Equity, Diversity and Inclusion within foundation industries: perceptions, practice and progression

In this first episode of The Equity Edge, hosts Professor Sue Black OBE and Jo Stansfield are joined by three guests: Professor Mark Jolly, Director of manufacturing and materials at Cranfield University and the lead scientist on the Transfire transforming the foundation industries project. Dr. Shini Somara, multi award winning computational fluid dynamicist, mechanical engineer, author and broadcaster who brings complex science technology and engineering to everyone and Dr. Rhys Morgan, Director of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

They launch the series by explaining the concept of foundation industries and their importance. The discussion progresses to stereotypes upheld in Engineering and within the foundation industries, mainly around gender. The group considers the ways to support companies to be more inclusive; starting from education through to working and being established in industry and visual representation.

Meet our guests

Episode Transcript

Sue Black

Welcome!  The Equity Edge is all about shaping tomorrow’s foundation industries, with a focus on EDI – that’s equity, diversity, and inclusion, and how it can help us achieve a sustainable and fairer future.

I’m Professor Sue Black. I’m Professor of computer science and technology evangelist at Durham University, leading pioneering initiatives like our award winning TechUPWomen programme championing diversity in STEM

Jo Stansfield

And I’m Jo Stansfield. I’m an engineer-turned-business-psychologist specialising in equity, diversity and inclusion in engineering fields. Welcome to The Equity Edge podcast.

Sue Black

Together we are working with TransFIRe, a programme investigating how the foundation industries can develop innovative solutions to reduce waste and energy use, and to accelerate the development of clean technologies.

Jo Stansfield

These are the industries that make 75% of the materials we see around us, and are fundamental to modern society – they are: cement, metals, ceramics, glass, paper and chemicals.

Sue Black
Welcome everyone to our first episode where we’ll be talking about the foundation industries as a whole. We’ll be discussing stereotypes in engineering and supporting companies to be more inclusive and so much more. Who’s joining us today, Jo?

Jo Stansfield
Thanks. Sue, today we’re joined by Professor Mark Jolly, Director of manufacturing and materials at Cranfield University. And the lead scientist on the Transfire transforming the foundation industries project. Welcome Mark.

Mark Jolly
Hi Jo, Hi Sue

Jo Stansfield
And we have Dr. Shini Somara, a multi award winning computational fluid dynamicist, mechanical engineer, author and broadcaster who brings complex science technology and engineering to everyone. Shini Welcome to the show.

Shini Somara
Thank you. Great to be here.

Jo Stansfield
And finally we have Dr. Rhys Morgan director of the Royal Academy of Engineering with responsibility for education skills inclusion. Welcome to the show Rhys.

Rhys Morgan
Thanks for having me, Jo and Sue looking forward to it.

Sue Black

So Mark, we’ll start with you. We met a few years ago when we did meet I had no clue what foundation industries were. So I’m sure that the term the foundation industries might be a new concept to lots of people. Can you tell us what the foundation industries are and why they’re so important?

Mark Jolly
Yeah, of course, Sue. It’s interesting actually, the foundation industries is really a construct. It was only developed as a concept about five or six years ago. But the industries themselves are really, really old. And originally the concept was that these are the high intensity industries, the ones that use lots and lots of energy to make the materials and products that they make. So the foundation industries are really those that sort of provide society with about something like 75% of all the stuff that we have all the materials that we use in everyday life. They include cement, ceramics, chemicals, glass, metals, and even paper. All the objects, all the structures that we have in our life that you see around that form, you know, the housing that we live in the offices we work in, the things that we use everyday, like mobile phones, laptops, computers, cars, aeroplanes, everything are made from these materials. So they’re sort of fundamental to society as we know it. So that’s why we’ve called them foundation industries. It’s all of those stuff that we use without which would be very hard to live society as we, as we know.

Sue Black
Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I can’t believe that I didn’t really know about that beforehand. So it’s been really interesting finding out so much more about all the different industries and every time I talk about the foundation industries to someone, which is quite often now that I’m involved in the project. I can never remember all six of the foundation industries, I usually get five and there’s one that just eludes me.

Mark Jolly
So that was me. I get three and three I’ve got the three C’s, and then three which aren’t C, and I try and remember them in alphabetical order as well. It’s just a little mnemonic crossbones,

Sue Black
but we’ll be testing everyone to see if we can all get it. That’s really great. Thanks very much Mark. And welcome Shini. Your work was instrumental in raising greater awareness of STEM careers, which is wonderful. And breaking down some of the stereotypes about engineering.  What’s made this so important to you?

Shini Somara
I think personal experience really because having gone through quite a rigorous academic education, to then find myself in an industry where there were no people that looked like me, and hadn’t had similar backgrounds. I found that quite alienating and so what I wanted to do was try and encourage more women and more people of colour into the industry just so that they didn’t feel that they weren’t welcome. It just seems like quite a shame to have been so dedicated and committed to learning about the industry and getting qualified in the industry to then not feel confident to contribute to the industry purely because of the way I looked or my gender. And I didn’t want anybody else to feel that way. And I think engineering as a whole is an industry that does lack diversity, and could really benefit from actually having more diversity and inclusion within the industry because I think innovation is really contingent on having multiple perspectives in order to be successful and effective. So it became my mission to encourage more inclusion within engineering as a whole.

Sue Black
That’s wonderful, and you’re just reminding me of when I realised that I was a woman in computer scientists and not just a computer scientist. I’m sorry, a woman in computer science rather than just a computer scientist, when I was going to conferences as a PhD student and not always having the best time trying to network with people and then realising that actually, there were very few women in the room and it was just not the easiest environment to feel comfortable in and then going to a women in tech conference and having such a very different experience and and then realising that life is just easier if you’re in the majority and it’s not something that I’d really kind of thought about before. That’s really wonderful. Thanks very much Shini.

Jo Stansfield
Yeah, certainly something I relate to as well. Having spent a lot of my career working as an engineer and coming to the realisation you know, as a woman doing this work, are people actually evaluating what I do based on the work or are they bringing in lots of different assumptions about it, and about me, and is that influencing how, how I’m perceived and the opportunities that I have?

Shini Somara
Oddly at university, I never, I never really noticed my differences. And I think that was because you know, it’s quite a solitary track. When you’re getting your education. I was very focused on getting qualified. But then when you join industry, you realise it’s an extremely collaborative process being part of industry, and you then have to learn a lot of different skills that you don’t pick up at university about working in teams, having confidence, being assertive in the way you contribute your ideas. And I think industry would really benefit from making people who are underrepresented feel more welcome. It’s a subtle difference. It’s only until I entered industry that I felt those differences. So I think that’s useful information when it comes to trying to figure out what industries can do to increase their inclusion rates.

Jo Stansfield
Yeah, absolutely. It’s really important the role that industry themselves play in it. So Rhys, moving to you, the Royal Academy of Engineering are really doing some pioneering work in just that area, you know, supporting engineering businesses to be more inclusive. Can you tell us a bit more about what you’ve been doing?

Rhys Morgan
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Jo. We’ve been really trying to take a systems approach to the engineering skills and diversity challenge over the last decade or so. And that indeed covers employers also raising awareness of engineering careers with young people but also then looking at some and addressing some of the systemic barriers in education that prevent young people from progressing with towards engineering. So on supporting businesses, we often hear I think, you know, oh we would employ more diverse people, but you know, then they’re not applying to us. So there’s a kind of externalising of the issue. It’s not about us. It’s them. And actually, we know a huge amount more can be done by employers to make their workplaces more inclusive, so that anyone and everyone working in them feels more comfortable, you know, safe psychologically, physically and emotionally. So we’re doing a lot of work, working with employers to embed inclusive leadership in senior teams to ensure that policies and processes for things like recruitment, fair progression, retention policies, opportunities, after career breaks, and things like that, really trying to embed inclusion as a culture and as a way of organisational working. And you know, we’ve heard over the past few years about unconscious bias. That’s a really good thing, but actually, it’s very passive. We all recognise that we’ve got biases, well done us. We don’t do anything about it. So we’re trying to kind of move the conversation on and we’re promoting something we’re calling, conscious inclusion. And that really means being more active about things like ensuring diverse panels for recruitment, developing policies and processes and training that mitigate the impact of unconscious bias and, and all sorts of things like that. And working with employers at various levels, from technicians through to engineers, practising engineers, through to senior leaders in businesses as well. But we’re also working with young people promoting engineering in a different way to them because I think one of the things, one of the problems we’ve got is that there is this image there is this perception issue with engineering. Many people refer to the kind of oily rags and dirty overalls or if you do a Google search for engineering, it’s most often you’ll find a hard hat, a white man and a hard hat on a building site. And that’s still the case today. So we’ve been doing a lot of work to kind of broaden people’s view of what engineering actually is, and the imagery as well. So, you know, it’s very difficult to get people’s attention in a world where they’re bombarded with content from all different types of people. So we’ve really kind of effectively done what businesses are doing. We’re taking a marketing lead approach to promoting engineering and that’s so we have this campaign, it’s called This is engineering. And we are directly targeting young people through the social media channels that they consume. So TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and various kinds of gaming channels that I really don’t understand anything about. And importantly, we’re not telling them what we think about engineering and why we like engineering. What we’re doing is we’re talking to them about their passions, and then showing how engineering careers can give them the opportunity to continue with those passions.  And whether that’s the environment, sport, music, fashion design and creativity, helping people you know, anything, engineering is really there. And there are career opportunities for them through engineering to continue exploring those passions. And we’ve been running that campaign for about five years now. We’ve had over 60 million views. It’s probably the biggest careers campaign. of its kind in the world. And we’re seeing some really good progress with it but it’s only one part of a very big jigsaw puzzle that we need to put together.

Sue Black
Yeah, I was part of the This is Engineering campaign. So I was really honoured to be to have a video made when I was talking about my my career and some of the challenges that I’ve had throughout my career. And yeah, it’s really wonderful campaign. I love the tube map as well with engineers on as stops on the tube. That was really cool.

Rhys Morgan
Yes. For listeners, we published for National Engineering day in November of 2023 a reimagined tube map with every station as a famous engineer, so well done Sue for  getting on there. Did you get on there?

Sue Black
Yeah, it was, um, Colliers Wood.  So when I drive past the station, I’m like, that’s my station. And I was really delighted to be between Dame Stephanie Shirley. A real icon for women in tech. And Tommy Flowers of Bletchley Park fame. So yeah, what an honour that was.

Mark Jolly
Most appropriate for you then, Sue?

Sue Black
Yeah, I was just Yeah, absolutely delighted with that.

Mark Jolly
I mean, Rhys, that’s really interesting, you know, because I think the foundation if we can come back to the foundation in this I think the foundation industries have an even bigger challenge than engineering in general, because the foundation industries are almost perceived as like the lowest of the low of the industries because of what they do. They’re not quite like making aeroplanes or making cars, which is also obviously engineering, it’s making the fundamental materials.  I think that getting that concept across that these areas can be exciting places to work for young people is really challenging. I’m not sure whether we shouldn’t have a focused campaign from the Royal Academy of Engineering on the materials production side because often, you know, the other engineering bits can sound, for want of a better word, a bit more sexy than making steel and making paper.

Rhys Morgan
It’s so true. It’s such a shame, isn’t it? Because I’m really passionate about the foundation industries. I don’t know if you know this, Jo and Sue, but I absolutely just love metals and ceramics and glass and paper. Ah, it’s just fantastic stuff and the manufacturing of it is just brilliant. And yeah, how do we get the kind of excitement of that over to young people? It’s a good challenge to have.

Mark Jolly
Well, it is a good challenge. I mean, I think we need more videos, more videos, more visual stuff that shows are also you know, one of the things is we’ve got this digital sort of transition that’s happening. And this is where I think the foundation in this is can also do a couple of things you know the translation or the transforming to more digital stuff more simulation, more control, more process control more image visualisation, all of this stuff, doesn’t need the same sort of skills as before. It opens up a whole market of different skills, which are perhaps more attractive to a wider range and younger people, a wider range of people and also younger people. You don’t need to be Butch and the horrible stuff, strong, to do these things.  Anybody can do it. And I think that’s the other thing, is this transition will give us an opportunity. Because we have to go there. It was one of the things we have to do to help us hit the challenges of sustainability and zero, is to be more digitised.

Shini Somara
Well, having written a book about engineers across lots of different sectors. What I really found that was most engaging is as exactly as Mark says, actually showing people what it is that engineers do because I think there hasn’t been enough publicity on how exciting the engineering industry actually is. I think we’ve been helped by people like Elon Musk, who is visionary and makes engineering cool and trendy. We don’t normally associate engineering with being glamorous, yet we are living in a time where engineers really are the superheroes of society because they build things, they solve problems. They come up with new ways of being more sustainable and more environmentally conscious. I mean, they hold the keys to a brighter future. And we’re not conveying that message, I don’t feel, because we are still very much envisaging engineering as being the kind of industrial revolution, kind of

Sue Black
Yeah, absolutely. Kind of like Victorian, that’s the images we’ve got in our heads, which are not true at all these days.

Shini Somara
And so one of the things I did as part of writing this book was actually go and visit the engineers that I wrote about, but also engineers who were not in the book, because I actually just wanted to see what they do on a day to day basis. And you know, having grown up with a dad, who was, still is, a building services engineer, I was exposed to seeing an engineer on a day to day basis. And so I was able to formulate what engineering is all about, but I think we actually have a fundamental problem of not knowing what engineering actually is. And so, simple facts like, as Mark said, you know, 75% was it, of our materials come from the foundation industry?

Mark Jolly
Yeah, and certainly in the UK 75% of our materials have been from the foundation industries.

Shini Somara
I mean, that is such a basic simple fact. But it’s game changing in the way that we see engineering because we realise that everything we touch and interact with, has had an engineer’s involvement. And that to me, is one of the most riveting things about engineering is that young people can be part of a profession that shapes our lives on a hourly basis.

Mark Jolly
I’m not sure that message comes across. I’m really not sure that people get that, you know, they might be touching a credit card or a debit card, they might be touching money, they might be touching something. They don’t realise that engineering has gone in to making that money, making the paper money, making the metal, but yeah.  In TransFIRe, we’re working with the Royal Mint at the moment because they make metal and that’s really important. They make paper.

Shini Somara
I don’t think we glamorise engineering enough. We don’t realise that actually, engineering can be an extremely futuristic, cutting edge creative, glamorous industry when even with my experience and knowledge of engineering, I still think of grinding massive machines, grease, overalls, hard hats, which it can be, but there can also be a glamorous side to wearing a hard hat. I’ve met many women now who you know have adapted PPE to look cool. I went to visit a welder who’s female and she just makes welding look awesome. And then those are the things I want to see.

Sue Black
I would love to see a video of that. Absolutely. That sounds very cool indeed. Shini, what’s your book? Can you give a quick plug for your book please?

Shini Somara
Yes, my book is Engineers Making a Difference. It features 46 engineers across 12 different sectors from transportation to going beyond space, food, human needs, and we’ve got some fantastic engineers in there. A couple of which have been in the This is Engineering campaign.  Because there are now more and more really creative, daring and courageous engineers who are defying stereotypes and traditions of what engineering is and they’re using their skills and their knowledge to do things differently. And the book aims to highlight not just these engineers but also really shine a light on how they got into engineering because there are many different routes and I think that’s another stigma that we tend to have which is that you can only be an engineer if you’re a genius at maths and physics. And actually that rules so many potentially fantastic engineers out who would prefer not to learn in conventional ways but actually do something like apprenticeships or technicianships, and, you know, maybe have more creative side to them and want to not only earn while they learn but also come from a much more imaginative design background. You know, all of these skill sets are welcome in engineering and I think that is one of the keys to increasing diversity and engineering: To make people feel welcome, even if their strongest subjects are not maths and physics.

Mark Jolly
Honestly Shini, I find that really ironic, because I mean, the reason I chose a career in engineering was because I wasn’t strong, particularly at maths. I liked the chemistry A-level, and I quite liked the physics, but I knew my maths wasn’t particularly good. So I chose an applied science which didn’t have to do all the maths in it. So metallurgy, material science is perhaps a lot more practically based, a lot more sort of, yeah, kinesthetic. I loved metal work at school as well. And I had to give it up because I was supposed to be academic and you had to give up metal work at school, which I think is dreadful. We know we have this stigma, you know, in a school in London, we had the stigma that if you did stuff with your hands, it wasn’t useful. And you had to do something academic, you had to give up the stuff that I really enjoyed. So maybe that’s why I got back into it when I did my degree.

Sue Black
Amazing.  Rhys, you’ve got, you’ve got something to say I can see.

Rhys Morgan
I’m interested in this because I think it comes back to the foundation industries and they’re very practical. They’re very tactile, they’re very, you know, there’s something very human about them. And you think about our understanding of metals going back from the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, and the fact that you can change the properties of a material by manipulating it, by working it, by strain hardening, annealing, and all those different things. You know, actually, there’s something very, very tactile about that. And experiential.  You can you can learn so much about metals, not by doing book work and mathematics and things, and of course you can, but there’s so much that you can do that’s actually just experience based.  And similarly for ceramics and glass and paper and all of those things. I guess with chemicals, you start getting into a bit more, you can’t do that in the back garden, like you could in the olden days.  You’d have a forge or, you know, whatever it might be, you know, a smith would do those kind of things. And I’m interested in the kind of the diversity angle for this because I don’t know what the diversity characteristics in the in the foundation sectors are, but across engineering, generally, there’s about 16% women working in engineering in the UK. And there’s about 10% Black minority ethnic groups. So I imagine it’s less but actually, there are other dimensions to diversity as well. And you think about where a lot of the factories, a lot of the operations plants are based. They’re not in affluent areas. So actually, it is supporting people from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Think about the Port Talbot steelworks, think about Scunthorpe, think about the cement plants around the country, in Derbyshire, in South Wales, in places like Northern Ireland. So they are doing quite a lot in terms of what we might think about as kind of invisible diversity characteristics. And of course, you know, the people working there will have disabilities and all those kinds of things. So it’s very clear when it’s looking at things like gender and ethnicity, there will be issues, but do we have a sense of the diversity across other kind of characteristics in the sector?

Jo Stansfield
I’m going to cross to Shini. You’re saying it’s something that we often, you know, will think quite narrowly about, but you know, Shini,I know in the work that you’re doing, you’re really targeting to bring in a much more diverse range of people into engineering with your outreach, and your book, and your broadcasting. How do you see diversity supporting all of the goals that engineering has?

Shini Somara
The topic of diversity, I think is very multi layered. And when I was in the industry, and I was sort of gaining experience and qualifications, I was very focused on trying to reach a certain calibre in engineering and that was my absolute goal. But one of the things that I did not spend enough time on was my actual confidence. And it’s seen in the industry as maybe a softer skill, but I think it’s absolutely essential for diverse groups. I think it’s really important for underrepresented people to have the opportunity to develop their inner confidence and this also ties in with psychological safety that I think many companies now realise is extremely important when it comes to inclusion. And what I have noticed over the two decades that has passed between sort of starting at university doing engineering to today is that women in particular, but also people of ethnic minority, have the confidence to speak out and that is as a result of industries and sectors realising that they do need to make underrepresented people feel welcome. So in the foundation industries, what I have seen are more women who are actually confident enough to say, I can’t lift that heavy piece of machinery, can you help me? And to have them not feel that they shouldn’t enter the industry because they can’t do the heavy lifting. I think just subtle differences like that are really important because it’s the difference between a woman, for example, not choosing the foundation industries, because they feel that they will have to deal with heavy, bulky objects and actually feeling like they can enter the industry because they can simply just ask for help if required. And it’s those kinds of subtle differences that I think make or break statistics in diversity because you know, a whole industry may not be chosen because they don’t feel they’re physically right for an industry. And the foundations industry does seem to have a sort of reputation of being involving very heavy masculine machines, and it’s simply not the case.

Mark Jolly
Absolutely. It’s not the case. In fact, legally, it’s not the case either, because you’re not allowed to lift very heavy objects now.  You know, the EU regulations, lifting and carrying dictate that you can’t lift very heavy objects, so…  and also much of that, because of the health and safety issues. And much of that is now being given way to assisted lifting. So you have equipment that can help you lift heavy objects. So again, what do you call it, industry 4.0 with cyber-physical relationship, where you get more robotics involved in those sorts of things, heavy lifting is not something…, but you’re right the perception of these industries is that they are heavy industries, and therefore you don’t… I think that the ethnic diversity is probably better in the foundation industries and some others because they’re global industries, you know, so, you can go across the world and you go to Tata Steel is an Indian company, it can hardly be anything but a global industry, with a good ethnic diversity, certainly in its global operations, may be less so in South Wales, but they will have managers at senior level. There are very few women that move up through those managerial positions. I think that’s one of the challenges, because there are very few women who go into it. But we have got some examples in transpire. So there’s a glass company called Encirc360, where they took on some graduate women through a graduate scheme in the local area. Those two of those women, female graduates, are now managing very serious operations in the glass industry. They’re actually managing the glass furnaces, the actual furnaces that melt the glass.  And they’re supervising men who are older than them, but they’re graduates they’re actually doing the control of the furnaces and running those furnaces. And I think that’s a really good example of where some of the individual companies have actually taken it on board. I love this scheme. They ran a campaign called, because they make glass bottles they make container glass, so they had a scheme called Women with Bottle

Sue Black
It’s a great name, isn’t it? Really a great name

Mark Jolly
I think that sums it up, it’s just brilliant, it really is a great name.

Shini Somara
And I think it’s so key to highlight these individuals, because in all of the work that I’ve done, I’ve been most inspired by actually seeing individuals exist. One person springs to mind who is a crane operator, and you know, she has glamorous pink hair, and she does her nails and she loves the colour pink and she just makes being a crane operator looks so cool. And I honestly could never have dreamt that someone like her would be so passionate about operating cranes. And just by seeing her exist, it automatically changes the crane sort of sector for me because you just see it embodied that is possible. You know, even with big fake nails or you know, the amount of engineers, female engineers that have big fake nails. I mean, I just, it just was unfathomable 20 years ago to show up to work with fake nails. Even today. I’m like how do engineers manage to do that, but the point is that it is possible for engineers to have a job and still maintain their femininity, or maintain their individuality in engineering. And I don’t think that…

Mark Jolly
Engineering is not about gender.

Shini Somara
It’s not just gender. You know, I’ve got you know, having run a podcast for six years for women in STEM. I have heard stories of people feeling excluded because you know, for example, feeling uncomfortable to bring their home cooked dinners, you know if they cook the night before at home, their traditional food, and they wanted to bring it to lunch in the office the next day in a tupperware feeling embarrassed to do that because it would highlight their individuality because their food doesn’t smell like, you know, conventional cuisine and just subtle differences like that. I think it all actually does boil down to psychological safety, feeling like they can be themselves in their industries.

Sue Black
Yeah, absolutely. Like inclusion and belonging. You know, just feeling very comfortable to be yourself. Amazing.  Right, well, we’re almost at the end of this episode of our podcast. Thank you all so much for joining us. We’ve got some quickfire questions before you go. So quick fire questions. What’s your favourite thing about the foundation industries and why? We’ll start with you Mark.

Mark Jolly
Well, I’ll tell you what I mean a bit like Rhys, I love watching Metal being transformed. I think it’s fantastic. Well, firstly, you’ve got to get it out of the ground and make the metal from the raw material but, but once you’ve got that metal, you’ve got it as an ingot. And you melt it and you know, it’s fantastic that you can then cast it into a shape that can be used. I mean, I’ve worked a lot in casting over the last 45 years since I’ve been in the industry and knowing that every time we fly, we’re relying on a process that’s about 6000 years old. I think that’s incredible. That all turbines, all jet engine turbine blades – well, most of them, especially the high temperature ones – they’re all cast using a process called lost wax casting. And that’s what the Egyptians used to use for making jewellery, death masks, statuary, and we’re flying on it. We’ve got this superb technology. We’ve changed over the years over the 6000 years, and now we’re still using it and we’re growing our metal. I think that’s lovely. It’s a sort of organic process. We’re growing metal crystals to make them the strongest they can be so that it can perform at really, really high temperatures. I love it. It’s fantastic.

Sue Black
That is amazing. Shini. What’s your favourite thing?

Shini Somara
I think I absolutely love the innovations that sprang from the foundations of these raw materials. So no matter how advanced we will become using AI and going digital, it all starts with these raw materials. And I love seeing that. That advancement, knowing that the roots will always stay the same.

Sue Black
Thank you.  Rhys?

Rhys Morgan

There’s something for me about the kind of craft heritage of the foundation industries and that we didn’t need the science and mathematics to begin with. Actually, it was done by people manipulating materials to get what they wanted. And it is a bit like Mark but I guess, you know, you think about glass obviously we have the kind of plate glass process now the float glass process invented by Pilkington but before that, you know, you go back hundreds years, to glass blowing and things like that. And so it enables people to be part of an industry that’s not about being academically brilliant and, you know, great at math and science and things like that. But actually, there’s so much, kind of practical, kind of tangible experience based aspects to the foundation industries, that’s what I think is really brilliant about them.

Sue Black
Great. Thank you. And so another quick question. Which foundation industry material is most like your personality?  …if you’ve got one!  Let’s go the other way around.  Rhys, you first

Rhys Morgan
So like brittle and fragile glass or something? No. Maybe Mercury. Kind of very kind of fast moving and crazy. I’m always running around. Actually. No, I’m gonna I’m gonna go with steel. Sorry. I’m jumping about here. Steel.

Sue Black
Yeah, so you don’t need to say anything else. Rhys. That’s proved your point. Yeah.

Rhys Morgan

Yes, exactly. Yeah, maybe I’ll stick with mercury. Yeah.

Sue Black
Shini

Shini Somara
I see. myself as a good old lump of clay. Earthy. I love the tactility of the material and it does feel very kind of grounded and mouldable and I like the colour. So we’ll go with clay.

Sue Black
That’s nice. And lastly, you Mark.

Mark Jolly
I guess it’s gonna be a metal because I’m a metallurgist. I mean, I guess it doesn’t have to be, I would probably have said steel as well. But I say, you know, it’s strong. It’s ductile. And it’s flexible. It’s really flexible. So I can take the stresses and strains of life. And you know, it sums me up really. And Sue, you know what I’ve been through in the last few years. I have to take it

Sue Black
A man of steel.

Right. Well, that’s really wonderful. Thank you so much, everybody. We’ve really enjoyed talking to you today and yeah, I look forward to being in touch in the future. So thanks very much.

Mark Jolly
Thanks. It’s been wonderful.

Rhys Morgan
Thank you very much.

Shini Somara
Thank you for having this podcast. It’s so important and it’s great to be part of this conversation.

—

Sue Black

Thank you for joining us for this Equity Edge episode.

Jo Stansfield

This Podcast can be found on our website www.transfire-hub.org/podcast and is also available on all good podcast channels.

Sue Black

And Please don’t forget to follow TransFIRe Hub on X and LinkedIN.  See you next time!