We Are Power Podcast
The We Are Power podcast is the podcast for your career and your life. A weekly podcast with listeners in over 60 countries worldwide where you'll hear personal life stories, top-notch industry advice, and key leadership insight from amazing role models. The podcast not only aids your personal and professional development but also delves deep into conversations around Gender Equality and Social Mobility. Each week the We Are Power Podcast will bring you a new interview from a leader within the 100,000-strong We Are Power community, hosted by Simone Roche MBE.
We Are Power Podcast
No One’s Coming to Save Us: Cat Wildman’s Mission for Diversity
In this episode, Cat Wildman, the founder of Powered by Diversity, talks about her experience of being named Commended Winner of the Agent of Change at the #NPWAwards. Despite the recognition, Cat shares how it triggered imposter syndrome and made her question her own success. As a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, Cat explains the mission behind Powered by Diversity and how its GEC app helps identify and track imbalances in the workplace.
Cat also reflects on how her career took unexpected turns—from wanting to become a doctor to working at a national newspaper. She discovered that technology, much like science, is about solving problems, but with computers instead of cells. Cat shares the turning point when, at a conference, she realised that “no one was coming to save us,” which led her to set up Powered by Diversity. She talks about the framework she created to bring real change to workplaces and how recent news around diversity and inclusion has been affecting her.
This episode is full of insightful thoughts on diversity, career changes, and the challenges of setting up a business for change.
Chapters: 00:00 - Welcome to the Powered by Diversity Podcast
00:46 - Meet Cat Wildman
01:24 - Cat’s Achievements and Experiences
02:46 - Starting Powered by Diversity
04:21 - Cat’s Career Path and Insights
07:33 - Overcoming Challenges
17:58 - Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
20:55 - Final Thoughts and Goodbye
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Hello, hello and welcome to the we Are Power podcast. If this is your first time here, the we Are Power podcast is the podcast for you, your career and your life. We release an episode every single Monday with listeners in over 60 countries worldwide, where you'll hear personal life stories, top-notch industry advice and key leadership insight from amazing role models. As we Are Power is the umbrella brand to Northern Power Women Awards, which celebrates hundreds of female role models and advocates every year. This is where you can hear stories from all of our awards alumni and stay up to date with everything. Mpw Awards and we Are Power Never imitated, never replicated singularly wonderful, everybody's wonder girl. This week, I am delighted to be joined by Kat Wildman, who is the co-founder of Powered by Diversity and our commended winner for Agent of Change at the 2024 Northern Powering Awards. Kat, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited.
Speaker 1:Looks very Hello Magazine there in the background For those of you listening, just looks very Hello Magazine. Catch up on the YouTube.
Speaker 2:This is my daughter's bedroom, you know, and it's now the nicest room in the house and I'm going to steal it.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love it. I would actually, yeah, I would. There you go, there you go. Daughter Come home. Next time she comes home, everything will be moved out. You Come home. Next time she comes home, everything will be moved out. You are a total advocate for diversity and inclusion and dedicated to promoting gender equality.
Speaker 2:You know, right up our street, what did it feel like to get up to the stage last year at the awards and pick up that trophy. Oh, my gosh. I was so, oh gosh, so many things. I was feeling a big dollop of imposter syndrome, as we all want to do, and no matter how much you try and fight against it, the imposter always is like are you sure they said your name Just because the caliber of people who are getting awarded and it made me so proud as well, which is Northern women, and I'm like yes, yes, this is great celebrating all the northern women, um, but the overwhelming feeling was pride. I was so proud of myself. I was so proud that I had earned my place in that room with all those phenomenal people and a newer power. I just thought yeah, I'm proud.
Speaker 1:It's like an energy boost, isn't it?
Speaker 2:in an evening yeah, it's that bit of recognition, you know, because it's day-to-day like. I think, sometimes, when you look at people on social media, you look at people on LinkedIn, you think, oh, you're always doing that sort of stuff, you're always going to awards, you're always going to glitzy networking things, but actually those are just the things you put on social media and day-to-day you're grafting, grafting really hard every day those nice little moments of recognition which makes it all worthwhile and you are, I said, co-founder of Power by Diversity, and you developed the GEC app in 2020, which is all about tracking imbalance in the workplace.
Speaker 1:But just tell us broadly about what what it is that Power by Diversity does yes, so we started off.
Speaker 2:I started off with the co-founder back in the day and we were doing education and business together, and so what I wanted to create was a diagnostic that worked for both education and for organizations, because I'm a scientist and technologist, and so what I saw when I was in the workplace I was a director in technology. 2017 gender pay gap reporting initiative came out and I saw people running around with their heads on fire, going quick, we better close our gender pay gap. And I'm thinking but we don't know what the cause is. I mean, we know the symptom is not enough women leadership level, but we don't know the causes. And from my own personal lived experience just one person there were so many different barriers that I'd had to navigate to get to even where I was.
Speaker 2:At the time. I just thought we need a diagnostic here to be able to break the problem down and address the root cause, and I wanted to do the same thing for education, so we formed the GEC first, which was education and business. Both of them took off and the audiences and the customers wanted them to go in different directions, so we split them into two businesses at the start of 2023. And now I am founder of Powered by Diversity. My ex-co-founder is running the GEC still. She still does education, I just do businesses and yeah, we've all it's been. I mean, I can't believe it was that long ago. Now it's flown by, but it also hasn't flown by.
Speaker 1:And you talk you just mentioned you're a scientist when. And you talk you just mentioned you're a scientist where did this whole kind of career path? How did you get to founding a business? Because we we talk on this podcast an awful lot about. Nobody has that one straight line, that one career easy trajectory. You know, at the age of 14, 15, I know what I'm going to do and off off a go I'm going to do, but where does? Can you give us a part of history of yours? Because it's, it's, it's interesting yeah, what was it?
Speaker 2:you said it's like a jungle gym, was that in lean in? Um, yeah, totally. I mean, I wish I'd been able to know at 15 what I wanted to do, because then I could have just fully focused. So where where did I go? So I, um, I did science at school, did physics, technology and chemistry at A-level, and then went to university and did a biomedical sciences and physiological sciences degree. I wanted to be a doctor and then I changed my mind at uni and then.
Speaker 2:So I came out of the world of science and then immediately got a job working for a national newspaper, in technology, in projects. Because actually I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know anything about technology, I know nothing about technology. And but I got, I got this entry-level job project coordinator and loved it, because what I very quickly realized was that technology is the same sort of mindset as science. It's about gathering the data, it's about making a hypothesis. Where do do you want to go? Let's control our experiment, let's do the experiment, let's measure how it went. It was basically the exact same skill set that I had, just working with computers instead of cells and microbes. So, yeah, I loved it straight away and I just went from there. I moved into digital product. Digital product wasn't a thing. When I got into the workplace From there, I moved into digital product, digital product wasn't a thing. When I got into the workplace, the website was like five guys in the corner wearing like Android T-shirts. No one knew what Android was back then and we were like, oh, the web guys, what does it even do? Who knows, don't know. And then went to the Telegraph, migrated the website to a new platform because everyone was saying podcast, it's all about multimedia. It's all about multimedia, it's all about seo, it's all about the web, a mobile web. And we're like, really, is it going to be? What the heck is seo? And so we went like it was the dawn of the telegraph, going into that world and it was really exciting. It was such a great project and we trained all the journalists and felled off with digital from that moment and thought this is the only area I want to work in, worked my way up to digital product director and then I, when I was at that at the telegraph, I was director of digital product.
Speaker 2:That was when the gender pay gap reporting initiative came out. I had had three children in that time and also I had seen the part as I became a cd reader of people who I was now recruiting. They were just men, men, men, men, men, men applying. And I'm like this why are women and girls not interested in stem? I'm obviously a great big stem geek. I love it. I can't get enough of it. It's the way my mind works and I just thought I need to get involved in the scene. So I got massively involved in the scene and the more I saw, the more I saw things I would have the power to be able to change and, you know, get involved in, have some impact in.
Speaker 2:And then, when the when I, when the gender pay gap reporting initiative came out and everyone was running around with their heads on fire going we need to close our gender pay gap right now, I'm panicking, and went to this event. I went to Women of Silicon Roundabout that year and all of the themes of these women standing up on the stage talking to a room full of 300, 400 smart, technical women. The theme was something has to be done. Someone needs to do something about this. Who's going to do something about this? This is not right. It's like give us a call to action, please Come on. Thing about this. This is not right. It's like give us a call to action, please come on, we can solve this problem. I just wanted the message to be like we can do this, here's what we can do, and just make us walk out feeling empowered. And I walked out feeling exhausted and I just thought I'm going to work in EDI in some form.
Speaker 2:And when I started researching that what are the root causes to the, the gender pay gap I fell in love with that research and it very easily extrapolated over to other protected characteristics like race, disability and so on, and I just thought I'm going to do this forever now, because I want to do it for my kids, I want to do the next generations coming up, because I don't want them to have to, you know, climb, scrawl up their fingers to the bone, getting over the same ridiculous hurdles that I had to and I'm an incredibly privileged white woman, but I had to go over those hurdles I just thought do you know what? I've got to? Spend the rest of my career making life easier for other people? Because it's silly, isn't it.
Speaker 1:And it's the ultimate. You're in that room at that big conference and I can sense you sort of sat there, me right yeah it was like I walked out of that room and my main message was no one's coming to save us.
Speaker 2:It gives me goosebumps, actually. It actually gives me goosebumps remembering it, because I was like no one's coming. No one is coming here to save us. They've done the gender pay gap reporting initiative. They've said let's all do this every year and now it's up to us. Actually, we're the grown-ups now. There's not a boss coming down to be like right, okay, what we're going to do is this. We can do it. And then I thought I can write a framework for how to do this. This is my skill set, this is what I enjoy doing. I'm going to have the audacity to just go and do it.
Speaker 2:And I was like oh gosh we're going to save ourselves.
Speaker 1:We've got our own capes.
Speaker 2:Look at our capes in our bag there, right here, put the apron round and put it over the back there.
Speaker 1:And at what point did you? You know, we talked about that. Now I need to do something now but at what point were you like, actually, literally, me now, literally, I'm going to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:It was when I was researching, so I started on geeking out by myself and looking at things like bias in the recruitment process, bias in the appraisal process, gathering the scientific research that had been done and there isn't a lot and that was also a huge worry in terms of let's look at a longitudinal study of females average appraisal scores and the sorts of verbatim feedback they get. I only knew from my own lived experience. I was told to grow thicker skin. I was told to be less emotional and I'm not an emotional person. I was, but if I get annoyed about something, it's like you need to be less emotional, you need to be more stoic about that. You needed to take a harder line in there. You needed to speak up more in that meeting all of those. You need to have more gravitas. That was the feedback I used to get time and time again to morph me into this leader shape that they wanted me to be in order to promote me, basically trying to turn me into a bloke, and I just thought how? What? There's no research on this. I'm going to have to do the research and I'm going to have to write questions like things, like what is belonging.
Speaker 2:Everyone's talking about inclusion and belonging and for me, belonging feels a certain way. I know I feel I like I belong when I, when there's certain things in place. It's having someone's desk to go and perch on and have a cup of tea and be like I've just had the worst call with the most annoying person, which really annoyed me. Have someone to, to be able to say hello to people, feel like you can be yourself with all of your flaws and you're like oh, why do I put my foot in my mouth all the time? Am I too loud? That sort of thing? It's like, no, I'm not, because I'm here with my people. That's my belonging. But every other individual person has a different sense of belonging.
Speaker 2:And who's done that work to look at the diagnostics for belonging? What does that mean? To belong at an organization? And that when I realized it was me, I was like I love this stuff and I geek out massively about this. I enjoy it. I'm doing this for a side hustle, this is my hobby, so I want to do it for my job. You know when people say when you do what you love, you never work a day in your life. Now my husband is like you need to get some hobbies. And I'm like, but this was my hobby and now it's my work and so sorry, I'll just do this.
Speaker 1:That, that is your t-shirt. We talk a lot on the pod about um, you know the tote bag moments, but you, you just have a whole brand range. Now I geek out that is it, that's my t-shirt, that's your t-shirt, your bag. Now, kat, you need that can be your new hobby, your own merch range.
Speaker 2:I will get that t-shirt and I will send you a photo and I want to sort of step into the.
Speaker 1:You know you, you then went right. Actually, I'm going to take my side hustle and turn it into my, my business. But I just want to track back on some of the, the where you were told to you know, be more stoic, be more this, be more this. Um, what's your thoughts on having more masculine energy? Oh, my gosh, I've said it out loud now. What to start to the year on social media?
Speaker 2:it's I mean, if you want to see someone triggered, it's me reading the news. My husband tries to read me things. Last night he read me. He showed me a headline of an article. What was the article about? Something about edi. Oh, this 75 year old woman had to go on edi training because she liked to post about illegal immigrants and like embraces connotations. She was asked to go on this diversity training and the whole thing was how can you ask her to do this? She's 75 year old woman, etc. Then the next article was about the murder and one of the questions they picked out was they asked her what a pansexual was. She's 75. Like this feeling of outrage of how could they make her do it?
Speaker 2:The next article was about the murder of a trans girl, the stabbing of a trans girl, and I'm like can you not put those two things together? Like really it's this headline grabbing, sensationalist posturing thing that is going to be very embarrassing in the future, people who are coming out and saying all this stuff about we need more masculine energy. I mean, what does that even? Please define that? I'm a scientist. I need to know what is your definition of masculine energy? Please tell me.
Speaker 2:But also, the stuff about EDI is out and this, this, this. It's like, well, back yourself because let's have a conversation about it. What is it about EDI that you're throwing out? Is it one specific part of it? Because you will be doing stuff and it's these headlines, which are five words and they say a thousand things to a thousand different people and it's just giving the wrong messages and they're going to look back and they're on the wrong side of history. Because I'm raising three generation alpha kids and if you think Gen Z are woke and I'm with it with this stuff, they have not met Gen Alpha. They learn about this stuff. At every assembly my kids have had non-binary teacher. They are horrified and outraged by anything to do with not accepting LGBTQ plus families, not accepting people's gender identities. They just get it, it's just in them and they're coming into the workforce.
Speaker 1:And do you think it is? We have to back ourselves because there's a lot of people and conversations I'm having at the moment that are worried that work around the equality inclusion space and it's actually let's face it, they're not spaces. It's what we should be doing every day. It's in our every assembly, in our DNA. How do we take the fear away? Because I feel like there's a lot of fear out there and there's a lot of fear from organisations automatically putting the brakes on and stopping and considering it, which is that's a worry, especially for businesses out there.
Speaker 2:Definitely yeah, and we encounter. The biggest thing that I encounter when we're training people is fear, and it's tackling the fear. What I would say is get off social media, get off. Don't follow activists, don't follow people on LinkedIn who are making you feel afraid. It's those.
Speaker 2:The activist space is incredibly important. It is essential for the work that we all do, but actually, when you are ready to learn and you're and you're taking your first steps, it's time to shut those messages off now, because they do propagate fear. That's what they are designed to do, and rightly so. But when you're in the learning space, you suddenly become aware of what you don't know and that gulf feels enormous. Um, and you're also in, you're entering the bottom of the change curve where all you want to do is go back and you're like, oh no, I don't obtain from my. I'm scared. It's that bargaining. Please don't make me do this.
Speaker 2:And people are so vulnerable when they're in that we call it the terror zone, because they're suddenly aware of all the things they don't know. They've got this big curriculum of things. They feel like they have to learn ahead of them. So I would say switch off anyone who makes you feel afraid and talk to real humans, because the real humans in your office, in your workplace, in your life you know on the streets who you meet in your friendship groups, your wider they're never going to scream at you for using the wrong word. They're going to want to have a conversation.
Speaker 2:If you say to them, you know what is inclusion to you. Or do you experience this sort of stuff? Or how did you feel during the riots over the summer? They'll talk to you about it and they're not going to scream in your face and they're not going to like cancel you. Real people are not like that and so when people this is what all of our training is is exposure to real people and just building back up their confidence to say the thing and not worry if it's the right thing so much that you end up saying nothing and then causing exclusion.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it is a real problem but I think is one of the solutions. It's the real life talk to real life people, as opposed to reading fake news yes, absolutely yes.
Speaker 2:I'm following activists who are amazing, but when you're in that fear zone, not helpful as much get out the fear zone back yourself.
Speaker 1:You are a self-confessed startup junkie. And do we all have an inner startup junkie? I suppose I think probably. Yes. I was sort of 45 before I set my own business up and thought, gosh, now I'm like, oh yeah, this is a business. Who knew? What advice would you give to individuals out there who have got those side hustles or have got those passions or have got have been in that room that go and looking around and no one else is doing it and they're like I want to do this. What's the top tip?
Speaker 2:Gosh, that makes me so excited when you just said that there's people right now who are in that room. Being like this is wrong and I could do it better. And yeah, do it first of all, do it. Um, but subheading, make sure that you. It's a it's a tough world. It is tough. You know as well as I do. It is tough and the things that people put online are such an edited version of the actual truth.
Speaker 2:If we all put what actually happens day-to-day life and running and growing a business, don't whatever. Start a business, uh, but you put the highlights on, it all looks glossy. I would say make sure that you've got your support network. Find your tribe. Don't compare yourself against people who you see. Don't compare yourself against people in the interviews who've made, you know, seven figure exits and this and this. Don't ever look at people who've existed from silicon roundabout at silicon valley, because you'll feel miserable work on what.
Speaker 2:One thing I'd say, a bit of concrete advice is think about your own personal success factors not to do with money. So I'll know I've been a success when, for example, for me, I can drop my kids off at school every day and pick them up, I can go to every sports day and play I've got. I can close my laptop at the end of the day and not have anyone shouting at me, although that's still a bit of a pipe dream. I don't really do. I do that. No, I'm not saying I take my own advice, but just think about your own success factors and don't tie them to like necessarily exiting for x amount of money and I know you were raised by a mum who made you believe you could do anything.
Speaker 1:Now, this is one of the things that amused me that at 45, your your mum applied to Manchester City Football Club yes, she did, oh my god she wanted to. She applied to manage.
Speaker 2:Sorry, she applied to she applied to be the manager of man City. Like, literally, my husband tells this story in public and I'm like, oh my gosh, embarrassing. That's the sort of woman that she was. She was just there. When you say she told me I could be anything, she believed that to her core, like whether that was a saying belief or not, I'm not so sure, but she certainly raised me to be like if you want it, go for it. You know if, if she, if I had genuinely wanted to be the manager of man City, she would have supported me, helped me find what courses to do. Like, yeah, she, that was my, my role model.
Speaker 1:I'm sensing right now, the apple does not fall far from the tree cat.
Speaker 2:Well, like, so I've got more realistic expectations of what I can achieve, though I'm not going to be the manager of man City.
Speaker 1:Well, I think he's just signed on for a super contract, so you know, it might be next time round, who knows? But what is your superpower, Kat my?
Speaker 2:superpower is being able to get back up again. I really like my own fire. So I have this internal pilot light is how I think of it, and even if I'm getting worn down by life and cynical, I know that I just give myself a bit of time, a bit of inspiration, and that pilot light will light up again and fire me on. So I'd say it's just the ability to just keep getting up amazing.
Speaker 1:Kat Wildman, utter inner geek serial startupper. You're all about real life, real experience, reality, telling those real life stories, cutting out the noise. Kat, thank you so much for joining me today. You're a total and utter legend. Thank you for having me subscribe on youtube, apple, amazon music, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a review or follow us on socials. We are power underscore net on Insta, tiktok and Twitter. We are power on LinkedIn, facebook and we are underscore power on YouTube.
