P is the bank’s Chief Marketing Officer

J is Co-Chair for LGBT+ Network

S is Co-Chair for LGBT+ Network

R is Bi Co-Chair for LGBT+ Network

Jan is Jan Gooding, outgoing Stonewall chair

S: How's that P?

P: Thank you S. Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining us for the first actually of a series of new Q&A specials that we're doing for the Inclusion Network with an absolutely fantastic line up and I'm pleased to say the first person we've got on is someone I'm delighted to count both as a friend and someone who I admire, a hero of mine who actually was the first person to ask me to get involved as an ally for LGBT at my time at Aviva and someone who has done amazing work not just at Aviva in her roles there, but also with Stonewall and in the wider industry as well so without stealing her thunder because I know Jan's got a lot to say, it's great, thank you so much for joining us Jan, it's an absolute pleasure. Thank you for taking the time to spend with us at the bank. I'm going to hand to S who's got a few questions to cover off with you before we open up to people in a wider audience but thanks again Jan. Thanks for coming.

Jan: Well honestly P I'm absolutely delighted to be part of it because I know how much work you've done. It was our loss at Aviva when you moved to the bank but there you are. We gather together today so that gives me huge pleasure.

S: Great, well we'll go into the questions then Jan if that's OK.

Jan: Yes, of course.

S: The first one that we'd like to ask is your work at Aviva led to you being the first Global Inclusion Director which is impressive in itself but what was your biggest personal achievement whilst you were in that role and how did you manage that?

Jan: You  know it's interesting with these questions it's always quite hard just to pick out one thing because there was so much I was proud of but I guess the thing that really stood out and captured the imagination of the nation if that doesn't sound too pompous was the introduction of equal parental leave. And I think the drama of that was that we did it in five countries simultaneously. People know that Aviva were not an organisation who implemented things in multiple countries that were untested. We would typically pick a country or a nation and try something there and then roll it out as I'm sure you do in your group. But we introduced equal parental leave simultaneously in Canada, Ireland, the UK, France and Singapore which was a wonderful range of countries and the simple proposition was that we were going to give fathers exactly the same as mothers in that country. So in the UK that meant 26 weeks of parental leave on full pay, in Singapore it meant 18 weeks. It also included surrogacy and adoption and same-sex couples. And the reason I was so proud of it was it included so many of the staff in something that was actually very expensive because Aviva has a very big gender pay gap. I think they're managing to slowly get it down but it was I think I recall it was about 29% and as you know fathers can go on having children much longer than mothers typically and therefore this was going, and they earned on average higher, so this was going to cost a lot of money. And the business case that I did, I surmised, well I was guessing really, who would take it up, and I think the reason I got it launched in five markets was because so many of the boards and executive teams didn't really think the men would take it up, so they thought they would get the joy of doing something big and bold but they thought adoption would be really poor from fathers. I just guessed that maybe we might double, because it was so generous, we might double the 15% of fathers who were taking more than two weeks to 30% in the first year and maybe we'd get to 50% in after three years. This was my guess. In fact 60% of fathers took it up in the UK in the first year and on average took five months leave. So it wasn't tokenistic. And the reason it was so powerful was for me twofold. One that a same-sex couple took it up in Singapore where as you may know it's not legal yet to be gay and so the fact that there was a father who was doing something quite bold in Singapore by having a surrogate child. He was married to a Singaporean doctor. They'd had a civil partnership in the UK but their marriage wasn't recognised in Singapore, the adoption was going to be problematic, because only the Singaporean father could be on the paperwork, and yet we were able to allow this father to have full parental leave which was magical. And I think the other reason I'm so proud of it is the unintended positive effects it had for women which is what we hoped for. Every father who didn't take it up had to go through the mental process of why am I not doing this and they had to confront their own fears about career interruption and everything else that mothers have been going through for many many years suddenly ... men had to confront that themselves, it meant that it took away the bias when you were interviewing women and men in their thirties. Suddenly the, I think quite conscious bias actually, I don't think it's unconscious, it was taken off the table that if you recruited a woman she'd be more likely to take a long parental leave and it also had the effect of and again I don't want to sound like I'm being against the men I think it shows, it demonstrates where the power is. But I think Pete will remember that typically at Aviva when women took long maternity leave teams just had to sort of cope. There was no real proper system for getting maternity cover. And yet once men started taking five months, six months parental leave, suddenly they were going, you know, what's happening on cover when I'm away, and because men are more powerful, because they're more senior, they were able to make things happen on that front which of course benefits everybody. So that's why I was so pleased and proud that we did it.

S: Yeah that's an absolutely amazing achievement as well going to the different countries you know, like you say it's not just a straight tunnel vision, I guess it's impacted more than just one community or group if you like which is really inspirational. Yeah, that's amazing. And I guess going back to Aviva the Pride network at Aviva were very successful. What could we as an organisation learn from that network?

Jan: Well I don't want to teach you to suck eggs because Pete was a really strong part of certainly the UK Pride so he knows the kinds of things that we did but I would say that the first thing is they always had gender balanced co-chairs. So there was ... the organisation was led by a lesbian and a gay man. There were trans people in the network but they didn't tend to want to be visible and actually we didn't have great representation of bisexuality and other but the idea of trying to have gender balance within the context of LGBT I think was really important and quite unlike any of the other networks, you know, for instance the women's network was all about women. I don't think men felt very invited or included and certainly weren't asked to help lead it. I think the other was that right from the very first days Aviva Pride was formed by someone who was a trustee of Stonewall and he attached the work of Aviva Pride to the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index so there was an incredibly sound methodology that was underneath what Aviva Pride were doing. So they weren't just putting on events and having conversations like this which of course is incredibly important but they were also, in order to take part in that programme and learn from it, they were having to look at policies, look at the customer experience, all the things that participate in the Stonewall Equality Index rely on you to find out about. So what it meant was it burst out of just an employee network. HR had to be involved, senior managers had to be involved, the board had to be involved, because it was being done in quite a serious way. So it was never a ghetto. And I'd say the other two things were we were fortunate that Aviva sponsored both rugby and Norwich City Football and so that meant that we were able to be a very early part of Team Pride and the whole Rainbow Laces campaign. So when that came along Aviva again mainstreamed it so Pete as the lead as the Marketing Director for the UK, he was actively involved in Rainbow Laces because of the sponsorship so again, it's about integrating it and knitting in your LGBT inclusion agenda actually into what the organisation is doing. And I think finally I would just say that the network themselves were very imaginative about the sorts of things people wanted to do so it wasn't all about party time and awards dinners, it was also about fundraising. So Aviva Pride adopted the Albert Kennedy Trust as their charity for fundraising because at the time, again, Aviva's strategy was around street children, and so what Aviva Pride I think did very cleverly was they said OK, if the Aviva Corporate is all about fundraising for street children, then we should look at the equivalent, and we know that so many LGBT teenage children are literally thrown out of their homes, and so by supporting the Albert Kennedy Trust, again, we created this strategic synergy between what Aviva the corporate brand was doing and then what Aviva Pride were doing. And in the early days before people really talked about allies, you know, I would write to the board, and I would write to the executive committee in my capacity as co-chair of Aviva Pride and I would ask them to contribute prizes for our auction. We had a silent online auction to raise money for the Albert Kennedy Trust and that was a way of senior people showing their support because it would be a case of wine donated by the chairman or go and have tea with the Chief Executive which I think people were almost too frightened to bid for. But you know how senior people always think having lunch with them is some sort of a prize but of course we went along with that and actually, plucky people who wanted to get in front of the CEO or someone director, they paid their £50 or £100 for that bid and they got an hour with somebody really senior. And they were very clever and they would come in and pitch for something that they wanted to happen at Aviva. So I think it was that multi strand, you know, what's the Aviva brand doing, what's our sponsorship doing, and actually how can we engage allies and the community in all sorts of different activities, not just these kind of events.

S: No, yeah, I absolutely agree, to be honest I'm quite proud to say that we do a lot of what you've just said.

Jan: Well there you are I'm not surprised;

S: It does feel good and yeah and like you say it's a balance as well. It's making sure that everyone's included and we've got a really good mix and things and it's not all about you know just talking about it, it's actually acting on it and doing what's right so yeah, that's brilliant. And you touched on Stonewall, so as a former chair of Stonewall, could you tell us more about what Stonewall do and what your role was within the organisation?

Jan: Well, Stonewall is now amazingly 30 years old and it was formed, probably their most famous founders are Sir Ian McKellen, Michael Cashman now Lord Cashman and Lisa Power and they were formed on the back of this awful piece of legislation called Section 28 that the Thatcher government brought in. And I'm afraid in spite of Stonewall being formed they did not prevent that going into law. Eventually it was repealed but it was essentially saying that schools and teachers couldn't talk about gay people in schools. It was a kind of … schoolchildren and by schoolchildren i mean up to the age of 18 must be shielded against the idea that gay people existed and it was against literature which might have same sex parents. There was a particular book that was published and a ridiculous kind of overreaction to that. And in fact we look over at Russia now and we see Putin trying to introduce similar legislation and we all go "isn't that dreadful" but I can assure you it was Thatcher's government who first had the idea. Having formed Stonewall it then became a campaigning organisation in the sphere of gay rights and I think we all know there's been the most astonishing rollback of discriminatory and persecuting legislation and there's still stuff we want to do. We want to outlaw conversion therapies and six years ago when I became chair I suppose my contribution to Stonewall's strategic agenda was to become trans inclusive because up until that point trans campaigning organisations were quite separate to gay rights and I don't know whether people are rewriting history but my understanding is that when Stonewall was formed there were trans organisations like Press For Change and there was a feeling at the moment that "we're here to attack Section 28 - that's actually not an issue for trans people". Also people felt there might be a confusion between sexual orientation and gender identity so the view at the time was it was better to have separate organisations. But actually by the time I became chair the term LGBT was commonplace and I frankly couldn't understand, I hated explaining "oh we campaign for gay rights, no we (gap in audio) ridiculous (gap in audio) an awful lot of work to be accepted as an advocate for trans people because by that stage there was really some bad blood between Stonewall and some trans activists. And I find it shameful that even now one of the original, well a group of the original founders and supporters of Stonewall actually have set up what's essentially an anti-trans organisation called the LGB Alliance that was literally formed to campaign against any reform of the GRA and I think that tells you that within Stonewall I'm afraid I think there was a transphobic element. So I'm incredibly proud to have been part of the board and the Chief Executive Ruth Hunt who changed that. So Stonewall now are focused on preventing any further erosion of the rights that we've earned because I think that we've entered a dangerous period where things that we felt we had achieved and the Equality Act we suddenly find people questioning. In fact there were rumours the Equality Act was even going to be reopened and revisited. Thankfully we've seen that off at the pass. It's awful when you feel it's an achievement that Liz Truss has not revisited the Equality Act but let's take it for an achievement because it was being talked about. We really want to advance the sense of dignity and lived experience for trans people and that isn't just about changing the law, it's about health provision, education in schools which remains an absolutely core part of what Stonewall do, it's our roots, that was why we were formed and at the moment we are for the first time helping primary schools educate children about different kinds of families which is how we talk about it. It's not sex education. It's about the fact that over 50,000 children now have same-sex parents. So it's not about even the identity of the children it's about the acceptance of the very different kinds of families in which children live. But that's been quite a tricky battleground. So there's a huge amount that Stonewall does. Some of it is reactionary and I think our core competence is around public policy, changing the law, focusing on schools and helping corporates like yourselves change the workplace experience for LGBT people.

S: Yeah and I guess in Stonewall itself it's good that sort of the L, the G, the B, the T communities work together but for you, how important are allies in a business to helping the LGBT community?

Jan: Oh absolutely massively important because I think whenever you're talking about any minority and I think to be honest at the moment the big frontier which we all accept is the black and anti-racism that we've all got to work on and I think frankly you know Stonewall's got its own issues on that as well. We happen to have our first black chair who's taken over from me but he is our first black chair after 30 years and representation of people of colour and I'm using that term because I think we're still in a process of we don't like BAME and we're not really finding the language to replace it but the particular experience of black people and different ethnicities is a problem for all of us. So I think even when you say how important our allies I'm saying "how important is it that I, a white lesbian, am an ally to black lesbians and black LGBT people and probably black trans women are the most persecuted and the receivers of the greatest hate and violence possibly of any group. So I think we are all allies even within LGBT lesbians are allies to trans, gay men are allies to lesbians. I mean I just think allyship is such a bigger concept than straight people versus LGBT and I encourage everyone to think about the privilege the power the influence they have and how much easier it is to help someone other than yourself. If we all think about who really needs my help rather than what do I need we will advance the culture of our organisations more quickly and certainly the area of racism is where and within that I would include faith because I think faith and belief is particularly problematic for the queer community. That's where the Stonewall board is really giving its attention and work. We actually have an active programme which I helped start, but I'm not going to complete it obviously because I'm stepping down from the board tomorrow. But the trustees you know, we can, look, we have 30% representation on the board at Stonewall, we have a black chair, but we feel that's just the start. There is so much more we have to do to make sure the experience of our black and as it happens Asian trustees is positive. And you get beyond just that tick, yes we have the representation on the board. But I've had some pretty startling feedback from my colleagues about how they have felt in the way that board meetings run that I have not understood. So I think all of us having some humility about what allyship means and making it something we're all doing and not a term that essentially the LGBT community invented to describe the straight community in a nice way, I think allyship's become way bigger than what it meant in the LGBT community just as safe spaces has become way bigger. I mean we know that safe space was literally somewhere I can go and be out when I'm in a country where it's a criminal I'm criminalised for being who I am that's what safe space meant but I think we can all be generous about the fact that actually it has meaning for many other groups now not just LGBT people.

S: Yeah definitely and I think even just what you said about the feedback from the board meetings this year for our inclusion networks as a whole we've all learned that actually intersectionality is really important. It's not about our own fights you know everybody is different every single person is different it's not just because we're all gay or we're all straight you know it's important that we recognise people as individuals and yeah support each other and yeah I guess we've started to work on that this year and it's really important that intersectionality piece. For us anyway.

Jan: Well the reason I mention it is because we're not talking enough as leaders about the fact that we're getting it wrong. And that's why I'm telling you that I've got it wrong. Because I think that unless we all start sharing our mistakes and being specific about you know can you give me examples we're doing a complete disservice to the agenda. No-one is without a need to learn and do better.

S: Yeah absolutely I think I completely agree I feel it myself even learning this year what I was saying about other networks we've all kind of realised that actually it's not about our own little bubble network it's about all being together and being inclusive to all kind of thing so yeah but that's the best way to do it you learn from your mistakes so um it can always have good coming out of it. But going to a more personal question, who's the most important person in your coming out story at work and what can we learn from that?

Jan: (23:41 - 33:55, fantastically dull coming out story)

S: Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm just going to suggest opening the call up if anyone has any questions for Jan. At the moment.

R: I do. Surprisingly. I'm the bi co-chair for the network so that's what I do.

Jan: Ah brilliant.

R: And my question's to do with the GRA. I've got a little boy who's five - he's got a mum (me) and he's got a trans mum. So the work you do going into Stonewall is really important to me as well. Couple of questions actually. The first one's to do with Stonewall. What is it that you guys do when you go into schools - you mentioned the different families. Is there a workshop you guys go in and do?

Jan: There's a number of things we do for almost every kind of educational organisation. So the first thing you have to do is tailor it to primary, or secondary, or college or universities. One thing we do is run conferences and workshops where we educate teachers and staff because one of the things Stonewall wants to do is really embed the learning so that the schools and universities become able to take it on themselves and not rely on us anymore. That's a different thing to someone like Diversity Role Models - they do really fantastic work but it is about sending someone who's been successful in life and they go and speak to a particular class and that has its role. But what Stonewall is trying to do is integrate the education into the staffroom, into the headteacher, into the leadership teams. And so we produce a lot of materials that go along with that, so whether it's posters that go up, I mean I'm so pleased when people I know send me, they go into a school and they'll send me pictures of , you know, "Gay, let's get the meaning straight" or whatever it is that are in secondary schools. In fact our most famous slogan "Some people are gay, some people are trans, some people are bi, get over it" was written for secondary schools back in the day. In primary schools we've just starting to do it now, so again it's education packs and materials to get it into the hands of the staff and the teachers so they feel able with their governing bodies to formulate the relevant policies for their schools and be empowered themselves to do what works for them. A couple of years ago we were given a grant by the government to do work in 250 faith schools which was also incredibly important which I think people don't realise there are many faith schools who want to be LGBT inclusive so we can make the mistake of just thinking of, you know, faith schools, absolutely hopeless. They vary enormously. So we’re not so much targeting parents, we're really trying to influence the school governors, the headteachers and the staff themselves who want to champion it. And I actually went and spoke at my old school assembly which was a really really, I don't think they've ever had anyone on the stage who said that they were a lesbian in the sort of 75 years of the school and of course when I went and did it I had all the those feelings of like being a little girl, you know, going back. But one of the things I spoke to when I addressed the assembly was that this is important education for the staff, it's not just about the students, the staff are not out, the staff get abused and teased by students, and therefore that is why getting into the staffroom is so important because if you think of the school as a village of which the parents are an incredibly important part. That's who we want to really educate and make them feel empowered so they're not fearful of, you know, gender neutral toilets or whatever it is or children who are being ... children who are questioning or the acceptance of parents when they go to parent-teacher meetings. You know, you don't want staff expressing surprise that they're being con ... you know, that they have a same-sex parents in front of them. So that's the kind of work that we're doing. The primary school stuff is controversial because it's new and it's just started this year and we even have the joy of the LGB Alliance for heaven's sake even campaigning against us doing that. It's extraordinary. Section 28 was all about "you mustn't tell children that gay people exist". I mean what a ridiculous idea that you can't tell primary school children that their best friend at school might have same-sex parents or a trans parent. You know. It's absurd. It's that old stuff of like "it's catching". If you even tell people about it they'll catch it. (inaudible) ... thirty years. It's extraordinary.

R: I know, I mean I grew up under Section 28 and it took me years to work out that I was bi because of that, I'm pretty certain. To be honest so I understand that. I've actually done a role model speech in Wales randomly and I knew that side of it but I didn't know the education part so it's nice to know that there's education for teachers, that's really good. Second question then is the GRA. How do we help it go through because in particular for me, on a personal level, the spousal vita, the spousal veto needs to go. And also this whole living authentically for two years to get a stamp on it to change your gender when you can do it via a doctor's letter for your pass ... driving licence but you can't do it for prison or pension without some people in an ivory tower stamping this bit of paperwork. Seems daft to me. So how do we help get that through?

Jan: Actually corporates have already been incredibly helpful. I promise you, I've just read my board papers for tomorrow. 200 corporates, I don't know, I hope the bank were part of that if you're involved with Stonewall. The reason Liz Truss stopped short and didn't revisit the Equality Act and the reason we got the very paltry "you can now do the form digitally", you know and "we're going to experiment with having three more gender clinics" was largely attributed to the corporates writing to Number 10 in the way that they did. Number 10 listen to business more than they listen to Stonewall. And so as we now as Stonewall we're going to regroup because there's a slight feeling of "phew, it didn't go backwards, we've gained very little but actually there was a lot to lose and as long as Lis Truss is the Minister for Equalities I have absolutely no idea who she thinks she's representing because she, I've never heard her talk about race, I've not heard her do anything positive for trans people, she's being really weird on conversion therapy. I mean why is this woman, and I'm speaking very openly to you, I mean she's the most disastrous Equalities Minister so let's hope we get somebody new, but we at Stonewall now are regrouping on our strategy for the advance of everyday life of trans people and yes, that's going to be around trying to change the law, but I think the problem we bumped into, R, was that Teresa May went for it because she's a lawmaker and because the Tories are so cross that the Labour Party and the Liberals enjoyed really the ownership of all the legislative advances. She wanted to do something splendid and amazing. I think she's a very good woman. And because she's a lawmaker and it's easier (she thought) to change the law than invest in healthcare, which actually is a much bigger priority for trans people is the length of time they have to wait for any kind of attention. She didn't prepare the ground so if there's one big benefit of hindsight we have, is we have to change the toxic toxic dialogue that has gone on around trans people. And that has to be done to pave the way for revisiting the changes we want to see in the process and our hope is that now Liz Truss has said what she is and isn't going to do we can draw a line under that. And I think, but this is for the board to discuss, I think we've got to really think about what campaigns we are going to run to win hearts and minds again, and get away from this ridiculous toxic tennis between JK Rowling and the rest of the world which is not helping anybody. It's superficial nonsense and no-one understands it and so we've got to regain that middle ground. We've lost people that we should never have lost because of the nature of the discourse. And I haven't been able to prevent headlines in the Sunday Times going "Stonewall founder sets up opposition group" because Simon Fanshawe was one of the founders. I can't do anything about it. The fact that Sir Ian McKellen wrote to me personally, as did Lisa Power, as did Michael Cashman, personal emails from them saying to me "he does not speak for me". You know, but we don't want to have that row in public, so I ... I'm telling all of you, I hope that you will treat it confidentially, but I say it to reassure you. This is the sort of nonsense that we've been in where journalism and clickbait headlines. We have refused to engage in that. I don't want to go in the Times the following week saying "well actually I you know I've got reassurance from the founders who we would all respect a bit more than Simon Fanshawe". It's noise. I want to get the conversation around the everyday lives of trans people and an understanding that they're no threat. They're not men dressed up as women, or women dressed up as men, they're not serial killers, they are not paedophiles, they are not predatory. All the things that gay people were accused of 30 years ago. Literally every single thing. The only thing that is different in terms of the discrimination and prejudice that trans people are experiencing, the only thing that is different to gay people I would say, is sport. Although there was a bit of it then because when Martina Navratilova came out as a lesbian, there were headlines saying "should she be playing in the women's game" because obviously if you're a lesbian you're a sort of almost-man so does she, you know, no wonder she's so muscly and ugly. Billie Jean King had the same so although there was homophobia associated with elite athletes, it wasn't as problematic as it is with trans sports people. And also the confusion with intersex so Caster Semenya gets treated as if she's a trans woman when and she's not. So there's a huge amount of education we need to do and I think we need to do it how Stonewall does it best, which is we do it in educational institutions which is where it belongs, where it's properly taught and the children and the students are properly engaged in the subject, deeply, because these are complex situations and through the workplace, because we've learned that corporates want to have inclusive cultures. They completely get it, they're not just doing it because they want to stay safe in the face of the law, which may have been how they started, but it's certainly not where they are now. And I think if we educate the workplace that will flow into society which is what we've seen in terms of changing attitudes to gay people. So I feel optimistic. It's going to be another decade and this bank and other corporates are absolutely critical allies. The power of your brand, the power of your reach, the power of your branches, the power of the customer experience that you choose to give. That beats anything that Stonewall can do.

R: thank you, that's very helpful. I have a partner who's blocked by spousal veto so I have a personal stake in this but um

Jan: OHHHH! I'm so sorry!

R: yeah, it's one of those things, thank you.

Jan: Well, Ruth Hunt's maiden speech in the House of Lords was on that very subject. I don't know whether you saw it.

R: I met Ruth Hunt. She did a good seminar in Bristol Uni, I went down, and I asked her the question about GRA face to face, and she answered me and she obviously then went on to the House of Lords and did the speech so I've got a lot for Ruth Hunt, she's a good woman.

Jan: THE BARONESS as we now have to call her.

S: Has anyone else got any questions?

J: I have a question, actually, so I'm J, my pronouns are him and he. I'm also a co-chair at the bank for the LGBT+ network , and I think for me when I've been listening to you Jan, I could listen to you all day, I really really could. Your coming out story was really inspirational and actually it kind of replicates my feeling when I came out as well in the workplace and currently I'm going through a journey with my leaders, the people that I am responsible for, in emotional intelligence training. And the fact that those two really marry well, you know, being able to be emotionally in tune with yourself first and foremost before you can then ask other people to be emotionally invested in you as well is something that you've got me thinking about and I made a note actually of what you said, you know the biggest amount of trust that, the biggest act of you don't trust your colleagues is when you're not out and proud in the workplace and that's something that's going to resonate me. I suppose my question, when I'm thinking about what you've spoken about and everything you've done with Aviva is how do you make sure that the agenda that you're on is the agenda for all the people that you look after, the people that look up to the network in Aviva, how do you make sure you stay on their agenda?

Jan: Well the way, I'm sure you're the same, the way Aviva Pride was organised was we had a steering group and our concern was to make sure we had representatives from all the locations so from Norwich, from Bristol, from York, from Perth, and even that took time, you know. There were, like, we had no-one in the Sheffield office, and we had no-one from Perth, we couldn't find anyone on the ground who was willing to be out and to stand up and be counted. So there are lots of acts of courage going on all the time but clearly trying to make sure that your steering group is representative so we had a trans member of the steering group who was absolutely vital but they did not want to be visible so I think there are going to be all sorts of things I'm sure you navigate around who belongs to the network, what you do with your lists, not accidentally outing anybody. But I would say that our blind spot was we had no people of colour in the network and clearly that was absurd. I mean I know Aviva have a representation issue but given we had a huge workforce both in London and Bristol which are hugely diverse cities, the idea that none of the people of colour in those offices were also LGBT was crazy. And we just didn't think about that. It was an absolute blind spot. And what was so fascinating was that when we launched Origins, which was our name for race, ethnicity, faith and belief, and the reason we called it Origins and not the black network or people of colour network was because we all have an origin. You have one, J, you have one, S, we all have an origin, and actually we have no say over what it is. It's exactly like your sexual orientation. The fact that my mother was Irish I can do nothing about, you know, we're victims of circumstance. So Origins was a unifying notion but what we found was the LGBT people of colour joined Origins because they preferred to be visible as a black person than to be visible as a black gay person or a black trans person. And so when you talk about how do you make sure you represent everybody I think what S already referred to which is the intersectionality of your different networks and how you can have private conversations as well as public conversations where you allow yourselves to be influenced by each other because there may be LGBT people who are in your equivalent of Origins. How do they influence their agenda without having to come out because that may be why they're trying to influence your agenda. Lady Phyll who's the founder of Black Pride, I've done a number of talks with her, I don't know if you've met her, she's unbelievable. I mean you must get her to come and talk to you if you can get her. She's now the CEO of Kaleidoscope. But I have been in the room with her in corporates around Pride where we've been doing a joint session and the first thing she says is "I need to come out to you as a black woman" and everybody laughs because we know we're there for an LGBT event and then she says "I'm coming out" and we think she's going to say something else, you know, either I'm bisexual or whatever it is. And she says black woman when there couldn't be anything more obvious in the world. She's the only black person in the room apart ... there's someone she brings from her own board. I've noticed that whenever she speaks so that she isn't the only one. She has one other black person in the room and that's the person she's brought with her. So I would encourage you to think about your blind spots and be thoughtful knowing what you do about intersectionality about how you can invite influence into your programme. I mean I think we're going into Black History Month, aren't we, and I don't know what you're planning to do but every LGBT network should be doing Black History Month. It isn't for the people of colour or Origins type network to acknowledge it. And then I think it's you, it's how, you know, it's how the chairs, how the co-chairs behave, what are they willing to share. I'm afraid there just is no substitute for role-modelling what you want to see and then what I found at Aviva was people contacted me privately and that was great, you know, everything doesn't have to be out in the open and you don't name your sources and senior people at Aviva were incredibly respectful when I said look people have been in touch with me. They never asked me well who or what happened or where, there were some awful awful stories. I was also, I was contacted by parents, husbands, wives, people who were devastated. I remember there was a woman whose husband came out as gay and she was devastated and she wanted to talk to me about it because I had come out to a husband. It was quite odd because her homophobia was extraordinary. I mean I sat listening for an hour to this woman, I'm really glad I did the call, but there were moments on it when I thought "do you have any idea how offensive what you've just said is to me?" She described her shame and humiliation and what were the neighbours going to say and the children's lives were going to be destroyed and this stuff to me, a mother, who had effectively done the same thing. So it means for challenging conversations but my feeling is there is something to be learned always, for us to grow, and be challenged and listen to this awful stuff because it is an insight into what people think and why they have the homophobia transphobia and biphobia that they do. But also I'm afraid I don't agree with the attitude of so many under-30 people who say "it's not my job to educate. I'm afraid I'm a bit old school and I think it's Stonewall's job to educate. It's my role as a leader to educate. I think with leadership comes disclosure and an obligation to explain why someone has offended you or upset you or why that might not land well and you might like to think of it again. I don't agree with this "I'm so exhausted go and read a book and find out for yourself." I'm reading loads of books by the way I think we do educate ourselves but that's not the only thing we need the personal stories to bring it all to life.

J: Thank you very much.

S: Has anyone else got any questions before we wrap up because that's actually quite a good time?

P: I think we're probably at time S.

J: You all want your lunch!

P: That's been brilliant Jan really inspiring and thank you for the great questions but also thank you Jan for just the honesty and the integrity in your answers and I know you absolutely you know the way you live your life and what you do is so true to everything you've spoken and gone through today so thank you also for your support and your input into what we're doing at the bank as well and thank you for being an inspiration to all of us. So it's been great having you on and thank you S as well for great questioning and we're going to do more of these so Jan we brought the best up first so we're going to have a hard act to follow with our next speaker.

Jan: No you've got much better you've got to get Sheldon Mills the new chair of Stonewall. He's hardly spoken to anyone so it would be quite a coup and as he's at the FCA, their strategy director, it's kind of pertinent for you.

P: It'd good timing, I've got him in my list to email this week.