Show Notes:

There are some brilliant leaders doing amazing work to promote equity & inclusion in the UK. Would you agree? There are not enough superlatives to describe the hard work and commitment of these advocates.

Christina Brooks, Founder and CEO Ruebik is one such leader. Along with her day job she is a trustee for an alternative provision school in Tottenham, a Trustee for pioneering Social Communications Centre for Autism. She also mentors incarcerated young people and advises many black owned social startups.

So, I was thrilled to have @Christina Brooks as a guest on the 126th episode of The 🐘in the Room podcast to talk about all things equity and inclusion. In this freewheeling conversation we spoke about her journey from global talent lead at Rolls Royce to starting Ruebik an inclusion first talent attraction agency and DEI consultancy. We also spoke about 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

👉🏾 Learnings from the corporate world that she brought to her entrepreneurial journey

👉🏾   Being purpose led, and B-Corp certified

👉🏾   Lived experiences, and her intersectional identities that led to her being othered

👉🏾   Her thoughts on Industry trends indicating a slowdown and step back in investment and commitment of DEIB/EDIB initiatives

👉🏾 How culture and measurement contribute to creating an impactful recruitment and hiring process

👉🏾   Conscious/Inclusive leadership

👉🏾   Future of work – the impact of AI

We also spoke about her podcast Elevated Conversations with Tacita Small and Monique Carayol, Zoom Fenty, even Beyonce, her beliefs, motivations and having a long view of change………..

To learn more head to the podcast (link in comments) 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

Episode Transcript:

Sudha: Good morning, Christina. It's such a pleasure to have you as a guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast today.

Christina: It's an absolute honour to be here Sudha. Thank you for the invitation.

Sudha: Brilliant. let's start with a quick introduction to who you are and what you do. Also, tell us why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?

Christina: Yeah, a really good question. Why did I decide to become an entrepreneur because it was not by design, I actually fell into it. So, if I give you a little bit about my background, I've got almost 20 years executive search experience. So that's really my bread and butter. So really thinking about how organisations should attract and retain exec leaders.

And prior to setting up Ruebik, I worked for Rolls Royce as a global talent acquisition lead. So, my team were in Derby, and I was based down here in London, and it was a really wonderful experience. And my mandate at the time was to increase gender representation, and we started to look at other underrepresented strands as well. But I think the real light bulb moment for me, Sudha, was when I was often looking for suppliers and other executive recruitment firms to help us really think about diversity.

They often sounded and looked like the business that we were trying to change and innovate in. And so really for me, I built the kind of business that I wanted to work with. So Ruebik, as it stands, it's an extension of a talent acquisition function. And so, we really partner closely with organisations who are trying to move the dial beyond gender. We're looking at race, we're looking at social mobility, we're looking at, fringe communities that typically sit on the periphery. And so that's what we do day in and day out.

Sudha: Wow, that's amazing. I think nothing better than a purpose led business because that's what you are. What were the learnings you brought from your corporate experience that have helped you navigate this journey to building a B Corp certified talent agency?

You are B Corp certified, congratulations.

Christina: Yeah, I'm happy to display it in the back.

Sudha: How important was it to have focus and purpose when you were setting this up?

Christina: It was intrinsically linked. It was never an afterthought and so when people say when did you decide to go to B Corp? B Corp came to me in a strange way.

Because of how I had built and set up the business I was introduced to a fantastic organisation called Cyd Connects. And it's run by two incredibly powerful women, and they take organisations through the B Corp process. So, if you ever need help and support with this, CydConnects, and I'd be happy to connect.

When I met with the co-founders and I explained how Ruebik was built, that we look at the ecosystem. As much as I'm passionate about changing executive diverse leadership within organisations, so really those decision making roles, I also look at fringe communities as I've already referenced.

I'm a trustee at a pupil referral unit, we are the academy that one, young children have already been expelled from school and it's typically because they have emotional, behavioural, psychological challenges that don't fit into that neurotypical peg. They come to our academy, and beyond that, we then, as a business, go into prisons and work with young men who are currently incarcerated.

I've been to Thameside, I've been to Pentonville, I've been to Brixton Prison and we work with the young men there to help reframe some of the activities, that really made them successful in an illegal way. How can we transfer that into a legal sustainable work that would help empower them and their families.

Because of this ecosystem that I've built that looks not only at executive leaders but wider society and community, it just felt right to have that B Corp certification and status to share with our clients, share with our candidates that this is something that is part of our DNA as a business.

Sudha: You haven't taken the easy path, because there are lots of people who've jumped onto the bandwagon post-COVID or pre-COVID because they saw an opportunity, a business opportunity.

Clearly you are deeply embedded in trying to bring about change as you said in communities that are at the periphery and are not likely to find as much support.

Christina: That's right.

It's so important for me, Sudha, because I often describe myself as the product of the problem that we're trying to solve. I left school at 15. I didn't do A levels. I did not go on to university at that time. I was brought up in a single parent family. My mom had four kids and in an incredibly religious environment. What that means, I was actually raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, so what that means to me is that I have a deep understanding and respect for other people's faith.

And while it is no longer my faith, but if you think of all of the complexities of also growing up outside of London, it was in Gloucester, it just meant that I was different in so many different ways. I was othered because of the colour of my skin, othered because our dad didn't live at home with us in that traditional family setting, othered because I was a Jehovah's Witness, there were so many things that made me so different.

And then it was a bit of an awakening to move from Gloucester to Tottenham, which is a very deprived inner city borough of London that for anybody who doesn't know it, but it's where the riots took place in 2011 when Mark Duggan was shot and killed by the police. That, that was literally the bottom of my high road.

And I just have a different perspective in terms of people growing up in lots of different social communities and what access allows and what the lack of access excludes you from. And I think that this is where this fight comes from is really understanding how very quickly and easily you can be excluded.

When I would go to job interviews, the minute I said I lived in Tottenham, no callbacks, I would never get a callback. So, I started creeping up the Victoria line. And I was like, I live in Finsbury Park, maybe we'll call you back. I live in Highbury and Islington. And then it was the callbacks because I had to be savvy. I didn't want to lie about where I lived and I wasn't ashamed. It just meant that people perceived me differently when I said, I come from Tottenham.

Sudha: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not what we're doing, it's how others are willing to engage with you because of the differences. Post COVID, you know, DEI gained a lot of traction and momentum, but research in the past couple of years has shown that the efforts are now stalling.

And I have two questions here, do you agree or disagree with the research findings? And if you agree, what are the reasons for this progress stalling?

Christina: I think that's a big question. In 2020, there was a groun