Ep19: How to survive serious trauma and help others with Matt Foster

Louise:

Welcome to the NABS podcast. NABS is the support organisation for those working in advertising, marketing and media. I’m your host Louise Scodie. Each week, I’ll be chatting with someone from our industry to find out how they support themselves and those around them through challenging times as well as the day to day. And it’s all to help you support your own mental wellness. I can’t wait to start chatting.

This week, our guest is Matt Foster. Matt’s the director of DEI at . He’s also a thought leader, public speaker, LGBTQ+ campaigner and multicultural specialist. Matt’s career includes 18 years as a healthcare communications expert specializing in HIV advocacy, with a focus on working with vulnerable populations to combat HIV stigma in community -based settings.

As a British diversity award-winning and founding member of WPP’s LGBTQ+ network Unite, he has frontline experience of empowering employee networks that drive organisational change within the advertising industry. Matt’s varied activism work includes being a non-executive director of the advertising industry’s LGBTQ advocacy organisation, Outvertising. He’s currently shortlisted for a 2024 British LGBT award in the Trailblazer category.

As a proudly queer, multiracial British Filipino, Matt is patron of Pinksy Creatives UK, an organisation supporting British Filipinos in the media, arts and creative industries. Now, before I get into my chat with a very impressive Matt, I will tell you that today’s chat includes matters pertaining to sexual violence and domestic violence. I’m going to be led by Matt on the language that he chooses to use to explain both of his experiences. If you feel that these are going to be difficult for you to listen to, then please be aware.

Matt, welcome to the next podcast. You award winner, you.

 

Matt Foster:

Thanks, Louise. God, I mean, when you read that all out, I get a bit awkward about it. It sounds very impressive, but maybe that’s just the accumulation of 44 years of doing stuff. But yeah, I hope I’m making at least a small difference for some people. But I’m delighted to be here. Always followed your podcast and always impressed with the guests you’ve had. So I feel very privileged to count myself among them now.

 

Louise:

Oh, amazing. Thanks, Matt. I’m really pleased to hear that. And we wanted to get you on for ages. And we’ll talk a bit more about the journey of getting you on and your changing story as we made your appearance happen in a minute. That will make more sense when we explain it. But I just want to get back to the fact that you just do everything. I mean, you’re prolific. Such a prolific activist in so many spaces. But how do you find time to breathe or do you not?

 

Matt Foster:

It’s a good question, but maybe I wanted to start first with addressing the word activist. And I think the Drum magazine called me adland’s activist particularly, and it was a moniker that stuck. And I kind of have a love -hate relationship with the word, which I’ll explain. Maybe I’m a reluctant activist, if that makes sense.

I presented at the D&I Leaders LGBTQ + Workplace Conference recently about activism. And I talked about the fact that I suppose there’s different ways that you can create change and activists, the way I see them, and I don’t always feel like I sit squarely in that camp, and I’ll explain why, is that activists are, or they’re very good at provoking ideas and very good at indicating that there are issues and challenges, often through anger, and there’s nothing wrong with anger, therapy has taught me there’s nothing wrong with anger. And that has a very special type of energy.

But in the work that I do, I have to complete things, I have to work with stakeholders to form coalitions. And in order to do that, I suppose I feel that where the activists kind of start, I then have to continue to reach sort of conclusions. And it’s often a case of, I think, you know, anger sort of gets something out there. But then you have to transform that into empathy and love. And I will be soppy about it to kind of reach a solution. And that’s, I suppose, where I fit in. And that’s kind of the type of activism or the reluctant activism that I feel that I do. So yeah, that was just me starting to qualify with the activism piece.

But the time thing, I mean, literally, I do breathe, take breathing exercises. I meditated this morning. Also, you know, knowing that we would have this conversation today. And, you know, as the podcast ensues, people will probably understand why I wanted to take a moment to be able to collect myself.

But, you know, in my line of work, being able to take the time for self-care is massive. I think when you work in, in an area that is at the moment so fraught by controversy in the public sphere. I mean, I can’t turn on the radio or read a newspaper without coming across most stories that are somehow DEI-related. And the kind of external noise can be very overwhelming. And I have to remember what I’m trying to do for my organisation and sort of zero it down to I’m the DEI leader, . How do I make the experiences of our employees and potential employees better?

The stuff that I do and that sort of crusading that I do outside of the organisation. But I kind of have to put it within manageable parameters to make it work. And that finding the time for self -care, finding the time to be with family and with friends, is very important to me because it keeps me grounded. As does actual breathing. I mean, you say breathing, but literally I find the time to breathe.

 

Louise:

It’s transformative. We’ve done a lot of work in NABS throughout the years putting on workshops where people can learn about breathing and mindfulness. It’s this resource that we’ve all got and it’s free and if you use it properly you can really help yourself.

 

Matt Foster

Yeah, I mean, I started about eight years ago and I follow, especially, you know, she’s a Buddhist teacher, but she’s American, she’s based in the States. And her name is Tara Brach. All of her lectures, I donate monthly, but you don’t have to, all of her lectures are free, as are her meditation sessions online. And I found that a resource that’s also been just hugely helpful for me, not just in times of distress, but just, you know, in kind of ordinary management of my day, it has been transformational. And also want to sort of disabuse people from the idea that this is something new, people think, oh, mindfulness is so, so new. It’s an ancient Eastern wisdom. It’s not new, but we’ve found, I think, modern ways to, to look at it and package it and apply it to the stresses of modern day living.

 

Louise:

Yeah, absolutely. And we’ll pop a link in the show notes to Tara Brach as well, so people can find out more. Now, here’s what I meant when I said that our conversations kind of evolved, because I have wanted to get you on for ages because of your DEI work and because NABS and Ogilvy have done a particular project that we’re going to discuss later as well that is super interesting. So we started that conversation and then in the time that we were talking, you then very movingly, very bravely, very openly,

 

Matt Foster (he/him

Thank you.

 

Louise:

shared a couple of stories about your own background on your LinkedIn page. You’ve got a huge following. So a lot of us in the community were very moved and very humbled by what you shared and how you shared it.

Now I’ve absolutely followed your lead on how much you want to talk about this on the podcast. And in the same way that you were on your LinkedIn, you were clear with me that you want to talk about some of the stuff that you’ve been through in order to help other people who might have been through the same kind of stuff. So if you could just tell us a little bit about that in the way that you want to, and also just really crucially, how you’ve been able to get to a place where you’re now able to have these conversations more publicly to use your experience to help other people.

 

Matt Foster:

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Louise. And this is an interesting one because I do a lot of public speaking. I deliver a lot of keynotes and panel events and I speak at conferences. And I’m very fluent and fluid when it comes to talking about those areas of expertise that you listed in my crazy intro, which makes me sound like a different person.

 

And I’m not an expert when it comes to speaking about what I’m about to talk about. And this is actually the first time I’m talking about it in public. I mean, I know I posted about it about one time on LinkedIn, but this is really the first time. It’s just kind of, it struck me in thinking about having this podcast today and having this discussion with you, that I’m not practiced about speaking about it.

I haven’t, you know, not in the same way that I am about DEI issues. I haven’t amassed my own kind of vocabulary around it to talk about these feelings, although I have been in therapy and I’ll talk a bit about that, which maybe has helped, but not like on a public platform, it’s very different when it’s sort of one on one. And then maybe just to set some kind of context.

And this is, I suppose, where a bit of the advanced content warning comes in. That post, if people are wondering if they haven’t seen it, which I posted around the time of International Women’s Day, just to give some context about it. And not to go down a rabbit hole, but I do need to set up a bit of context so that people understand what provoked it. But that’s less important than the content itself.

I’d been invited to speak at a post -International Women’s Day panel on male allyship and how men can continue their advocacy for gender equality all year round, which is something that I’m really passionate about. And around the same time, unfortunately, I was experiencing quite a bit of cyberbullying on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has sometimes can be wonderful, but can sometimes can also be a bit of a Wild West and increasingly kind of increasingly so. It’s an interesting one. And, you know, I have my own theories. That’s a different podcast about why we’re seeing more sort of division in…

 

Louise:

What is going on?

 

Matt Foster:

..you know, on LinkedIn, particularly when it comes to matters around identity. But yeah, I was, you know, for the for the first time really experiencing quite a bit of prolonged harassment from a particular faction. And I won’t I won’t go into who they are or their motivations. But it was really in criticism of my broad support of the LGBTQ+ community. And I’m using all those letters there because, you know, particularly, I suppose the trans inclusive work that that Ogilvy does and that I do because we do see ourselves as one whole community despite the diversity within the LGBTQ+ community.

And they were online and they were questioning my allyship of women. One of them even called me a misogynist because I had blocked her and I blocked her because I needed to protect my own mental health. And as a queer person and as someone who is also not white, as someone who identifies as multiracial, I’m quite practiced in the fact that I know when or how to create some safe spaces for me within unsafe spaces and blocking someone is something that I do. So that was the kind of background to my post. And it’s a long story, but which though upsetting isn’t really the point.

The point is, it was a catalyst for me to come out as a man who has survived male sexual violence, both as a child and when I experienced sexual abuse as a child and later as an adult when I was raped.

I didn’t use the word rape in the post. I couldn’t even bring myself to use it then. I remember it took me a while to even use that word with my therapist to admit that that’s exactly what had happened, but that is what had happened. And I use the term survive very deliberately because I am walking proof that survival is possible. That we can not just still make something of our lives despite the most extreme of personal violations, but actually because of them. And I go back to what I said about being a reluctant activist, and it’s about leading from the heart, and it’s about leading from heart and not from hurt. And I think it takes a lot of work to get there, to get from the hurt and anger to empathy and love.

But it isn’t something that I did on my own. I worked with a tremendous therapist for nearly four years who was able to show me that I could not only withstand therapy and exploring what happened to me. I mean, we spent the first six months talking about whether or not I could bear talking about it. And then when I realised I had that capacity, that that capacity was boundless, that I could withstand it, not just withstand, but actually, you know, survive and thrive. And that capacity to explore and to get better and to heal sort of happened in tandem with my realisation that my ability to love myself and others was also boundless. And the other way in which I kind of, you know, I managed to pull through it, as I said, was through the love and support of friends and family.

 

But then there were also incredible charities like Survivors UK. And they work, you know, in this area very relentlessly to ensure that every boy, man or non -binary person has access to support to navigate what is a really tricky area. I mean, we could spend an entire series of podcasts talking about male sexual violence and some of the issues there. And what I’ve come to realise is through my advocacy of so many other identity dimensions, the one that was this, which in a way has really deeply impacted me.

And in a sense, I suppose now looking at it has given me so much motivation to help and support and uplift those who have been marginalised themselves. I mean, I can see now, you know, what is it that’s motivated me? How can you turn trauma in a healthy way into a positive outcome? I want to start and begin using my platform to advocate for this particular issue and to support men who find it very difficult to talk about the fact that they are survivors.

 

Louise:

Well, the first thing to say is that I am so sorry that you have experienced all of this and to experience as a child, to experience as an adult, both intensely traumatic and horrible and for you to have come through all of that, being able to work through it with your therapist and now being a place where you can talk about it is really inspiring and thank you so much for being so open.

 

Matt Foster:

I appreciate that, Louise. And it’s interesting because, you know, I’m talking to you now and I can’t plan whether or not I will cry. There are times when I just do and it’s close to the surface. I can feel it now a bit. It’s not completely not there. It’s there. And I’m not trying to control it. It’s just under the surface right now.

And, you know, I think there’s a lot of good that can come out of difficult circumstances. And again, I’m thinking of Tara Brach when I listened to one of her lectures and she talked about this metaphor, it’s a Buddhist metaphor of the lotus, which is a very Buddhist symbol. I’m not a Buddhist myself and I’m not religious in any way, but I consider myself to be a very spiritual person. And that’s also one of the ways I think I’ve managed to cope and thrive.

The lotus springs from the mud and that’s a kind of a Buddhist phrase, which I think is very helpful. When you are stuck in the mud, actually there is beauty that can come from it. And I think that’s very difficult for people to see or feel because, and you know, there might be people listening to this now thinking, what is he talking about in the sense of, I’m going through all this pain, I’m experiencing this, it’s all very well, you know, Matt’s saying, you know, the lotus can spring from the mud, but my firm belief is that these experiences can be transformational if we realise a few things.

Like if we realise we do still have agency, if we realise that at some point we are able to make choices about whether or not we want to be happy. We sometimes can’t make choices about what happened to us, particularly when we were children. I mean, you know, in my circumstances, I, you know, I grew up in an alcoholic and violent household. My mother, who’s no longer alive, married a violent alcoholic. And that was the circumstances in which my sister and I grew up. And then that chaotic household, there was, you know, there was a lot of abuse.

And we had no control over that, you know, I was five years old when, when he came into my life. And there’s a huge amount of guilt as well when you work through some of those issues. Was it something that I had somehow caused? Did I somehow deserve it? All these very difficult questions, which I was guided through with a fantastic professional to try and explore. And then there’s such a lack of agency at that period, at that point in time, for sure.

But there does come a point, I think, in our lives where there is much more space for us to actually move towards healing. And that’s, I think, really, really key. It’s the healing journey which I think is really critical because my life could have gone in many different ways. And I can distinctly remember certain kind of crossroads or junctures in which I could have kept on choosing love or kept on choosing empathy or kept on choosing to continue to be vulnerable and kept on choosing to believe and kept on choosing to hope and to heal and to do the things which I thought would help me heal. We do have that ability.

I just think sometimes for some folks it can feel so hard to feel that that is the case. But I suppose my message of hope is that it completely is, you know, it’s possible.

 

Louise:

You’ve been so brave. And what I’m hearing is that bravery is very much being supported by finding a safe space where you can get proper help because it’s not something you can work through on your own. So you’ve sought therapy and I’m guessing that’s therapy that’s gone on for quite some time. There’s not an instant fix in any circumstances, really.

 

Matt Foster:

Nearly four years.

 

Louise:

And that also there were charities like Survivors UK who we’ll signpost to that you were able to reach out to as well. I will also say at this point, the NABS Advice Line is here for anyone in the industry who’s been affected by anything that you’ve spoken about. And we’re here as a confidential listening ear, and we can also help to put you onto further therapy, support services, et cetera. So don’t be scared to reach out for help to help you.

Process what’s happened in the timeframe that works best for you.

 

Matt Foster:

Yeah, absolutely. And I’d also say, Louise:, and of course, you know, NABS have fantastic resources for our industry. And had I been in this industry before I kind of went through this transformation healing journey, I probably could have leaned on NABS. But at the time, you know, I was working in a related but not, you know, you know, not the advertising or media industry.

And another thing that’s worth mentioning is that, in terms of my childhood, or like I mentioned, growing up in a violent alcoholic home, in my early 20s, my first attempt at support and healing was to become a member of Al -Anon. And for those of you who don’t know, Al -Anon is, I suppose, the kind of sister program that’s related to AA.

So there’s Alcoholics Anonymous for people who feel they have a drinking problem and there’s Al -Anon for friends and family and partners of people who live with alcoholism. Because the kind of acceptance in that space is that alcoholism is a family disease and that alcoholism is ridden with so many isms, isms, isms, isms, perfectionism and everything. And I had become that person because of what I’d grown up with.

I was a complete people pleaser. I was a terrible perfectionist. I was conflict avoidant. I tried to fold myself up into the smallest possible size I could be in any given space, which for a six-foot-three-and-a-half bloke who’s built like a beach house, like that’s me, I’m a big guy, right? It took some effort. I also find it just almost ironic that I do so much public speaking and I’m in demand to talk when… you know, in my early twenties, for instance, starting out in my career, I could barely utter a word if I was asked to present. And it was it was beyond just the fact of having sort of jitters as a junior. It was because of what happened to me as a child and growing up and feeling I had no voice. I mean, literally and to go from that position of having no voice and feeling so small and feeling so insignificant and feeling like I had no agency to go to sort of the opposite direction, which I am in now, and I’m still a work in progress. I’m just so grateful for that. And there’s another thing that you mentioned, which I suppose I also wanted to raise, which was the fact that there’s what happened to me when I was a child, which was ongoing, this, unfortunately, for as long as I was under that roof.

 

That’s what happened to me as an adult when I was raped and the two were not unrelated, unfortunately. Because I think if you find yourself in a situation where you’re given this kind of really terrible template of what you think relationships are supposed to be like, you are so vulnerable to situations that are unhealthy and unsafe for you. And I wasn’t even able to read them.

 

So that’s the amazing thing about the healing journey that I’ve had and especially the therapy that I’ve had because it seems odd to some like regular people, sorry to use that phrase, but like, I mean, I couldn’t see red flags before. It was as if I was wearing a strange filtered glasses where sometimes actually I would run towards the flag.

And in a kind of parallel slightly, you know, in a subject that has a bit more levity. I took nearly four years off of dating when I was in therapy, most of which I also decided to be celibate. I can’t believe I’m saying this on a podcast, but this was deliberate. It was part of what I was trying to do and figuring myself out and everything. It was also the longest I decided to be single, which was also important to me too.

Again, it was part of my healing journey, understanding what healthy love looks like, what healthy relationships look like. And that’s been a very good experience for me because emerging from that in my early 40s as an out and proud gay man and going on to the dating scene, the way I respond to people now is very different.

The way I go on dates and I’m just like, check, please. The glasses are off, the filter isn’t there. And I’m able to make healthy decisions and read things, read the room and know what my needs are and know what I need to be safe and know that being safe is important to me. That’s just a world away from the blueprint I was given as a child and that I inherited and I carried into much of my younger and mid adulthood, which I’ve managed to kind of recalibrate.

 

Louise:

That’s all made perfect sense. You have articulated that so beautifully. So thank you. And one thing I’d like to reflect on, because we are all about mental wellness at work, is the ways in which these experiences have affected your ability to be yourself at work and to be your best at work and to enjoy work. You reference the fact that coming into the workplace, you were incredibly timid and found it difficult to talk because you’d been through all of this stuff.

 

What were the other effects of your experiences on how you were at work? And how would you contrast that with now where from what I can see, it’s a bold man who’s taking up space and advocating for himself and other people and leading a DEI function at a huge, huge industry name.

 

Matt Foster:

Yeah, I mean, it’s a very good question. And I touched on some of it before, but it was, you know, not having a voice. And when I did, I couldn’t be assertive. Not knowing what my needs were, also like in the workplace, what I needed from colleagues, what I needed from a boss, not being able to articulate that. So then not being able to place down what are healthy boundaries in terms of this is how I need a professional relationship to look like. You see, completely talk about relationship, it bleeds, right? This whole thing of whether it’s personal or professional, I was still using the same kind of blueprint. We’ll talk about microaggressions, I hope, soon. Well, no, because, you know, maybe I didn’t mean to cue it up this way, but the classic example, I was working for an agency in my early 20s, which will remain nameless, a very, very famous big agency, public relations agency, not an ad agency.

 

Louise:

We’re coming onto that very shortly.

 

Matt Foster:

And I had a photograph of my boyfriend and me at the time on the beach in Brazil in a frame, just wearing Bermuda shorts on the beach. It wasn’t in any way controversial. Because my colleagues had pictures of their partners on holiday on their desks. And they were, OK, my colleagues were, actually, they were all straight. And I was asked to remove my picture from my desk. This was going back, this is like 2004, so I’m trying to give it some contextual justification, but still. No, well, yeah, but the justification was that I was sitting on a desk in the office, that was very high traffic, and outside a meeting room that clients used a lot. So that was it, though, there was nothing beyond that, but it was as if to say, well, the implication is lots of people will see it.

 

Louise:

Still!

 

Matt Foster:

And also, especially clients will see it, so move it. So I removed it. And I suppose I use that as a story or as an example. I mean, not only to highlight what I consider to be an accepted microaggression, but also to highlight the fact that that’s how I responded. In fact, I was apologetic. Of course, there were probably several things happening inside of me underneath that I wasn’t allowing myself to register, like anger, like disappointment, like fear. And that was the person I was. I also was working in a career that I became very competent at, and I worked at a quite a high level, but I didn’t love.

Again, going back to how different am I now, I had an epiphany about when was it five, seven years ago, where I was like, actually, this DEI work that I’ve been doing on the side-ish moonlighting, I want to incorporate into my actual career because this is who I really am. And I suppose that maybe to end on to answering your question is, and it’s something that I talked a lot about in therapy, but also with my close friends and family, this is not the new me. This is the me I always was beneath the layers.

And I think that’s quite helpful, I suppose, to answer your question of, you know, what’s the difference between the mat then and the mat now professionally in the workplace? I’m more who I am, who I really am now than I ever was. And who I was back then was just submerged and covered by all these layers of guilt and shame and trauma and hurt and pain, which meant I wasn’t fully able to unfold and be who I really am.

 

Louise:

And the impact that you’re having on other people’s lives now is fabulous. So it is just so good for so many reasons, that being one of them, that you’ve gone through the therapeutic process. And I think we both say for anyone listening who’s been through anything similar to what you’ve experienced, reach out, get help, please.

 

Matt Foster:

Yeah, absolutely. And also, I had a fantastic therapist, but I did give him a hard time because it took me a while to trust him. But there was always chemistry. And I suppose that’s also just maybe my one tip in that the relationship with the therapist is so important to the process and the result.

So if you’re looking around and meeting a few chemistry is important and just get a sense and get a vibe. If you think that that’s someone that you want to work with, because you are working together, it’s a partnership. And it’s a really deep partnership that must depend on complete trust, both ways. It’s also a two -way relationship. That helped me as well.

I remember being in a session with my therapist where I said, I need to know whether you actually care about me, whether you… I don’t know even if you’re married, I don’t know if you’re gay or straight, I knew nothing about him other than the fact that he was a great therapist. But I said, I need to know that when you leave here tonight, do you think about me when you’re having your dinner and think I care about Matt? And he said, yes. And it was so interesting because that was a pivotal moment for me. I didn’t need anything beyond that. But I needed that to know, OK, this, I can take this further with him. Like he sees me as a real person and he’s showing me who he really is. Yeah.

 

Louise:

That’s amazing. And a good therapist will be able to hold that space for you in that way. And they will know that if you’ve been something horrendous, of course you’re going to take a while to trust them. And they will be able to guide you through. I’m so glad you found the right therapist. Speaking from personal experience as well, I’ve had therapists that I’ve not bonded with, my current one…

 

Matt Foster:

Yes, exactly that.

 

Matt Foster:

Yes.

 

Louise:

I sound like I go through them like sandwiches, but you know, but my current one  – biggup Sooz – is brilliant. And we do have chemistry, it makes such a difference. Huge, huge. Listen, thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing all of that with us. And we mentioned microaggressions, which seems like a good point to go into the project that we did with each other, because that’s how we know each other. NABS and Ogilvy, did a project creating a booklet that highlighted microaggressions at work. I would counter your story about the photo. I think that’s more of a macroaggression, but anyhoo.

So we created this book, it’s called Throwaway Comments, and it charts the stories of people who’ve experienced microaggressions, i .e. oh, can I touch your hair if the person comes from a different culture? That kind of thing. And there’s loads of different examples in the book, and the reaction to it so far has been brilliant. It’s really affecting people and getting them to think about culture change at work and protecting people from microaggressions. So talk us through the project and why it’s so important to highlight microaggressions and the effect they have and to basically get rid of them.

 

Matt Foster:

Sure. Yeah, 100%. And just to start off with saying we were so grateful for the partnership with NABS for it and felt that NABS was the perfect partner for us because we really were trying to focus on the mental health impact, the sort of real world impact and lifelong hurt, which is the kind of subtitle to the project throwaway comments, but lifelong hurt. So yeah, very grateful for that continuing partnership.

I will also caveat and fully admit that I wish I could lay claim to being a real part of this project. And I can’t. I came on board when I joined Ogilvy and my bit was the end bit, which was tricky, but all it was, you know, negotiating with lawyers for seven months, trying to get them to be more flexible. I’m not saying that’s not important, but in terms of the impetus for the project, that was very much driven by Ogilvy Health and very much led by an amazing colleague of mine called Adele Rego, who actually works with me one day a week, which is incredible. She’s a hugely talented and passionate person. So in terms of how the project came about, because it’s important, I suppose, to think about its genesis, 2020, as we know, was a pivotal year for a lot of anti -racism work, because it was the year not only of George Floyd’s terrible murder, but the subsequent, you know,

 

Louise:

She’s great.

 

Matt Foster:

sort of global prominence of Black Lives Matter, even though obviously Black Lives Matter is a movement that has existed for some time. And at Ogilvy Health, they already had an existing forum, which they called Umami Sessions. If anybody doesn’t know what umami means, I’m even still not sure. I know it’s a type of flavour. It’s kind of like a savoury flavour. That’s it.

 

Louise:

It’s the moreish flavour that you often get in Asian cookery that makes you want to eat more and more of it.

 

Matt Foster:

That’s exactly it. And I think the word is Japanese. But if I’m wrong, please let me know because you know, I like to get these cultural things right, but I’m always open to being very wrong. And these umami sessions were designed to, you know, with quite an open agenda to get people around the table and talk about things that were interesting or opportunities or of concern to them. And in 2020, obviously, a lot of the umami sessions were talking about Black Lives Matter, we’re talking about anti -racism.

 

And then thinking about what can we do as an agency to support us and also to support our industry in a way that’s quite focused on some of the challenges that we might face every day. So that was the kind of kernel of idea that led to a book on microaggressions, which is now called Throwaway Comments, Lifelong Hurt.

 

But the project does so much more and it’s still really in its infancy. I say that because we haven’t yet produced the digital version, which we will open source. And there’s so many plans on how we’re going to roll it out and make it available to people and how we can really incorporate it into kind of training modules. And we’re also currently in discussions with a client who wants us to run some sessions with them internally.

But the… I think that the beauty of the book is that at Ogilvy we always talk about having, you know, or kind of in a way our mantra, proposition, mission, whatever you want to call it, is borderless creativity. It’s like at the heart of everything we do. So how do we use our creativity, which is what we’re all about, and kind of central to Ogilvy as an identity, how do we use that to support anti-racism in a way that is very specific to something that happens a lot on a day-to-day basis to our people.

So microaggressions clearly was something that really came up, particularly in some of the WPP safe rooms that were set up at the time. And I know Adele, my colleague, was instrumental in setting those up too. And then, of course, the idea came about of, well, what else can we do?

So the book is beautifully illustrated by a range of artists who all come from underrepresented backgrounds. Their details are all in the book. The idea was to platform them and give them further exposure too, because we want to make sure that these underrepresented artists and designers have an opportunity to be more prolific, be seen, and use it as a platform to get them more work and more business and more exposure.

So in a sense, that was quite a beautiful arrangement because we were thinking of not only doing something that was very relevant to our agency and to our sector. And the All In survey, for instance, in 2023 pointed out the fact that microaggressions continue to be an issue. But then as well, we could use it to do more than that and to connect underrepresented artists to potential clients and to partner with an organisation that really understood what we were trying to do, which would help us so much with advice, counsel, amplification. And as we talked about, NABS was the partner for us.

 

Louise:

Fabulous. We’re really happy to partner with you on it. And from our part, that mental wellness aspect is huge. So we did a research report back a few years ago, which we will link to in the show notes, Diversity in Focus, which really did a deep dive into the experiences of people from underrepresented groups and the kind of discrimination that they were facing, including microaggressions.

And also more recently, All Ears, which is our community consultation, which we conducted at the end of 2023, showed that people from underrepresented groups are over-indexing when it comes to being reticent about discussing their mental wellness challenges at work. So if you have microaggressions going on at work and that’s compounding to mental wellness challenges, they’ve got even more stuff to talk about that they actually don’t feel that they can talk about. And it just leads to anxiety, stress, worry, all of the feelings that you absolutely don’t want people having at work.

 

Matt Foster:

Yeah, and I think your colleague, Uzma, who was, we launched it at a panel event at Ogilvy in October. And Uzma, who’s your business psychologist, who I’m a big fan of, I think she’s just come back from her honeymoon. Don’t know, need to catch up with her. Amazing. Having lots of umami food, probably. She was great in talking about that specifically. And like you say,

 

Louise:

That’s right.

 

Louise:

She’s actually just gone. She’s gone to Japan at the time of recording this podcast, having a lovely time. Exactly.

 

Matt Foster:

…there were already challenges working within our sector, or just in general, but then specific to our sector. But then when you add the layer of people who come from minoritised backgrounds experiencing microaggressions, it adds this other layer. So understanding the complexity of those different experiences and pressures, I think, is really helpful because you have to navigate them, understanding, I think, the specific differences that…

 

that people will have based on their background, based on how they express themselves, based on their presentation from a gender perspective, based on whether or not they’re LGBTQ +, and that’s quite challenging. I mean, I’ve been part of, so with my work with advertising, I’ve been working very closely with Mark Runicus on the LGBTQ plus data set of the All In survey, and really drilling down into that aspect.

And, some of the verbatim we sifted through in terms of microaggressions are terrible. Some of them seem harmless, like, oh, well, you’re a good gay, you like rugby. I mean, absolutely awful. Absolutely. And I’ve got many comments like that before, and you’re just like, whoa, where did that come from? But then I think maybe the more worrying things that came through the All In survey as well from a microaggressions perspective in terms of at least the LGBTQ+ cut was when…

Louise:

That’s awful. That’s so bad.

 

Matt Foster:

…we have people in our industry experiencing microaggressions from clients and that not being dealt with. And I think that’s a real concern. And I think we do have issues in our, I call it consultantitis. And I know our industry is more than agency. We’re also talking about brands and companies, but in terms of agency, consultantitis in agency, we find it so difficult to push back to clients when it comes to deadlines, blah, blah. We have a resource, blah, blah, blah.

Matt Foster:

But that also bleeds into allowing sometimes a culture, a permissive culture of bad behaviour. And that’s something I’m really concerned about. And I think we need to support our people with feeling empowered to push back and say, that was not acceptable behaviour to our clients, no matter who they are.

 

Louise:

Yeah, 100%. So there’s a few things I can highlight here. Firstly, NABS inclusive leader training where we help managers to develop the skills they need to create more inclusive cultures. And the more inclusive your culture, hopefully, the less likely you are to have microaggressions happening. So we will post a link to that in the show notes. We’ll also post a link to where you can get the book Throwaway Comments. And eventually when the digital version is ready, we’ll post a link to that as well.

 

Matt Foster:

Great.

 

Louise:

So there is loads of good stuff to come with that project as well. I know because I was talking about it this morning. So it’s really important, really, really good work. How does the advertising and marketing community lift you up?

 

Matt Foster:

Does it? No.

 

Louise:

Yeah, does it? If it doesn’t, then this question is stuffed.

 

Matt Foster:

It doesn’t no, just kidding. Just always like to put the cats amongst the pigeons there. No. I think when I was thinking about this earlier today, and I do feel very at home in our industry because it’s a creative industry. And as a creative bunch, we tend to be in general, very progressive. We tend to be at the forefront of new ideas and synthesizing them for ourselves, but also for brands.

I mean, we play a massive role in shaping culture. And one, I think in 2022, Ogilvy led a WPP initiative called the Consumer Equality Equation. I’ll link to that as well, hopefully, in the show notes.

We asked a question, even though this was focused on minority ethnic communities, we asked a question about shaping culture. And they were you know, over 80 % of our sample size, which was like over 5 ,000 people actually said that they expect brands to shape culture. So not only can we do it, but we should be doing it and it’s expected of us. You know, so when you ask me what lifts me up, it’s partly that, that our community can do that, that it’s such an exciting opportunity. And then when you think about what I do, then it’s kind of even better because, you know, my ability as one person to support an organisation to have that kind of impact. The massive channel that brands have, it really gives, it makes me feel like my work can have more meaning because it can have more impact on the world around me.

And I mentioned Outvertising and you did also in the intro, being part of Outvertising’s non-exec board as well is something that the community or my relationships with the community has kind of afforded me. And in advocating for more inclusive LGBTQ+ representation in both the workplace and in the work means I also have a further ability to change things for the better.

And there was, I think, I can’t remember who said this to me once, but it was something called the starfish theory. Again, someone might say I was wrong, but it was something to do with you know, if you sort of imagine yourself on a beach and there’s all these kind of dried up starfish that, you know, that are far from the shoreline and you can think, gosh, you know, what would be the point of trying to even throw one back into the water because there’s so many of them? And the idea is, well, you made the difference to just that, at least that one starfish. And this story has stuck in my mind for the last two decades.

And it might not sound very ambitious. Maybe it doesn’t at all, but I kind of think, you know, what lifts me up in this industry if one person can remember me and look back, God, now I am going to cry and say, you know, that guy made a difference to me, to me and my career and to my life. I think I’d feel like I’d done my job.

 

Louise:

Well, I think you’ll have made a difference to everyone listening to this. So that is much more than one person. You’ve been incredible. And I can’t believe we’ve got to the end of this, but we have. And I’ve just got one last question for you. I’d also like to say that Matt has a cat and the cat has been asleep for the whole podcast, which has been brilliant, has not disturbed us at all. So well done to your cat. What’s the best lesson you’ve learned about how to support yourself?

 

Matt Foster:

The whole time.

I think it’s building on what we talked about before, but I do want to reiterate it. It’s remembering that we have agency. And I know I use that word and what does that mean? Some people might be like, what does, you know, agency, that we have the power to move through things that we’re not just stuck. And like I said, it can be so easy to forget that when you are lacking hope and I’ve been there. I’ve been that person with no hope. I’ve been in the depths of despair. You know, I have, you know, questioned, you know, whether or not I should be here. I have been through those periods. But there’s always been something in me that’s propelled me forward.

And so I suppose, you know, that the one thing, the one lesson that I’ve learned on how to support myself is that, you know, I have the ability to withstand anything that comes my way. And that, you know, my ability to respond with love is boundless.

 

Louise:

That is incredible and an amazing note to end on. So thank you so much for being so open and so candid and for having the bravery and courage to talk about everything you’ve discussed today. We will put links for everything in the show notes. If you want to talk about anything that’s affected you today, please give the NABS Advice Line a call and we will hold your hand and help you out.

Matt, you’re amazing. Thank you so much. And just keep doing what you’re doing, because you’re doing fabulously.

 

Matt Foster:

Thank you. It was a massive pleasure to be invited. I really appreciate it, Louise and NABS. Thank you.

 

Louise:

It’s our pleasure. Thank you.