It’S quite difficult explaining to parents and students the tuition is the tuition, and so even though it’s not on campus, we’ve still got to pay the tutors and professors, you know, in the same way to prepare it and to give the courses. And so there’s quite a lot of dialogue within the university sector going on about, you know, should people be able to claw back And that is quite a nerve-wracking thing because not knowing where that will land is something that we have to prepare ourselves for. So yes, that’s another sector. I’ve supported a charity called the London Russian Ballet School, and they were so wonderful in last year taking some of their fabulous performances up to Manchester with Manchester Academy Schools and supported by the Co-op. And so I just thought it’d be great to get them to perform for some of the Academy Schools. And there’s a really, really heartening video of people coming out of one of the performances and just saying it’s so great to see this sort of thing up here in Manchester because, you know, it always tends to, to be down in London and the Southeast. And sadly, that ballet school has folded. They couldn’t survive the last year because the pressure was just too much financially. And so quite a wide range of impact on the different enterprises. Really, really sad. But Chineke Orchestra, which as you know is the only Black and minority ethnic orchestra in the country, of which I’m supportive as going well and has just launched a new scheme, a new foundation for supporting people going into auditions, and that was announced just last week. So we’re very excited about that, and numbers of orchestras have got behind that and tried to help us to move forward so that we could see more blind auditions, greater support for people when they’re trying to prepare for auditions. And travel and so on. And so yeah, that’s a really exciting scheme and it’s great to see that launched even despite the downturn. People have got behind it and we will try and boost its presence so that people have a greater awareness of it. So yeah, it’s just such an incredibly wide range of different impacts on the charities.
Aoifinn Devitt: When you’re talking there, it reminds me of a podcast I held with some small business owners. I was really acutely focused on the impact of the pandemic on their businesses. Some of them just got up and running, literally just opened right before the pandemic hit. What actually surprised me, but probably shouldn’t have, was how ultimately how scrappy some of these businesses were anyway. Because they were used— some of them had been going for 10 years. They’d been through multiple recessions or setbacks. They were forced to survive and they were fairly lean. This was just yet another setback. So they were actually more resilient than I had thought, probably because their expectations were set fairly low and they were used to volatility. It could be that some of the charities you mentioned— some, obviously not all, but some— maybe also have a similar track record in that they’ve been used to a fairly amount of struggle. So obviously the pandemic— I think that’s.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: A really good point, it’s a really, really good point. And before the pandemic, a lot of discussion in some of the economic papers about zombie companies and zombie enterprises that, because interest rates are so low, have sort of limped on in spite of the fact that they hadn’t done enough to trim the fat and to make sure that they were sufficiently resilient. And I think that the pandemic will have put paid to a number of organizations that were in that sort of, in those sorts of circumstances. And I I think you’re right that those who have been agile because they faced so much in the past are probably well placed to be able to move forward because they’re really, really lean. And the globe, I think, being totally self-sufficient in the past has just thought to itself, we’re just going to have to try and rebuild our reserves. Shrink down and rebuild and be that, you know, just go back to who we were and move forward from there. And yes, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s a real object lesson in going back to basics and just thinking about, you know, what the essence of your organisation is and staying true to that so that you are lean enough to be able to deliver the absolute essence of it.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s really interesting. And just having a few closing questions which I always ask my guests, and I’d love to ask you. And one would be, what have you learned from some of the setbacks or challenges that you faced in your career?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: There was a point when I was made redundant from Dentons, and I— that was in the 1990s, when the early ’90s, there was quite a bad property recession, and I went home and just thought, okay, well, I’ll go and do something else. I won’t stay in the law. And then the phone started to ring and lots of clients were saying, well, where are you? And, you know, I was sort of in my kitchen and then they said, well, look, you know, we want you to do our work. So the interesting thing there was I realized that, albeit the firm thought I was redundant. The clients didn’t. And what I hadn’t realized was that I’d actually built a relationship that they saw as important. I didn’t realize that I had my own brand, and I was able actually then to just say to them, well, I don’t— I’m afraid I don’t have any insurance, but if I went to another law firm, would you want to ‘Want to come with me?’ And they were basically saying, ‘Yes, I mean, that’s why we’re calling you at home.’ And, you know, I didn’t court them because I genuinely didn’t know that they thought that I was important, because I wasn’t a partner, I was an associate. So I went and worked another firm, and, you know, the clients came, and that was really amazing because it did tell me that I needed to recognize my own self-worth.. And it gave me better resilience, it gave me a recognition of the importance of having a network, which I didn’t even understand really in those days. And then Dentons asked me after a year to come back and help them rebuild a department. Because I’d already you invested, know, sort of over a decade of my life there, I did go back, although I did say to them, I’m not wooing.
Speaker C: The clients back because I think it.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Would be unfair to the firm that had given me a home. So I went, know, you I said, you know me, you’d have to trust me. And I went back and built a practice and was made a partner and did tell me at that stage, because I was then joint head of department, that one needs to sort of future-proof the team as best you can. So I also then created a greater agility by saying we we won’t have all our eggs in one basket. And so we did a wider spectrum of work. We did government procurement work as well, so that we created a resilience within ourselves. So it taught me an awful lot, that particular episode in my life. But probably the most astonishing lesson was the importance of Recognizing your own self-worth and building your own brand.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely. And when you look at any key people that you may remember as influencing you, or maybe, um, putting you on a different direction throughout your life, is there anyone that you can mention?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Yes, absolutely. The people who have been sort of inspirations to me— I mean, obviously my parents, both of whom worked really hard, both of whom understood the importance of public service, and both of whom were very encouraging of the different talents within.
Speaker C: My brothers and myself. And so that taught me something about recognizing what people bring to a team. And my mother always said that people are like the fingers on your hand. They all bring different things. Each finger is a different size, different.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Shape from the other, and yet they.
Speaker C: All contribute to make the hand work. And the smallest, stumpiest is the thumb.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Which is probably probably actually the most.
Speaker C: Useful, which is really interesting. And, and you just allow people to bring their whole selves into the enterprise. So definitely my parents.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: My brother Joe, who sadly died a couple of years ago, was amazingly strong.
Speaker C: He was a fashion designer, and even.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Though the arts are meant to be liberal, fashion was incredibly racist. And Joe was so strong and so uncomplaining. But, um, what I saw him do to try and widen diversity, try and.
Speaker C: Help other young people— just amazing.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: And he’s been my spur for the.
Speaker C: Way I work and try and do the same thing and try and pass the baton on.
Aoifinn Devitt: In terms of any advice or a creed or motto that you live by, is there anything that you can share?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Yes, I would say redress the imbalance and all else will follow. So what I mean by that is try and give improved access to education opportunity to everybody, and you’ll bring the best out in them. And you know, what more can we do in the world than try to bring the best out in other people?
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s so interesting. It reminds me of a podcast I listened to this morning, which was with Daniel Kahneman, and he spoke about the prevailing focus on happiness. And restoring happiness. And he said, I actually take the opposite approach. I focus on misery and trying to eliminate that. And I think that’s— if you eliminate misery, or try, I think you can go very well away to solving many of society’s problems. And I think that what you’re saying is something quite similar.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Absolutely, absolutely. Yes, yes.
Aoifinn Devitt: My last question I ask all my guests is whether they would have any advice for for their younger self. Is there anything that you might advise that young law graduate from Oxford?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Yes, believe better in yourself. Yeah, and I would probably say that to most women as well. I think that we so underestimate our potential.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Margaret. This has been such a rich discussion, and I can’t thank you enough for your ongoing service to not only the sector, the charity sector, but to culture, to third-level education, and to the conversation we’re having today. I think your contributions are so unique, so nuanced, and so very useful. So thank you for sharing your insights here with us.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Oh, it’s my pleasure, Aoifinn. Thank you very, very much for asking me. It’s been an enormous pleasure speaking with you. Thank you.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring inspiring investors and their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for information only and should not be construed as investment or legal advice. All views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations of the host or any guest.
Aoifinn Devitt: This podcast was made possible by the kind support of Guylaine Charles and Charles Law PLLC, a law firm representing clients in the negotiation of a wide range of financial trading agreements based in New York City.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Redress the imbalance and all else will follow. What I mean by that is try and give improved access to education opportunity to everybody, and you’ll bring the best out in them. And you know, what more can we do in the world than try to bring the best out in other people.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investing and beyond by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Dr. Margaret Casely-Hayford CBE, who is Chancellor of Coventry University, a role she has held for close to 4 years. She’s had an extensive career in law, having been a partner at Dentons for close to 20 years, and has held roles as NED of the NHS, as well as, as a special trustee at Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, chair at Shakespeare’s Globe, and as a board member of Co-op, to name just a few. Welcome, Margaret. Thank you for joining me today.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Thank you very much, Aoifinn. It’s really a pleasure to be here. Thank you for asking me.
Aoifinn Devitt: So let’s start with your career journey. You’ve had a fascinating career journey that started with studying law at Oxford Can you talk us through your early career moves, and were there any surprising turns in there?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: It starts off with something probably quite bizarre considering I ended up being a lawyer, in that I really wanted to be a ballet dancer. And so albeit that I was studying law, I had in my heart that I wanted to dance. So what I did was to work in local government legal offices whilst doing dance classes for quite a time, and What that did was gave me an insight to the administration and systems, and probably set me on the pathway for.
Speaker C: Being planning and development lawyer, because that.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Was probably the best example of where the, the system really organises our lives, if you like.
Speaker C: You Because, know, if there are going to be houses, where do you put them? How does that impact on impact on where the people work, and if there are going to be retail developments, where do you put them, and how does that impact on, you know, the people’s.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Ability to access, and so on, and.
Speaker C: Consulting the individual, and so on. And so the interaction of the state with the individual became really stark and really apparent to me, and I just suddenly realized how much I actually enjoyed that. So working in local government actually gave me such an insight, not just into what was possible, but also how individuals ought really to engage more with the system to be able to determine the relevance of our own future. So that’s how I sort of embarked on that, and I went into the planning and development set of chambers and basically realized that I wasn’t very well suited to that, and so went into a city firm of solicitors as a planning and development lawyer, and that’s how I, I got in. To Dentons and we specialized in a lot of retail development. And so, you know, we did a lot of work for Sainsbury, Marks Spencer, Co-op, and Virgin and so on. And so I developed huge insight into how these businesses ran because you obviously, if you’re going to be a decent lawyer, you make it your business to understand the client’s business. And really understanding the client’s business then I think was what gave me the ability to transition into an in-house lawyer in a retail enterprise. And so that’s how, after 20 years Dentons, when I was asked whether I would go into John Lewis Partnership as Director of Legal, it didn’t seem like too mad a transition because I’d been so steeped in, you know, what it is that makes retail development work, what it is that makes a retail enterprise work. And then also because of understanding systems. I understood governance and so on, so all of it, everything seemed to sort of inspire to make that next step not too daunting and somehow logical. So yes, and then I went there for 9 years as Director of Legal Services, which was wonderful because it’s a fantastic organisation.
Aoifinn Devitt: Then you went into a plural or portfolio career role with many board roles and committee roles. When did you make the decision to do that?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Well, in fact, I had been on boards during my time as a solicitor, so it wasn’t just when I retired after being a lawyer, after 30-odd years as a lawyer, that I went on.
Speaker C: To boards, because I’d been on trustee boards.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: You mentioned Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital Charity, and I was also on the Jeffrey Museum whilst I was an associate solicitor. Those were really— gosh, it was such.
Speaker C: A steep learning curve, because at that stage I didn’t know I didn’t know very much about how boards operated, but being a trustee on charity boards is a really great insight into the relationship between the executive and the— I would say those in supervisory, but it’s not so much supervisory support and challenge roles on the board.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: And then when I went to John.
Speaker C: Lewis Partnership, of course, because I was also company secretary, I was obviously involved at board level all that time as well. So all of that gave me a lot of insight, and it was then really not too artificial then to go plural, as they say, once I did retire. And it was fantastic to be given the opportunity to chair ActionAid UK, and not least because it just has such a fantastic ambition to eradicate world poverty global poverty through focusing on the rights of women and girls and helping women and girls out of poverty. So it was just a brilliant time in my life to transition into some great boards and going onto the board of The Co-op after being at John Lewis. Again, there was a logic to it and it was another organization with a fantastic ethic and wonderful values. So I feel I’ve been blessed as well in the transitions that I’ve been enabled to make because I’ve been able to work with organizations that reflect my values.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s an interesting point. I was going to ask you then what you seek to bring to these board and chair roles. What do you think makes an effective chair?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: I suppose starting with an effective chair, one’s got to be able to listen, and becoming chair of ActionAid UK helped.
Speaker C: Me to realize the importance of listening.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: ActionAid challenged itself, saying, if we are promoting the rights of women and girls, are we ourselves a feminist organisation? In other words, do we allow opportunity to those whose interests and opportunities are normally marginalised? And so we realised that there was a really fundamental shift that we had to take in making sure that we checked the way we ran our enterprise so that we opened up opportunity for people to be heard appropriately, for people to be appointed fairly, recognising that even the way in which you set your criteria can at times exclude certain people. So I suppose being a good chair is understanding the ethic of the organisation, working with the ethic of the organisation, really listening to people, giving people the opportunity to bring their whole selves into that boardroom. I’ve been in some boardrooms that have been quite hostile and heard the executive on leaving saying, “Did you survive?” And I think that if people feel like that, then you’re not running the Board appropriately. People should feel supported so that they can come in and really explain what’s happening within the organisation so that the Board can add value in terms of giving the right direction. You can’t give the right direction if you’re not hearing the whole story. And people can feel if they’re frightened or worried and don’t trust. So you— a good chair needs to build trust and a feeling of openness, needs to make sure the organisation recognises who are the key stakeholders. And the key stakeholders, of course, need to include the people working within the organisation all the way through, the employees, as well as those within the supply chain and those who are our neighbours and those who are meant to benefit from the way in which the organisation runs itself. Making sure that there are, I suppose, metrics set so that everybody is aware of how best to protect and promote the interests of the different stakeholders is critical, and in particular making sure that there’s a proper balance between those who are investing their money and want a commercial outturn, and those who are investing their time because they work within the organisation, or those who are impacted by the way in which the organisation operates.
Aoifinn Devitt: That is a very interesting point. Speaking of bringing one’s whole self to the board, what are your thoughts on some of the recent initiatives such as the 30% Club to get more diversity onto boards? Have you seen progress in this respect and do you welcome it?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: There has been progress. It’s very slow. I mean, it’s really interesting that you started off by talking about the 30% Club because, of course, that’s focused on women. And those who champion diversity have done.
Speaker C: Really well in making boards understand the need to bring women onto boards.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: We’ve done less well in widening diversity to ensure that there are ethnic minorities within the pipeline and on the board itself, and even less well to champion the interests of disabled people who can also obviously be sensibly accommodated within enterprises and on boards. And I’m actually quite pleased that now there is a much louder voice on the part of some groups, and there are charters emulating the charter that was set up for women, particularly trying to get women onto boards of the FTSE. The charter that was set up in that regard has been something that’s been copied by, I think, Mary Mativu, who’s a barrister, has done this for ethnic minorities, for Black and minority ethnic people, to try to get them into some of the big corporates in the city and into the bar at higher levels. And I know that Lord Billimoria, Karen Billimoria, has also established a charter for the CBI. And what we need next is to see the charters move into implementation so that it’s not just a statement of, well, we recognize we need to do something, It’s actually articulating what we’re doing is and putting a timeline against it so that everybody else can check the progress that’s being made. Because it’s not systemic at the moment, it isn’t properly monitored. So as a consequence of that, the progress isn’t linear. You’ll get a blip when something goes wrong and everybody gets terribly excited about it, and then it all sort of subsides and disappears. And it can’t be down to one champion CEO or a good-hearted chair, because of course if either of them leaves, resigns, retires, gets run over by a bus, all the good intention disappears with them. It’s got to be systemized and within the enterprise in order for it to take hold and be properly embedded. So Yes, progress, but not fast enough, and in particular moving into making people understand that if you do nothing, you’re actually condoning a negative. And the shift that we’ve seen recently into organisations having to look and think about whether they were actually anti-racist by doing something positive has been a really, really helpful one because it’s made people really think differently. So there’s a lot to do, but we are moving forward.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I want to go back to talk about your current role, but just since we’re on the topic of diversity, you spent over 20 years practicing law and have probably seen quite dramatic shifts in the diversity of that profession during the course of your career. How was it for you in the early days? Were you in an obvious minority in the practice of law, and what kind of progress have you seen there? And where do you think, if you were to give it a scorecard, the legal profession now, how would you think it would rank?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Well, when I was made a partner at Dentons, the Law Society told me that I was the first Black female partner of a City law firm, and I hoped that things would change quite quickly. I think it was 2 years ago I was asked to speak by the Black Solicitors Network to a group of young people who were partners in city law firms, and there must have been about 30 people around the table. And I asked them at the beginning of the meeting how many of them were the only Black partner within their law firm, and apart from one person, every single person put their hand up. And I I just, just couldn’t believe it you that, know, 20 years later the situation was so you feeble, know, in terms of its progress. So there is progress, there is movement, but it’s just glacial, and it’s worrying because one of the things that’s very clear is that until we properly acknowledge the talents of young people, as soon as we give them a chance to recognize that they can become something that gives them confidence in themselves and their peers, they will remain outside of public service because you’ll feel there’s no point in participating because nobody’s going to take me seriously, nobody trusts me, and The interesting thing about that is it does have wider repercussions. We’ve seen it with the pandemic. We’ve seen that Black and minority ethnic people are far less likely even to want to have an injection, a vaccination, because of the lack of trust in the societal structure. And so that’s not only jeopardising the health of the individual, it’s jeopardising the health of the whole community. So, you know, it is really interesting that unless you make people feel part of the community, feel recognized, respected, they won’t trust. And if they don’t trust, the system breaks down. So it has a really, really wide benefit to bring people into the equation, quite apart from the fact that you’re obviously fishing in a wider pool of talent. And there is a, there’s a concept that a number in science and tech world have been discussing, and that’s the invisible Einsteins. And, you know, just on the basis that X percent of any population will be incredibly bright people, if you’re excluding those people from getting into the pipeline, you’re actually limiting your own ability to fish in that pool of talent, which seems ludicrous. And it’s been proved that this is absolutely true. And Tommy Loubey, who started a school in Ghana for girls, because of course girls are least likely to be supported in education if there isn’t money. And it was for really talented girls. And he has found that these young women can take an A-level in one year and get an A*. They, I mean, it’s really just the most remarkable success story, just by virtue of the fact that he’s demonstrating that you can pull people out of the ordinary system and give them support and they will shine. So, you know, we are actually doing ourselves a disservice by not allowing these.
Speaker C: Young people to come through and to participate appropriately.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: And I’m ashamed of the legal profession.
Speaker C: In this country for not actually having.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Moved forward more quickly, but I do.
Speaker C: Recognize that there are some really great people and there is a diversity index and there are law firms like Hogan Lovells and so on that have a really, really good Everest had some good presence on the diversity index, and the work that they’ve been doing has been highly regarded.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: So, you know, it’s happening, it’s, it’s changing.
Speaker C: We just have to keep on asking for metrics and monitoring the metrics so that we can see that the progress is actually moving forward with the right level of impetus behind it and energy.
Aoifinn Devitt: Those are very powerful observations there, and I think you mentioned that the trust and maybe the lack of a take-up of, say, vaccinations, and I think I think that does come down to perhaps lack of role models and lack of examples, say, Black people as doctors on the front lines, you know, actually on television, you know, validating the safety of these vaccines. It really takes— I think there has to be an element of role modelling as well, and even more reason for the professions to become more visibly diverse. So thank you very much for those thoughts.
Speaker C: There are huge numbers of Black and minority ethnic doctors, of course, In fact, it’s almost criminal how many there are here by comparison to the countries from which their forebears.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: But your point about there not being high profile is a really good one, and there is a tendency to use.
Speaker C: The Black and minority ethnic people almost as cannon fodder, and you, you never get them to go into the high-profile roles, you never get them them to be the spokespeople. And it’s that, it’s the lack of visibility that makes people not trust the system, because they know perfectly well that their brothers and sisters are going into the profession. But if they’re not being treated well, it makes one not have trust in the system. So that is actually a really important point.
Aoifinn Devitt: Just going back to, to the role of charities, I’d love to ask you currently Clearly many of these charities are going to be suffering some severe stress at the time of COVID and what have the charities you’ve been working with, how have they been coping with the current strain?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: The theatre world has been probably quite well publicised. As you know, I’m chair of Shakespeare’s Globe, and we have— the Globe runs two types of enterprise really, in that we’ve got an education education an side as well as a performance side, and the education side runs workshops for schools, it runs performances as well as the research and graduate and postgraduate level through relationships with King’s College London and Guildhall. And we transitioned quite dramatically online, and for the education side we ran almost industrial-scale workshops, which I think were really well received by parents and teachers. But obviously we haven’t been able to open, and what a number of people didn’t realize until that first lockdown was that we don’t get any government subsidy as a charity. So we’re wholly 100% reliant on either donations or our own revenue-generating capability through people coming through the doors. And once the doors were closed, that was really worrying, and we had significant reserves just through the prudent organisation of the Chief Executive and finance team. We lived on the reserves for as long as we could, and then it got really difficult. We had to rely on government furlough, and then we made a pitch for government support, and we were We were so fortunate in being given £3 million, almost £2.9 million, towards the end of last year, which helped enormously. But by then we’d had to cease our operations so considerably that we just had a few socially distanced performances on the indoor stage of the Wanamaker Playhouse, which we live-streamed and hoped that people would give us some donations, and we— the public have been fantastic in supporting us. But obviously, as I think people’s budgets got tighter, less and less money came in. So that was really nerve-wracking. But we’re looking forward to being able to open up in this summer. We’ll start rehearsing very shortly, and hopefully with the government loan that we’ve managed to secure, we’ll be able to limp on until we can open the doors throw them open, and we hope that then people can come in in significant numbers. I mean, we still obviously can’t get people in maximum capacity because of social distancing, so even when we open, it’ll be some time before we can generate the sort of income that we need to keep the full contingent of people that we would like to have and to bring back all our freelancers. The The university I’m chancellor of, Coventry University, has an incredibly visionary chief executive.
Speaker C: And he had already moved the organization 2 or 3 years ago towards blended education. In other words, some of it on campus live, so to speak, and some of it online. And so because we already had that online capability, For us, transitioning online wasn’t nearly as dramatic as it’s been for some of our sister organisations, and I know that students have found online tuition really easy to access. And then we— I think probably because we had this sort of advantage of being ahead of people, ahead of the game, we were able to think about things like how do you create that, the community ’cause that’s what being at university is all about. It’s not just the education side of it, it’s also being part of the community. So for example, we have a brilliant.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Scheme of sort of peer-to-peer discussions about the quality of tuition, and it’s run.
Speaker C: By a specific piece of software, and it’s almost like TripAdvisor for tutors.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: This must be pretty nerve-wracking for the.
Speaker C: Tutors, but apparently they get some really great feedback from the young people. And if they get— if there’s part of something that they’re doing that gets really brilliant feedback, they know that they.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Should do more of that.
Speaker C: And that helps the community because they all discuss it amongst themselves. And so even though it’s obviously not the sort of on-campus, let’s all go for a drink sort of discussion, it still creates a degree of vibrancy that’s not just, oh, let’s just get our heads down and get stuck into this work. And we partnered a particular enterprise that’s enabled this community to work. So we’re quite ahead, but it doesn’t mean that we haven’t suffered financially. I mean, Brexit is utterly terrifying for universities because so much of our income.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Came from students from Europe feeling that.
Speaker C: They can come over here and work easily and study quite readily and move backwards and forwards across the the borders. So that’s going to create a big hole.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Then another big hole will be just.
Speaker C: Post-Pandemic, because of you course, know, we’re not going to get the free flow of people traveling for quite some time. So again, even if we come to useful arrangements such as substitution for the Erasmus scheme of student exchange to Turin, even if that works really well, and I don’t know how well that is going to work, it will be time before there’s confidence and people are back traveling with ease again. So all of that is going to put quite a lot of pressure on us, and so, you know, we have to tighten our belt quite dramatically, and.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: It’S quite difficult explaining to parents and students the tuition is the tuition, and so even though it’s not on campus, we’ve still got to pay the tutors and professors, you know, in the same way to prepare it and to give the courses. And so there’s quite a lot of dialogue within the university sector going on about, you know, should people be able to claw back And that is quite a nerve-wracking thing because not knowing where that will land is something that we have to prepare ourselves for. So yes, that’s another sector. I’ve supported a charity called the London Russian Ballet School, and they were so wonderful in last year taking some of their fabulous performances up to Manchester with Manchester Academy Schools and supported by the Co-op. And so I just thought it’d be great to get them to perform for some of the Academy Schools. And there’s a really, really heartening video of people coming out of one of the performances and just saying it’s so great to see this sort of thing up here in Manchester because, you know, it always tends to, to be down in London and the Southeast. And sadly, that ballet school has folded. They couldn’t survive the last year because the pressure was just too much financially. And so quite a wide range of impact on the different enterprises. Really, really sad. But Chineke Orchestra, which as you know is the only Black and minority ethnic orchestra in the country, of which I’m supportive as going well and has just launched a new scheme, a new foundation for supporting people going into auditions, and that was announced just last week. So we’re very excited about that, and numbers of orchestras have got behind that and tried to help us to move forward so that we could see more blind auditions, greater support for people when they’re trying to prepare for auditions. And travel and so on. And so yeah, that’s a really exciting scheme and it’s great to see that launched even despite the downturn. People have got behind it and we will try and boost its presence so that people have a greater awareness of it. So yeah, it’s just such an incredibly wide range of different impacts on the charities.
Aoifinn Devitt: When you’re talking there, it reminds me of a podcast I held with some small business owners. I was really acutely focused on the impact of the pandemic on their businesses. Some of them just got up and running, literally just opened right before the pandemic hit. What actually surprised me, but probably shouldn’t have, was how ultimately how scrappy some of these businesses were anyway. Because they were used— some of them had been going for 10 years. They’d been through multiple recessions or setbacks. They were forced to survive and they were fairly lean. This was just yet another setback. So they were actually more resilient than I had thought, probably because their expectations were set fairly low and they were used to volatility. It could be that some of the charities you mentioned— some, obviously not all, but some— maybe also have a similar track record in that they’ve been used to a fairly amount of struggle. So obviously the pandemic— I think that’s.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: A really good point, it’s a really, really good point. And before the pandemic, a lot of discussion in some of the economic papers about zombie companies and zombie enterprises that, because interest rates are so low, have sort of limped on in spite of the fact that they hadn’t done enough to trim the fat and to make sure that they were sufficiently resilient. And I think that the pandemic will have put paid to a number of organizations that were in that sort of, in those sorts of circumstances. And I I think you’re right that those who have been agile because they faced so much in the past are probably well placed to be able to move forward because they’re really, really lean. And the globe, I think, being totally self-sufficient in the past has just thought to itself, we’re just going to have to try and rebuild our reserves. Shrink down and rebuild and be that, you know, just go back to who we were and move forward from there. And yes, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s a real object lesson in going back to basics and just thinking about, you know, what the essence of your organisation is and staying true to that so that you are lean enough to be able to deliver the absolute essence of it.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s really interesting. And just having a few closing questions which I always ask my guests, and I’d love to ask you. And one would be, what have you learned from some of the setbacks or challenges that you faced in your career?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: There was a point when I was made redundant from Dentons, and I— that was in the 1990s, when the early ’90s, there was quite a bad property recession, and I went home and just thought, okay, well, I’ll go and do something else. I won’t stay in the law. And then the phone started to ring and lots of clients were saying, well, where are you? And, you know, I was sort of in my kitchen and then they said, well, look, you know, we want you to do our work. So the interesting thing there was I realized that, albeit the firm thought I was redundant. The clients didn’t. And what I hadn’t realized was that I’d actually built a relationship that they saw as important. I didn’t realize that I had my own brand, and I was able actually then to just say to them, well, I don’t— I’m afraid I don’t have any insurance, but if I went to another law firm, would you want to ‘Want to come with me?’ And they were basically saying, ‘Yes, I mean, that’s why we’re calling you at home.’ And, you know, I didn’t court them because I genuinely didn’t know that they thought that I was important, because I wasn’t a partner, I was an associate. So I went and worked another firm, and, you know, the clients came, and that was really amazing because it did tell me that I needed to recognize my own self-worth.. And it gave me better resilience, it gave me a recognition of the importance of having a network, which I didn’t even understand really in those days. And then Dentons asked me after a year to come back and help them rebuild a department. Because I’d already you invested, know, sort of over a decade of my life there, I did go back, although I did say to them, I’m not wooing.
Speaker C: The clients back because I think it.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Would be unfair to the firm that had given me a home. So I went, know, you I said, you know me, you’d have to trust me. And I went back and built a practice and was made a partner and did tell me at that stage, because I was then joint head of department, that one needs to sort of future-proof the team as best you can. So I also then created a greater agility by saying we we won’t have all our eggs in one basket. And so we did a wider spectrum of work. We did government procurement work as well, so that we created a resilience within ourselves. So it taught me an awful lot, that particular episode in my life. But probably the most astonishing lesson was the importance of Recognizing your own self-worth and building your own brand.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely. And when you look at any key people that you may remember as influencing you, or maybe, um, putting you on a different direction throughout your life, is there anyone that you can mention?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Yes, absolutely. The people who have been sort of inspirations to me— I mean, obviously my parents, both of whom worked really hard, both of whom understood the importance of public service, and both of whom were very encouraging of the different talents within.
Speaker C: My brothers and myself. And so that taught me something about recognizing what people bring to a team. And my mother always said that people are like the fingers on your hand. They all bring different things. Each finger is a different size, different.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Shape from the other, and yet they.
Speaker C: All contribute to make the hand work. And the smallest, stumpiest is the thumb.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Which is probably probably actually the most.
Speaker C: Useful, which is really interesting. And, and you just allow people to bring their whole selves into the enterprise. So definitely my parents.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: My brother Joe, who sadly died a couple of years ago, was amazingly strong.
Speaker C: He was a fashion designer, and even.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Though the arts are meant to be liberal, fashion was incredibly racist. And Joe was so strong and so uncomplaining. But, um, what I saw him do to try and widen diversity, try and.
Speaker C: Help other young people— just amazing.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: And he’s been my spur for the.
Speaker C: Way I work and try and do the same thing and try and pass the baton on.
Aoifinn Devitt: In terms of any advice or a creed or motto that you live by, is there anything that you can share?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Yes, I would say redress the imbalance and all else will follow. So what I mean by that is try and give improved access to education opportunity to everybody, and you’ll bring the best out in them. And you know, what more can we do in the world than try to bring the best out in other people?
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s so interesting. It reminds me of a podcast I listened to this morning, which was with Daniel Kahneman, and he spoke about the prevailing focus on happiness. And restoring happiness. And he said, I actually take the opposite approach. I focus on misery and trying to eliminate that. And I think that’s— if you eliminate misery, or try, I think you can go very well away to solving many of society’s problems. And I think that what you’re saying is something quite similar.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Absolutely, absolutely. Yes, yes.
Aoifinn Devitt: My last question I ask all my guests is whether they would have any advice for for their younger self. Is there anything that you might advise that young law graduate from Oxford?
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Yes, believe better in yourself. Yeah, and I would probably say that to most women as well. I think that we so underestimate our potential.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Margaret. This has been such a rich discussion, and I can’t thank you enough for your ongoing service to not only the sector, the charity sector, but to culture, to third-level education, and to the conversation we’re having today. I think your contributions are so unique, so nuanced, and so very useful. So thank you for sharing your insights here with us.
Margaret Casely-Hayford: Oh, it’s my pleasure, Aoifinn. Thank you very, very much for asking me. It’s been an enormous pleasure speaking with you. Thank you.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring inspiring investors and their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for information only and should not be construed as investment or legal advice. All views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations of the host or any guest.
