The Evolution of ESG: Transforming Business for a Sustainable Future with Katherine Teh

No one makes wholesale changes. Communities don't make wholesale changes. Institutions don't. But we can make a commitment to stop doing things that really harm us, our communities, the environment, and our society. I don't think being compliance orientated alone is anywhere near sufficient to resolving the kinds of crises that we have before us.

No.

We need innovation. It takes a lot of training when someone Responds to you like a jackal and you can respond like you're a giraffe. Mostly something else takes over, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

How do you dissolve that thorn?

Yeah.

So Catherine, welcome today. Thank you so much for making the time for us. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on this podcast.

My pleasure to be here, thank you.

Catherine, when we sat down earlier and spoke about what we might cover today, you mentioned that obviously, and looking at your past, you're deeply involved with ESG in creating frameworks. Perhaps you might want to help me sort of explore what it is, what is ESG today and how it's actually relevant for generations working their way through the workforce.

Sure, ESG stands for environmental, social governance. And it's got its origins from the concept of sustainable development. So that was defined by a Futures Commission in 1985 because the concerns about the way our economy was being driven was that it was impacting on our clean air, our clean water, our animals, our flora. And based on those concerns, environmentalism grew, and alongside the rights of communities, alongside the questioning and the challenge of whether companies were being governed effectively. So all of that ended up sort of snowballing into a really strong debate about whether companies had responsibilities outside of just making profit. And the Our Common Future definition really brought into the idea of sustainable development, that is development that actually was able to meet current and future generations, as a responsibility of all organizations including companies. And it sparked this debate, uh, which has been really raging now for 3 decades about where the responsibilities for companies lie around making money. Do they make money in a way that increases and, you know, increases risk for the environment or reduces risk for the environment? Increases risk for society or reduces risk for society? And I guess now it's moved from being a debate that we have in terms of corporate affairs, in terms of public policy risk, into what investors think, and that's when it translated into the name ESG because that's how investors communicate the concepts of sustainable development. ESG is a simplified, you know, articulation of the sustainability challenges. There's so many different measures and ways, but investors have tried to boil it down into almost like a compliance orientation. And, you know, therein lies one of the biggest challenges, which is that really what we're defining is about the capacity of a company to innovate and to grasp the challenges that the environment is society provide their institution and the rate of change that institution is capable of. So for me, when I'm thinking about ESG, I'm not just thinking about can they tick a box and promote the fact that they've got, you know, beehives on their roofs or they're, you know, procuring in a way that's sensitive to the environment or enhancing their Indigenous procurement. They're things that absolutely they should be thinking about and doing, but I'm really much more interested in what are they doing in relation to taking their current business model and turning it into being a net positive outcome for society and for the environment, and how are they governing that, and not just from an internal perspective, but how are they enabling the public, the consumers, others to observe and engage with the way they're governing the resolution of all of the trade-offs required to transition their business model from what it is today to something else?

Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, a fantastic way to summarise. Thank you. And it's clearly a complex issue. It sounds like this has actually been driven by investors as opposed to initially by government or the companies themselves. Would you say that's fair?

Well, look, it really wasn't. I mean, I remember being a finance journalist in the late '80s and early '90s, and investors were so, if you like, nonplussed at the concept of the consequences of these issues that investor relations people that I was talking to would just slough off the idea. I mean, one of the investor relations people I spoke to about the planning and approach that CSR had to asbestos.

Yeah.

I asked the question, what does CSR think of corporate citizenship? And he said, look, it might give you this warm fuzzy feeling on the inside, but it makes no difference to our share price. So we don't give a damn.

Wow.

And I said, can I quote you on that? He said, absolutely, quote me. Because that is how little they cared. I mean, they genuinely did not believe that they were going to lose investors if they argued the hard line that they did what they did. It was in line with the law, even if some might argue it was, you know, not ethical or not moral to put their employees and customers at risk, right? Uh, they were compliance orientated in their strategy.

Yes.

And I guess that's what I'm really trying to get at when I talk about ESG. I don't think being compliance orientated alone is anywhere near sufficient to resolving the kinds of crises that we have before us. We need innovation, and what we should be really looking for as investors is where that innovation's coming from. I saw last night on my Instagram feed Olivia Colman doing that ad on— have you seen it?

I haven't, but I obviously know who Olivia Colman is.

Right, I mean, it would be so good if you could cut away here and show a little example, but she talks about how our pension funds essentially fueling the climate crisis, right? And, you know, she has— she's just such a great actress. She did a really intense, fabulous performance. And at the end, and she goes, what the frack? It's got this sort of ending of, you know, this evil person. The The point there is that it's activism that's trying to get our funds and our investors to become aware that the money-making models of today aren't going to be acceptable to investors. And they're activists like that campaign, or in fact the campaign against asbestosis, or environmentalism, or chemical pollution, or whatever it is. it's been activism that's actually driven a demand for change.

Right.

Activism focused on getting investors to be awakened to it, community activism that was concerned about pollution in local waterways, or, you know, institutional activism like NGOs campaigning as special interest groups on public policy as it stands. And it's activism that's increased the maturity that we have as a society on these issues.

Right, yeah. That's interesting itself. And can we touch on potentially how— so companies can move away from that, I guess, compliance culture or that command culture towards a more sort of meaningful co-engagement strategy?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's vital that we see an evolution in styles. You know, if you think about what a traditional corporate culture is like, you know, if we were to sort of put it in gender terms, it's a command control masculine environment, which as more and more women entered the workforce, found quite challenging to be in. And in a sense, by bringing more women in, the culture has the opportunity to evolve into, you know, in a gender-neutral culture that takes the best of what men's power habits and preferences are and, and the best of what women's power and preferences are and tries to sort of leave out the downsides of either gender and sort of is a gender-neutral space. Now what that means is that we can have cultures that are more collaborative and more capable of co-creating solutions and not as dogmatic about what is right or what is wrong, but in fact what is a solution set that we can work towards to resolve. And That's the kind of collaborative culture that we need to evolve for some of the complex problems that we have in front of us.

Yeah, definitely. Now, it's interesting, obviously you're famous for many things, but certainly for implementing the project— was it the Gorgon Project? You know, where there was no activism involved. Honestly?

Oh yeah, well, I didn't implement. I was asked to do the strategy, which is how do you take a highly controversial project, or possibly highly controversial project because it hadn't been one yet, but the joint venture partners were split. There were 4 of them. 2 believed that there was absolutely no way they could ever get social and political support for the project, and there were 2 that believed they could. So the ones that believed they could hired me to do the strategy and I facilitated a process which was a global process around understanding what the potential risks were of the project. And then I forecast into the future all of the social maturity of the solutions that would be expected in the timeframe of that project approval.

Right.

Which was expected to be 18 to 20 years. And we forecast out to sort of 25 years and said, where do we think the solution sets will be by then? And then how could we start solving with stakeholders, with experts for those things today?

Right. Yeah, that's a very sensible approach.

Yeah, well, and what it meant was that you didn't have to have activism to wake the organization up to their solutions being substandard because we were actually strategically Identifying those problems and working out how to solve them in a futuristic way. So way ahead of the curve. And bottom line is, if you're ahead of the curve, you're not having an ESG risk.

Right.

You know, if investors were focusing on investing in companies that were ahead of the curve, we would have companies that were fueling the sustainable development innovation.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Makes total sense. I guess the mindset's very different from when you were consulting on projects which were sort of blocked by activism in that sense. So how would you go about resolving those issues particularly? Did you have another strategy and set of frameworks available to you or did you create them?

Well, I mean, when people are blockading, protesting, agitated, angry, outraged, the The first thing you have to do is listen to them and understand why. And often it's the behaviour of the company, the approach they took, the disrespect that they had, the lack of real genuine responsiveness to their concerns.

Mm.

So to do that kind of intervention, you need an organisation that's willing to reflect on itself. And I guess that's where quite a lot of companies fall down. That's the first step. Some will just say, we'll fight this to the High Court. And we're seeing that at the moment. Like, look, Santos, Woodside, there are companies today that are still in that mould. They're not in a mould that says, oh gee, there's a lot of backlash here. Why don't we sort of have some self-reflection and work out why?

Yeah.

And what we can do about it. So yeah, my first step in those situations is talk and engage with the company to see what level of willingness, maturity they have internally to do that. And then second, it's to engage with the community and the activists about what might be a solution that is ahead of the curve.

Yeah.

Because, you know, really people are only inspired to resolving a problem if you can do something that's inspiring and that's got to be ahead of the curve. Yeah, you know, and frankly also at this point there's a kind of distrust which is, well, yeah, are you just kind of placating me so that I stop protesting?

Yeah.

And I really want a solution and That's a really important strategic conversation with the client too, because some are really only just into replicating.

Yeah.

As opposed to being ahead of the curve and solving the problems. So where the exciting work is, is when someone says, actually, you know, we've learned a lot from how much we've failed in this situation, and we want to do something that's far ahead of expectations because we don't like being in this Yeah. Where people are attacking us and protesting against us. We want to be, you know, loved and admired as an organization, and that will happen if we solve problems in innovative and exciting ways.

Definitely. Kirsten, how would you recommend a company go about sort of changing that culture? I mean, you touched on it just there, so that, that initial period of reflection as we don't want to be here anymore, let's get to the next step.

Yeah.

How would you recommend companies go about that, or how do you drive that change as a leader?

Well, my job as a consultant for over 2 decades was to engage with people so that they could, you know, make that move. So some of it's emotional, some of it's logic, some of it's financial, some of it's strategic. Every organization will have a different set of factors that could influence them to change and different influences around them that might stimulate that. But bottom line is it's leadership, right? So does the leader who makes the final decision in the organisation see value in the resolution of these issues? And, you know, I'm really always very fascinated to see, if not, why not?

Yeah.

Because, um, yeah, I'm fascinated by human nature when people know they're stuck, they feel stuck, and they don't want to do anything about that. I find that just fascinating. It's like, really interesting. Why is that happening? Can I climb into their head? Can I understand what's going on? I don't get it. So, um, probably some of the more frustrating moments of my life is when I just genuinely don't get it.

Yeah.

Um, but I'm never-endingly curious about it.

That's interesting. I guess that sort of comes to a point we were discussing earlier in terms of, yeah, rising above groupthink and coming back to that whole sort of, um, sort of co-design and engagement in a company and, you know, the value of speaking out if something's not right or you feel it's wrong. I know you confronted me with an interesting framework for sort of nonviolent communication as well. Can we explore that a little bit and how that's potentially helpful?

Yeah, sure. I mean, I've always believed in the importance of speaking out on an issue, but I didn't always know how to. speak out on an issue. So I felt, as, you know, as I grew up in my professional environment, learning how to do that was one of the biggest challenges that I had. Like, I had views about what were right or wrong, but I wanted to be able to articulate them and communicate them in ways that didn't make me sort of unacceptable in that corporate environment. Because part of Learning how to be in a corporate environment is learning how to be a corporate person who knows how to diplomatically address these issues. And you're judged based on, in a sense, not having an unpredictable emotional reaction.

Yeah.

So, so you— early on I was taught, well, people could say things to you that are quite offensive and you're not actually really expected to be offended or at least not show it.

Yes.

And that's a measure of how professional you are. So when I was about 24 and I was at lunch with 3 executive general managers, one of them said, we're so happy that you are here working with us because now we'll never have to deal with another minority. You're a woman, you're Asian, all we need you to be is a lesbian and we'll never have to hire another minority person because we're all in one with you. And I remember sitting there thinking, okay, now I think I've got a smile on my face. I can't tell because every part of me is just frozen.

I was going to say frozen horror.

And I knew, I consciously knew, if I say anything now, it's not going to come out well. It's not kind of been like a little flippant, you know, joke like, don't worry, if all men were like you, Chris, I would be.

Yeah.

That came later, you know, many years later as I sort of thought, well, that's— how do I deal with that? How was I supposed to deal with that? So it sort of bugged me and I wanted to be able to respond in a casual You know, in a way that was still seen as professional, but also noting that, you know, there are some things that are sort of meant to tell you you don't belong. And if you receive them in ways that say you don't belong, you can easily get put off being in that environment, right?

Yes.

You know, because people People want to feel like they belong and connected and engaged and worthwhile and contributing. That's what we want to feel. So the idea of being able to speak out and communicate— I set up my company in 2002, FutureEye, the world's first social license agency, and I thought absolutely fundamental to our culture will be the ability to speak out, to raise issues and be concerned and to be curious and engaged with each other about why we have different perspectives. Now, if I have that value from day one, then everybody is going to have that value because it's, you know, it's supposed to be set by the leader. And, and then I started realizing it's not really all that easy because you can be the leader that says that, but how do you encourage people at all the different levels?

Yeah.

To actually do that. And you're not taught how to do that. So I found out that one of the junior administrators was, by the senior administrator, was fearful of me.

Okay.

And so I said, oh, well, you let me know why. And well, you know, you're scary. And so she just needs to know she has permission to say what she thinks. And, and And, you know, I said, okay, well, I'll bring her in and I'll have a talk to her and we'll work it out and it'll be all good.

Yeah.

So I said, you know, I just want you to know I really value what you have to say and I really want you to tell me if there are any concerns or issues that you have. And she got sort of awkward and I said, well, I do mean it. So please, is there anything you'd like to talk about? And, uh, she said, well, I'm really annoyed that you made me stay back 30 minutes on a Friday when my finishing time is 5. And I went, oh, okay. Like, um, yeah, I'm really sorry about that, but, but what, you know, you knew the circumstances that led to that, um, and circumstances where 2 clients were, one half a day late, the other 2 days late on delivering, but we still had a final deadline.

Yeah.

And the impact on her was that it was another extra half an hour. And I was giving her time off at another time. I had talked to her about whether it was okay. She'd said yes, but she'd harbored resentment.

Clearly.

So when I gave her the opportunity to talk about it, She said, but it's not on them, it's on you for being disorganized.

Wow.

And which case I just went— I have to say I'm not proud of what I said next, I really am not. And when I reacted, I thought, oh, okay, now if somebody opens up when you ask them to And then you don't respond properly, there's a dynamic that's not good here. I have to fix this. What's going on?

Right.

So when I did nonviolent communication, I finally worked it out, which is you have to train yourself and others that when you are listening and wanting to receive feedback, that you have what they call giraffe ears. You know, you're listening in a softer way and you're expressing yourself in a softer way. Whereas what in that interaction I described, that was a jackal approach. So it was an attack and I experienced it as attack and I reacted like it was an attack.

Yeah.

You know, um, now it takes a lot of training when someone responds to you like a jackal and you can respond like you're a giraffe. Mostly something else takes over, right?

Absolutely. Yeah, how do you dissolve that thorn? Yeah.

So if you're going to have a speak-out culture, you've got to do a lot of training on how to be giraffes. You know, how do you have your ears open, curious, aware, your nervous system sufficiently practiced at receiving feedback, and the person who's giving the feedback practiced at Being constructive about the feedback.

Yeah, that's definitely part of it.

I mean, yeah, it's a, you know, so everyone's got responsibilities in that interaction if we want to speak out culture. And, um, that, that was a great learning for me. And I started to realize, wow, you can't have a giraffe culture, um, you know, without extra work because We are naturally reactive. And so, you know, if we were to have a culture that was a giraffe culture, we would be more capable of great consultation with the public. And at that point, you can be listening to an activist and not get reactive.

Yeah.

Whereas in fact, many of the times in companies I've worked for, they have a jackal culture internally. And then they kind of expect their people to go out there and resolve concerns, but you can't resolve concerns if you're going to be jackal-like externally.

Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. Hey everyone, thanks so much for tuning in. If you're loving this podcast, please give us a 5-star review. And would you then be screening for that on the way in for candidates who are naturally more inclined towards draft, or would you be providing training to How would it work?

Yeah, well, I mean, I— there's a compare and contrast which is, you know, interesting, and that goes to self-awareness, I think, and capability of learning and evolving. Because on the one hand, for work we do, you've got to be passionate and care about it, which means your heart's in it.

Yeah.

So I'm not trying to find people that are actually totally devoid or divorced from the significance of the— and the need for innovation and the rate of innovation required. I'm really wanting people who are passionate and caring about that.

Yeah.

So in which case, that comes sometimes with value judgments that are you know, challenged or challenging for internally and externally. And so that is a skill set question. Like, okay, some people can be trained for it and some people can't.

Okay.

And I mean, I've— one of my most talented consultants, brilliant technically, but just impossible to be trained in relation self-awareness and the effect that his behaviour had on other people. And they're some of the hardest challenges to deal with. But in the end, you know, you can't, you can't have resolution and depolarisation being done by unaware jackal-like people who are judgmental. No, fair enough.

Well, coming back to your earlier point, I think you definitely need to be Need to be curious as well about the issues, right?

Yeah, like, why do you think that way? You know, how did it come to be that you thought that way? Or, you know, it's not blanket right, wrong, black, white. So many of these things are trade-offs and have a whole series of nexus-type issues that mean you have to weigh up relativities in any situation and be able to think like that, draw out the multi-criteria, significance on any particular decision and set of assumptions and understand why someone's come to that conclusion, whether you can reassemble it in a way that might create a better outcome for everyone.

Yeah.

And who would be interested in participating in redesigning that solution. That's a level of willingness and availability for change. It doesn't always happen, and— but it's something that you have to be able to construct inside yourself in order to construct it outside of yourself.

Of course. I assume that's, that's linked very strongly with your work in gendered violence as well, your volunteer work there.

Yes.

How have the two paths come together, so to speak?

Yeah, I first experienced what we now call gender violence, I guess, when I was about 15, but I never drew a line in until I was about 27. Because I thought it was part of this whole, oh gee, you just have to sort of get used to innuendo and comments and things like that. But the threat that I would have my career destroyed if I didn't have sex with somebody was where I drew the line. And I just went, that is not okay. I am never putting up with this.

No.

That's where I did not— I guess that affected my career. I was working in a mining company at the time.

Right.

And I would have stayed working in that mining company had it not been for that situation. So my career was affected, but I didn't think I could pursue a kind of career in sexual harassment. I was passionate about sustainable development. I was going to stay in that. Yeah. But now, as time has gone on, the volunteer work that I've done in gendered violence has actually become an embedded part of the way I think about what are the barriers to sustainable development being achieved in Jackal-like companies.

Right.

Right. Because I was working in a Jackal-like company and You know, those power plays and dynamics were a normal part of what you had to deal with. And, uh, and at the same time, the consistency between that environment and resolving concerns and issues, it was so big a difference. And I was trying to navigate those 2 different worlds, um, and resolve those. Internally and externally. And I didn't realize why it was quite stressful. And increasingly I'm like more aware of the impacts of those stresses on people. You know, you can't take a jackal organization, wrap it in cotton wool, and put a person who's kind of, you know, supposed to be attached to it as a giraffe and send them out. You know, it's—

No.

It's a really, it's a really, really Tough place to put anyone. And it's also very ineffective because the actual model that is being produced by the jackals to get out there and resolve issues is nowhere near sufficient to resolve the issues.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And some of them just won't hear of it.

Obviously from, I think, anyone's viewpoint, you can could argue that you've been incredibly successful. What really struck me is when we were speaking last was that you, you seem to have very clear goals, and you went ahead and absolutely smashed those targets sort of early. Is, is there any sort of framework you'd like to share with our listeners that, that might help them, uh, sort of meet their goals and achievements and become successful in their own right?

Yeah, um, it's fascinating because everyone will judge success on different factors. Um, I remember once having a dinner with my cousin in Indonesia, and he was sort of, you know, grandstanding, I guess, around how wealthy he was. And he joked that he did it through destroying orangutans, you know, owning coal mines. And there I was, much poorer than him, trying to save the orangutans and trying to help people switch to renewable energy. And I remember, you know, this kind of grittiness that sits inside me and just went, goddamn, by the time I die, I definitely want to be richer than you.

Yeah.

And not because money was my actual driver, because if it was, there's so many other much easier ways, as a person has pointed out, and my cousin being one of them. So many easier ways of making money than trying to make it through sustainable development.

Yeah.

But the grittiness for me came from the, you know, if the way you're going to measure success is money, then I would like to eventually be able to beat you at that exact exact game because then I've done it with values that actually enhance the environment and society and the economy and at the same time beat you at your same game. Yeah, I mean, that's a stretch target given how far ahead he is, you know.

It's good to be stretched like that.

Yeah, you need a goal. But yeah, I never sort of started off with the idea that it's all about making money. I started off with the idea that it's all about actually leaving the world a better place and wanting that to happen. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, that's powerful. Thank you. Um, Catherine, do you have a favorite book or a book that's influenced you that you've read recently that you would like to share with us?

Yes. Well, my favorite book is Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game. And it's a journey about a person who evolves their emotional engagement with the world. But most recently I've started reading Anna Funder's book called Wifedom, which is about George Orwell's wife.

Right.

And George Orwell, as you know, wrote 1984 and Animal Farm and his well-regarded, some say the best writer of the 20th century.

Yeah.

And it's just incredibly interesting way of writing her story and differentiating the 6 biographies that have been written of Orwell, which pretty much ignore the role of his wife who supported him, who financially, but also with a lot of intelligence around the work that she did that informed his work.

Okay.

And how she's, you know, essentially a figure that isn't seen as a participant in the creation of his story. It is a fascinating book. It's very, very engaging, and I think it's a demonstration, if you like, of rethinking how our perceptions of people, our communities, and our society interact, and somehow or other patriarchy influences the historical nature of how we see the world.

Yeah.

And I'm hoping through the book, and as I'm reading the book, I'm, you know, I'm hoping, I guess, that I kind of evolve my own thinking about that a little bit more than it has.

Fantastic. Yeah, it's good to see history sort of being readdressed.

Yeah.

Written back in. Oh wow, okay, thank you. Do you have a particular favourite quote that you'd like to share?

Yeah, I mean, I have lots of favorite quotes, but probably Einstein's quote, which is— if I can get this exactly right, I think it's something along the lines of doing the same thing in exactly the same way and expecting a different outcome is madness. I'm sure that's not word perfect, but it's along those lines.

There's no—

And it's a favorite quote just because I kind of think everybody should be looking at a mirror with those words in it every day because we know from neuroscience now that people, even when they aim to change, can change about 3% each day. But it's not— no one makes wholesale changes. Communities don't make wholesale changes. Institutions don't. But we can make a commitment. to stop doing things that really harm us, our communities, the environment, and our society. And we can make a recommitment to that every day, and we can evolve our communities so much better if we're all prepared to do that.

Absolutely. Thank you. I think I feel that's gone almost full circle. Thank you. I'm gonna have to ask one more though, if you don't mind.

Yeah.

If you could go back in time and give some advice to your younger self, what advice would that be?

Hmm. Oh gee, there's so many things I'd like to say, but possibly that it's all gonna be okay, you know. Like, I was so intensely worried. about my future. You know, I was concerned as a woman who was Asian in Australia that I wouldn't be able to succeed, that I, I was worried that, yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to live my dream and have the kinds of freedoms that I can actually have now.

Wow.

It worried me. I was driven by fear sometimes. Like, so being able to at the same time be authentic to who I am and what my goals were, but at the same time actually achieve them, um, and just drive to being more and more authentically me.

Right.

And, um, that really worried me a lot. So that's why I thought about all these things like, hang on a minute, how do you How do you resolve this? And I've been constantly on the search for how I would improve or get to that place. And rather than worry, I think I'd just be a little bit more relaxed and less anxious about it all.

Yeah, it will work out. Hard work will work out. Thank you, Catherine. I think now we're going to go into the segment where it's the sort of short answer questions just for a minute, if that's okay. Please just answer the first thing that comes to mind. There's no pressure. Catherine, are you ready?

Yes, I'm ready.

All right. Apparently, I'm not. Okay. Catherine, here we go. Sweet or savory?

Sweet.

Summer or winter?

Summer.

Hunter or farmer?

Farmer.

Jackal or giraffe?

Giraffe.

Risk-taker or risk-averse?

Risk-taker.

Data-driven decisions or intuition-led choices?

Data.

Phone calls or texts?

Phone calls.

Home cooking or dining out?

Hmm, um, both, but dining out.

Passenger or driver?

Passenger.

Electric or petrol?

Electric.

Cash or card?

Card.

PC or Mac?

PC.

Tea or coffee?

Tea.

TV or book?

Book.

City or country?

Country.

Sleep-in or early riser?

Early riser.

Netflix or YouTube?

Netflix.

There you go. That's it. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Catherine, is there anything else that you'd like to cover that you feel we haven't touched on today?

I sort of want to circle back to the idea of advice, you know, to younger listeners who are sort of trying to work out how to plan their career.

Mm.

It's working out where your point of passion is and being authentically you is the most powerful place you can be. So doing that given the context of society and where the challenges in relation to being that, you know, is a real source of pain for a lot of people, but it's actually also a source of a lot of potential energy and change.

Yeah.

And I guess my recommendation to people is that they look at the gap and the challenges that they perceive and and explore how to manage it internally and externally. And that through that you find a much easier sort of way to navigate your passions.

Yeah.

And your strategic opportunities open up from there. People can sense it when you're really sitting with where you're authentic and where you are your most powerful.

Right. And is there any sort of work that you recommend getting there?

Well, I've found meditation and yoga and exercise a way of calming my own polyvagal, you know, system, which is, you know, your nervous system. Yeah. And, and that when you're calm, you can be more reflective. So I found that being really important for me.

Yeah.

The other place to get there is whenever you have bad experience and reflecting on it, no matter how painful it is to think about, actually reflecting on it and thinking, okay, where's the source of that, that pain? What can I do about that? So therapy is good, you know, so you can differentiate between old pain current feelings, you know, and the resolution of that. And then just being never-endingly intellectually curious about all of the incredible intelligence around. For me, I needed to sort and sequence it. So that social maturity work that I did around sequencing the way social issues, norm helped me get some clarity around why there are differences sometimes and why and what it takes to drive to unification.

Yeah.

And unification is, you know, one of the key kind of personal drivers for me. I, I want to depolarize issues, resolve issues, see, you know, people come to, to conclusions together for consensus building and for a vision. And I feel like that's something you've got to resolve inside yourself and outside in community sense. So getting more involved in community work, getting more engaged with others and being in touch with yourself all throughout that.

Yeah.

I think it's a combination that really worked for me. I— the group of women that I met through the work I did on gendered violence were incredible and sort of inspired me around community work. And today I, you know, find myself setting up different groups all the time. You know, I've got a directors group now who are just fantastic, all different levels of directors, from ASX-listed directors to people who are just starting out their careers.

Right.

I've got another group which is a combination of academics and business people, filmmakers, advertising creatives, business people. We get together and talk about ideas.

Oh, wow.

You know, so I just find the creation of groups and people and exchange and heart, mind, soul connection is kind of, you know, the zest of life, really.

That's fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us today, Catherine. It was, um, it was a fantastic conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. It was great.

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