Zoe Amar  0:04  
We are delighted that this episode of Starts at the Top is sponsored by Arvato CRM Solutions. Arvato CRM Solutions designs and delivers award winning customer service, business process outsourcing, and digital and Intelligent Automation solutions with some of the world's most respected brands, as well as innovative charity and public sector clients. They partner with clients to help them define their customer experience and transformation strategies by implementing the right technology, people and processes to improve their customer journey while driving new efficiencies and helping them prepare for the future. To find out more about how Arvato CRM Solutions could help an organisation like yours, and to receive a free no obligation chat, visit arvato.co.uk/walesairambulance.

Alice Kershaw  1:14  
How do we increase digital confidence and over the next couple of years I want people to feel more confident about asking questions about digital. I don't want people to kind of feel they have to know everything about digital.

Zoe Amar  1:25  
Welcome to a brand new episode of Starts at the Top, our podcast about leadership, digital and change. I'm Zoe Amar.

Paul Thomas  1:33  
And I'm Paul Thomas. Our podcast is all about leadership and brings you interviews with leaders who we believe are driving positive change in the world.

Zoe Amar  1:41  
Change comes in many forms. And we're equally interested in speaking to leaders who are making incremental change and shifting the dial within their organisations. As we are speaking about huge systemic changes that impact the world of work. The driving force of this podcast is to share the stories across sectors and industries so that we can all learn from each other.

Paul Thomas  2:03  
And today we're sharing our conversation with Alice Kershaw who's head of digital transformation at the wildlife trusts. Alice is responsible for coordinating and supporting the strategic root and branch digital transformation of the wildlife trust's 2030 strategy, see what they did there. But what's nice about this conversation is that we're both big fans of getting out into nature. So although the trust's work is quite familiar to us, it was lovely to hear more about the digital side of their operations guided by the wonderful Alice.

Zoe Amar  2:32  
Before we get to the interview. There's a huge story in the news this week about Russell Brand, who has been investigated by the Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4's dispatches on allegations of rape, sexual assault and abuse, allegations that we need to say that Russell Brand denies.

Paul Thomas  2:51  
Why is this relevant to us? Well, we thought this was a topic that we should discuss, albeit not a pleasant one. Not least because in this season of episodes, we have spoken to Soma Sara who was author and fine founder of everyone's invited, which is an anti rape movement organisation, which allows survivors to share their stories through testimonies anonymously on their Instagram, and on their website. And we will share details and links back to that episode in the show notes. But also, because I think there's a big discussion to be had here about online influence and how it's being used to weaponize social media followers to create counter narratives that protect the people at the centre of these allegations.

Zoe Amar  3:31  
And what was fascinating about this was something I heard on the news agents podcast, I was listening to yesterday about the whole Russell Brand case. And they were saying that the speed of response to when the story started to break on, I think, Friday or Saturday, and then straight away, it almost became a kind of online culture war between people saying that they believe they're survivors. And then other people saying this is an attack by the mainstream media on Russell Brand was incredibly fast. And this is a real insight into the way the stories break on social media now and how people discuss controversy, isn't it?

Paul Thomas  4:17  
Yeah. And also about the power of individuals over institutions where they do have quite powerful numbers of followers on channels like YouTube. So Russell Brand has millions of subscribers to his YouTube channels, as other social media outlets, and we're seeing this more and more with a lot of these sort of controversial figures, I guess, who are sort of building this narrative against you know, it's them versus us. It's the big news media against the common person, the common, the common man, in this case with Russell Brand. And it was just interesting to see how quickly that army was sort of whipped up into To support of Russell Brand, as he said, particularly on Saturday, without really having seen any of the allegations put in front of them, I think it sort of started as he posted a video to YouTube before, before it even been published on the time site. And certainly before dispatches had gone out on Saturday night at 9pm.

Zoe Amar  5:20  
I'm thinking all of this is actually a really good indication of what we're going to see happening in the 2024 election, and it probably is going to be even worse. And the implication there for the charity sector, which is obviously where I spend all of my time is about these kinds of cultural springing up very quickly online, where supporter bases have already been developed in parts of the internet, which because they're so led by their values, quite rightly, charities may not be spending a lot of time how those communities can be mobilised, and also how it's incredibly difficult to have, you know, any kind of balanced discussion, particularly about sensitive issues on social media now. So I think some of the really fraught things we've seen coming up on Social were probably I'm sure a lot of us have felt very protective towards people, we know that our survivors are only going to be magnified in 2024. When we start seeing all the election campaigns playing out.

Paul Thomas  6:29  
yeah, and I think, you know, you and I, and several groups people had come have had conversations over the weekend, I mean, this comes off the back as well, as, you know, Elon Musk, and others using x, what was Twitter, still can't get used to that, but using his platform to leap up in support of Russell Brand, and that feels a bit odd. And then Elon Musk on Sunday, calling out the Sauros organisation, so you know, starting to sort of come out and show anti semitic leanings, I guess, is the word I'm looking for. And then today, there's a story about how he's making Twitter or looking to put a subscription model on Twitter for every user. And you kind of the conversation we had was that platform, although we all sort of, you know, we've made great connections on it. And it works really well, from a business point of view and an information sharing point of view. The only reason really to be on his channel anymore, is to almost sort of, you know, not let them get away with this, turning it into such a niche chat, hate channel, essentially, if it's going to be a channel where this type of behaviour is tolerated and even supported, then it's not a place that I want to spend any time but I kind of don't want to throw in the towel either. And say, Well, look, it's an open channel go off and do what you want to do. But the minute he puts a subscription model on top of that, as well, it just becomes a real, real challenge. I think

Zoe Amar  8:04  
it really does. And I'm sure there's reasons why he's having to do that because of commercially where Twitter must be at the moment. But yeah, I mean, I think what's gonna be hard for charities who will be looking to influence you know, what, what goes in manifestos and those kinds of things in the 2024 election, is that you can't just completely opt out of social, you probably can't completely opt out of Twitter, if you're trying to do anything around policy and campaigning, because I, you know, the other channels will help you make a bit of a dip, it's hard to think about how you might influence an MP unless there's a younger MP on Instagram, for example, is probably all the kind of contextual stuff that messaging you can do on those channels by actually getting to the MP and their team, Twitter will probably still be your your best route because I just can't see MPs making a mass exodus from that platform, because that's the one platform where they do have a presence. So I think that is is the thing, and I suppose this brings us back in some ways to the Charity Commission social media guidelines, which came out this week, and I will be writing a blog about that over the next few days. But this is very relevant to the Insight we've had into what's going on on social media with Russell Brand being a real so kind of case in point and the different sizes that were that people are taking in that discussion. But also the fact that you can get yourself a policy you can get yourself a plan in the way that the guidelines say that you do, actually the number one thing you also need to do is really to be prepared for when these incredibly difficult discussions could happen and maybe someone could potentially mobilise their base who has done Different values from your charity. So that is definitely something to consider the really difficult environment that we are now seeing on social which charities are going to have to continue to navigate through, and which will probably become even more challenging in 2024.

Paul Thomas  10:16  
Yeah, no, I think it will, won't it. And I think it's really hard to even join in any conversation on that channel on twitter or X, Twitter, X, it's really hard to see any conversation on that without sort of delving into the comments and seeing such an array of sort of that sort of mobilisation that kind of, you know, taking over of the conversation is just really, really tough compared to what it used to be compared to the channel that we all, you know, hope and wish it will be that threads isn't quite yet. You're right, you know, it's still the de facto channel, I wonder how that will change when the subscription model, if it happens comes in. And when he starts to charge everyone for their use of the platform, how many people will move away from it, but I said, I would suspect that mainstream media and politicians, journalists, or those people that use it as a channel today will probably just cough up the money, I don't know, will depend, and we'll have to see, but certainly be interested in going into 2024. 

Zoe Amar  11:15  
There are some very weird behaviours, or perhaps they're getting magnified because of the political and economic tension, which are only going to ratchet up next year aren't they because, are they one of the things that I worry about most in the context of the charity sector is it seems to me that key thing that sector does is about, you know, calling truth to power effectively. And it's really hard to do that when people have such a strange relationship with the truth online. And you highlighted when we were talking about this earlier that with the Russell Brand case, and obviously he has denied the allegations. The fact is that people were making this rush to judgement before they had even seemed to have heard anything about the details of the dispatches programme. And since when did justice become a spectator sport that feels like part of what social media is now this kind of gladiatorial exercise in picking a lane? So I think that this really highlights how much of a difficult climate this is for organisations who are there to shine a light on what's going wrong in the world and what needs to change?

Paul Thomas  12:33  
Yeah, I completely agree. There was a great article in the spectator that we will link to by Sam Leith, that I think we'll link to in the show notes. I think everyone should go off and read that. But yeah, you're right, the cult of personality, isn't it? It's the he can't have done these things. Because that literally out of the mouths of some of the journalists on GB news, I mean, it's not necessarily a space that we're going to pay much attention. But literally sort of saying, Well, look, I'm gonna believe Russell Brand over the the allegations because I know him because I watch his content, really? So a couple of years of watching him on YouTube, and you think that's enough reason to give him a pass for all of this bad behaviour. And it's so you know, so bad when you listen to watch the dispatches TV programme, I think in particular, to look back at some of his past behaviour and look back at some of his past performances and just see it writ large. You know, you even if he's proven to be innocent of the of the crimes that he's alleged to have carried out. There is a there is a behaviour there that is just apparent. It's very, very strange. Very, very strange indeed. Anyway...

Zoe Amar  13:54  
Now for our interview with Alice Kershel. We are very excited to welcome Alice Kershaw to Starts at the Top today. Alice Kershaw is head of digital transformation at the wildlife trusts, and she's responsible for coordinating and supporting the strategic root and branch digital transformation of the wildlife trusts 2030 strategy. Alice works with a wide range of people across the Federation to inspire and CO develop business cases for change, using insights, new ways of working and digital technologies. Alice also develops funding bids for this work, and oversees the delivery of transformation projects and governance, while supporting the upskilling of others say that all wildlife trusts are strong and effective players. She has been in her current role since October 2021. And prior to that worked at the National Lottery Heritage Fund, bringing in a new culture of service design to help people do the things that matter to them, including undertaking complex business critical technical overhauls of legacy systems. Alice is a claw Leadership Fellow with a particular interest in systems change and agile methodologies and how partnerships work together. Prior to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, she worked in a variety of roles in the broader heritage sector, working to solve knotty awkward problems with others. She lives in Shipley near Bradford, and enjoys being out on the moors in her spare time, usually whilst eating cake. Alice, welcome to Starts at the Top.

Speaker 2  15:39  
Thank you very much. And it's good to regret bits of my bio while it being read to me, thank you very much for having me.

Zoe Amar  15:47  
You should regret nothing. We're excited to dive into especially pleased to hear that mention of cake because this is this podcast is just a thinly veiled opportunity to talk about cake in my view. So I'm very, very happy to have you here. We're so excited to hear more about your story. And for anyone who isn't familiar with Wildlife Trust, can we begin there? Can you tell us a bit about the Wildlife Trust in the Federation how it all fits together?

Alice Kershaw  16:15  
Yeah, it does make us sound a little bit like Star Trek when we say Federation, I think it works very well. So we are a federation of 47 fiercely independent charities that work together for the same goal. So I work for the Royal Society of Wildlife Trust, which is the central charity. But there are 46 other wildlife trusts that cover the UK there's one wherever you're listening to this, if you're listening in the UK, there is a Wildlife Trust in your area and on some of the islands as well. So we effectively have so like the Isle of Man has its own Wildlife Trust too, as does Alderney as does the Isles of Scilly. And so they work and manage reserves. They have members in every patch. Basically, we have nearly a million members across the UK. Collectively, we're one of the largest environmental NGOs in the UK. But we work really locally. And that's a kind of key aspect of the Wildlife Trust Federation. So there is a slight difference between the organisation I work for which has a UK wide remit and supports those trusts and what the trust themselves actually do.

Zoe Amar  17:14  
Wow, that's really interesting. And we're going to hear a bit more later about how that structure is working in terms of your digital transformation. And so now's a good place to begin, actually, can you tell us about the digital journey so far at the Wildlife Trust and what you've learned along the way?

Alice Kershaw  17:33  
Yeah, so for me, it's been really interesting. So I was brought in off the back of the fact that in 2020, the wildlife trusts took the approach under a new chief exec, Craig Bennett, who came from Friends of the Earth to actually have a full co creative strategy that was going to take us up to 2030. So the whole strategy was co developed during kind of COVID times people came together from the Federation, then use that time in order to come up with a really decent strategy they could all agree with and sign up to, which isn't necessarily hugely common for these kinds of Federation's. But critically, for me, this strategy is made up of kind of three layers. So we have our kind of big goals about what we want to do, we have under that transformations. And under that we have things that enable those transformations to happen. Now, transformation four is what you described in the kind of introduction as a root and branch digital transformation, because we love an ecological metaphor. But effectively, that was the thing I was brought in to support the wildlife trusts as a whole are trying to do and solve some of the most kind of genuinely difficult problems in the UK. How do we stop climate disaster? How do we stop the decline of nature? How do we get people engaged? How do we change behaviours? How do we make the most of our own reserves? How do we mitigate against climate change? There's some big problems here. So we have to be able to make the most of everything. And digital is one of those things that was identified as part of a key transformation for the Wildlife Trust together collectively to make. So I came in about 18 months ago with the kind of remit of looking at how do we coordinate that? How do we work across that? How do we kind of raise awareness of digital, because people don't... I'm going to caveat this. I like working through all those just cause i'm really interested in digital. I'm fairly confident that most of my colleagues did not come to the Wildlife Trust Federation, in order to think about digital things. They came here because they're interested in protecting and enhancing nature and wildlife. So effectively, there isn't really a lot of that kind of skills and knowledge that you might see in say, kind of arm's length bodies or local government or national government around the kind of digital skills we might expect to see. So things like service design developers UX UI, that kind of stuff isn't really here. It's not available within the Federation. So they needed to kind of bring in someone who had a bit of knowledge about that, to kind of take for with the digital components of the strategy. And our strategy around digital has kind of three key things about it. One of them is about being more aware of digital sounds like you know, what is it, are we making the most of it, what kind of stuff is out there? The fact it's beyond technology. And it's not just about a tool, or bringing in a new tool, although I'm fairly confident some people expected, I'm just gonna go, I've got the tool that will solve everything. Anyway, we can probably come back to some of those thoughts. But basically, the fact it wasn't just about that, the fact about we, we need to make it inclusive and accessible, and people want to use it. So there's that side, there's also people being more skilled about it, that was a really critical thing in our strategy development that we wanted people to have the skills to use, the technology we're bringing in, and also skills around ways of working, like collaborating is critical for what we're doing. And actually, that's hugely supported by digital. So that was the other one. And then there's kind of third key strand is being what we call more informed, which is that, you know, how do we use the data that we have on people and habitats and species to make really good decisions, and to be able to actually see the impact of those decisions? On wildlife, we haven't got any time to waste, we need to make sure that we're making good calls. And that's where the data comes in. So that's kind of what our strategy fundamentally looks like, and the kind of remit that I have to work in.

Paul Thomas  21:00  
I was just gonna say how many people since you've been there have asked you for an app?

Alice Kershaw  21:04  
I think it must be in the dozens. And I will take as a major win the fact that I occasionally get an email from someone who said, I thought we might need an app. And then I remembered what you said about what's the user need. And now I don't think we need an app. And that is the kind of progress that I want to see more of.

Paul Thomas  21:24  
Digital transformation drinking game, I think is coming coming soon.

Zoe Amar  21:28  
Yeah, that would be great merch Paul. We should definitely, definitely launch them in time for Christmas, hopefully. No, that's really interesting, Alice. And there's so much that I'd really love to dig into more, because you've described this, you know, that is roots and branches, you were saying you're taking this very holistic look at your digital transformation, which I think is exactly the right thing to do. Can we just unpack it a little bit there. So just starting with the skill side of things. And I'm really mindful of what you were talking about earlier, where staff and volunteer motivations might not always be about I want to do this because I'm interested in digital, I'm interested in helping, you know, that climate disaster and look after landscapes and those kinds of things. How do you bring people like that on boards?

Alice Kershaw  22:18  
So there's been a couple of different ways, I suppose the initial answer is in as many ways as possible. So we can either we do stuff like I just put out a podcast today with our, one of our EDI leads that's gone out on our internal intranet, which is called Wild net, which is all about digital accessibility and inclusion, because we know that there's really big connections between kind of accessibility and you know, climate change, and who's impacted all that it's a really important thing. So how do we tie that into the values that the organisation has? So it's things like that, it's quite specific stuff. Like I've been running a course called Agile for beginners, which is all about, you know, but not pitched as like, Oh, this is digital skills. But like, how does this help you manage project, we are dealing with really complex projects. So actually, this is a methodology that works quite well. And also is already in use, you know, we have projects where you might test something out on a reserve, see what happens, get that feedback, then test something again. So how do we make the most of that, so some of those skills, are courses that I run myself, others are ones where I've brought people in to do it. So for example, whilst we don't have let's say developers in house, because of the fact that people have come from often scientific backgrounds, what we do have is people who are handy with like R and Python. Now, that's great, because if I can, you know, we have, like, say, we don't have devs, but I do have people who know how to use those kinds of, like, have those kinds of skills. So bringing in kind of how do we bring those people together? How do we make sure that people's skills are like high enough to be able to do that to be useful across the Federation. So there's been some specific training in that which has been identified. And we're also working with the Open Data Institute, because we know that one of the things that we have is some real pockets of great high data literacy really, really strong. But given what our ambitions are, we have to be able to have something that can be rolled out a bit wider around that. So we're looking at kind of data skills specifically related to the kind of data we have, because we want it to be specific to habitat data and species data and actually use some of the datasets that we use, and use those as the example. So we're working with the ODI, having done a bit of research on what people want to roll out a kind of bit of a self serve course, so that the courses we do and run kind of regularly, but then there's also courses that people can access in the kind of copious spare time that no one has, but actually are much more able to kind of dip in and out of and do specific little bits when they need and when they find useful, that's hopefully based around real use cases they're going to have. So that's the kind of skills work we're looking at. But there's definitely a kind of wider ambition to build in the kind of businesses usual skills approach because obviously our technology is changing all the time. The you know, the things people need to know is changing all the time. We can't just keep doing one and done. So the data one I think will be an interesting test to see if that's helpful. Have approach works. But I am quite keen to see that in the future, we have a lot more skills training that's just available in a number of different formats as people need it, and changes and updates.

Zoe Amar  25:10  
That's a great approach isn't it. And I love what you've picked out there around helping people identify the skills they already have, and these transferable skills around data, and also where they get to apply those skills as well on a day to day setting. And then still on that skills piece, because you talked about the need to keep growing those skills. How do you incentivize that with staff to get them to keep moving ahead on that journey of developing their digital skills?

Alice Kershaw  25:41  
I think it's always a challenge, because our resources are very tight. And so I think there's something around working with, for example, HR teams, working with our training teams, working with people who are delivering training to make sure that it is always available, there is wider ambitions around do we need something like digital champions, do we need to kind of really focus in on kind of train the trainer approaches, which works quite well, for things we do, for example, around our carbon work, we have trained the trainer there, where people are within trusts able to then pass on that training, I think the incentive is always how it makes people's jobs easier, and frees up time to do the things they actually want to do. The incentive is not digital is interesting, I think digital is interesting. I am well aware that that's not the incentive for anyone else. So having I do a course, for example, which is called like, stop inbox overwhelmed. It's all about digital ways of working. If I call it digital ways of working, no one will go to that. So it's like, what does it what are people telling me? They're telling me they have too many alerts, they have too many bits of information? Well, that's about you know, how do you make the most of collaboration, software's and ways? Sorry? Yeah, no, that was the right word, and collaboration, software and ways of working, that come from the kind of more digital space and internet era ways of working, as it's phrased in, you know, the public digital, like definition, how do we bring those in, without making them seem scary? You know what, so we have people, for example, will do things like make a user manual of me, which is great, you know, that comes from a kind of digital background, but actually enables them to have good conversations with their colleagues, but how they free up time to do what they need. So it's digital without using the word quite a lot of the time.

Paul Thomas  27:16  
We've come across that many times, haven't we, in our conversation Zoe? Where were in sort of skirting around the issue and saying, Well, actually, it's it's learning, it's learning the digitalness of everything that you've been doing already. And I've found two or three organisations that I've worked with, who I've said, Well, that sounds like agile project management way you're doing that as well. You know, the way you described it, that you'll find pockets of people doing things in a way that you just recognise, as you know, being badged with a digital name, but the digital name or labelling it is really unhelpful. So how do you how do you sort of do that with, I imagine you've got quite a diverse internal audience in quite a big age range, I would imagine.

Alice Kershaw  28:02  
Yeah, I find that it's, I mean, it's a big age range. It's a big skill level range. In terms of digital. It is a hugely expert organisation, which is quite an interesting place to work, the level of specialism is often very, very high. So everyone is incredibly passionate and incredibly good at what they do, which I'm sure is true of every organisation. But I will say I have found that quite striking here. So it's a real mix. But it's people trying to do their best in what they're doing. And that's really handy, because everyone's job is impacted by digital. So it's finding the right angle on that, in terms of how I actually do it, I go out and visit trust. So you know, I will go and visit I will offer I do workshops for them, I can help them come up with strategies, I do Lego series play workshops, which can be quite good fun, and also help people shape their vision of what they want to do. And also it's nice and disarming, because it's not pure digital, I'm not turning up with a load of mero boards, although I'll happily do that as well, you know, wherever people want, go out, talk to people see what's people's jobs are really like, but I also have a couple of parts of the governance of the transmission for programme, the written branch digital transformation programme is that we have a digital transformation delivery group and an advisory group. These are made up of people from across trusts. So the delivery group is people who might be an IT manager, they might work in comms, they might manage a GIS mapping platform. Anyone who's self identifies, as I'm interested in digital, I get those people because that's the enthusiasm I need to be like closest to it. That's where we can use digital jargon and language. We can work together we can do all that kind of stuff to see strategically what we need to do, but also get that feedback for people on the ground. The other one, the advisory group is Chief execs who are particularly interested in digital and that's hugely valuable as well. So I work with I think it's about 12, Chief execs, directors and trustees of some of our wildlife trusts, and they regularly give information on what's going on the kind of real pioneering work that's happening. The really interesting thing things that are going on issues, opportunities, that kind of stuff. So I can't get around everyone, I can't keep in contact with everyone. But I can hear back what's going on. The other thing is I do work in the open. So I put notes out. And I talk about what I'm interested in, that often results quite well. And people replying to me going, Oh, we're doing that, or I've seen this, or I'm interested to know more about this. So that can be quite useful as well, by just saying, I am interested in examples of x and people go, Oh, yeah, great. We're doing that.

Zoe Amar  30:27  
And tell us a bit more about some of the challenges that you faced along the way, and how you've dealt with those challenges.

Alice Kershaw  30:34  
So I think there's the initial challenge, I mean, I'm fairly sure I'm saying things that loads of people have said on this before, the initial challenges of like tech will save us, it's like, great, we've got someone in, they've got digital in their job title, they'll solve it all by bringing in some new thing, or fixing the old things in a way that we didn't think about. And it'll all be fine. And I think my approach of it's more about the culture and the ways of working than it is about finding a brand new shiny tool is a challenge. And it's been a challenge where I've worked before, it's certainly not new to this. But it's that expectation, management of the quick wins are not always that quick, some of the things are going to take a bit of time. And without the resource available there of for example, you might see something you want to do. But if we don't have developers, if we don't have user researchers, my level of confidence in that being definitely the right thing. It's not always high, you know, so there's something there around how I make sure that the research that's going into what we're doing is good enough quality to be able to define the tools that are coming out of the other end, if it is a tool based solution is definitely a challenge. So that kind of lower awareness of kind of user research, as opposed to you know, we're great with analytics, we're great with looking at data. And we're pretty good with insight on species and habitats. But the stuff around people and exactly what they need from us has been quite an interesting journey, I think. And it ties in to some of the stuff I know, we discussed before this around the next door nature programme, which has taken a different approach to this. And I can come on to that in a minute. So it's a there's definitely, that aspect is also that everyone, I mean, once again, not new, but everyone is incredibly busy delivering often outside, they're not in front of computers. So I honestly can't over communicate it what I'm doing is the other thing, we have an intranet, if you're a reserves manager, you're going to look at the intranet that often probably not. So I need to make sure that I'm getting stuff in, you know, staff briefings and emails and like, say, physically going to places and talking to people is really critical. And so for me the challenge of how do you get to 3000 staff, most of which are not in an office, that is a really critical challenge. So I relied slightly more than I might expect on kind of word of mouth and turning up for staff meetings, things like that, that just enable people to be aware that I'm there. And then when they're thinking about something digital, they might get in contact with me. But that's definitely definitely a challenge. The other one, which I would just find, which is probably also not unusual, is just that kind of connection to kind of that thing where when you get an email from like LinkedIn, and someone's like, Oh, I've got this great AI thing I want to sell you and you go, Oh, yeah, that's clearly rubbish, delete, the slight issue I have is that there isn't necessarily digital confidence to go, That's rubbish delete, instead, kind of take it quite seriously. And my concern is people just wasting the time of charities is just really irritating. And so that's kind of a slightly different challenge. But you know, there's, I get a lot of emails which like, oh, we should we should look into this. And I'm looking at going, you don't need to you already have a system that does that. Like, don't, don't be ripped off by these terrible emails. I'm sure you must get more than me of those. But there's something about that and how decisions about digital are made, which I think is a challenge. Not just common to us, but it's definitely something I see quite a lot of.

Zoe Amar  33:51  
It's a very big challenge across the sector, isn't it the quality of procurement, which I think comes back to skills. And also I think this is going to get a million times worse, once we see lots more AI products coming on the market, our inboxes are going to be overrun. And I hope that that is going to encourage more charities to really think about how they can run a good procurement process and do much better due diligence.

Paul Thomas  34:20  
With the AI in particular, already hearing so many clients just started on their, their journey and they're already talking about process automation and stuff like that. And it's like yeah, okay, put it on the roadmap, but can we not have a meeting about it until we've decided whether we're using teams to communicate or not? Or whether we need a standard intranet? It's things like that, that drive me completely and utterly potty.

Alice Kershaw  34:45  
Yeah, I, I would agree. I mean, we have big, big ambitions with our data for sure. But for me, there's something fundamental about we need to get our data standard state models and data processes right before we think of putting an AI anywhere near it. Because yeah the potential is huge. There's loads, I think it's brilliant. There'll be loads of great things we can do. We need to get the foundations in place before those things are even anywhere near where we want to be thinking about. I think it's great that people are horizon scanning, though, that's definitely like Happy Days great. But the link between where we are now and where we want to be, it's, let's be sure we're going to be making the right calls with that

Zoe Amar  35:22  
it's about readiness isn't it, is about getting yourself into the position to be ready to use these technologies. So do you have a sense, Alice right now, some of those aspirations you might have with those new technologies?

Alice Kershaw  35:36  
I think it's interesting, I think there are, there are huge opportunities with some of the new tech. And I know, we have projects, for example, Surrey space for nature, which is looking at kind of satellites, use of satellites to map some of the kinds of areas around Surrey, and use AI on that to kind of start to interpret what that data is telling us. So we have some really pioneering projects, there are some phenomenal projects across the Federation, one of the things I've always found really fascinating is because it is 47 individual charities trying to solve problems, the level of innovation is actually really high. The issue we sometimes have is scaling by innovation. So checking that we're not actually doing the same thing in more than one place. So well, we have stuff like that, and you kind of go okay, that is obviously something that could do really well. But do we have other ones who are trying to solve that problem in a different way? And how do we kind of make sure we have an awareness of that, collectively? And what you know, so we have got some AI in use, we have got some big aspirations around our data and how we bring it together. I think for me, there's such an obvious kind of way to look at our impact by bringing it together at scale. We work locally, but we influence nationally. So how do we make sure that we are using data both ways so that we can support those decisions being made on a local level, but we can also see at scale, what's going on, because our members, our species, and habitats don't know where the boundaries are between wildlife trusts, they're not visible on the ground. So it means that things cross them all the time. And we at the moment, don't have the biggest awareness of what's actually going on there in terms of kind of single supporter views, in terms of real impact on certain things. So we want to move towards a point where we have that at our fingertips, we have it self serve, we have it across the Federation. And that's definitely a really big ambition, along with putting communities at the heart of things and actually working more with. So just to confuse things, Federation is the the trusts coming together we call the Wildlife Trust movement, that kind of wider membership campaigners, people who work with us. So how do we, like move away from being top down about that? And go a bit further towards what do they need us to do? Where can we catalyse stuff? Where can we start to make a bit of an impact. And we need more information and data in order to personalise some of that journey and approach, make sure it fits their context, make sure it makes sense to them. So there's some really big ambitions there about how do we do more, and add the value that we can add and stop trying to go into areas where we don't add as much value? So there's some quite kind of key ambitions.

Zoe Amar  38:11  
Yeah. And that's points to one of the challenges that I imagine you face in your kind of context, which is about how you make decisions about digital in that federated network structure. Can you tell us a bit more about how you do that?

Alice Kershaw  38:27  
Yeah. So I mean, ultimately, I can't ever tell anyone what to do. I think that's right. I am not a decision maker, I can recommend things I can suggest approaches, I can model things. But I would never say this is what we have to do. We always do collective decision making. It often relies on consensus, or it can rely on like I kind of identified projects that are really interesting, that kind of surface and scale can be very, very influential. So if it works in a Wildlife Trust. So this next door nature that I mentioned, there's also a project called Evidence emergency, which is looking at our kind of species and habitats data, and that's a group of trusts have identified that that is a problem. And they are working with me and with others on what our solutions might be. So decisions tend to get made kind of in that way. There is a formal governance structure, we have a council, we have, you know, kind of many advisory groups and boards and we have strategic groups and co chairs, all that stuff you might expect on an individual trust by trust basis, the decision is going to be made by the Chief Exec. So I will have conversations with them. We have kind of regular kind of town halls and conversations around this is the state of the sector. These are things you might want to think about. But ultimately, collectively, our decisions are made through our strategy, but they have to be also kind of done on the ground. So there's a lot of where things like case studies of what works quite well. Getting people to talk so we do show Intel's on like trust they're doing particularly interesting things that helps others then make decisions in their context. Because I think it's also slightly different. You might be working somewhere where something is really important to you but isn't, you know, you might have different habitat, you might not have a marine area, you might be in Wales, and therefore you have the Welsh language aspect as well. So there are different contexts, we always have to take into account. So that's a Wofully way of saying that effectively, decisions are made locally. So I want to find the best way to support people to make those decisions with the best information. That's where my role kind of comes in, rather than saying, This is what we should be doing.

Zoe Amar  40:22  
You know, I think that kind of structure could ultimately work really well for digital, couldn't it because what you're describing there is something which is devolved. And if you can empower the movement to be really skilled up and to have a really clear idea of what success looks like and incentivize them to collaborate. You could be absolutely cooking on gas.

Alice Kershaw  40:45  
Yeah, I think I mean, honestly, I think the potential is enormous because of that. Like, it is a you know, it's a decentralised structure. I've often, you know, it gets described as things like, you know, mycelium, it's like, we connect, and we share energy, Oh, we love ecological metaphors. The other one is a memoration...

Zoe Amar  41:01  
Just keep giving them to us Alice, we like them too.

Alice Kershaw  41:05  
... memoration that it's all individual birds, but we make the shapes together. But they're still distinct and individual. And that's quite important to know kind of how the Federation works, because that grassroots local knowledge is the really critical thing. There is a reason we are not one organisation. And that is because that local specificity has always been so important to working with kind of species habitats and people, that's like such a critical thing. But like, say, it is a huge, huge strength to be able to draw on that local trust and that local knowledge as well.

Zoe Amar  41:37  
I'm finding this so refreshing Alice, because having worked with a number of charities who do have that federated structure, I think it's a not uncommon experience for people to see it as a bit of a challenge in many ways. And I can see how it can be as well. But what you're describing here is how that decentralised structure, that network effect can essentially end up being a real strength content.

Alice Kershaw  42:01  
100%. And it's, it's that bit that allows for the innovation. And once we can kind of scale the knowledge, that's why that communication, that collaboration becomes such a critical element of digital transformation. Because if all trusts know what the other trusts are doing, and can learn from that, and do the feedback from that, and take forward things when they get to the right point, we can basically scales to pretty quickly, I mean, the next door nature project came out of a thing called Team Wilder, which is initially trialled on Hampshire in the Isle of Wight. And they were doing work of how do we work with local communities in a different way, that work was so influential that eventually it was scaled across an all Wildlife Trust to doing it, that hasn't taken a huge amount of time, we have the ability to deliver things quite quickly. So once they work, we can scale them and we can deliver services that help support that. It's just finding those kinds of sparks that enable that to kind of move forward. That's the, for me something that's quite critical.

Paul Thomas  42:57  
So you might be coming to this when we discussed next door nature. But so a lot of digital transformation focuses on internal mechanics, and you've described you know how that's happening internally to the organisation. How much of that do you transmit to the people that access your services, and donors and people like that? And how much of it comes through in your communication that you're making these changes? Because that's a bit that I think always goes missing in terms of communications, we think about how we talk to our employees about digital transformation, but not necessarily to the people we serve.

Alice Kershaw  43:34  
Yeah, it's true. And I think it's possibly, because it's a more extreme version of what I said earlier, which is, you might not work for the Wildlife Trust, because you want to deal with digital, you're probably not a member of the Wildlife Trust, because you want to, you're like, Oh, they're really good at Digital. That's not that's rarely a reason. What you probably do want to know, though, is that were quite efficient and effective, and that we're putting the most money into the stuff you do care about, like helping our reserves and making sure we're bringing back species and doing reintroduction all the great stuff that you actually pay your membership for. That's the point is, so there isn't we don't explicitly kind of say, you know, this is our digital transformation programme. And this is what it means you can find information on our website, if you go there, there's a thing about working for the Wildlife Trust. So there's a little bio of me just to make the point that actually working for the Wildlife Trust is not just about being reserves manager, it's there are actually quite a lot of other roles kind of behind the scenes that might be interesting to people. You know, digital skills are the kind of thing we want to see in the Federation, you know, all his jobs go and do keep a lookout. But you know, so these kinds of things are where we start to talk about it. What you tend to do is see it so we kind of showcase the projects that are doing really interesting things. We start to put out new tools, new approaches, there's things being tested. There's new ways of doing comms that you might get tested. We're not necessarily going to say this is a digital transformation test of a new way of communicating with you. Because I think that might be weird. I would love to get more notes public. The moment my notes are done internally to the Federation. And one of the reasons I want to do stuff like this podcast is to talk a bit more about what we're doing to an audience that might be interested, I think I am quite keen to try and think about how we talk to an audience who might not be so interested. But I think it's probably the show don't tell element which is you will get a better experience from us. And that will be the digital transformation rather than us necessarily kind of telling you that is so there's a an organised group of organisations based around Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, who are working on a what's called a digital membership hub, they are quite explicitly a digital transformation project, I've been training them in Agile, we've been running it as an agile project, they'd be doing it sprint, and this is all about putting out kind of marketing information, getting that feedback, doing a B testing, all that kind of good stuff, but very explicitly doing it in a digital way of working way. You would know that from getting any of their comms. But it's you would have a more personalised experience than you've previously had with Well, that just leads to having some success and people kind of being happier with the comms. They're getting more people becoming members, more people taking part in actions for nature, those kinds of things. But it's not necessarily I don't think anywhere is it badged externally as this is a digital transformation programme, but it very much is in terms of changing the way that that group of Trust works with each other. And works with its kind of the public that it serves.

Paul Thomas  46:29  
It's interesting, because I was just thinking, it's a little bit similar, or the the sort of the step is a little bit similar to project I was involved in for a short time with CAMRA, the campaign for real ale, similar kind of model that they have lots of different bodies around the country, responsible for local local areas. But there was a call out that they put out to CAMRA members to say, anyone with digital skills would like that, who would like to join an advisory network. And I joined it for a short period of time, it was quite hard work. But it was, it was one of those things that sort of dropped into the inbox. And I thought, Do you know what I mean? Have an interesting in CAMRA. I'm a member. I like beer. And, and maybe I can help maybe I can offer something that is going to help bring the organisation forward. So yeah, that sort of stuff is done. And it works and can work really quite well.

Alice Kershaw  47:27  
Yeah. Also, if anyone would like to come in, advise us at the Wildlife Trust, I would happily take that we do have people who've given us support. And when I'm talking about our advisory group, you know, that includes Trustees with digital skills, which is hugely valuable. So yeah, definitely up for that. Also, if anyone wants to give us free beer, that's also fine.

Zoe Amar  47:47  
And if anyone, if anyone wants to get in touch with you, Alice to offer you either digital advice, or free beer, where should they do that?

Alice Kershaw  47:57  
So I am, given my complimentary thoughts about it. I am on LinkedIn. You can find that please don't try and sell me an app. Please, please don't. But I am on LinkedIn. I'm also I say I'm on Twitter. Who knows if I'll be on Twitter by the time this comes out. But I am currently still on Twitter, at Alice Kirshaw or if you want to find me but LinkedIn, if you just search my name and Wildlife Trust it comes up, you can find me. But I would be very keen to hear from anyone who would be interested to talk to me about specifically anything about skills, data, or how you've made the most of digital, I would be really up for that. 

Paul Thomas  48:19  
Or meet ups on the moor with cake...

Alice Kershaw  48:37  
Absolutely, cake, if anyone has any good running routes, or wants to know any good running routes, or where the good cake is around West Yorkshire also hit me up.

Zoe Amar  48:47  
I mean, I would definitely download an app that was kind of cake based. Where can I find good cake when I'm going on a walk?

Paul Thomas  48:58  
Yeah, I'm a big walker as well. And, and you look at the, it's a struggle to find walks that include, it's not a struggle to find them. But there ought to be a filter for walks that include a pub and or a good cake shop or cafe where you can actually stop and get something. A rest and a bit of respite and restoration. I'd be up for that. So yeah, anyway, or just a map of the wildlife trusts that have cafes.

Alice Kershaw  49:28  
I was just thinking, I was like, how do we bring this back? Yes. A lot of not all the reserves have cafes, not all of them are publicly open, but there are some amazing cafes or Wildlife Trust reserves. So it is well worth having a look on your local Wildlife Trust website. There will be a list some of them have brilliant cafes. I can absolutely say some great cake out there.

Paul Thomas  49:48  
It starts with cake, our new podcast.

Zoe Amar  49:51  
Oh, well we look forward to... We should definitely rebrand to that Paul. So Alice you know, you've made so much progress during the time you've been there and the amount of things that you've done and where you see yourself going is so exciting. Is there anything if we could go back to when you started that job in October 2021? Is there anything that you wish you had learned earlier?

Alice Kershaw  50:18  
I think there's some things I've learned twice, you know, I mean, when you get that kind of, you know, that initial wave where you think I'm really getting to grips with this organisation, I really understand it, and then you have the like, depths of actually I do not, I still have quite a bit to get to grips with. And then I'm kind of on the second one up. And I think there's something around things, I mean, some things that are not surprised, no one has any time known as any resource. But simultaneous, everyone is really keen to help. This is an organisation in which people are really happy to have conversations with me, they're really happy to talk to me really happy to help. One of the things that I had not quite clocked. And actually one of my colleagues has written an interesting blog about this that came out yesterday is eco anxiety, because one of the things that I've kind of had to learn and deal with is the reality that every day, I am looking at what is going on, in the UK, around climate and nature emergency all the time, that is my job, eight hours more a day, I'm sat in front of a computer, and I am aware of that, that is something I had not, I genuinely not particularly about it, obviously, I wanted to join the Wildlife Trust, because this was something I was passionate about trying to get involved in. But mentally, that can be a little bit of a challenge, because you're constantly aware of that in your job, I have a slight you know, everything. Like if this digital transformation doesn't work, there's a lot riding on this, you know, we are trying to do really big things, I really want to be able to support this organisation to do really big things. And that feels quite a lot of pressure, when at the same time we're seeing our latest, you know, mitigation documents, or we're seeing the impact of species declined through our species data, or we're seeing, you know, pollution going into the rivers looking at other people's data, you know, we look at, you look at the surfers against sewage maps, you see, you know, you're seeing this stuff all the time. And I think that's something that I kind of have to learn and relearn is how you balance that against. It is wonderful to be working with people who are trying to solve this problem. And it sounds really sanctimonious. But I think for me, there's something about the mix of those things where it's like, you just have to hold on to the fact that I am working in an organisation and with partners who are trying to do something about this. And that's really critical. But it is unexpected to what I was kind of thinking about when I started working here.

Zoe Amar  52:29  
So interesting, because you're absolutely right. I think if you're leading any kind of charitable, digital transformation, there's a lot at stake isn't there? And that's where I think it can be a real contributing factor to burnout can't it?

Alice Kershaw  52:44  
Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, it's singularly, we're not alone, every single charity, like you say, is trying to deal with really big problems. And at the moment, the problems are the biggest they've been for quite a long time with every single charity. So yeah, I think for me, finding peer networks of other people doing digital transformation and data work is hugely valuable. It's valuable within the Federation. And there's people who I really, you know, I lean on a lot to have these kinds of conversations with, and to be able to share those feelings is really, really important, because digital is not always seen as a particularly emotional sector to be dealing with, but actually, it can be quite isolating can be quite lonely, and you can feel under quite a lot of pressure. So being able to, you know, pick up, pick up the proverbial phone, it's always teams or zoom, let's be real, and have a conversation with someone about what they're doing, what they're working on, the kind of stuff they're feeling is absolutely vital release valve, actually,

Zoe Amar  53:37  
I can see that and there's a lot of heavy lifting, isn't there in terms of the stakeholder management and leading and dealing with organisational change as well? Isn't that that, that does have a bit of a human costs, too. So what else do you do to look after your well being, then make sure that you've got that balance right?

Alice Kershaw  53:58  
I mean, it's an interesting one, because one of the big things I do for my well being is get out into nature. So like, I mean, it's a good fit in some ways. So you know, just to, I just gotta keep plugging stuff, we have 30 days Wild comes up in June, it's open now, sign up. But genuinely, like, it sounds really, like I'm not just plugging it, that ability to go out and spend time in nature is hugely, hugely valuable. You know, it's like actually, like, this is the point, I don't want to spend my entire time just sat in front of a desk, designing stuff and writing copy, I want to actually be out and experiencing that because nature has a big part to play in our own well being. So there's that. There's also just the ability to get together with people I work on my own at home quite a lot. But I will go and visit other colleagues who are based up here in the North of England and when I go down into our Newark office, and just spend time with people because that's really important as well. It's not just about the kind of delivery focused bit it's about why you're doing that delivery can be quite important. And then on top of that, it's also you know, the usual thing of get help when you need it nature can't solve everything for you. If you know in the past, I've benefited from, you know, engaging with local mental health networks, and don't ever feel ashamed or embarrassed of doing that. Because yeah, you can go for a nice walk. And I'm pretty sure we're all we all know that. But sometimes you might need some extra help.

Zoe Amar  55:17  
100% Yeah, I think it's, it's so important for leaders to tap into that I myself talk to a therapist regularly. And it's almost like seeing as a personal trainer in many ways. You just got to do whatever you got to do to, you know, to keep looking after your own well being because I think is a really important thing for leaders, isn't it? You can't put on anyone else's oxygen mask, if you haven't put your own on first, like people always say.

Alice Kershaw  55:44  
Very good point.

So what else is on the wish list then? So if we wave that magic wand for the other things you'd like to achieve in digital over the next year or two, and we talked about your aspirations around AI? What else would you like to do? 

Well, so in the next year, we're going to be launching our kind of one of our actual, an actual digital product, like everyone I work with is going yeah, that's all thing rather than just a way of working anyway. So we're actually going to be launching our next donated digital output, which so when I was talking about the fact that we want to work more with local communities, and actually work for local communities to give them what they need, we've been running a project, which is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which has changed the way we're looking at Community organising. So the idea is that it should permeate every aspect of the project. And we should really look at what people need and want, not what we think they need and want. So that tool is going to be launching in about June, July time. And what's going to be interesting about that, is that I think it's probably quite different to what we initially thought people needed and wanted. Also not surprised who worked in digital. But when you start to have a look, kind of we thought that they might want to think really jazzy and something, you know, really high tech and like, do we need something that's like got like maps on it? Or works a bit like Facebook? Or what what do people really need? And then we brought in a consultancy, called gigs for social change, who've been doing some user research, they're fantastic, highly recommend doing some user research and starting to look at what do people actually want from us? And it turns out that what they actually wanted, was quite similar to what I just described, we want for ourselves, which is case studies of what's working, who's doing it, where are they doing it? What kind of stuff are they doing, what resources have they created? What can we learn from and scale from everyone else? So weirdly, we kind of didn't necessarily take from what we thought we needed and scale it, we just kind of went, Oh, that guy wants to look jazzier. So that's been quite interesting. So we've kind of really use that as a learning opportunity for like, how to do a project differently. How do we actually kind of make sure that it's not just about the kind of stats of it being used, it's like, actually, we have a little bit of permission to fail, I'm hoping that it does do what people need, because we've really based on user need, but for me, the aspiration is, we learn from that project, and future projects are based on that approach of what do people need from us? Rather than what do we think they need? We know what bits of our website are popular, we, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we know exactly what people need when they are trying to manage their own projects out there. So that's one that I think is a really important one of like, what's that project does and what comes after that. So that's a big aspiration. But there's also, well it's kind of phrased making data work for people in nature, which I've kind of described how we make the most of our data, looking at kind of really exciting stuff for me around like data infrastructure, do we need a data lake? Do we need a data warehouse, that kind of exciting stuff, which I'm not going to go into, because it's so deadly for anyone else. But the you know, like getting the infrastructure, right, and the culture, we have a cultural roadmap for data, and we have a skills roadmap for data. So now we need to back it up. We've got to the point now where we need the infrastructure to back up those ambitions. So how do we look at that? Then we also have the kind of how do we increase digital confidence. And over the next couple of years, I want people to feel more confident about asking questions about digital, I don't want people to kind of feel they have to know everything about digital. But I would love it if people were like, You know what? I'm curious about that. And I don't know about it. And I'm gonna go and see what that means or what it might look like, or ask someone else publicly about it, or share what I'm finding that I would love to see. Because I think that'll be a real sign that we're getting further in our digital maturity that people aren't kind of going oh, it's a bit embarrassing not to know it, but instead of actually having a look. And then at the same time, there's also a thing in our ambitions around what's kind of quick term like high integrity digital, and this is like making sure our digital is meeting our values and that we have opinions on it. So when we're looking at things like AI, does it meet our ethical values? Is it something we should be using it? Do we have an opinion on that? Do we need to have an opinion on that. But there's something there about like if one of our values is being is having integrity, then how do we bring that into our tech, is it making the most of what we have having best value, having the stuff that's got the lowest carbon footprint and having a real conversation about that alongside a wider kind of carbon mitigation, so my big ambitions around digital around that kind of those kind of almost three pronged things of like, let's get more confident with it, let's get our data better and in the hands of people who need it. And let's make sure that it's actually got the integrity that we deserve as a charity,

Zoe Amar  1:00:18  
I love that I think are so important to take a values led approach, especially with all the many developments that are going to come through with emerging tech. And I think not enough, not enough organisations necessarily put those values at the heart of their digital transformation. And it's such an important thing to do. So that's really exciting. And we'll be cheering you on Alice.

Alice Kershaw  1:00:42  
Yeah, no, thank you. I'd be, I mean, there's such a long way to go. And there's so much learning for us to do so, for me, it's you know, it's really valuable. Seeing the stuff you put out, listen to your podcast, learn from others. That's a really valuable thing. It's like, what can we draw on? We are, you know, the things we're really good at the things we're really learning, and how do we make the most of those? So yeah, really appreciate it. And it'll be exciting to see where we go, because I think the potential is absolutely massive.

Zoe Amar  1:01:07  
Brilliant. Well, we look forward to hearing how all of it develops. 

Alice Kershaw  1:01:12  
Brilliant. 

Zoe Amar  1:01:13  
And we hope to see you on a reserve soon. Cake in one hand and perhaps beer in the other.

Alice Kershaw  1:01:20  
Well, I've got another app idea that was not what I expected to come out of this.

Paul Thomas  1:01:25  
Exactly. Overlooking your data lake, you can't have a warehouse, it's got to be a data lake.

Alice Kershaw  1:01:30  
Well, you know, it's, I mean, we were trying to work this out the other day with the metaphors of like, what does that what's the data beavers are to the data lake? Do we need a data Lodge? I don't know. I'm sure we can work it through. 

Zoe Amar  1:01:43  
Amazing, fantastic. Thank you so much, Alice, a delight to talk to you. Really brilliant to hear about all the amazing things that you've achieved so far, and very excited to hear what you do next. So please do let us know how it goes. 

Alice Kershaw  1:01:59  
Thank you.

Paul Thomas  1:02:01  
Thank you so much to Alice for making the time to come on to the podcast, you can find more information about the wildlife trusts via their website at wildlifetrusts.org.

Zoe Amar  1:02:09  
We'll be back in a fortnight with a brand new episode, this time speaking to Ben Lindsey OBE of Power The Fight, an award winning charity, which tackles violence affecting young people. So stay tuned for that one.

Paul Thomas  1:02:22  
And you can support the podcast by leaving us a five star review wherever you listen to us, whether that's Apple podcasts on Spotify or Google. 

Zoe Amar  1:02:30  
Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.

Paul Thomas  1:02:32  
Thank you and bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai