Show Notes:

There are some brilliant leaders doing amazing work to promote equity & inclusion in the UK. Would you agree? There are not enough superlatives to describe the hard work and commitment of these advocates.

Christina Brooks, Founder and CEO Ruebik is one such leader. Along with her day job she is a trustee for an alternative provision school in Tottenham, a Trustee for pioneering Social Communications Centre for Autism. She also mentors incarcerated young people and advises many black owned social startups.

So, I was thrilled to have @Christina Brooks as a guest on the 126th episode of The 🐘in the Room podcast to talk about all things equity and inclusion. In this freewheeling conversation we spoke about her journey from global talent lead at Rolls Royce to starting Ruebik an inclusion first talent attraction agency and DEI consultancy. We also spoke about 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

👉🏾 Learnings from the corporate world that she brought to her entrepreneurial journey

👉🏾 Being purpose led, and B-Corp certified

👉🏾 Lived experiences, and her intersectional identities that led to her being othered

👉🏾 Her thoughts on Industry trends indicating a slowdown and step back in investment and commitment of DEIB/EDIB initiatives

👉🏾 How culture and measurement contribute to creating an impactful recruitment and hiring process

👉🏾 Conscious/Inclusive leadership

👉🏾 Future of work – the impact of AI

We also spoke about her podcast Elevated Conversations with Tacita Small and Monique Carayol, Zoom Fenty, even Beyonce, her beliefs, motivations and having a long view of change………..

To learn more head to the podcast (link in comments) 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

Episode Transcript:

Sudha: Good morning, Christina. It's such a pleasure to have you as a guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast today.

Christina: It's an absolute honour to be here Sudha. Thank you for the invitation.

Sudha: Brilliant. let's start with a quick introduction to who you are and what you do. Also, tell us why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?

Christina: Yeah, a really good question. Why did I decide to become an entrepreneur because it was not by design, I actually fell into it. So, if I give you a little bit about my background, I've got almost 20 years executive search experience. So that's really my bread and butter. So really thinking about how organisations should attract and retain exec leaders.

And prior to setting up Ruebik, I worked for Rolls Royce as a global talent acquisition lead. So, my team were in Derby, and I was based down here in London, and it was a really wonderful experience. And my mandate at the time was to increase gender representation, and we started to look at other underrepresented strands as well. But I think the real light bulb moment for me, Sudha, was when I was often looking for suppliers and other executive recruitment firms to help us really think about diversity.

They often sounded and looked like the business that we were trying to change and innovate in. And so really for me, I built the kind of business that I wanted to work with. So Ruebik, as it stands, it's an extension of a talent acquisition function. And so, we really partner closely with organisations who are trying to move the