A Life More Extraordinary

In this episode of A Life More Extraordinary, Sarah and Olly are joined by the hilarious, insightful and inspiring Grant Morgan.The youngest of five children, Grant left school at 16 with few qualifications and pursued a career in hospital radio and free-lance satirical journalism. He formed www.louiskennedy.com in 1991, has delivered over £250M in social good in the past 30 years.Grant has written a sitcom (pilot in planning) and is midway through a book, a surreal look at celebrity culture. He married Emma in 1993, and has four beautiful children Jack, Joshua, Sam & Charlotte. Grant hasn’t seen Jack since August 26 2019 when he went on a new journey.https://happiful.com/bemorejack-campaign-launched-on-world-cancer-day/ In this discussion with Sarah and Olly, Grant talks about the loss of his son Jack and how his son achieved so much and inspired so many whilst also taking on some of life's hardest challenges with grace, courage and a smile on his face. 

Jon Ford & Jez Belas from Life on Time join Sarah to discuss how teachers/parents and children/students coped with the challenges of a new way of life in 2020 and 2021.Parenting and teaching in the pandemic brought in a raft of challenges that most parents had never even considered they would have to be prepared for. From home schooling to helping children cope with anxiety about a deadly global virus, from missed birthday parties to rights of passage gone forever - it was a tough time for parents and children. Passionate about young people’s wellbeing, Jon and Jez are part of the team working on LifeonTime - a student and teacher wellbeing resource for schools and colleges.Jon is a performance and wellbeing coach and the founder of Life on Time and Become Inspired coaching. A qualified sport and exercise scientist, trained in psychotherapy and hypnotherapy, he has a passion for empowering people with the skills so they can achieve their potential and live healthy, fulfilled and meaningful lives.Jez is a qualified sport and exercise scientist and strength and conditioning coach. He is also the current head of wellbeing at Leighton Park school and a Parkour Fitness specialist.

In this episode we're joined by the inspiring and hilarious Rachel Vecht - one of our panelists from our show entitled "The Kids are alright aren't they?"Rachel founded ‘Educating Matters’ 20 years ago and works with Diversity & Inclusion, L&D, HR teams, Employee Benefits and internal networks to engage and support employees.Educating Matters provide guidance on inclusion, changing cultures and bespoke training (through varied formats such as seminars, webinars, workshops, 1:1 coaching, resources & videos).Rachel’s practical support draws on her experiences as a school teacher but also the real, every day experience of being a mother to 4 children (aged between 20 and 11) and the challenges of merging work and family. She aims to equip parents and carers with the skills necessary to maximise the quality of precious time they spend with their children at home and get the very best out of them.

In this special live, face to face episode, our own Sarah and Olly speak with the inspiring Luba Kassova and Richard Addy. Business partners, life partners and incredible individuals, Luba and Richard share some amazing stories about how they've evolved their own thinking and feeling over the past year.From the missing perspectives of women in Covid-19 news reporting to unearthing staggering insight about how the Bulgarian government have failed to protect the elderly, Luba brings a challenging and motivating view to the past 12 months. She also shares her experience as the wife of a black man and in her own words shares that she "felt like I was living on mute" when uncovering the overwhelming inequality and injustice that impacts people like her husband.Richard - an expert in strategy, storytelling and insight - shares his own thoughts on living as a black man. “I’ve spent most of my life living as a black man making sure I didn’t rock the boat and as Chair of Mind's Race Equality Advisory Board and as a board advisor I have realised my responsibility to  use my voice as a black man."We hope you enjoy an insight into these two amazing people's lives and views.

In this week's show Sarah and Cat speak with the inspiring Annette Joseph.Diverse & Equal Founder, Annette Joseph, is an award winning Agile Coach/Delivery Manager who has worked in and around Tech for over 20 years. As Chair of Co-op’s network for BAME colleagues, Annette was instrumental in affecting lasting change in the organisation. Annette’s #icantbreathe article in response to the murder of George Floyd has been viewed over 22k times. In response, a BlackTech GoFundMe was created to fund research and training to measure the impact of tech on Black people and Black communities in the north of England.

In this week's episode Sarah and Olly catch up with Paul McCaffrey. When COVID hit and the country got locked down, Paul's whole life was thrown upside down. His source of income and purpose had been taken away as comedy clubs and venues all over were shut down with no sign of re opening for a long time.  But on his journey to turn things around he learned a lot about himself and what made him so good at what he does. He got creative and collaborative with others and found ways to bring his skills to others, and in doing so, bring a lot of joy to a lot of people at a time when they needed it most. It's a really interesting chat and we hope you enjoy!

This week Cat and Olly catch up with Shaun Dellenty and have a fascinating conversation.Shaun is a multi-award-winning educator, ex- Head teacher, trainer, presenter, author and advocate for compassionate LGBT+ inclusion.This work began in November 2009, when Shaun’s (then) London primary school discovered (via pupil surveys) that 75% of primary aged pupils were subjected to covert, daily homophobic bullying and abuse whether or not they identified as LGBT+ with 98% hearing the word ‘gay’ as a pejorative term. This data triggered Shaun to ‘come out’ to his school community to serve as an authentic LGBT+ role model, he then devised ‘Inclusion For All’ a ground-breaking training suite to facilitate compassionate LGBT+ inclusion in the UK education system. Shaun has since trained well over 80,000 education professionals and spoken to many thousands of young people at an extensive range of primary and secondary schools, teacher training establishments, faith schools, local authorities, hate-crime, police and anti-bullying organisations including; Amnesty International, NSPCC, House of Commons and many many more.Shaun’s anti-LGBT+ bullying work has featured in numerous press articles and books. He was also broadcast nationally on children’s television in the UK as part of the CBBC series ‘Our School. And he has supported nationally funded UK organisations in the development of resources intended to facilitate positive LGBT+ inclusion and advised on policy at the House of Commons and Lords.Shaun was twice included on the Independent on Sunday ‘Pink List’ of the top 100 most influential LGBT+ people in the U.K, was awarded a ‘Point of Light’ award and was named one of the twenty figures in public life by the Global Diversity List alongside figures such as ex-President Obama, Jacinda Ardern and Kamala Harris.

In this week's show Sarah and Olly catch up with Behavioural Scientist and Performance Expert Lindsay Kohler. Lindsay's expertise is in the application of behavioural economics to improve employee engagement. A frequent speaker at industry events and webinars, she loves transforming scientific insights to tangible, actionable ideas people can actually use. Her thoughts appear in a wide variety of industry publications, including Forbes, HRDirector, Workforce, CorpComms Magazine, and Human Resources Executive. She shares with Sarah and Olly her thoughts on how people can deal with the challenges of the day, how motivation actually works and why we should all be very afraid of jellyfish!Enjoy!

Hello!!! In this week's episode Sarah and Olly catch up with Ruban Nathan and Ollie Crawley - AKA The Professional Patients. Ruban and Ollie are two great friends brought together by the w̶o̶e̶f̶u̶l̶ wonderful world of Chronic Kidney Failure.They speak about their experiences of spending their lives in and out of hospital and discuss with Sarah and Olly how they've been able to use the past year of Lockdown as a motivator rather than a blocker for exciting projects. If you smile and laugh whilst listening half as much as we did whilst recording then you're going to have a very good time with this one!Enjoy!

In this show, Sarah spends some time with award winning journalist Minreet Kaur discussing how both she and her father turned the lockdown of 2020 into something purposeful.Minreet talks about how journalists are always hunting for a great story and how she found one in her very own family. Her father - Rajinder Singh MBE - has always enjoyed skipping and was inspired to start a skipping challenge during Lockdown to support the NHS. Working alongside his daughter, the community story reached a global audience. The Skipping Sikh’s exercise videos went viral, he was awarded an MBE, and a Points of Light award. Most recently their story won Report of the year for the Asian media awards.It's a heart warming story that we hope inspires you to look right under your nose for the most special stories.Enjoy!

In this episode Sarah and Olly speak with Phil Smith - Chef de Mission for ParalympicsGB. When the COVID pandemic hit the world in 2020 so many sectors were impacted and perhaps none more so than international sport. With the Tokyo Paralympics postponed, hundreds of paralympians had their lives thrown into turmoil. For some it meant a crushing end to a career sooner than anticipated whilst for others it could prove to be a career defining event as they will have one more year to prepare. Phil shares some of the incredible stories from his team and from the athletes as they looked to adjust, survive and eventually thrive in these challenging circumstances.As the world hopes to come out of the clouds of lockdown and quarantine in 2021, could the Olympic flames be the beacon for a new life more extraordinary? We certainly hope so!We hope you enjoy!

In this episode Sarah and Olly speak with Lauren Griffiths. You might know Lauren as the person who changed their LinkedIn profile pic and caused a social media storm. With this one simple action of switching full make up for a hoodie, Lauren captured the feelings of millions around the world who were being forced to come to terms with a scary new reality. Lauren talks to Sarah and Olly about what inspired her to make this change, the incredible reception she got and how she continues to strive, struggle and thrive as she looks to make her life ever more extraordinary. Her story will make you laugh, nod along and hopefully leave with a new enthusiasm and love of yourself.Enjoy!