We Are Power Podcast
The We Are PoWEr podcast spotlights voices and perspectives that need to be heard. Our weekly podcast, with listeners in over 60 countries, delivers PoWErful conversations that inspire, challenge, and empower... from personal life stories to business insights and leadership lessons.
We share diverse experiences, bold discussions, and real solutions. Whether you're looking for career advice, topical themes, or stories of resilience and success - this is where voices spark change.
We Are Power Podcast
"You don't need to know everything, and that's okay because neither does anyone else."
Dr. Chrissi McCarthy's candid conversation takes us through her story of growing up in a council house in Bracknell to holding a PhD and founding the Centre of Behavioural Equality.
Dr Chrissi opens up about mental health struggles that doctors dismissed because she 'was smiling' and an alcohol dependency that society refused to recognise because it didn't fit the stereotypical image of alcoholism.
Listen to learn:
👷♀️ Taking a break during her PhD after experiencing miscarriages, business challenges, and mental health struggles
💪 How Dr Chrissi reframed her relationship with alcohol
🎓 Completing a nine-year PhD and being from a background where such achievements were rare
💫 Founding the Centre of Behavioural Equality to develop research-backed, context-driven EDI strategies
🔋 The poWEr of resilience
Find out more about We Are PoWEr here. 💫
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.
Speaker 1:Well, welcome to the we Are Power podcast Today. Never imitated, never replicated, singularly wonderful, everybody's wonder girl. Wow, welcome to the we Are Power podcast. Today I am joined by Dr Chrissie McCarthy. Yeah, phd, doctor and everything I know. Who'd have thought it? It's never as easy getting a PhD as you think, is it? And I will get into this. But in my preparation for today's chat, I listened to another podcast because there were other ones out there who knew right and it talked about taking a break, the bravery of taking a break in your PhD, because it's a big thing to do, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It was a massive thing to do and it was a really, really hard thing to do because the things that led me to a break I'm very typical, I think, of a lot of women out there in that I need lots of big reasons to think that it's okay to have some downtime, and for me it was pretty much a breakdown, a mental health breakdown that allowed it. So I'd had a couple of miscarriages, really early term, like I don't know the pain of the later term ones, but they were early and we wanted I don't know the pain of the later term ones, but they were early and we wanted it, you know. So so that was really heartbreaking for me. Also, I had a client that did not treat our business well and I can be incredibly naive, bless my socks and so I had to make four people redundant.
Speaker 2:And then, on top of that, I was trying to do this PhD, so I wasn't in a great headspace for it, and the harder I pushed, the worse it got and like it really got to a space where, like I don't know if I say it in the other podcast or not where I just had this kind of real big mental health breakdown and I don't know what it was, because I went to the doctor about it and the doctor basically I explained the situation.
Speaker 2:I was like I've not been able to leave the house in three months, like I can barely get out of bed. This is the most I've done in such a long time and the doctor was like well, I can tell you now you're not depressed, because I've chatted you for five minutes and you've smiled all the way through. So it was really yeah. So I got no help for it and just kind of lumbered through, and it was then that I was like I can't keep doing this PhD right now, so I had to kind of send this letter to my poor supervisor. So I was like and there was a miscarriage and there was a business breakdown and there's been a mental health break and I think I just need some time. But, um, and I'm not, but I was smiling through it all.
Speaker 1:So you were okay, right, yeah, I was grand, I was grand like we're taught to mask, aren't we?
Speaker 2:we do it well, but um, there was good news in that, taking some time apart, my mental health got better and and I did end up falling pregnant. So, but that doesn't happen for everyone. I don't wish to imply that it does.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is a an opening to the podcast. Sorry, yeah, went in hard. No but it's because you know, I think, when you you hear a title, you hear, you know Dr Chrissy McCarthy, multi-award winning, super successful, founder of multiple things. How do you, how do you intro yourself? Because you are a woman of many, many things, oh, not like that.
Speaker 2:Just, I don't know, I struggle with this. I can talk about my ideas all day long and, you know, to the point of boredom I don't do as well to talk about myself. I can tell you what I'm interested in. So, like you know, I was a builder. So when I was a builder, I would tell you about, you know, my love of concrete, my love of cranes and what we were building. Now I can tell you about my love of equal workplaces and creating really fair environments. As for me, I'm just um, I'm all right. Like I have moments of brilliance, I have times of just awfulness, like mostly I'm just muddling through.
Speaker 1:Like the rest of us, I'm just um if, if it's not about you you were your finalist in Northern Powerpoint Awards this year. How did that feel? Was that a bit overwhelming then? Um?
Speaker 2:no, because I had my marketing manager with me, and also Fiona Hull, who's oh, construction Q she is ace.
Speaker 1:We love Fiona. High five Fiona, love her most.
Speaker 2:I worked on site with her and she, oh my gosh, that must have been a riot, it was brilliant. She, um, she took me shopping, I talk, I taught her about drainage, you know, as with most, female relationships.
Speaker 2:So, uh, she's brilliant. And she made me like put myself forward a few years before. So I wrote something just terrible, like I do things All right, here you go. And then she nominated me this year along with someone else and like it was fine because Fiona had put me there, but it was um Jo Clark who won in our category absolutely we were over the moon, because Jo Clark's not just doing good work.
Speaker 2:You can see that that work hits her hard every single day and it's just so impressive to see someone who was constantly going through that and yet is still fighting for everyone else. Because I know, when I had my mental health break, I couldn't do much more than watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on a daily basis, so she was just just extraordinary.
Speaker 1:So we there was a lot of whooping and hollering from our side of the table- absolutely, and I know I think I spoke to you on the night and you came on the stage. I think you said, um, I had the best time not winning anything, but I've got the best mentor because we have a mentoring program, don't we? That sits, uh, sits alongside the awards, oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yvonne's just an amazing mentor. She's so, so good and like usually, like I've done mentoring before, you usually meet up about once a month. Yv Ron's like let's do this once a week. Um, oh, she's just brilliant and for me sounds terrible. It would have been, of course, lovely to win it's always nice to win things but getting the mentor was the winning because, like, she's helping me think about finance, she's taught um, we've got some like projects running and so she's helping me think about funding and the things that I don't lean towards in a business. She's absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1:So that was the winner for me, really and that's the irony, because you know mentoring is so much about you and you want to make the world better, more fair and equal place and giving back, paying forward, but to be on the receiving end of it's kind of the role reversal right oh, it absolutely is, and I've had lots of informal mentors in my life and absolutely brilliant ones, and technically I suppose my PhD supervisors could be classed as mentors.
Speaker 2:They've certainly helped me immensely, um, during the PhD and after it. But to have this kind of more formal thing, it's, it's like really great and kind of like I'm not too sure why I haven't sought this out beforehand and maybe I should look into that.
Speaker 1:It's sought you, let's blame Fiona Hall, shall we?
Speaker 2:We should blame her for everything, good and bad. She's a wonder.
Speaker 1:Let's take back to where we started. Really was talking about the PhD and taking that break and having all this dreadful things happening. You know miscarriage, two miscarriages. Yeah, we had two yeah, um, and then you sought a different way to deal with. She went to the doctor. The doctor said you were smiling, so therefore you had no mental health issue, right? So absolutely, so you find a different way to deal with mental health yeah, I.
Speaker 2:So I've always struggled with my mental health, say because long as I can ever remember and these days it's an awful lot better and a lot of it's been environmental, like my my dad had a terrible time. He was in the industrial homes in Ireland, so between 7 and 11, so of course that meant that our home life was, um, at times just a little bit more challenging than other home lives might have been. So I left home at 16 and have dealt a lot with my mental health, I think through drinking which I don't know. I'm just not going to recommend it. It felt like a great idea at the time, but it turns out it was a terrible one, and so then I had to. Then I came to a point where I realised that this wasn't working for me not that it ever was and I really had to try and understand it. And strangely, my PhD is what enabled me to give up drinking, which I was not expecting at all. But yeah, it did.
Speaker 1:But society also said that you didn't have a drinking problem. Oh, society very much did so no mental health problem because of the smiling. No drinking problem because it was all fine. Yeah, the problem with drinking is you, it was all fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the problem with drinking is you can be fun when you drink. I can also be an absolute nightmare, in pretty much any color that you want to put into it. Um, and when I when I was coming to realize I had a drinking problem, which was mostly due to my absolutely wonderful husband. Um, just talking about a lot of quantity surveyors today, so I married a quantity surveyor and Fiona Hull's a quantity surveyor. Apparently, they're just some of the world's greatest people, which I don't think it says enough.
Speaker 2:A new study, I think, yeah, exactly, are they the best? But yeah, it was really interesting when my husband was was the one who saw what the drinking looked like and my drinking wasn't what we would write down as an alcoholic, because that would be someone who drinks every day, who has a dependency on alcohol and that shakes. And I wasn't doing those things. I was going out two, three times a week, but I was the last one standing and by that I mean when I'd go out I'd be drinking till two to six in the morning. Every time I went out I didn't drink and not black out and that was really normalized for me. So of course that would write off the next day and I'd still be able to work and I would still be able to always make it work.
Speaker 2:So that's okay, isn't it? And so trying to reconcile that with the fact that that's not okay and also the impact that it would have on my husband because I'd always see it as well it's just fine, like I get myself home, it's grand Whereas my husband would worry about me he's such an amazing man and his conversations about this. This isn't right. You shouldn't drink to that extent so regularly. But then when you speak to people about it, it's fine, chris, we go out, we have a laugh, it's fine, chris. And then you start to realize that their version of staying out late isn't your version and their version of what fine is is very, very different. And when it isn't, they're saying it's fine because perhaps they see something in themselves as well.
Speaker 2:So you kind of gotta unpack a lot of stuff that you don't want to be unpacking and then you have to just go. Do you know what? I think I settled on drinking problem rather than alcoholism, though I would be happy to call myself an alcoholic if, if that ever helped anyone, I don't shy away from it and I certainly do not view myself as better than I. Just happen to not be able to drink and some people can, I can't. Luckily for me, I worked out that I don't need to drink. Sometimes I need other people to. I'm already on the karaoke.
Speaker 2:I'm already dancing the people to to like I'm already on the karaoke, I'm already dancing, I've clearly got no filter, like it's not necessary for me and kind of turning that corner and understanding you can be fun, you can have a great night out, you can do all the things that you ever did and not have to get a dodgy taxi home was a bit of a revelation, but it took time and it took work and and you talked about your husband taking the time to keep saying it's, that's not okay.
Speaker 1:What was the actual corner?
Speaker 2:what oh the the moment?
Speaker 1:yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So the moment was really interesting because it wasn't as if it was the worst thing that had ever happened or that I'd ever done. It just felt like enough, which is really interesting. So I'd gone out and we'd gone to go to a place that was having a barbecue and some drinks, and they didn't end up putting the barbecue on, so I just had red wine and then we moved on to another place and then I had even more red wine. My husband had gone home by this point. I joined some other friends and I got into the taxi.
Speaker 2:Apparently, I don't know, I don't remember this. What I remember is being in the hospital and like sobering up, and the taxi driver had clearly thought this woman is too. So I was told, thought this woman's too drunk, I'm not taking her home, I'm taking her to the hospital, went home, went to bed and then we got a knock on the door and it was the ambulance had come around to check to see that I'd gotten home, that I was okay, and I just remember in that moment thinking this isn't what other people do, this isn't okay and, more importantly, this isn't what I want and if I'm trying to have a baby, this isn't what I want for them, and I think it was. I think it was that that made me kind of like, right, I've gotta, I've gotta do something, so yeah not easy no, really really hard.
Speaker 2:There's so much. I think what, um, what's really important to understand when you give up something like alcohol is you've, you can't just stop drinking, not if you want it to work, or at least sorry, I shouldn't say that in such definite terms it's terrible, um, for me. I I didn't think it would be helpful to give up drinking because I knew that I would spend the rest of my life thinking I'm I'm missing out and if I gave up, I wanted to give up and be happy about it. And right now I am so much happier in my sobriety and genuinely. So I will never say I'll never drink again, because I think the moment that I think that is the moment that I'm just wide open to it, like that's an invitation, right, but instead what I know is I'm happier not drinking. But that means to get there I had to undo a lot of things Like why do I drink? Why is that important? And they seem like really simple questions. Oh, but they're not.
Speaker 2:So there was that kind of work that needed to be done, which was really fortunate because it coincided with a bit of my PhD, where I was studying epistemology and ontology. So what is truth and what's the nature of being so, yeah, wow, oh, that was not easy. Took my little brain a long time to get my head around it, but it helped me to think about the stories that I'd been told about alcohol. That that's what makes you fun, that's what's enjoyable. It helped me to question those stories. And is that true? Because I'm not sure that I am fun when I'm drunk and aggressive, or when I'm drunk and crying uncontrollably, or when I'm drunk and lost somewhere in a ditch being hauled out by the police. I don't think that that is true. So maybe undoing that a little bit is really helpful.
Speaker 1:And how has that sort of shaped your future? Because you ultimately completed your PhD I did indeed Doctor ultimately completed your PhD, I did indeed Doctor. You became a mum and you are passionate about an equal and fair society, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am very much so.
Speaker 1:And is that driven by all of that learning and that unpicking, pulling that thread?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I was able to give up drinking because of all of that kind of work and those motivations as well. I certainly didn't want to bring my son into into that kind of drinking environment and I'm really glad that I didn't. It feels like, um, like a gift that I give to me as much as a gift that I give to him. Um, but yeah, that kind of those kind of levels of thinking, I suppose have just really kind of helped an awful lot with it. So I would advise PhD, but only if you really want to do one otherwise, like they're painful. How many years in total? Oh, it took me nine, nine years.
Speaker 1:I'm literally hyperventilating inside. I can feel it right now. I'm a 6.0 level girl. It's just the terrifying thought. I hada chat with someone not so long ago up at one of the universities and like that we're doing I think it's called a living phd now or a work-based phd. So it's less about all the writing, more about the doing, and I'm like yeah, no, not in a minute, no, it's not for me too much, right? I like getting all the answers which is what you're doing right no, no, no no, um, we're unraveling PhD now.
Speaker 2:Well, it's really interesting because I didn't know what one was and I was really encouraged into it, and that's the thing I find really fascinating. I come from a council house down in Bracknell. People that come from my background don't tend to end up with PhDs as much as perhaps other people do. We didn't know what one was. My dad always says the funniest thing it took him a while to understand what this PhD was, and now he describes it as Chrissy isn't the sort of doctor that will save your life. She's the sort that will talk you to death. And he's not wrong, is he? But yeah, so it's a really difficult and long thing, and I found it really difficult to write academically. I just was really bad at it. I like storytelling in my writing. You can't be doing that in a PhD. You need to be precise. So it was. Yeah, it's one of the best and one of the very worst things, or one of the worst experiences and one of the best experiences I've ever had. I would do it again. Yeah, I would. And will you?
Speaker 1:Oh, like if I retired. Never say never, though.
Speaker 2:Oh, if I retired, which I don't think I'll ever do. But yeah, definitely do a PhD in something else. But it teaches sorry. Back to your point. It teaches you how to ask questions and the thing is oh God, I'm going to slip into epistemology. We can never be 100% sure that anything's true. So it gets you closer. The lovely thing about a PhD is, I think, if you do it right, it teaches you. You don't know anything, and it's okay, because neither does anyone else. So you know just.
Speaker 1:That's a tote bag, quote there.
Speaker 2:I've never heard one.
Speaker 1:So you talked about growing up on a council estate in Bracknell to finding your way into having a PhD mental health, alcohol, challenges along the way a mum, that's you know you talk about. When someone sees someone's title, you automatically assume that it's that one straight path, that one clear line, privilege, education, everything that goes with that. Do you look at it? Yeah, actually, actually, I kind of do identify as a role model no, no.
Speaker 2:I don't know you're gonna say that no, no, I, I don't and I, but I'm starting to think that how to put it like things like talking about the drinking, I think is really important, because I think it's really important for people to see that people that can be like you, um, or things in you that you recognize, we can have this problem and if that helps someone to make it take a step or an action, that's best for them. I think that's really important. So I think I'll take role model there. But it's, you know, it's like words, like leader, isn't it? And role model they just seem so big they're for these lofty people that have done amazing things inspirational influencer, leader they're all big, aren't they big or bold?
Speaker 2:and like I'm just doing the stuff that I find interesting how would you describe yourself in three words?
Speaker 1:oh, that's a tough one, isn't?
Speaker 2:it, you've got phd.
Speaker 1:This is easy to you.
Speaker 2:I think oh no, I can't do that.
Speaker 1:I can't do that. That's more than three words.
Speaker 2:I don't know what do you think your superpower is? Well, resilience, without a shadow of a doubt, resilience there's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you've just got to get back up again, that's it and and if you had that one sort of, one sort of magic wand that you could do something and change something today in this crazy world that we're in, I might need to give you more than one wand might know. I'd need a lot of onesands. Where would you start?
Speaker 2:I think probably tolerance.
Speaker 1:I think that's it.
Speaker 2:I think we are where we are by design. I think that it has served an awful lot of people to divide an awful lot of people, and I think that that's really heartbreaking, because there's always more that we have in common than we have, you know, the opposite of common, which I can't think of. And so I think, just getting people to see that, just have a look, and yeah, I think it would be tolerance.
Speaker 1:Wow, so it feels so simple.
Speaker 2:Oh no, it's far more complicated. There is. You need to look at the news, don't you?
Speaker 1:at any given moment. Tell us about the Centre of Behavioural Equality. What does that look like on a day-to-day basis?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're starting up a project which we're launching in, I think, september now with the Russell Group University, so that's called Fields. So that's all about teaching people how to create EDI strategies that are context-driven and research-backed. So that's really exciting. To create EDI strategies that are context-driven and research-backed, so that's really exciting. We do a lot of work for clients through consultancy, like the City of London Corporation. We write a commitment for them, for the construction industry, deliver a lot of training, which is always so much fun because then you get to hear how people are thinking and feeling. And also there's the research arm of it, which is where we're trying to, um, to get people to think really behaviorally about how we approach equality. So quite often, when people are thinking about equality, what we do is we, we think about how we want people to act and then we kind of give them training and hope that they will. But it obviously gets a bit more complicated. So we use the work from my phd, which is about understanding, about fairness, um. So basically I'll say it this way to you If you work for an organisation that you perceive to be unfair, we tend to act really individualistically, like I'm going to look out for me, no one else is going to.
Speaker 2:So when we're in that individualistic state, what we tend to do is we think of difference as a threat, because we don't know why anyone's getting an opportunity, so we assume that anyone who's different is going to get more than us. We don't follow rules and procedures of organizations because we think what's the point? And we tend to align to individuals with power, which means we tend to copy their behaviors. So if you imagine dropping an equality and diversity initiative into that environment, it doesn't really end well. What we see is increased resistance, increased hostility, increased discrimination. So that's a real worry, right.
Speaker 2:But there's good news If we perceive our organizations to be fair, we start to act really collectively because we think what I put in, I'm going to put out again, or get out again, sorry. And so in those kinds of environments we see differences, opportunity, we follow rules and policies of organizations and, more importantly, we align with the goals of the organization over individuals with power. And what that means is we're more likely to call those individuals out and less likely to copy their poor behaviors. So that means that equality work has got a chance of succeeding. So for me, that's the level that you've got to get to first before then you start to do those terms like equity, which people talk about, and also undoing inequality within organizations. So we try and kind of basically push for that as well and get people to really think about organizational sociology in their kind of equality approach.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that you talk about is that you could always talk really quite heavily about concrete cranes, cats or chess. Oh yeah, I do In any particular order.
Speaker 2:Well, cats have taken a bit of a backseat because my husband and son are allergic, so that's heartbreaking. I know Chess. At the moment I'm part of a two-woman improv show around mixing up improv and chess, which is delightfully fun with the wonderful Susan Q I'm sorry, susan Jackson, susie Q on my WhatsApp, so that keeps me busy because you've got to have a hobby.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:Concrete. I love giving an interesting concrete story.
Speaker 1:You can't just tease one now. You have to give one now.
Speaker 2:Excellent.
Speaker 1:They have to be asked for. So do you know that if you add sugar to concrete, it will stop it from setting? I did not, but I do now. Now I need another one. Yeah, um, for fact, the other one's too long, but I will.
Speaker 2:I'll give you a follow-up, which is? They once accidentally poured concrete into the victoria line substation when they were I don't know if it was Crosswell, but there was a big project. Concrete ended up getting poured in, was about to stop the entire network from working and someone was like no, put sugar in it. So they put sugar in, mixed it up and were able to scoop it out, as opposed to have to try and break it out. So, concrete people, I'm telling you it's the future.
Speaker 1:Look at this. Well see now. I'm now going to give you your three words.
Speaker 2:I think is how we would describe you you're a builder. I'm a builder at heart.
Speaker 1:I'm a builder yeah, you are resilient and you are awesome thank you, I will take those, oh Dr. Chrissie, thank you so much for just being so honest, open and sharing on in our conversation today. I look forward to keeping our conversation going and thank you so much for joining us on the pod.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.
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