Carole Edmond: How Your Upbringing Shapes You and Your Success

0:04
With us today is Carol Edmond.

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She has over 30 years of experience working in healthcare and childcare.

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She’s a strategic advisor for Kids Connect and the founder of Glass Moon Groups known for disrupting diverse industries with their forward thinking to change the status quo.

0:20
Thank you so much for being here today, Carol, And I’d love to kick off this episode with talking about your upbringing and how it shaped you to be the successful woman that you are today.

0:32
Well, firstly, thank you very much for having me join you on the podcast.

0:35
It’s a real pleasure to be here.

0:37
And I think that’s that’s such a such a great question to start with.

0:41
It’s also very broad questions.

0:43
I’ll try and keep this this answer relatively short.

0:46
I think my upbringing’s definitely shaped me.

0:49
And I think sometimes you don’t realise how much until you’re sort of reviewing your life sort of and, and looking backwards.

0:56
But certainly I come from pretty humble beginnings brought up by a a single mum.

1:02
It’s a very working class family in Scotland in a, in a council house, went to state school.

1:09
My mum had to drop out of the workforce when she was 40 due to she had rheumatoid arthritis and was and was pretty I’ll and how my dad divorced.

1:18
And I think we went, we went through a quite a kind of tough time in terms of financially and, and how she was because she was a really bright lady, not able to work.

1:29
But thankfully I went to an incredible high school that didn’t have the best academic results, but it had incredible resources and opportunities in terms of what you actually got to do at school.

1:39
And so I think a combination of my family of origin in terms of those sort of humble, hard knocked beginnings, great opportunities at at school kind of shaped some of my entrepreneurial spirit, I think.

1:55
I think because we had literally had no money when I was a kid, I started delivering newspapers at 13.

1:59
So I’ve got that sort of entrepreneurial newspaper delivery girl aged 13, worked in a supermarket at 16.

2:06
And then my sort of aspirations to go to university couldn’t really be followed through because, you know, finances was a real issue.

2:15
But also from a social conditioning perspective, there just wasn’t an expectation that anybody in our family was going to go to university and the first person to go wasn’t wasn’t going to be one of the girls and the family.

2:26
So I went into the full time labour market, age 17 in a steel stockyard.

2:33
And, and that was a bit of a bit of a shock to the system.

2:35
I did that for a year and then I had what turned out to be a very life changing opportunity to join Bupa when I was 18.

2:44
And that led to the next sort of 20 years of incredible career opportunities, which is how I found my way into childcare and early education.

2:53
It it’s sad sometimes to say, like our own family members and securities are projected onto US.

2:59
And sometimes, you know, we lack the support from our own family members, which I feel is something that we so crucially need in order to push ourselves and have sometimes have that motivation.

3:09
But not all of us have family members that are supportive.

3:12
And, you know, we have to, you know, carry out that drive on our own merit.

3:17
Definitely.

3:17
I mean, until I mean, just just coming back in, in terms of your, your point there, I think you’re absolutely right.

3:23
I think sometimes our family of origin don’t necessarily always set us up for life and for the greatest sort of life opportunities.

3:32
But I’m by the same token, I’m a big believer in if, if you sort of look at what’s happened to you and even if there’s been, you know, limiting beliefs or adversity in your in your early years, it’s not what’s happened.

3:43
It’s how, what you can do with that and how you can as you kind of mature into adulthood, how you can use that to your advantage, which isn’t always easy and it isn’t always available to, to everybody.

3:55
But I think it’s a, it’s a good point in terms of a family of origin doesn’t always set us up well.

4:00
And I think it’s why I became a really big sort of advocate for for the early years and for education more broadly in terms of if you haven’t got the, you know, the best family, yeah, environment, it’s how can early years.

4:13
So how can nursery, for example, how can the school system, you know, support be part of that, you know, broader, broader way to kind of shape people sort of going forward?

4:26
And so in terms of your question about Bupa, absolutely it became a, a life changing opportunity in terms of when I joined them at 18.

4:35
I worked in the Edinburgh office in BIPA for five years, was promoted a number of times.

4:40
People just saw potential that I didn’t even know I had because my, you know, I had a very strong work ethic, which I think makes, you know, made a big difference certainly in in those days and worked for some incredible people who just saw potential and gave me opportunities.

4:54
And I took every opportunity available, including sort of creating my own one.

5:00
When I was 23, I wrote to directors in London to say, look, you know, I think we could be doing something better in Bupa in relation to how the how the back office sales function was structured.

5:12
Never thinking I’d hear from him again.

5:14
I call it my kind of letter to London.

5:16
Anyway, a few days later got a phone call to say we like your thinking, could you come and talk to us?

5:21
So I flew down to London, had a conversation and literally went back to Edinburgh, packed a bag and came back.

5:27
And that was over 30 years ago.

5:29
Wow.

5:30
So would you say Bhupa was that starting point that absolutely changed the direction your life was headed?

5:36
Yeah, I think so.

5:37
And I think, I think companies can, can create life changing opportunities in terms of, you know, the work environment and work opportunities.

5:46
And certainly for me, coming from those sort of working class humble beginnings, Bupa sort of opens my eyes to, to opportunities to learning, to figuring out how you could actually use your, your talents and skills that, you know, when you’re in your sort of early 20s, you don’t always necessarily know what you’re good at and what you’re going to go on and do.

6:10
But I just had different opportunities and different met different people that shaped my thinking.

6:16
That then made me think, OK, what can I do next?

6:19
But I think my main motivation and this has been a defining part of my career is about being in service to other people.

6:26
In terms of in Bupa, it was very clear, particularly when I came to London was we were doing this for the customer.

6:33
And in healthcare, the ultimate customer is somebody who’s, you know, certainly in health insurance, struggling with their health or, or needs an operation, needs treatment.

6:43
And I think once I said it latched onto the, you can make a difference for people who are in need from a healthcare perspective or, you know, or, or childcare or social care.

6:54
That was a massively motivating factor that really trapped, tapped into something intrinsically for me around my, my purpose, my passion, my why.

7:02
And I think I developed that in my mid 20s and my career in Bupa.

7:06
And once I had that dot connected around, that was something that was usually motivating for me.

7:11
And if you’re in the right environment with the right people who are supportive and encouraging and inclusive, and it does your background doesn’t matter.

7:21
They create opportunities to, to go on and do things that you, you didn’t necessarily imagine yourself doing, but you, but you, you take them forward.

7:29
Wow, yeah, that’s, that’s quite life changing.

7:33
And I resonate with you on you create your own opportunities.

7:36
Sometimes they’re not always handed to you.

7:38
So I, I definitely believe that if anyone’s listening out there, you know, to not limit yourself based off what you have, go out there and explore, you know, and see what opportunities you could seize.

7:48
And so how did so so from Bhupa then what was your next step or next role?

7:53
It’s is that when you worked with Bright Horizons?

7:56
Was it did you?

7:58
Yeah.

7:58
So, So what took me into sort of early education was I’d worked for Bupa for about 10 years at that stage, had an, an amazing career from sort of age 18 to 28.

8:08
I’d done some, I’d done a diploma in management studies through the Open University.

8:12
So I’d had a little bit of a taste of, you know, great work experience doing a bit of academic study.

8:19
And actually I’d been headhunted to go and work for, for one of the big banks, which I’m, I’m so grateful that, that I didn’t follow that path.

8:26
But what is that?

8:28
Because I just don’t think financial services and the banking industry would have been for me.

8:34
But I was, I was 27 at this stage.

8:37
I’d I’d worked in different parts of Bupa by that time.

8:40
I’d been down in London maybe four years and I’d been running a really big systems project which had given me most incredible experience about back office functions, about front ends, about data.

8:53
I mean, we were doing some tech developments and, and whole scale sort of organisational change that as a 27 year old middle manager was an incredible opportunity to get that experience.

9:05
And I think after 10 years it was, you know, I thought it’s time to kind of go and, and, and, and move to a different sector.

9:11
Anyway, we had a, a woman who joined at senior level in, in BIPA And so I think it was 96.

9:18
I’d got a N through her induction.

9:19
Anyway, she was the the next sort of CEO designate and it was the first female CEO BIPA had had.

9:25
And it’s back then I think 4050 years.

9:28
And she was working one with two kids.

9:30
And I’d got to know her through when she joined the organisation because I was running this big project and it was pretty high profile.

9:36
So when she heard I was leaving, she wanted to do a an exit conversation.

9:39
And so I remember turning up in her office one Friday afternoon, slightly jaded from a night out before with the the, the tech guys from this.

9:49
Yeah, but especially when we were running a big tech project and some of these guys were working 18 hour days.

9:54
And she said to me, you know, it was a master class in how to talk to somebody about, you know, the kind of career and where it was going and what you really wanted to do.

10:02
And, and towards the end of that conversation, she said to me, look, I think Bupa had just, you know, stretching the brand into the aged care market in terms of care homes.

10:11
And she said, I think there’s a real opportunity for us to stretch the Bupa brand into, to support families and young children.

10:17
And, and I think we should look at childcare.

10:20
And this was 1997.

10:21
There was no real market.

10:22
There weren’t any big chains at that point.

10:24
So when she was pitching this to you or, or having this chat with you, how did you feel about it?

10:30
Well, as I said, I was, I was slightly hungover.

10:32
So it was probably a good time of having the conversation actually, because I was a bit like, you know, childcare.

10:38
I’m 27, I don’t really kids, I actually don’t even really know what you’re talking about.

10:43
But sort of Long story short with that, I just, there was something about the conversation that stuck in my head and it sort of rattled around my head for a for a sort of few days.

10:52
I’d had to go back.

10:53
We’d had a family bereavement literally that that night I’d had to go back to Scotland for a few days and then gone back to my kind of hometown and my roots.

11:01
Something clicked into place for me that I can’t quite explain.

11:04
Some sort of dot connected around.

11:06
It was my, my granny had died and, and when I came back, the CEO or CEO to be sort of, sort of persevered with this and she sent the HR director out to see me.

11:18
And it was, it was one of those kind of look back now.

11:22
It was a life changing moment because I agreed to stay and I agreed to start research on the childcare market and literally started with a blank bit of paper.

11:30
We did it ourself.

11:31
We didn’t bring in any of the big consultancies.

11:34
And my very first nursery visit out to see what was happening was, was a Teddy’s nursery who we then subsequently 2 years later went on and bought, bought the group.

11:45
But my starting point was blank bit of paper.

11:47
We created the spectrum of childcare that was going to be everything from supporting families around sort of if there was problems with sort of infertility and and conception.

11:56
Because BIPA obviously was a, a healthcare company right the way through to supporting families with teenagers.

12:03
And even back then, it was obvious that families would need support around those teenage years and mental health and things, even though that was very much ahead of its time.

12:11
And it was a just all kind of intertwined in the end, like social work, health care and families.

12:15
Yeah, it was what, when I went out and did the market sort of research, it was really obvious that care, education, supporting families.

12:24
Now you’ve got to remember this was 98.

12:25
So this was prethe.com era, pre kind of the Internet apps, all, you know, digital content, data, all that stuff.

12:33
But some of those fundamentals that are still so crucial in the early year sector around how do you create great provision?

12:40
How do you make it accessible and inclusive?

12:42
How do you give give children the best start in life and how do you support families to do that?

12:47
How do you support working?

12:49
Yeah, well, I think, you know, any family because I think we, one of the things that came through, I remember when we were doing the research at the time and it was before I had my daughter.

12:56
So I had no concept of this in terms of in my sort of personal life was we talked to a lot of parents who were what was described back then as cash rich and time poor.

13:08
So they had money, they had the, you know, dual family disposable income, but they were juggling, you know, professional lives and careers and jobs and trying to raise children.

13:18
And So what really struck me was how do you create a proposition early years where you’ve got high quality childcare that isn’t just the bricks and mortar support, but there’s there’s, you know, content for parenting.

13:29
There’s, you know, actually potentially using the assets as the weekend to provide like clubs and, and, and that sort of thing.

13:38
Yeah, it was all about really high quality provision so that you get it right for the children in terms of improving outcomes and the early years experience for the for the child who at the end of the day as the as the day-to-day end user.

13:49
But also, you know, it was really clear to me that parents needed support.

13:53
You know, I’m talking 26 years ago, but you know, the market fundamentals around building an infrastructure that support working parents.

14:01
And it’s still the case 26 years later that the, the primary carer is, is the mother, you know, So how do you support mums and, and dads, you know, and, and grandparents in terms of creating this network where you’ve got really good quality provision, but you’ve got the opportunity to provide this kind of 24/7.

14:18
And of course, as you know, as times evolved in the last 26 years and, and what’s happened from a tech point of view and, and what’s available now in terms of connecting with parents, whether that’s, you know, content, being able to see how their child’s day is.

14:32
It’s just evolved in a way that back then it was really obvious.

14:36
Yeah, it’s transformed a lot, especially with the help of technology.

14:40
And absolutely.

14:40
But back then you could just see the potential for that, even though, you know, we didn’t know what the technology was going to look like and things.

14:46
So but yeah, I just had this amazing opportunity to to develop this market entry strategy.

14:51
I remember doing the board presentation in Edinburgh.

14:55
I am ironically back in my sort of home in town and asking for a sort of 2 million budget which working class will ask from Scotland.

15:01
That felt like a lot of money and they still feels like a club.

15:05
Yeah, it is.

15:05
Yeah, possibly 12 million.

15:08
Yeah.

15:09
To develop to do this or host an event like no, absolutely.

15:13
But, but, but the point of that story is I kind of went in and, and with this sort of modest request in terms of, you know, to get to get going and buy some companies and, and develop the market entry strategy.

15:25
And I must have pitched this idea so well.

15:27
And I think there’s something in there about really believing, doing the research, know what you’re talking about and then develop a kind of passion and almost sort of unwavering belief in what you’re doing because that’s what I presented on that day.

15:38
And they said, no, we’re not going to give you 2 million, we’re going to give you 5.

15:42
And I remember coming out there just, you know, thinking almost.

15:47
Yeah.

15:47
Well, exactly.

15:48
Well, there is, you know, there is something about I don’t think I’ve ever under asked for anything.

15:52
I think I’ve always been, you know, that kind of gave me the confidence to say, hey, you know, if you believe in something at, you know, ask, you know, make the ask.

15:59
But you know, coming out of there, we literally bought the first company, which was a, it was a very small business to business company.

16:07
Keep bringing it back just a bit.

16:09
So, you know, you’re saying like it’s important to believe in oneself.

16:13
Did you really believe that you were, you know, you were capable of executing this?

16:19
Like from the moment that you pitched it?

16:20
Did you have that confidence?

16:21
Like did you go in there saying like, I absolutely know what I’m doing or gosh, no, absolutely not.

16:27
But I’ve got, I mean, my, my, my granny used to say that I could start an argument in an empty house from the age of seven.

16:34
Now, what I’ve kind of taken that to mean in terms of if I really believe in something, I will stand up for it and I will fight and I will make the point and I will stand even if I, I’m potentially go to, you know, that could get me into trouble.

16:46
Or, you know, if I think about that, whether that’s a strength or a talent OR, or no, in corporate life, you can use up social capital by really standing up for what you believe in, especially if you’re a woman.

16:59
You know, men are expected to have kind of agency and do this and they go, oh, look, I’m, you know, doing this thing.

17:03
Whereas women, sometimes we can make ourselves very, very unpopular if we are vocal about what we really believe in.

17:10
And I think having researched the market and as I say, it was Primi being a mum, that was just something so, so powerful about this opportunity to create something that got it right for for children in their early years.

17:24
And the opportunity to create this infrastructure that could support mums, you know, and dads.

17:30
But typically dads would be the breadwinner in those days.

17:33
And I think because my mum had had to drop out of the labour market, OK, it was for health related reasons rather than barriers around childcare.

17:41
There was just something in that for me around playing a part in developing the social infrastructure in this country that enabled parents to work and particularly women to get into the workforce.

17:52
That really tapped into my kind of family of origin story around, gosh, if I could play a part in terms of creating, you know, infrastructure that helps give children the best start in life.

18:03
That was important to me.

18:04
But also the infrastructure to support working families and in particular women to participate in the labour market.

18:10
There was just something massively motivating and and there wasn’t a sort of intrinsic motivation.

18:17
And that that at the time I’m not sure I could have articulated.

18:20
But now looking back, reflecting on that opportunity, did, did I think I was going to be the one that was necessarily going to take it forward?

18:28
Not, not, not especially, you know, the the CEO had said to me, you know, if you’re any good, you can run it.

18:34
And I thought you had never done anything like this before, right?

18:38
Especially working with such a massive budget.

18:40
Yeah.

18:41
But I think when, when people can see sort of potential and, and scope in, in you and especially I think, you know, and, and it’s never, you know, it’s never a single effort.

18:52
It’s never one person that creates a business.

18:55
You know, I was very lucky and as much as I was then able to, you know, get some people to come and join me on the, on the team and work with me in those very early stages.

19:03
And I was lucky that I had that pot of money and we could go out and we could start to do acquisition work.

19:09
So we bought one company, very small organisation called Company Kids and then we bought 1 nursery and I spent quite a bit of time in that nursery ’cause I didn’t know anything about nurseries and it was even pre Ofsted at that stage.

19:23
So it was still when they were, you know, sort of governed by local authorities.

19:26
And then and then Ofsted, the regulations changed and Ofsted was then the regulator.

19:31
And then we bought Teddy’s Nurseries, which was 18 nurseries.

19:35
And that was the biggest acquisition that I’d done.

19:37
And I worked with the founders of that organisation, one for a year, the other one for a couple of years.

19:43
And that gave me that sort of general management experience of how do you run an organisation, how do you look at the different parts of it.

19:50
We acquired other nurseries and we grew organically in terms of brand new nurseries and we went on a growth trajectory and then five years after.

20:00
We got going actually 5-6 years, the CEO who’d been the big backer of that business and Bupa retired and the person that took over just did not have an affinity with Bupa operating in that sector and believed there was, you know, sort of we’d never get to materiality in terms of we’d never scale it big enough to be, you know, to be a sort of viable division.

20:22
And also, I think there’s a, you know, a worry around reputational risk because Bipa’s a very well brand name, known brand name in the UK.

20:29
And so the decision was made to sell the business.

20:32
And I was pregnant at the time.

20:33
I was seven months pregnant and I was asked if I wanted to do an MBO.

20:37
So management buy outs so we would buy the company.

20:40
And I remember looking at my belly being seven months pregnant and going, I’m not sure this is the greatest timing to do this.

20:48
And so we didn’t, the management team didn’t buy the company I literally was in was in labour when I was finishing documents for the information memorandum to sell the company.

20:58
And I remember sending the, you know, the document off to the corporate finance team in Bupa and say, no, I’m not going to be available for the rest of the day.

21:05
And the person who received it in Bupa said she must be in labour.

21:09
I was just going to ask you.

21:10
I was like, is that because you were going into?

21:12
Yeah, I was literally in labour.

21:13
I never forget typing this document and breathing through my contractions.

21:17
And she was pregnant, actually herself a few months behind me.

21:20
And she said to, you know, the rest of the guys and the team, she must be in labour.

21:24
And they were like, how would you know that?

21:25
And she said she’s never, ever unavailable.

21:29
You know, she works, you know, working so exactly.

21:32
And, and sure enough, the next morning they got an e-mail to say, oh, I had the baby at midnight, you know, last night.

21:38
And yeah, I mean, literally after seven days, I was back on the phone doing calls in terms because we were getting the business ready for sale.

21:44
At that point.

21:46
I had a very short maternity leave, came back and my my daughter went into nursery at sort of 3-4 months old.

21:53
So then I became a customer of my own business, which was incredible in terms of, you know, you’re running the organisation, you’re leading the organisation, working with these incredible childcare practitioners, you know, early educators and from a professional perspective, but you’re also a customer.

22:11
But no more than ever you could actually relate to.

22:13
Yeah, absolutely.

22:15
Parents, absolutely.

22:16
And, and I think it was tough for the team because the nursery that my daughter was at was right next to where the office was in Twickenham.

22:22
And I was always the last customer to, to run in the door at like 1 minute to six.

22:27
And then when I obviously have a conversation about how the day had been.

22:30
And quite often they’d say, hi, are you asking us about Amber’s day or are you asking us with your MD hat on in terms of, because I could never stop thinking about it from a kind of, from a customer perspective.

22:41
And, and how could we improve?

22:43
Exactly, right, exactly right.

22:45
But it was, but I, Amber and I recorded a podcast just before Christmas in terms of, you know, her Gen Y, Gen X experience, kind of mum daughter.

22:55
And you know, she’s very kind about my sort of parenting skills.

22:58
But I 100% can say that I did the best I could.

23:03
And a lot of that was supported by working with incredible early years practitioners in terms of same, seeing what they did on a day-to-day basis in the nursery and learning from them.

23:12
And that absolutely shaped my parenting abilities and, and how I raised my daughter, just having these incredible people, you know, around me sort of it felt kind of 24/7 in terms of growing the business.

23:25
And we, we ran Teddies for another gosh.

23:28
So, So yeah, I was pregnant when we put the business on the market for sale originally.

23:33
And Amber was 4 or no five.

23:35
I think actually when we finally sold it, it took us five years.

23:38
I mean, we went to side of the business, you know.

23:41
Yeah, exactly.

23:42
Well, she actually started, she was in reception year.

23:45
And we used to joke in terms of saying, gosh, it’s taken us so long to sell this business and we’ve been through so many sale processes with different potential buyers before Bright Horizons showed up, I used to say, gosh, if this goes on much longer, she’ll be she’ll be at university by the time we sell this business.

24:00
Yeah.

24:00
But that was.

24:01
But again, that experience of, of being a parent and being a customer of your own business was, was life shaping for me.

24:07
And I’m so grateful to, you know, the team for their, you know, for their kind of patience and willingness to sort of support me both from a parental perspective, but also indulge me when I was there asking questions which were really about process improvement or how could we do things differently at the handover giving.

24:22
Is that true?

24:23
Like inside scoop of, you know, the day-to-day functionalities of a of a nursery?

24:28
Yeah, absolutely.

24:29
And I was used to say, you know, it’s not just about the the nursery day between 8:00 and 6:00.

24:33
If we’re doing our, our job properly and, and they are the year sector, we should be enriching the whole parenting experience because there should be a transfer of not just information about how a child’s day’s been and you know, and what their next steps are from a, from a learning outcomes or learning objectives perspective.

24:50
But we should be helping to upscale parents with all this incredible amount of knowledge that, you know, our educators have in the sector and passing that information on so that we can make the parenting experience a bit more enjoyable.

25:02
And, but also when parents are at home with their children that, you know, they can take some of the stuff that, you know, the child’s doing at nursery or just the way that things are approached from AI mean.

25:11
I’m not a big fan of like that’s where technology plays a big role in shaping that parent columns, you know, like that, that relationship because again, something that I’ve mentioned previously in other podcasts is, you know, nurseries tend to be a child, second home, second family.

25:25
And improving that relationship will, you know, help also with nurseries and their profitability and retaining, you know, or like getting more parents in the door and and then just giving them that support outside of the nursery as well is, is really important.

25:38
It’s huge.

25:39
I mean, it makes the proposition 24/7.

25:41
Yeah.

25:42
And I think we’re back in 98.

25:44
You could see the potential for that.

25:45
How do you, how do you extend that relationship, that customer relationship when the nurseries doors are closed, you know, you know, or the weekend, how do you have, have, have that kind of relational working relational partnership in terms of you, you know, you’ve not just got your child in a nursery, whether it’s 7 to 7 to 8 or 6, whatever the sessional attendance is, you’ve got this collaboration, you’ve got this partnership, you’ve got this willingness.

26:12
Absolutely, yes, absolutely.

26:14
That’s in the best interest of the child, obviously, because that’s the, the primary, you know, the priority, but it’s also supporting that parenting journey and making it a little bit easier.

26:23
Or, you know, and whether that’s around, you know, basic things like parenting advice around, you know, weaning or potty training or getting a child ready for school.

26:32
Or how do you cope with the, you know, when you realise your child can actually dress themselves in the morning and you know, you don’t have to have that argument over getting dressed and what to wear and things.

26:40
And, and, you know, through to just, you know, just figuring out, can you afford the nursery fees?

26:45
And, and I think that’s where technology and data and making it as accessible to parents as possible.

26:51
And from a self-service perspective is where that’s been hugely game changing.

26:55
And, and it’s one of the reasons why I love working with kids Connect in terms of that ability to, to, to widen that opportunity and that relationship with parents to just make it that a little bit easier.

27:06
And how many how long have you been with Kids connect?

27:09
So I joined the board, gosh, a year past December.

27:14
So just we know about 15 months.

27:16
Oh, nice, great.

27:18
And, and what about Glass Moon Group?

27:21
When did you?

27:22
Yeah, so I set that up.

27:23
I mean actually probably just to finish the story in terms of the Bupa journey.

27:26
So when Bupa sold Teddy’s Nurseries to Bright Horizons, I went across and, and was in Bright Horizons for six years.

27:34
And that was an amazing opportunity to to lead that organisation.

27:37
From about 100 nurseries, we grew up to 200 nurseries.

27:41
At the point at which I left in 2015, we were looking after about 20,000 children.

27:47
We had a team of about 6000 staff at that point and it was just this incredible opportunity to take everything that I’ve been working on in the last 10 years and bring it into a bigger organisation and, and scale it that bit more.

27:59
I had an incredible leadership team, incredible colleagues across the 200 nurseries.

28:04
And one of my favourite parts of the job was actually getting out and doing the nursery visits and seeing the team and sitting on the, on the floor with, with the babies or being in the toddler room or the preschool room.

28:15
And, you know, I absolutely loved that.

28:17
And, and in fact, I, I sort of worked at about 6:00 or eight people that were in my leadership team in bright horizons who are now in CEO or MD jobs in the sector.

28:26
And that makes me immensely proud to know that, you know, we worked together as a team and every, he’s gone off and done, you know, other things.

28:33
And I was in Brit Horizons for six years and I think it was, it was an incredible journey, worked super hard.

28:42
You know, I was raising my I, I, you know, I got divorced just before I joined Brit Horizons.

28:48
So I was raising my daughter in my own and I did a master’s degree when I was there and started my doctorate there.

28:55
And we had this incredible growth.

28:56
So it was amazing at one level, but also it was for me, what I realised at the end of that journey was that I’d, you know, experienced a bit of kind of burnout and you know, in that role in terms of, you know, what, what we were doing and also over indexed on, on on work.

29:12
So when I, when I came out of that I wrote role, I realised that I wanted to do something different.

29:18
I didn’t necessarily want to be running a big organisation again.

29:21
And I sort of dug into my research from my doctorate and that’s when Glassman was created this this sort of notion that we can change the status quo, we can do things differently.

29:34
And, and the name originates from the glass comes from all the research I was doing around glass barriers that get in the way of us, you know, developing our career, our kind of whole person approach to life and the moon.

29:48
But is my dad was always convinced I was conceived in the night that Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and he used to call me his moon baby.

29:54
And so I put those two bits together in terms of the glass insofar as how do we, we move the barriers far enough away so that people can, you know, develop and evolve in the way that they want to be that professionally or personally or, you know, ideally a combination of the two.

30:07
And the moon is that the willingness to take that moonshine opportunity?

30:11
And so it’s the sort of how do we overcome the barriers with, you know, the potential that we’ve got, you know, in our lives to kind of navigate our lives to where we want to be personally and, and professionally.

30:21
So it was an idea that kind of came to me and the name came to me really before I knew what the organisation was going to do.

30:29
And in the early stages, we started with some consultancy work.

30:33
Some people sort of asked me to do some work for, for free, which you kind of do when you’re getting going and you’re figuring out what you’re doing.

30:39
And it, it was in the early years.

30:40
So consultancy work for typically private equity funds that wanted to invest in childcare assets or invest in the UK market.

30:50
And then I got an amazing opportunity to work with what was then called LPCR.

30:56
It’s now grandeur in in the UK.

31:00
And Jean Emmanuel Roro connection was one of my first clients that actually paid us to to do work to help them enter the UK market.

31:09
And so that’s how we got going in terms of the first Glass Moon company.

31:14
And then the second one we developed was a was a small digital company, which you’re familiar with our app and in terms of you’ve been, you’ve been given that a go.

31:23
And then I did go back into an executive role for a couple of years in adult social care and then came out of that and a year after that set up Classmen services and now home.

31:35
So that’s where we work with the NHS in the Southwest to support adults that have autism and learning disabilities and who our model supports adults that have got high level of acuity.

31:46
So for example, they might have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act and have been locked away in long city institutions in some cases for over a decade.

31:53
Right.

31:54
And I tuned into one of your episodes.

31:57
That story brought me to tears.

32:00
Is that Alexis?

32:01
Yeah.

32:01
Yeah.

32:02
She was a swimmer, right?

32:03
At Olympic swimmer.

32:04
Yeah.

32:05
Yeah.

32:05
So she didn’t, I’m not sure Olympic level, but she’d in her youth, she’d swam for Team GB and she’d gone on and she was a teacher and then had a a sort of mental health crisis on, on the back of her losing her brother.

32:20
Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

32:22
And went to the GP for a bit of help and support.

32:25
And Long story short, was sectioned for four years and and four years for the cohort that we support isn’t actually that long.

32:33
Did you come to find out about her story after the work you had already been doing or was that before?

32:38
No, so, so after.

32:40
So we set up Glassman Services and the first person that we were commissioned to support had been in a long stay institution for two years.

32:48
It was actually a Cam service.

32:50
So that’s children’s services, but sections and effectively in sort of seclusion for sort of two years on his own, no real interaction with other people.

33:02
So he was the first person that we that we supported to come out of that long stay institution, bought a property and developed the organisation from there.

33:11
And then in the process of running that company and going to conferences, we went to an autism conference.

33:18
And that’s How I Met Alexis.

33:21
And actually, before meeting at a conference, I’d read her book Unbroken, which effectively tells the story of, you know, being sectioned under the Mental Health Act in four years and having to escape to Africa is the only way she could kind of get out of the mental health.

33:35
It sounds like something from a movie.

33:37
Because she had checked herself in, right, seeking that help and support and on a voluntary basis for two weeks.

33:44
And four years later, and in that time, did she have a daughter?

33:49
I can’t remember.

33:50
So she had a daughter before she’d had her.

33:52
She’d had her daughter before she was sectioned.

33:54
And she went in for a voluntary sort of two weeks respite and then was there for four years, moved to I think something like 12 different institutions.

34:03
So effectively what we do in Glassman Services is we work with people like Alexis who might have been sectioned in a long state institution for, you know, we’ve supported somebody who’d been sectioned for 13 years.

34:15
So sometimes longer, you know, sometimes shorter to effectively get a team run about them to, to work with them and recognise their, their, you know, autism learning disability, if they’re, you know, divergent absolutely to, to support them in terms of understanding their need.

34:31
And then our property company will buy a property purpose, refurbish it to make sure it’s, it’s safe for them to, to live in that property in the community.

34:38
And then we put the two bits together so we can support them 24/7.

34:42
And that’s what my team in Cornwall and and Plymouth do.

34:46
And I’ve got an amazing team led by my managing director Kerry Libby, who runs that on a on a day-to-day basis.

34:52
And we’ve got 100 colleagues and we’re in the process of hoping, hopefully buying another property and supporting somebody else to come out of long stay care.

35:02
The transformation that’s happening through Glass Moon is amazing.

35:05
So how would you say what are like future plans or projects that Glass Moon has in in, in motion to continue to change the status quo?

35:15
Yeah, I think, I mean, people ask me what, you know what, what is next and how are we, how are we going to scale Glass Moon services?

35:21
And I think it’s a tricky question because the the work that we’re doing is very much on a sort of individual person by person basis, which when you look at that in terms of, OK, what does the growth look like?

35:31
I don’t know that the growth story for Glassman services is what I’ve done in the past in terms of, you know, growing nursery groups to over, you know, 200 locations.

35:39
Yeah, absolutely.

35:40
Same When I was the the CEO of the regard group, we had over 170 services.

35:46
I think for us it’s about getting it right at the individual person level, from a, from a quality, from a human rights, you know, getting it right because this work is hard to do from the team level perspective, getting the property piece right.

35:57
For me, it’s the digitalisation of how do we, how do we digitalise every part of that process and system in terms of understanding what works and what doesn’t and how do we capture outcome data that could change people’s lives either in relation to getting people out of long stay institutions and how we create the infrastructure.

36:15
So it’s back to my fixation.

36:16
We’re creating a social infrastructure in this country to live meaningful lives in the community.

36:22
You can only do that on a person by person basis, but how do you can in terms of getting it right?

36:27
Because everybody’s different and the need is different.

36:30
But how do we create a scalable model that uses technology and, and uses data to look at, OK, if we’re going to create the infrastructure, what does the infrastructure look like from a property and, you know, housing accommodation perspective for the skill set that the team needs to have for how you manage risk, how you, how you get it right at that individual person.

36:50
But you’ve got the right shared risk from a multidisciplinary team with the NHS and, and, and the local authorities who are, who are funding this care and support.

37:00
So for me, I think the, the growth of the opportunity is around how do you create that, that digital and that data infrastructure and how do you share that collaboratively across the sector so that people in this country can do what we’ve done in terms of set up smaller organisations do that at scale.

37:18
Yeah.

37:19
But but the scale in terms of because there’s 2005, there’s probably more now, people who are locked away and long stay institutions who it’s hard to see how if we don’t create this infrastructure and get it right by that person by person level and meet that individual need, it’s hard to see how they’re not going to be in long state institutions in, in the long term.

37:40
But also, if you look at the prevalence of autism in young adults, Yeah, yeah, in, you know, in, in young adults and, and, and you look at, you know, I, I sit on the board of in family club, which is a, you know, is a fast growing organic nursery group in the UK.

37:56
And when I’m doing nursery visits, I always, because obviously I have a special interest in autism and neurodivergence and, and special educational needs.

38:04
You know, I say, you know, you’re seeing more children coming through that require, you know, early intervention.

38:10
They’ve got, you know, special educational needs.

38:12
There’s some level of support speech and language, whatever it might be.

38:16
And without fail, and every visit, they’ll say, yeah, we’re seeing more children.

38:20
Now that is the incredible part that I think that the the nursery can play from an early intervention perspective, because you have parents who who are seeing patterns and signs and start to talk to the nursery in terms of, you know, the child requiring additional support or potentially being assessed.

38:37
You also have families who don’t, who are completely blind to it, who are blind spot or who are just in denial.

38:43
And that’s where they think the nursery can play an incredibly powerful role in that early intervention piece, which I think personal level as well-being able to absolutely.

38:51
And again, I think that’s where the technology and capturing the data and spotting patterns can play an incredibly powerful and important role in terms of, you know, how do you gather that data?

39:03
How do you look at it?

39:04
Well, how do you support the child?

39:06
How do you support the team supporting the child in the nursery and how do you play a an important empathetic role in supporting families to get the help that they need?

39:15
Because we know as children age up, you know, through the educational system, not every school in this country is, you know, whether you’re in the, in the, in the state sector or the private sector is geared up to support children that are neurodivergent or have got, you know, additional needs.

39:32
And a certain, especially when you age into those teenage years.

39:35
Because sometimes we work with young adults who are, who are sort of ageing up and are moving from children’s services to adult services.

39:42
And you can just see, you know, the infrastructure, the joined up thinking and the making that a smooth transition.

39:48
It, it, it, it’s not there.

39:50
And so it’s an area that we’re sort of focusing on in terms of how, how can we support in that area, particular for older teenagers as they age up to adulthood, but families that we work with.

40:02
Quite often say to us they’ve had to fight the, from the minute it was, you know, it was identified that the child had further needs.

40:08
It was usually identified early on.

40:10
Yeah, exactly.

40:10
But when it’s identified and they realise that they require further support, they, they have to fight every step of the way to get the support, to get the funding, to get the help.

40:20
And, and I just think that’s terribly, terribly sad.

40:23
You know, we and nurseries, yeah.

40:25
Like, especially if they’re not well equipped to, to help, you know, consider neurodivergent.

40:30
Absolutely.

40:31
Yeah.

40:32
And, and the school system, the education system I think needs a, you know, it needs to be, needs to evolve massively to, you know, support every child, whether you’re neurotypical or neural divergent.

40:41
But, you know, I think it just, it needs to evolve.

40:43
And again, I think that’s where technology and data can play a huge role and help them with that.

40:47
Yeah, yeah, huge transformation and seems like quite a challenge, but not impossible.

40:52
As we said earlier, you know, there’s a little, there’s a way and I think to to every problem there is a solution.

40:58
Well, I hope that Glass moon continues to grow because with the things that is happening through glass rooms, I think it’s quite beautiful.

41:06
And thank you.

41:08
And one of the other things we do is we still do some work with where we’re asked to go in and look at from a quality due diligence perspective in terms of how, you know, children’s home groups are performing or groups in adult services or very occasionally in, in early education as well.

41:24
And I, I love that particular part of, you know, what, what we do within the group in terms of, because it’s an opportunity to see, you know, how are, how are companies performing, how are they delivering from a quality and, and an operational perspective.

41:36
And again, it always, you know, develops our thinking in terms of, you know, how can we support, whether it’s private equity or management teams in terms of, for, you know, for those assets.

41:45
But it’s that ability to kind of see the whole pathway from kind of early education, right the way through children’s services up to adult services.

41:53
And I remember a private equity funds estimate a few years ago in terms of, you know, would you ever go, you know, back into a kind of big exec role in terms of, you know, running something?

42:02
And I said, no, I’m enjoying developing our own organisation and, and sitting on the boards that I do.

42:07
But one of the things I, you know, I’m absolutely fascinated and is how do you join that pathway together from early education, you know, early, early years through the whole education system, you know, young adults and to, you know, adulthood and adult services.

42:21
And I think there’s a real opportunity to join that together from a pathway perspective so that it’s just it’s much smoother.

42:28
And again, you know, I know I keep saying this, but this is I think where technology and data can help us do that to create this, the infrastructure, the social infrastructure in this country where we’ve just got much more joined up thinking about how we do this, which would make it easier for children, young people and families.

42:43
And I really hope over the next 1020 years, that’s what we started to see evolve in this country because there’s so much scope, there’s so much potential.

42:50
And I know everybody talks both in early years children’s services and in adult services that there’s not enough funding.

42:56
And I don’t think there is.

42:58
But I also think we could make much better use of the funding that is available to get it to frontline services to to support children and young people and families in this country.

43:07
Oh, that’s, that’s quite impactful.

43:09
And I hope to see this through as well.

43:12
Thank you so much for being here and I hope to have you again.

43:17
Absolute pleasure.

43:17
Thanks very much for having me, Priscilla.

43:19
Thank you.