It is not easy at times in life, we hope that our inaugural episode with Marverine Cole provides you with the hope, aspiration and encouragement that you need to break free from fear, shame, lack of confidence or any other impediment, to find your success. Breaking through lifes challenges is possible! If we can do it so can you!
Marverine is an Award-Winning Journalist, Broadcaster and Academic and she is on the Core Team for The Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity.
You can also visit How to start over and lead a more fulfilling life here.
In “Breaking Through Lifes Challenges” Nathaniel Schooler and Marverine Cole discussed the following:
Emotional wellbeing strategies?
How to navigate your path to a fulfilling career?
Career pivot?
We Believe You Can: Navigate Your Career Path To Be Happy with Marverine Cole
We have ups and downs in life, and our careers are part of life and this amazing learning curve that we seem to go on. We either sit back and wait for something amazing to fall out of the sky or take action to make something happen during our lives.
In summary: Multi-award-winning journalist and broadcaster Marverine Cole and I wanted to inspire the listeners to navigate their career path to be happy. So despite this being recorded in 2020, it contains massive value.
In this interview, we discuss emotional wellness strategies, personal development and the importance of a career pivot for growth.
I also tell the story of when my motorcycle received a parking ticket when I was in the Job Centre signing on for unemployment benefit, which put life into perspective.https://embeds.audioboom.com/posts/7564358/embed/v4
Marverine also talks about her career pivot into journalism and the importance of relentless studying to progress. She says that if you want a different type of job, then you need to be doing something different in your spare time and working towards your goals.
Navigating your career path is not easy at times, and we have to work hard at it; in life, there are ups and downs, but you need to know how to be happy for happiness is the key to a fulfilling career.
A career pivot transition is such a great time in your life!
A career pivot transition is an amazing time in your life – where we can reinvent ourselves and shape the direction of our future.
– Navigating a career path has many challenges and rewards; it isn’t always easy, but some strategies will help you navigate these times successfully.
“I never learned anything from a teacher. I only learned from the school of hard knocks.”
Harry Truman
This quote is one of my favourites, and it’s so true for many people, people without the support of a coach. The school of hard knocks is a learning experience where we learn through personal experiences; sometimes, we may not have wanted to learn. However, we can use our life experiences to become more resilient and know what to do when faced with new challenges in life.
There are many ways to embrace joy in learning. One way is to take advantage of opportunities to take personal development courses or read books to inspire growth and personal success.
– Life is a series of ups and downs, and career paths can be perceived as highs and deep learnings
Know that you have a purpose, the reason you are here is to make things happen, and if you are happy, others will be too. Happiness and success go hand in hand.
Navigate Your Career Path To Be Happy: You Can Do It!
The best advice I could give someone navigating their career paths is to reset your mindset from focusing on what’s wrong in life to what’s right about it and start to embrace learning new skills and enjoy the journey of learning. Take note and learn from your past experiences.
Breaking through life’s challenges is not easy at times; we hope that the inaugural episode with Marverine Cole on the Positive Personal Power Podcast provides you with the hope, aspiration and encouragement that you need to break free from fear, shame, lack of confidence or any other impediment, to find your success.
Accept that you will have challenges in life, be a warrior, and fight for what you want; never give up! It is okay not to know everything; we all started somewhere. Navigate your career path with passion and conviction.
- Continual learning is crucial! : read these blogs here:
- Checkout: How To Make A Career Change At 40
- Checkout: Career Change After 50
- Checkout: LinkedIn Branding Tips For Career Success
- Checkout: Continuous Learning As A Professional
- Checkout: Use your own domain name.
My advice is to spend time with like-minded and successful people because they will connect you with opportunities you would not otherwise think about.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
― Jim Rohn
We talk in detail about the importance of navigating Your Career Path to Be Happy and how we both have done this. The feedback from this episode has been incredible!
Marverine Cole is an Award-Winning Journalist, Broadcaster and Academic, and she is on the Core Team for The Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity. She has had a rewarding career in Television, Radio and Digital Journalism spanning over 20 years. I enjoyed meeting her at the Great British Beer Festival when I was in the Branding and Marketing world as the business I worked for were experts in drinks branding…
To conclude: If you are reading this and not knowing where the next meal will come from or how you will pay the rent, have faith and take action, you can do it!
Navigating a career path has many challenges and rewards; it isn’t always easy, but some strategies will help you navigate these times successfully. Learning experiences where we learn through personal experiences are sometimes lessons that we may not have wanted to learn. We can use our life experiences to become more resilient and know what to do when faced with new challenges in life.
The first step is embracing joy in learning by taking advantage of personal development courses or reading books to inspire growth and personal success. For example, you can spend time with like-minded and successful people because they will connect you with opportunities that you would not otherwise think to try. It’s also a good idea to set goals so you can focus your energy on the things you want. It would help if you were asking yourself whether you’re making progress or simply waiting for something to happen. If being happy doesn’t bring about success, then I don’t know what does.
The second step is to change your mindset to half glass full, not half glass empty; try to be grateful for what you have and the people around you who care.
I found self-confidence through a difficult period by setting new goals with the support of three mentors /coaches, who helped me learn life skills such as developing my strengths and managing my weaknesses.
Marverine Cole’s show Fabulous Woman can be found here:-
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7DE5mpDR0W59spBvfZVjZN?si=0wxPZtc_TFezgMBp-fxkBA
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/fabulous-woman/id1482921006
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzX7BUq25TBlYnUtp1dQH4Q
Reach out to Marverine on LinkedIn here:-
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marverinecole/
She also recommended some resources: –
https://www.robertholden.com/shop/
https://www.michaelneill.org/store/
Nathaniel Schooler can be found here www.natschooler.com
You can also read the full transcription below.
00:00:47
Hello and welcome to the inaugural episode with Marvel Cole. Marverine Cole is an award-winning journalist, a broadcaster, and an academic who is on the core team for the Sir Lenny Henry centre for media diversity.
Marverine Cole
00:01:04
Yay. Thank you so much. I’m very excited to be on the podcast.
Nathaniel Schooler
00:01:09
Super, super well. I think it’s, I think it’s really quite fun actually because I’ve known you probably for, it’s got to be about 10 years. Isn’t that?
Marverine Cole
00:01:18
Where’s that decade gone. That’s a bit scary. Isn’t it? But we met in the beer world. Didn’t we in another world?
Nathaniel Schooler
00:01:24
No, it’s, it’s, it’s extremely strange. I, you know, I was kind of pivoting my career and today we’re going to talk about the career pivot, emotional wellbeing strategies, and how to navigate your career path, which right now is, is, is really tough for a lot of people. But back then, you know, you were in bear, you were, you were broadcasting on TV and, and I was selling beer for, for a few different breweries and, and, you know, we were kind of, we were into Twitter, right? Yeah.
Marverine Cole
00:01:55
Yeah. We’d gone into Twitter. I mean, Twitter was where, where it was at and it’s still very much is now. So you were selling beer. I was a beer journalist to be a writer. I think I’d just won my award with the Guild of British beer writers and not long started freelancing as a journalist and spent about four or five years at the BBC being a reporter-producer presenter in Birmingham, my hometown where the local ITV, local BBC. And so on. I’d spent a couple of years at sky news cause they poached me from the BBC and said, come and work for us as a news anchor. So I did that.
Marverine Cole
00:02:34
And then I think I came back to Brum for a bit and I was interested in the kind of links between the history around women, potentially being the first-ever producers of beer, you know, in a call it thousands of years ago in Sumeria. And so, which was all really interesting to me. And I was like, no, I don’t believe any of that. So being the journalist, I was investigating the history of beer, pitched an idea to BBC inside, out in the East Midlands and made a TV feature, kind of looking at the history of beer and how women were the key to the future profitability of pubs, which for me is really interesting. And my beer journey began and I started blogging and writing and appearing on this morning with Holly and Phil getting them drunk on beer at 12 afternoons. It was brilliant. I had a lot of fun working in the beer world. I do less of that now, but of course like you, I still drank beer
Nathaniel Schooler
00:03:45
It’s once you develop that passion for, for a nice bear, it’s, it’s a, it’s very, very difficult to, to not because there are so many different flavours out there, right?
Marverine Cole
00:03:56
Absolutely. There are thousands upon thousands of beers. If you think about just British brewers alone, and most brewers will produce at least four core beers, right? So a golden ale, a bitter, an IPA because who doesn’t love an IPA on a starter reporter, at least four core beers they brew regularly. And then you times that by the number of breweries you have in Britain, and then times that by the number of breweries, you know, in Europe, in the world and your beer journey could be never-ending, which is, which is beautiful. Really?
Nathaniel Schooler
00:04:29
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a bit like your career journey really, you know? Well, it is. I mean, you’re always, you know, nowadays more than ever. I mean, I was, I was listening to something the other day about how people, actually have multiple different careers during their career. Right. Like, and they learn skills all the way through. And I think that’s something that I don’t think you, you probably will realize how good you are as a multiple of things until you find that job that you, or, or, or business that you start, which you really have to use those skills for. Right.
Marverine Cole
00:05:06
You’re absolutely right. Yeah. I mean, if I think back to myself and I was a little girl, so, you know, my mum and dad came over from Jamaica in the fifties, my dad was a builder. My mom was a nurse. And then, you know, my mom always loved watching the local news in the evening. So I think we’d watched Nicole on ABC news and we’d also get the Birmingham mail newspaper put through the door every night. And so she would read the paper and then hand it to me and go have a look if you want. So, you know, my interest in news and current affairs start from a very young age. And I always felt, you know, drawn to TV, radio broadcasting. I was always just walked into the innocence radio, but then, you know, through school, I didn’t feel brave enough to venture into the industry.
Marverine Cole
00:06:00
So I thought, oh yeah, I’ll try advertising. You know, I did a degree in business studies at all, try advertising that didn’t quite work out, try marketing, did a couple of jobs, didn’t work out. And I did various jobs through my twenties where I started a job. I didn’t like it. I left, I started a job, got made redundant, you know, signed on. And in the end I spent a lot of my twenties working as a secretary, like a PA person to top MD the CEOs. And then I had like an epiphany when I was about, I think it was about 30. And I went, listen, this journalism thing that you thought about when you were a kid, I think you need to try it. So I went and did a post-graduate diploma in broadcast journalism at Birmingham city university, which is where I now work so crazy full circle. And it was the best thing I ever did. Going back to uni, studying this, post-grad learning how to become a TV and radio reporter.
Marverine Cole
00:07:11
And I don’t want anyone to think for one minute. It was just all an easy glide. I didn’t have the money to pay for the fees for this course. Right. But I applied on a hunch. I thought, if I can get a place, then I know there are bursaries available. Right. So you have to try and get a place to apply for a bursary. So I got the place. I was like one of the last places for this post-grad. And then I think it was the local heart FM station, local BBC, and the local ITV that were all offering bursaries for students at this unit. So I applied for them all, just hoping my brain had to go through like rigorous interviews for those bursaries. And in the end, each broadcaster offered me three, which was like blew my mind. Wow. But that made me think it would make me realize, oh, maybe this is a good career move for me because if broadcast has gone, yeah.
Marverine Cole
00:08:12
We’re going to pay your fees. Cause we think you’ve got potential. It made me believe in myself, which is, you know, often half the battle for a lot of us. Right. Yeah. And that really was the best thing I ever did. You know? So I kind of hustled and got my way into ITV and BBC and, you know, work really hard. Some days I worked seven days a week, took extra shifts, worked early mornings, late nights just to kind of learn everything about the job and to, and to learn in a deep fashion. So that then I could be useful in all sorts of different ways and you know, really hone my skills at the BBC in Berlin. Yeah.
Nathaniel Schooler
00:08:52
Yeah. I think it’s very difficult though. When, you know, back to what you were just saying a little bit back about your self-esteem and, and, and how sometimes you just need someone to perhaps believe in you too, to encourage you to take yourself seriously, like actually respect yourself, right? Yeah.
Marverine Cole
00:09:13
Yeah. Do you know me thinking about doing the post-grad came as a result of two periods of redundancy? When I, you know, two jobs where I was a PA I was in those respective jobs for a year and it was made redundant and you know, you’ve got one month salary to live on and when you’re young in your twenties and you’re, you’re just about in your own flat and you’ve got rent or it’s really stressful. And then I had times where I was out of work signed on, you know, claimed benefit, you know, had my housing checks through and stuff like that. I was on, you know, my electricity was on a meter that, that time, and, you know, you’d watch the meter tick down and go into the emergency five pounds before you would, you could get some money to go to the shop and top it up. I’ve been in a bin of lived those times. Right. And so it felt like I stood in the post-grad was my last-ditch attempt, you know, the big leap of faith to try something new, try something that I felt had a potential end but wasn’t sure. And to get validated, you know, through those kinds of broadcasters saying, yeah, we think we’ve, you’ve got potential. Here’s a bursary that was really like a huge, a huge change, a huge moment for me.
Nathaniel Schooler
01:10:37
Yeah. It’s, it’s really difficult. I remember once being out of work, being made redundant and actually going to the job centre and at the time I think it was 35 pounds a week that we were receiving. So I’ll never forget, I rode my motorcycle about 20 minutes, 25 minutes to the job centre in Guilford and a parked on the pavement, but it was a really wide pavement and I made sure parked against this wall. Yeah. And I came out and this traffic warden had given me a ticket was like 50 quid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it put everything into perspective and it was just like, oh no, it was just like a kick in the teeth. Right. But, that wasn’t the lowest point. I think that I think that, I think that you can, you think you’re at your lowest point, right. But if you haven’t sort of been down to like your last candidate beans and a loaf of bread with two slices left in the bag and maybe one teabag and no milk. Yeah. I don’t, I think, I think when that arrives, you can only go upwards from there. Right.
Marverine Cole
01:11:45
Totally. I totally appreciate what you’re saying. That that definitely would have been one of my lowest points. You know, the running down the emergency pound on the Lackey. Yep. And then going, right. I just need to go and get five pounds to get it back to zero. And so sometimes when I’m feeling low or struggling, I think back to times like that, and I’m always, always have gratitude and my husband and I have gratitude because, you know, he’s had tough times as well. And you know, he had a hideous motorbike accident, you know, 25 years ago. And he always remembers, you know, I’m so grateful for surviving that. Right. So we do often go, oh, aren’t we just, we’re doing all right. Are we doing all right? Yeah, we’re doing all right. Okay. Let’s, let’s keep on going up. Yeah. Cause life deals you some blow sometimes that it’s how you, how you pull yourself out of it. That is the, is the real key to, you know, a happy future.
Nathaniel Schooler
01:12:52
Yeah, for sure. I mean, before this, before this episode, I sent you a message on LinkedIn saying, we’re going to talk about Rocky and Rocky. The story about Sylvester Stallone is that he actually sold his dog for 25 us dollars to this guy outside the liquor store. Right. So serious before, before he actually did Rocky one, he was trying to sell the script and every time he’d go and in New York and he would go to these, to these producers and he’d say, look, I’ve got this movie, want to be in it. And they would look at him and go, what do you mean? Do you want to be in it? Like you can’t even talk properly and stuff like this. Right. And, and, and, and one of them offered him, I think $250,000 for his script, but he wasn’t allowed to be in the movie.
Nathaniel Schooler
01:13:38
And he turned around and he said, no, I’m not going to do that. So I eventually settled for being basically selling this for 35,000 and being in the movie. And they took a punt on em and, and, and basically, then he went back to the liquor store. It was the first thing he did. He went back to the liquor store three days in a row. And he waited for this guy with a dog, with his dog. And he actually managed to buy the dog back from the guy. But the guy said, I want to be in your movie and I want $15,000 for the dog, but I was just listening to this, this story just before, before you came on too, to talk to me. And, and in fact, I think he actually slept in a bus station for three weeks. Yeah. But, you know, and, and, and really we’re really lucky in England. I mean, it, you know, yes, there are homeless people, but if you really want to get off the streets, I think you probably can actually.
Marverine Cole
01:14:39
Yeah, it’s interesting. I think so too. I remember watching the BBC have done a lot of incredible documentaries on, on BBC. iPlayer about, you know, speaking day in, day out, week in, week out to homeless people. And I think there’s a series of women on the streets, which is really interesting looking at, you know, you know, talking to homeless people about why they’re there and if they want to get off the streets and how they’re being helped or, or not, it’s all relative, isn’t it, it’s where you perceive the help to be and have some kind of coped going into shelters and then not coping with the regime and the regulations around living in a shelter and then being kicked out again. And, you know, it was all just so, so complex, isn’t it? The reasons why people are homeless is so, so complex, but ultimately there are always those stories of people who have battled to get clean and, and get into accommodation and get a job and turn themselves around.
Nathaniel Schooler
01:15:38
Yeah. It’s but I think, but I think it just depends on kind of the individual. Right. And what they take away from it. Yeah. Like I’m, I’m super grateful to have a roof over my head and like, to be able to eat. Right. Like, and I think there are different levels aren’t there of kind of pain that you, that you sort of have to go through to learn lessons. Right?
Marverine Cole
01:15:59
Yeah. Without a doubt, without a doubt, you know, when I think about you’d laugh at the way that my husband and I are, we’re always grateful and I’ll go, oh, we’ve made it to our like dream house. And that in itself was a struggle because, you know, we had, as you do, you have, first world problems, of course, we have credit card debts and all the rest of it and it to pay those down, to get the mortgage. And then we only had a certain mortgage because, you know, w the times in my twenties, when I had been made redundant and was, you know, on benefits and what have you, I, you know, I ruined my credit rating. So the ability to get a mortgage was an issue. And then, you know, I’d say, I’d say to my husband, we’ve got this house.
Marverine Cole
01:16:47
It’s great. And they said, yeah, yeah, we’ve done it. Well, we’ve paid our debts off. And I said, but we wouldn’t have been able to, to even be here without you having bought that flat, you know, to have some equity to pay down the mortgage. And he said, yeah, yeah. But think about where that equity came from because he was able to buy the flat from the insurance money he got because of the hideous motorbike accident. And you’re like, whoa, then you kind of start thinking, God, there’s a lot of weird karma going on here. This terrible thing happened. But out of that, something, you know, good or better can, can come really, really strange how the world works. I am a firm believer though, in a lot of the philosophy that inspirational guys, like Robert Holden and Michael Neil talk about in that everything that we might look for outside of ourselves and, you know, happiness, joy, resilience, you know, is actually within us already innately. I’m a strong believer in that, you know, and that’s one of the things that has kept me going, and it’s kind of transformed my life and how I deal with things. Like in the last year I listened to a lot of Robert Holden. I listened to a lot of my content in terms of podcasts books and shows.
Nathaniel Schooler
01:18:14
Wow. So, so yeah, I mean, so with emotional wellbeing strategies, right, there are so many different, different ways that you can, that you can manage your emotions, but before you learn to manage your emotions, you need to understand what they are, right?
Marverine Cole
01:18:37
Yeah, absolutely. You’ve got to almost self-diagnose. I think it’s harder if you can’t, self-diagnose in the same way we know when we’ve read something and it’s not agreed with us, or we kind of sense why, oh, my knees absolutely killing me today. And that’s probably because I did half an hour of a crazy Joe wicks this morning, you know what I mean? You know why something’s not feeling right. And then, and then when you feel something in your body that is, that’s weird, I can’t quite pinpoint it. Then you almost know that. Yeah. Maybe I should go to the doctor about this. Right. So the same way we do that kind of self-diagnosis around our body. I think it’s, you know, it would help everyone to try and do that self-diagnosis around our emotions, but also recognize where our feelings coming from, you know, where our feelings, where our emotions are coming from, we’re all, we’re always kind of, we are always experiencing our feelings.
Marverine Cole
01:19:39
So, you know, like when we’re worried about something that’s ahead, it’s kind of, we’re fixating on something that’s ahead. But that does not make any sense because we, we can’t predict the future. You know? So why would you get yourself completely wound up about something that you, you know, an imagined future? So the sooner we recognize, you know, those sorts of feelings, the sooner we can go, well, that’s kind of silly, right? So snap back to the present and handle each minute, each hour, each day as it comes, that’s how I handle things. That’s how I handle things. Now. I recognize where my feelings coming from. What’s making me sad. What’s making me angry and kind of rationalize it and go well, particularly when there’s nothing I can do about a situation. I just tell myself, there’s no point in expending the energy, expanding the negativity, winding yourself up about something that you, you have absolutely no control over. I’ve just been able to do that. And that’s, that is through the help of, like I say, listen to Robert Holden and listen to Michael O’Neill. I would recommend all of that. All of those works to anybody who kind of struggles with emotions and, and, you know, well-being. Hmm.
Nathaniel Schooler
02:21:07
Yeah. I, I, as, as, as I’ve been doing, Tai-Chi like nearly 25 years. Right. So for me, I’m very aware of my, of my emotions, but I’m also aware of how to kind of balance them and exercise, diet, water, and other things play a big, big part in that. But like right now, it’s still, it’s super difficult right now because we’re all stuck in, stuck indoors. Many people can’t even go out for any, for any exercise without fear of, but begin to someone and whatever. Right. So it is, it is really, really tough, but I think, I agree. I think day by day, just, just kind of break it down. Right. And, you know, you’ve just got to, you just got to try and do your best. I mean, if you can’t change something right now, then perhaps, you know, if, if you’re not in work or you’ve, you’ve been stuck at home and you, you can’t do your regular job, then think about some skills that you’d like to learn.
Nathaniel Schooler
02:22:07
Something that you really enjoy, you know, look into it and study. And before you know, it, you can actually be very good at something like, I mean, I didn’t know anything about podcasting like five years ago. And I just learned how to, how to edit from a friend of mine, told me how to edit. And I launched a podcast and launched another one. And, and then the world’s largest ebook man producer asked me to do some expert talks for them. And I, I, I produced around a hundred talks for those guys. And yeah. So, you know, you don’t know where things are going to lead, but I think you need to listen to your intuition. Right?
Marverine Cole
02:22:47
Absolutely. I mean, you know, all the examples you’ve given of how you have school yourself so relevant now we’ve got so much that is available online and yes, I fully appreciate, I’m not sitting here going, ah, ha my situation’s great. You know, there are loads of people, like you said, in tower blocks who can’t, you know, the parks close or whatever, you know, they might have to walk how many floors to get downstairs or whatever to get fresh air. I appreciate that. A lot of people for whom this locked down is, is going to be absolutely awful is awful. I suppose the only, the only suggestion, anything I can think of flipping back to the situation where I was, you know, in a pokey little flat, not that noise for four years, right. Is do what you can try and stay calm about the situation and have hope that things will change, but also try and plan if you can, as to how you want to change your future.
Marverine Cole
02:23:56
Because I do believe that we are all the masters of our own fate of our own destiny, and you’re saying, you know, I think YouTube is the biggest encyclopedia in the world. There are so many helpful people showing you, how does that have a podcast, how to use this, how to do that, how to edit this. But then also there are organizations who are now throwing open, you know, courses that were previously on payables, right? Bri. So Coursera, I think, you know, or cheaper, like new to me open university has got a little, whole load of free courses. FutureLearn there are all these sorts of places online. And I’m sure like load wall that I haven’t even mentioned, that people will know about where you can log on, spend hours. Boy, have we got hours? Now, if you’re not a key worker, we’ve got time. You know, if you’re furloughed, you’ve got time, right in school, yourself on a new topic, a new hobby to try and transform your life in readiness for when we do come out of however long, this cycle is of us being locked down. That is what I would suggest to anyone and everyone to give yourself hope, give yourself hope don’t succumb to hopelessness. If you can. I know I always qualify it by saying, I don’t, I’m not, I’m not deliberately sounding flippant or glib, but I think, you know, holding onto some hope for a better future for yourself is really important. Yeah.
Nathaniel Schooler
02:25:22
Is it, but the thing is it’s about having faith, right? I mean like whatever your belief system is like you’ve got to have faith that things are going to get better. It’s a bit like walking through a tunnel. Yeah. At the beginning of the tunnel, everything’s black and you can’t even see the white at the end at the other end. But when you get to daylight out the other side, you stop, you start seeing more and more of your path and that’s, that’s a bit like navigating your career path. Right. Which I think we should just, you know, appreciate that people like yourself, people like Lenny, Henry and, and people from all sorts of races and sexual orientation and, you know, things like this, they, they found it very, very hard in life, you know?
Marverine Cole
02:26:09
Yeah. And I think that’s because obviously, we know a lot of our institutions, a lot of our organizations have always been led by and managed by a traditionally white male, privately educated majority. And that, you know, that’s not me spouting off the top of my head. You only have to look at certain trusts, you know, kind of detailed research around the elite professions in the world, you know, which is basically a lot, a lot of professions and a lot of industries, institutions. And so, you know, when that’s been kind of how it has been for centuries or, you know, kind of decades, then people as our population changes and as the UK changes with people from different countries and necessities and different faiths, migrating and settling here and, and, and feeling they’re British and they are British when they’re born here. If you can understand when people feel like having a minute, so we’re not represented in these circles where we’re here, we’re living here, we contribute to society, we’re paying taxes, all the rest of it.
Marverine Cole
02:27:20
We feel British yet. We’re not part of decision-making, we’re not represented very well in many areas. Then you can appreciate what people feeling, hang on a minute, this doesn’t feel right. And we need to try and affect some change so that, you know, all of those institutions that we know of feel more representative or more representative of how Britain is today and, you know, Lenny Henry’s focus of course television, because, you know, he made it on TV. They just 16 winning new faces in front of 16 million people. So that’s his domain. It always has been. And you know, he’s excelled at it. Of course, he’s also excelled at academia, by the way, as an aside, no longer getting a PhD, but his, you know, his, the aim for the Lenny Henry. So Lenny Henry centre for media diversity, art, my university, which is Birmingham city university, is about, you know, trying to increase diversity and inclusion in, in the media with the name of a kind of trying to improve politics, policy decisions.
Marverine Cole
02:28:34
And I know some people will be like, why does that matter? Why does any of that matter? Why do we need to see more black, Asian, ethnic minority people on TV? Because representation really does matter. You know, we, can’t kind of keep things as they are. There needs to be a shift, a more concerted shift towards a fair representation. And the data, from off calm around media diversity is very clear, you know, a lower proportion of, of ethnic minority employees in senior management positions, you know, making the decisions on what programs we see. We don’t see the people we see on TV or on the radio, the people behind the camera, behind the microphone, very few ethnic minorities involved in those decisions.
Marverine Cole
02:29:27
And the same when it comes to news and news and current affairs, we see again, it’s extremely elite professional journalism. So, you know, you’ve, you’ve really got to, of course in any profession, you’ve got to fight hard to kind of get through, but it seems that the playing field is not level. And hopefully, you know, with the work we’re doing at the centre, that we’ll hope to level that playing field, you know, we’re going to be analyzing diversity statistics, examining you know, where there might be deficits in the figures, but also analyze some of the broadcasts or sort of, sort of the announcements made by broadcasters about what they’re doing around diversity and just kind of take the temperature of the industry.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:30:12
Hmm. That’s very interesting. So excuse me, I’ve just got a cough. So when, when navigating your career path, right, would you, would you just look at, look at an industry you want to go into and actually take a look at some of the real leaders in that industry and say, well, actually I could, I could be there. I could potentially be there in five years, 10 years time and or next month or next year, but like, would you sort of start there and then, and then try to navigate the skills that you need to actually get to that place?
Marverine Cole
03:30:53
Yeah, I definitely would, but I’d also come from a point of, as well as identifying where you think you might want to be, make that decision based on a passion because there’s no point in pursuing a career that you don’t feel passionate about. You know, why sit and go, yeah. I want to be an accountant when you’re kind of, you know, you weren’t very good with maths and you know, you think, yeah, it’s going to make me a lot of money, but you have got the dry for it. I think absolutely. You’ve got to have a drive for a particular career these days. There’s so much information out there about how to get into different careers. Lots of people volunteer their own stories of their own journey. Lots of very transparent information about the qualifications you need to get there. Way more so than, you know, when I was thinking about broadcast journalism as a career, you know, coming on nearly 20 years ago, there’s way more information now.
Marverine Cole
03:31:51
Oh yeah. Masters, there’s loads. And so yeah. Do the research, but also, you know, industries, every industry is very much built on around networking as well. And there seems to be in some professions, there, there isn’t journalism kind of unwritten rule of you got to work your way up, which I think is fair. You know, which makes sense. Particularly, if you want to get to a senior position, you can’t jump into the senior position of an organization without understanding how the cogs work, you know, which bits turn, which bits and who’s responsible for what I think it would be very difficult for anybody to do that. Unless, you know, a profession, some people might disagree, but you need to school yourself on the industry. You know, who are the main players, what sort of qualifications you need also, what sort of aptitudes and behaviours you need now, what sort of person do you need to be?
Marverine Cole
03:32:50
What sort of skills and qualities do you need to have, you know, be a good listener, be a good team player, be able to back down, you know, if you, you know, if you try to have an argument discussion and it’s not working to be able to compromise, see other people’s points of view in it, all those sorts of things, it’s a combination of the two, but yes, by what you want to do, and then just work hard on schooling yourself, about as much of the industry as you can. And ultimately, you know, getting the right qualifications to get in and to thrive and to grow.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:33:29
Yeah. Yeah. I think also finding mentors as well is, is super. I mean, like, I mean, I’ve learned so many amazing things from people that just want to teach. I mean, they love just, just helping people to get somewhere really
Marverine Cole
03:33:42
It’s re you know, mentors is really interesting. I have never had an industry mentor, but I have mentored hundreds of people. So this feels weird. Yeah. I’ve never had a mentor, but then I, I, I suppose that’s why I have become a mentor in that, and that people have come to me and said, I’ve seen you’re doing this. I’ve seen you, you know, you’ve been an anchor and now you’re not going to make it. Can I talk to you about how I can, you know, move on in my career? You know, I’ve always loved doing that and continuing to do that. So, yeah, I agree. Having met, having a mentor is super important, but please don’t expect that mentor to just hand you everything on a plate and go, yeah, here’s my content to do this. Here’s my conduct to do that. It’s about, you know, discussing what you think you’ve got to offer and, and that person helping you kind of shape your future.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:34:39
Yeah. Yeah. I agree completely. And it hurts because you’re going to grow because they’re going to put you in the right direction. Maybe you can work on some projects and stuff together with them as well, depending on what business you’re in and it’s painful, you know, it took me years to learn certain skills and now those skills are coming, coming together now, you know, but
Marverine Cole
03:35:01
The last part of the learning journey isn’t it.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:35:05
Yeah. Yeah. If it doesn’t hurt, then generally you probably not learning anything,
Marverine Cole
03:35:09
No pain, no gain.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:35:13
Well, you’ve been most generous with your time. I can’t. Thank you enough. And yeah, it’s, it’s been super talking with you.
Marverine Cole
03:35:20
It’s been an absolute pleasure, really fun. Thank you so much.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:35:36
Thanks for
speaker 1
03:35:37
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