About our guests

Ilona and James Alcock are friends of ours who we’ve seen go from strength to strength through their collaborations. Ilona and James have worked together previously so shared some interesting insights from this experience. They also a couple who have made the decision to be child free by choice. 

Ilona Alcock is co-founder of Elevate business development consultancy. 

James Alcock is a fractional CTO and founder of navigate. 

Rachael and Vikas’s reflections on the conversation 

Ilona and James have a strong set of shared values which has informed the way they’ve collaborated over the years. An appetite to take risks and a healthy dose of competitiveness has seen them make bold moves to work together. They also train together working in partnership to achieve big fitness goals. 

About our guests

Matt and Claire are friends who have a funny story about how they came to realise they were both openly Gay. Together they helped to create the Pride in Leadership network. The purpose of the network is to ELEVATE, CONNECT and SUPPORT LGBTQ+ business leaders and make them more visible. www.prideinleadership.co.uk

Claire Ebrey - is a purpose-driven leader and change-maker. Claire is the founder and director of On the Level, a consultancy focusing on responsible business, diversity & inclusion, membership, partnership and stakeholder engagement.Claire has also held senior roles at the Institute of Directors and Co-operatives UK.

Matt Howarth - has spent his career in the public and third sector working towards that end in a variety of creative, technical and communication roles. In 2007 he founded Reason Digital, a social enterprise that partners with corporate social responsibility, charity, university and other social enterprise in order to do social good with web, mobile and social media.

Rachael and Vikas’s reflections on the conversation 

We really enjoyed our conversation with Claire and Matt. Of the guests we’d had to this point Claire and Matt were our first guests who had met professionally, then went onto become friends. It was clear they’d found a shared need for a network and have worked together to create a much needed space and community for LGBTQ+ leaders. 

The other thing that stood out from the conversation was that we’d not appreciated the role that legislation had played in making it even harder for LGBT leaders to feel like it was safe to be open about their sexuality.

Vicky and Lauren Owens are sisters.

Together they run a sister led Social Media Agency based in Manchester, UK called Socially Speaking Media. They have only been running the business for the last 2 years. So are early on in their business partnership. 

They grew up dreaming of running a business together and pinch themselves everyday that this is their reality.

Rachael and Vikas’s reflections on the conversation 

We loved having Vicky and Lauren on the podcast. Through the course of the interview it became apparent that the impact of having a mental health condition accelerated Vicky’s journey to running her own business. While seeing her sister start the business gave Lauren the chance to hone her skills working alongside Lauren.

It was also fascinating to hear how they have developed healthy boundaries to ensure they are switching off from being on social. Which given their business is important to protect their downtime and the pressure of running a social media agency. 

About our guests

Sharon and Afiya Amesu are a powerful mother daughter team who founded She Leads: for Legacy. 

Sharon is co-founder of She Leads: For Legacy and one part of the mother and daughter team.In a former life sharon was a Criminal Barrister for 16 years. She now runs a consultancy delivering leadership development, executive coaching and diversity and inclusion training. Sharon is a passionate advocate for race and gender equality in the workplace.

Afiya is co-founder of She Leads: For Legacy and one part of this mother and daughter team Afiya completed the Postgraduate Course for Barristers and started her pupillage in October 2022. 

In her work with community groups she has seen how many of her black female peers face barriers that limit their access to so many opportunities.

Rachael and Vikas’s reflections on the conversation 

Rachael - I was blown away with the love and depth of regard that Sharon and Afiya have for each other. This should come as no surprise, but you could really tell how they had been working on creating an equal partnership. Seeing the way they have navigated their respective professional careers alongside managing the family dynamic was really inspiring.

We also loved the role that Sharon’s Husband and Afiya’s Dad plays in the background as a sounding board to them both as well as providing a balanced perspective when there are challenges as he can see both perspectives. 

Darren set up Truth in 2006 which he owns in partnership with his wife Jo Scott. Prior to starting Truth Darren had spent 10 years working for McCann-Erickson building a reputation as an award winning designer. 

Jo met Darren when working together at McCann and it was this early working partnership that meant they went onto become a couple. It was also their experience of working together that lead Jo to go on and join Darren in the first 7 months of him setting up Truth. 

Darren and Jo were the perfect first guests to join us on the podcast. They encapsulated everything we’d hoped to get from these conversations. Darren and Jo bring out the best in each other. By playing to their strengths they compliment each other really well. It was clear that the trust that is built up early on goes a long way to make the leap of working together easier. They just knew they would be better together. 

As we’re at the start of our journey of working together, Darren and Jo were a great example of what can happen when you take a leap of faith based on knowing what you both bring to the partnership.