Recorded on 07/04/2025

Olivia Collins is the Marketing and Communications Manager at Ahead Partnership, a purpose-led business which drives inclusive growth and social impact through bespoke skills and careers engagement programmes that support young people.

Olivia is a Philosophy graduate from the University of Leeds, specialising in ethics and aesthetics. Olivia started her marketing career in the recruitment industry before gaining experience agency-side and moving to Ahead Partnership.

In her current role, she develops and implements marketing and communications strategies for social impact programmes across the UK.

Olivia's favourite programmes to work on include initiatives that help to break down barriers and challenge stereotypes for young women before they enter the world of work. These include Ahead Partnership’s flagship Girl Tech programme which connects young women aged 12-14 with role models in digital and technical roles aiming to address gender diversity and bias in the digital and tech sectors.

More information about Girl Tech can be found here: https://www.aheadpartnership.org.uk/girl-tech

You can find Olivia on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-c-m-collins/

Recorded on 12/06/2025

Michael Guy is a digital strategist with a background spanning leadership business analysis and accessibility. He spends his time making sense of messy systems. Over the years, he’s worked with charities, membership organisations, and SMEs—often at that difficult, slightly tangled stage where everyone knows something needs to change, but no one’s quite sure where to start.

His role is often about helping teams focus, prioritise, and move forward with confidence rather than deploying technology for the sake of it. A firm advocate for value and impact Michael translated his approach into his business Kingsbury Consulting. Michael says, “I get a real buzz from bringing clarity to complex challenges”.

Right now, he’s building a small, focused team that helps organisations plan and deliver digital change. He spent the last few years defining and refining a proprietary strategic framework. He’s running workshops and getting under the skin of how things work (and don’t), and shaping practical roadmaps that will actually get used.

Kingsbury Consulting’s mission is to help charities, public sector teams and small businesses make smart decisions, bring the right people along for the ride, and avoid wasting time or budget on the wrong things. He and his company are committed to making high quality Big Thinking accessible to everyone and he’s built a business on the principle of Leadership of Authority through Creative Collaboration.

You can find Michael at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelguy

https://www.linkedin.com/company/kingsburyconsulting/

Recorded on 14/04/2025

Britta Ofori-Kuragu is a Purposeful Parenting Practitioner, Young Entrepreneurship Specialist and a Digital Safety Monitoring Analyst. She is also the Founder of Better Being by Britta Ltd and Purposed Potential CIC — the latter being a non-profit community interest company set up to equip and empower young people with entrepreneurial, financial literacy and future-ready skills

Britta is a passionate advocate for children, families, and purposeful living. After a 14-year career in Adult Social Care, where she was honoured as Colleague of the Year 2013, she made a bold shift in 2022 toward work more deeply aligned with her values: empowering the next generation.

Having lived in Ghana, Denmark, Australia and now the UK, Britta brings a rich, multicultural perspective to her work. She is a strong proponent of ‘Imperfect & Purposeful Parenting’ and young entrepreneurship, drawing from her personal experiences of childhood adversity and a deep belief in the potential of young people.

Alongside her children, she has co-created and helped turn their interests into real-world physical and digital products. Most recently, she’s helped Verity to write and publish her very first book, which is a milestone that reflects Britta’s dedication to nurturing creativity and confidence in young minds.

Through her social enterprise, Purposed Potential CIC, she hopes to extend this work to equipping and empowering even more children to develop their potential and pursue their passions, while supporting parents to intentionally nurture their children in a way that makes them feel seen, safe and secure.

Britta currently supports parents through her membership: The Purposeful Parenting Club, which equips parents to build an empowering relationship with their children.

Britta also works part time as a Digital Safety Monitoring Analyst, which involves keeping children and young people safe online.

At the heart of Britta’s mission is the unwavering belief that every child has a future worth nurturing. With each initiative, she helps parents become allies and children to become changemakers in their own right. She believes that when parents are purposeful and nurturing, they plant seeds of hope and possibility in their children’s hearts and empower them to thrive.

THE PURPOSEFUL PARENTING CLUB:

https://www.betterbeingbybritta.com/ThePPC

VERITY’S BOOK - Verity the Visionary: A Little Girl’s Story of Her Entrepreneurial Journey

https://amzn.eu/d/0JdtHtU

Recorded on 22/04/2025

Richard Michie has been in marketing since before the internet, cutting his teeth in old school Direct Marketing. Then the internet came and made his job 1,000,000 times faster and a lot more fun!

Throughout his career he has worked client side in translation (twice), holidays, nursery furniture, big book mail order (ask your mum), and renewable energy and worked for digital agencies in Yorkshire too.

Richard launched The Marketing Optimist in 2016 vowing to do marketing in a different more agile way to the traditional marketing agency set up.

He’s great at taking complex marketing problems and cutting right through to the core of the issue. Not one to hang around, he likes to begin creating and testing strategic marketing plans quickly so that he can begin to generate return on investment quickly.

If you'd like to work with the Marketing Optimist you can find them at:

https://www.marketingoptimist.co.uk/

Business LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-marketing-optimist/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardmichiemarketingoptimist/

Recorded on 19/02/2025

Candice Waldie is the Owner of Recovering my Balance. She’s an experienced Mental Health and Wellbeing Professional with over 6 years of extensive experience in mental health training.

Candice has lived experience of c-ptsd, anxiety and depressive disorder and was recently diagnosed with Autism. She is adept at delivering high-quality training courses and fostering a positive learning environment.

She’s also currently studying to be a Therapeutic Coach and she’s volunteering as a Region of Learning Ambassador for West Yorkshire Combined Authority.

Website: https://recoveringmybalance.co.uk

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recoveringmybalance1/

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@recoveringmybalance-tm7zd

Recorded on 19/03/2025

Jack Hurley is an artist who started later in life and is mainly known for the Rubbish Seaside series of parody travel posters. Originally from the South, he’s lived in Leeds for well over two decades and was a mental health worker in the city for much of that time.

https://loudribs.com/

https://www.instagram.com/loudribs/

https://www.facebook.com/

Recorded on 18/02/2025

This is the third consecutive episode where the guest has allowed me to use their video for YouTube. If you'd like to be on the show and you're up for being on YouTube Get in touch. There's only 18 free places left for the podcast - yeah, I do need to change the intro monologue again but, I don't have time.

Emma Longbottom is a Wellbeing Coach, Energy Healer and Yoga Teacher based in Leeds, UK. She is the founder of Wellbeing with Emma

Emma is passionate about empowering people to reclaim their energy and find their joy. She works with people who want to find a path to wellbeing but are overwhelmed, feel like they’re missing out on a better life and are struggling to find moments of joy and gratitude in their life. Emma does this by offering a range of holistic wellbeing practices both online and face-to-face. She combines coaching with energy work, movement and meditation.

Prior to founding Wellbeing with Emma, Emma worked for over 20 years in a corporate environment, developing and implementing many very successful programmes and initiatives. However, for many of these years she was sucked into a toxic productivity mind-set and ended up with chronic pain, recurring laryngitis (at its height she had 11 weeks in one year where she couldn’t speak), she was stressed, felt unhealthy, sluggish and was always tired.

So she started to question if there was a healthier way to live?

This was when yoga and mindfulness entered her life and her healing journey began. Holistic practices such as yoga, meditation and energy healing completely changed Emma's life, supporting her to reduce stress levels, reduce pain and live more in tune with herself.

It had such an impact on her that she decided to re-train and start her own business so that she could support other people to make positive changes.

Emma's business contacts:

Website - www.wellbeingwithemma.com

instagram - www.instagram.com/wellbeing.with.emma

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-longbottom-251487114?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app

And check out her YouTube - www.youtube.com/@Wellbeing-with-Emma

Don't forget to donate to this show too. Thanks!

Recorded on 24/04/2025

Micky P Kerr is a dedicated teacher and aspiring footballer who transitioned into a professional comedian and author.

Micky discusses his early dreams of becoming a football player, the reality check during teenage years, a newfound passion for music, and the eventual turn towards teaching and comedy.

His journey continues through teaching experiences, comedy gigs, and the challenges faced along the way, including our usual suspects COVID-19 and Brexit, social media strategies, business risks, and the struggle between teaching and pursuing artistic passions.

As if he doesn't have enough to do he's also got a book to promote, it's called 'Football, the People's Shame.'

https://www.waterstones.com/book/football-the-peoples-shame/micky-kerr/9781915672551

https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Football-the-Peoples-Shame-Audiobook/B0DR9DJ1JQ?source_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

https://reallyfunnycomedy.co.uk/

https://mickypkerr.co.uk/bio

https://www.facebook.com/mickypkerr