When Sara is first diagnosed with MS she asks the medics , ‘how did I get it?, what can I do to make it better? and what is it going to do to me?.’

Pointed questions that not everyone asks when we first acquire a medical condition that can disrupt our working lives. And because she did not get clear information she keeps her personal information private and doesn’t share it too widely. However, unlike the majority of us she had a huge job. In fact, she was Chief Executive of Argos.

Her story about how she has built her impressive career at the same time as managing disability is very special and her words will stay with you for a long time.

Sara has a plural portfolio career. She is a Non-Executive Board Director of both BT and Virgin Money. She is also the chair of the government’s Money and Pensions Service.

Sara takes us through her career journey with Mars Confectionary, Abbey National, Sainsburys and Argos, as Chief Executive with 750 stores across the UK. It was, she shares, the perfect job.

In our conversation together Sara talks movingly about how hard it is to ask for help and workplace adjustments. She offers some great take-aways and talks powerfully to the very essence of what it means to be human and her own honest reflections in this conversation bring out the things we need to do to help those that come behind us.

These interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster.

The first tranche of six podcasts is brought to you with thanks to LSEG who are working to build a culture of belonging for everybody and accessibility is a key part of that.

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

We are on a mission at PurpleSpace to cascade a universal definition of inner confidence as a strong expectation of a positive outcome and to share the practical things we can do to navigate our working worlds while managing disability.

Enjoy this episode.

Toby Burton’s story is going to blow your mind. He conveys with such clarity that while so many of our barriers to career success are caused by external forces, ultimately we have to dig deep and strengthen our reserves of resilience and confidence to push back against those things.

Toby is currently Chief Financial Officer of Fastmarkets. Their annual revenue exceeds 100 million. He began his career at Unilever and became a qualified accountant while there. He then found his way to The Economist and sat at the very heart of news, politics and finance and eventually became CFO to the Economist Group’s publishing business responsible for 300 million of revenues.

Toby was born profoundly deaf and has never used speech. He shares a story about being undermined as a 9-year old boy by one of his teachers. I would imagine everyone who has navigated work while living with disability will have experienced a similar moment when maybe a colleague has been blatant in their view that you cannot do something and you reach a crossroads of choice about what you do with that view. Toby decided to prove his teacher wrong and his career is testament to what you have to do to build inner confidence.

His story of flunking a really important board presentation about stock cubes because of not being able to get the right interpreters is a powerful one. Does he blame the lack of interpreters? No. Does he believe his poor performance is not fixable? No. Does he blame his colleagues for not noticing he had interpreters who were unfamiliar to finance? No.

As you listen to the film, you will hear his powerful truth that no matter how good your organisation is in relation to its own track record of getting it right, there is no way they will know your own unique adjustment needs. So relying on others to set something up for you is never going to work.

He leads. He takes control of his story, his brand, his adjustment needs, his career trajectory. His lessons are powerful and I learnt so much, as I expect you will too.

These interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster.

The first tranche of six podcasts is brought to you with thanks to LSEG who are working to build a culture of belonging for everybody and accessibility is a key part of that.

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

We are on a mission at PurpleSpace to cascade a universal definition of inner confidence as a strong expectation of a positive outcome and to share the practical things we can do to navigate our working worlds while managing disability.

Enjoy this episode.

Damian Riley’s impressive career path demonstrates his commitment to leadership across the public and private sectors and it demonstrates his sense of duty and compassion.

I have heard him speak many times and have had the great pleasure of getting to know him for a while. But you have to absorb the entirety of his background to get a measure of the man.

In September 2021 he secured the role of Chief Executive of the Army Recruiting Group and is responsible for recruiting up to 12,000 regular and reserve soldiers and officers each year to serve in the British Army. It is an uncomfortable truth that in the UK, like many nations, we need to be war ready. And that is what he helps to do. He ensures that we attract the talent that potentially could be called on to protect our nation and all of us, as people.

Aside from that huge responsibility, like every other person who wants to preserve and protect their financial independence, his world was rocked when he experienced a life-changing road traffic accident in June 2019.Our conversation will in turn, rock you. We talk about the challenges that come with the dramatic and traumatic onset of a life experience that we would prefer not to have had, as well as the gifts that come with disability.

We talk about those moments when our planned-for life-trajectory is de-railed and replaced with an ambiguous future and we talk about the things that we learn about ourselves as a consequence and how they can be as life-enhancing as they are challenging.

The key confidence fundamental in our Confident Conversation series that Damian talks to is the need to assimilate and make sense of our new identities that can often come from the experience of disability and the need to get comfortable with that before we can expect others to do the same.

These interviews are brought to you with thanks to remarkable people choosing to share their learning about developing inner confidence so that others can learn faster.

The first tranche of six podcasts is brought to you with thanks to LSEG who are working to build a culture of belonging for everybody and accessibility is a key part of that.

Once you have listened, we ask one thing from you: send the link to the film to five others who you think might be able to pass on the messages to five others.

We are on a mission at PurpleSpace to cascade a universal definition of inner confidence as a strong expectation of a positive outcome and to share the practical things we can do to navigate our working worlds while managing disability.

Enjoy this episode.