Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 93: Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton (or Sab) took my breath away when I met her. She has achieved, and continues to achieve, so much despite her early life being incredibly tough.Sab found herself homeless aged 16 after her beloved Dad died and her mum's mental health crumbled. She talked to me about how she has suffered from hyper-vigilance ever since, as the strategies she developed for keeping safe while sleeping rough, are still there. She eventually found a place to live and was determined to become a fire fighter, applying to over 30 places before being accepted aged 18. She is now Chief Fire Officer of the West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service. She met her husband Mike in her early days in the fire service. Following an incident in which she believed Mike had been seriously injured, Sab wrote a research paper on the mechanisms of decision-making under pressure. She has a First Class degree in Psychology, a Masters in International Fire Service Development and a PhD in Behavioural Neuroscince. Sab has been faced with a lot of gender bias while in the Fire Service (for example in social settings people will say, 'Oh you're so brave' to a male firefighter; but 'Aren't you afraid?' to female firefighters. She has frequently experienced 'the backlash effect' when people are uncomfortable with you because you are doing a job associated with the opposite gender. She recently published her book 'The Gender Bias' which looks at the everyday prejudices which women experience and also has some practical solutions to offer. In our chat she clearly illustrated this, describing two very striking studies of little children. One study (as it happens, involving a firefighter's pole!) showed how parents unconsciously treat sons and daughters differently when it comes to perceived risk; the other study showed how children also have gender biases from a very young age, but how this can be reversed easily when they're little.Sab and her husband Mike have a teenage daughter Gabby. Sab remembers how she started her PhD the day Gabby was born (yes, I don't blame you if you have to read that sentence twice!) and was promoted the day she went on maternity leave. She and Mike have been a tight parenting team, but interestingly Sab told me Mike experienced his own backlash when he took their daughter to baby classes, with mums of the other babies tending to gatekeep their maternal role and keep Mike at a slight distance.Now that Gabby is a teenager, Sab is having flashbacks to her own teenage years and remembering more vividly that she was sleeping rough in a shop doorway aged 15, with people walking past her as if she wasn't really there. She told me how important it is to smile, have eye contact and say hello to homeless people, even if you don't have any change. If anyone knows, Sab does. Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing. It can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Ciao and I'm saying ciao because I'm speaking to you from Rome. I know, lucky me. But however you when you're listening to me say this to you I'll already be home even if your leg's super keen and you listen to this as soon as it's published

I'll still be home because I'm flying home tonight but I've been here for the weekend shooting in Rome video music video and oh just having an absolute ball what a ridiculously beautiful place Rome is i feel very spoiled this is where i am we've been um wandering around finding beautiful places which obviously if you've been to rome you'll know are flipping everywhere uh i'm here with sophie miller who's directing the video who i've worked with since take me home and as i'm talking to you I always have a very big hairdo going on uh I think most of the hair is mine although it could be 50% someone else's I've had things clipped in not quite sure what's going on up there but it looks pretty fabulous that's my friend Lisa Lisa Lauder who's

done that who's done every video with me since the beginning are two which isn't bad is it it's a pretty good innings of like over 20 years of working together now. And wow, Rome is just the most spectacular place. Richard's here with me. And we first came to Rome when we just got married. It was our honeymoon. We had three days here because we only had Sonny at home. He was only 14 months. We didn't want to be away too long. So yeah, we had three nights together in Romeome and i just was so struck by if you haven't been here it's really difficult to articulate how extraordinary it is because you'll sort of approach i don't know around about and there'll be trams going past and lots of cars and then the backdrop will be this

huge mighty ancient building and obviously you know everybody knows Rome for the ruins but what's extraordinary is how much of it actually still looks amazing and big and bold and beautiful and it's just a spectacular backdrop to the city and it's everywhere everywhere you turn you bump into the past and so much of it has remained. It's just incredible. So, yes, we've been shooting all day yesterday and finishing up today. So I'm going to start the day going to a cemetery, actually, which I'm looking forward to. I love a good graveyard.

And, yes, what's happening with the podcast this week, I hear you say. Wow. Oh, my goodness. Most amazing guest. So, my producer, Claire, sent me a text one day, very excited, saying, I've just heard the most amazing woman speaking on Radio 4. And she was referring to today's guest, Sabrina Cohen-Hatton.

So, sometimes you get these people you meet where the more you know about them, the more extraordinary and amazing they become. If all you knew what Sabrina was up to now, with her being Chief Fire Officer of West Sussex Fire Department and already being a female Chief Officer is an extraordinary thing because you're already in the minority. But her journey to get there is

extraordinary and she's also changed through her research and through it um the findings of her research she's actually changed how um emergency services respond to emergencies because she found that 80 of accidents were happening through human error and that there were ways to tweak responses so that people would be safer. So she's actually, you know, created award-winning changes within the emergency services. That's extraordinary too. But her beginning into the fire service was also extraordinary because she applied to over 30 fire departments before she actually got given a job at 18 and this was following a period of homelessness. So when Sab was only nine her dad very sadly died and her mother spiralled into lots of mental health issues

which culminated in it being intolerable for Sab to continue living at home. So she left home before she was 16 and then slept on the streets for a couple of years. And it's just kind of mind-blowing, isn't it? I mean, the idea of being homeless is something that we, you know, you walk past homeless people all the time, but that actual divide between having a roof over your head and not is sometimes it's not as far away as you might think and the fact that she's managed to sort of

take this tough childhood and become a very positive adult and someone who's actually creating a legacy that changes things for the better i think is pretty amazing it's not everybody's response to being dealt with half hand is it to actually kind of want to make things better so well she's going to say it better than i ever could so i'm going to leave you with the chat with sabrina and i but um it was an absolute pleasure to meet her and thank you to you for for the podcast so that i have the excuse of sitting and chatting to these amazing women thank you so much uh right i'm going to continue packing up my clothes for the day while we have a listen i've got um a little bag full of several costume changes i did it yesterday as well just getting changed like in the back of a car and in losing restaurants and stuff

just so that we can make the video as sumptuous and ridiculous as possible. These are things I like and the song is called Lost in the Sunshine. I'm doing the video for and the sun is shining so all is right in the world. I'll see you on the other side. Oh firstly, welcome Sabrina, it's so nice to meet you. You as well, thank you for having me. How are you doing today? Really good, really good. The sun is shining. You know what, it's put me in such a good mood.

I feel like I needed a bit of spring. It's taken quite a while to get here. Well I did have to double check because I didn't know what that strange orb was in the sky initially. Tell me about it. The blue skies. And also, I have to say, some people I invite on the podcast, and then the more research I do with them, the more I feel like there's a temptation in me just to sort of sit back in awe, which would make you feel really weird and also be a really horrible listener as a podcast. But your story and the things you've done and are doing is pretty flipping incredible.

Oh, thank you. So thank you so much for coming over because it's just been a complete delight to sort of get to know you more through your books and through listening to things you've done and then kind of you've really got the wind behind you, I think, in terms of like when people read about it and how you're actually changing the world for good.

Oh, thank you. Love people like you being in the planet at the same time as me. So thank you. So what's up, you know, what are you up to at the moment? Where do we find you? Oh my goodness me.

It's a really busy time at the moment, but if people want to find me, I'm on Instagram on at doctor underscore sab underscore Coen Hatton. And then I'm on Twitter as well. I just joined TikTok, which is scary. Oh, how are you finding that? I know.

The trouble is I'm not a teenage child so trying to navigate the side is not the easiest thing in the world but I'm getting there you do have a teenage child maybe they can help manage your TikTok she has been recruited yeah that's what I did with mine actually I had a bit of time where I was basically I'll try and make this as brief as possible but I have a tiktok i wasn't really using it my then i think he was 12 whatever they hopefully was allowed at legal age to do tiktok probably not he basically started to build my followers and then switched the entire account to his name um and then i needed it back for something i was doing so i said to him you need to help me like i don't really know what to do on TikTok it's not really very me so we did this thing together where he would ask me any question

he felt like asking me at any time and just film it and it would really make me laugh because he'd ask me really strange stuff like apropos of nothing and some of them I don't know if you've seen this on TikTok but this is like old lady me I would film it like you know we'd see you first and you speak but he would do this thing where he'd start with the floor and sweep up. And I was like, why are you doing that? He said, because then people engage because they want to see what happens next. And I was like, that doesn't sound right. And it's true.

All the ones he did where it started with like something random and then swept around to find me, more people would watch than the ones where he just started with me going, hi, here I am. Isn't that strange? Isn't that crazy? I do worry slightly about what it's doing to people's ability to focus with TikToks because they are everything has got to be like the next two seconds or the next three seconds or they completely lose engagement yeah and my teenager my daughter Gabby I can literally see her zoning out when I try and say anything that's longer than a three word sentence oh yeah it's almost like you've got to shout an order and then hope that she's heard it

because if it's more than a if it's more than three words, she's like, no, scroll on, mum. That's so true. Yeah, can I swipe you? You've done me now. Yeah, exactly. Well, actually, I think that happens too with things like the pace of everything, edits and everything.

If you watch an old film, it feels really slow, a lot of them, because they just, the pace, you don't think of life as having a rhythm, but it really does. Yeah. So I've been reading your book, The Gender Bias. So when did this come out? your book the gender bias so this is when did this come out not very long ago at all right no no not very long ago at all um it came out in march march 2nd okay so it's pretty recent but it's pretty phenomenal and i imagine this is years of research yeah there's a lot that went into writing that book

um i've unpicked hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of research studies to try to look at how people are experiencing gender and the way that it's impacting on the way that we see the world and the way that people respond to us as well. And I have had what feels like a lifetime of people responding in a way. I mean, I'm in the fire service. My day job is a chief fire officer. So it's a job that not many women do let alone having kind of that level of leadership they're actually more chiefs called chris than women chiefs so not that i've got anything against chris's by the way there's some really just more likely to meet chief officer chris than exactly than a woman chief um and so people would respond in a way and i'd think oh

it's just me i'm just being sensitive you know or i must have completely misread that and it happens time after time. And it's only when I started to speak to other women and they were kind of describing the same experience that I thought, actually, this isn't just one single droplet that's happening here. This is actually a load of droplets that are making up a river. This is real. And then when I started to look at the research,

it was like a tsunami of data that sits behind the experience that we're all having that people all think it's just them or they're just being sensitive and that's why for me that book was really important to write but of course the other piece when people think about bias they think about it being something that's bad that's wrong and that's shameful um and they also think that it's something that you know particularly when we're talking about gender in this concept they think it's just guys that have got a gender bias and it's not actually the reality is biases are something that we all have because of the way that we absorb information in the world our brain categorizes similar

experiences and similar things together and we're constantly having experiences that relate to gender and experiences of women and experiences of men and experiences of different jobs and what people do and where you sit in the world. And so that all gets kind of put in our little categories. And then those categories are what our brain uses as a frame of reference, as a go-to to navigate the world. So they become our frame of reference. They become the rules of engagement. They become the shortcuts that our brain uses all the world. So they become our frame of reference. They become the rules of engagement. They become the shortcuts that our brain uses all the time. And they're the basis of our stereotypes. And we all have them.

And if we want to challenge them and do something about them, then I really feel strongly that we can't do anything about anyone else's. You can't. You can say it, you can inform, you can educate, you can talk about things. But the only one that you can really affect is your own. Yeah. and i think it's interesting you say that bias is seen as a negative but actually it's just a a lot of it's a functioning tool we haven't got time in the day-to-day world to stop and constantly address every everything that happens to us along the way going i'm just checking i filled in these gaps here and i just want to check that that's actually accurate yeah

that wouldn't work but when it comes to, specifically, you've said the barriers that hold women back. So if we're talking about it in that regard and how bias has actually given us things to carry that we can actually, with help, can all put it down. Men, women, everybody all together. Absolutely. Then that's actually something that's really worth unpicking. And what I find really interesting is some of the stuff you know it's hard to read but you actually can think well I can sort of understand that so when it came to your role in the fire service and how you and your husband when both you know both

work in the same industry but the reaction people might get is to your husband oh that's really brave how wonderful and to you god that's scary what a risk job how you know aren't you worried if you have a child that stuff is disappointing but i kind of understand that but i think the thing that i find really always blows my mind a bit is how we all buy into it even if we're actively trying to unpick it yeah there's a bit where you talk about women taking on the sort of um for want of a better term mother loadload, of the domestic roles in the house and setting the emotional tone of families and all these kind of things, things we do and continue to do.

But there's a bit we talk about when, if we say, if you know your partner, your husband, says, I'm going to do some of those roles, you might helicopter it and say, you're not actually doing it quite the way I want, or actually can I redo it? helicopter it and say you're not actually doing it quite the way I want or actually can I redo it partly because it's so intrinsic to the sort of idea of of being a adult woman that you'd be good at these things that the idea of having it taken away from you might question or who am I if the

things I think I'm supposed to be good at I'm not even doing yeah it's so true and I do you know I found myself doing it more than I was comfortable with, with admitting, to be honest with you. And especially when Gabby was young, especially when she was really, really young. And it would be things like, you know, I would complain about the mental load of needing to organise everything and do everything. And Mike would say things like, well, tell me what I can do and I'll do it. And I'd be like, I didn't have to tell you what to do. Why can't you just know? Yeah. You know, and we get really frustrated about these things so it'd be things like you know getting Gabby ready for school or packing a lunchbox or sorting something out

and I'd be like yeah that's great do that and then I'd be helicoptering over his shoulder going oh no don't do it that way oh no that's not how you do your to do her hair you've got to do it this way or don't put that in a lunchbox put this in in a lunchbox. And you'd, bless him, I'd see him dying a little bit inside every time I'd do it. And I didn't realise it at the time, but I was actually kind of gatekeeping those roles. And when I looked into it, I was really interested because there's a lot of research around this. And it shows that when women do that, one, I mean, you're not helping, frankly, because you're not giving your partner the opportunity to be able to really contribute

and feel like they're making a contribution because you're almost going kind of parent-child with your partner rather than having an equal play in it. But also, when you do that, women are judged on their ability to be a good mother, to be good at your job to be able to do everything to be able to have everything yet you know you kind of take your child to school and because I'd always be working you get the comments at the gate like oh who's mum are you

again oh the biggest kicker I think is oh you never get that time back you know I don't know how you could do it I mean you know what what kind of response to the extraordinarily rude thing to say by the way it's so rude it's so rude but you feel like you're being judged on more than just what you do you're being judged on everything and so making sure those other details are right as well actually it's a very human thing to do because it's kind of protecting your self-esteem when those things are so tightly tied to your identity you're also protecting your sense of identity as well so while it's unhelpful it's a lot more human um but interestingly when Gabby was small I went back to work after um just after six months and I was an officer by then so I'd be working kind of nine to five and I'd do my on calls on top and Mike was still on a station so he'd do two days two nights and then

he'd have four days off and so I still wanted Gabby to do all the parent child classes and you know like the music toddler class and the you know the baby massage and all of that kind of stuff I didn't want her to miss out and so Mike said well don't worry I'll do it you don't have to worry about taking time off work I'll take her brilliant or so I thought he went and when he'd come back he'd be really quiet and really withdrawn and I'd be like you all right what's the matter and he was like I just I'm really trying he said but I just no one seems to want me there I was like, what do you mean no one wants me there? And he kind of described this scenario where he'd go in, he'd try to make conversation and people would be polite,

but it'd be like one or two word answers, a couple of sentences here and there, but no one would ever engage him. And he'd try to break into the conversation. And then he was worried. He's like, oh my goodness, what if they think that I'm trying to hit on them? So he would kind of pull back and I think there was a certain amount of resentment to him being a man in that space which you know I can kind of understand if they want to talk about breastfeeding or the you know the latest incident that they had and those kind of things I can understand but these

are parent-child classes it's you know it's a it's a music class for babies. And so he'd find it really difficult to break into that space. And there was some really interesting research done in Belgium that found the same thing with stay-at-home dads. And it would be even comments from health professionals like, oh, mum knows best, or where's mum today? Or mum will know how to do this. That actually was something that the men in the study found to be really kind of a masculinating and it would question their validity as a parent because they were a father as opposed to a mother. And so actually as a society, I think we've got much further to go to make it as comfortable for men to be doing domestic work

and pick up the child rearing in the same capacity that women currently do so that we can push on further in the workplace. Yes, I'm nodding emphatically. I think, as you said, there's so much to do, so far to go with that kind of thing. Even subtle things as well. Like, I think in my line of work, I've been asked a lot of times about who's looking after my kids when I'm away. But I don't think Richard's been asked once who's got the kids when he's working. It's assumed, I guess, it's me. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. It is so true. It is so true.

And, you know, that point about risk, that was a conversation that me and Mike had at a party. And, you know, Mike has never been asked oh what about your kids isn't that a risky job not once but it's something that I get all the time and I can remember I put it in the book actually when I was being um interviewed for it was a lovely prime time slot and it was a lovely interview and everything was really feel good which in my line of work if you're doing something feel good it's quite rare because normally when my face is on telly, there's been a disaster or something, so it's nice to do something positive. But the interviewer was dutifully going through the list of questions

and then said, so, Sabrina, how are you juggling your new role as a chief fire officer with being a mum? And I looked at them completely blank-faced and just said, well, exactly the same way that my predecessor coped with being a dad. And they kind of looked at me and went yeah that was a really silly question please don't use that can you cut that please but you know it's just that that's expected of guys isn't it but and it pains me to say because it's 2023 now yeah that women are still regularly getting that question because that's the assumption it is so we've still got a very long way to go and actually I love the fact that when you were

asked that question you pushed back on it in a way that had humor so it was gentle so no one was sort of humiliated but it just was a bit of a come on really so you mentioned that your day job doesn't often have so much of these sort positive-y bits that we hear on telly. But I just wanted to sort of surmise, that's why I've got your book here, because I just wanted to make sure I correctly sum up where you are at with your job. Because obviously you are Chief Fire Officer, but you also have a first class honours in psychology, a master's in international fire service development and a phd in behavioral neuroscience i didn't want to get any of that

wrong and you also work as an honorary research fellow at cardiff as well cardiff university so what at the moment what does it look like in terms of your work how does it divvy up with all the different roles that you have on a perennial juggle I think is probably the best way to sum it up. My day job as a chief fire officer is the primary work you know that kind of takes up a huge amount of my time but I also do the research then alongside that and I've got a number of research strands that I do. I've got a number of PhD students under us at the moment. I co-supervise a small research group at Cardiff University, along with Professor Rob Honey, who was my PhD supervisor and a professor that I've worked with now for, ooh, what are we, 2023, for 13 years. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, he's fabulous. And we've got

a couple of research programmes that predominantly look at decision-making under pressure. So we're doing stuff with emergency services, our research that we've done kind of completely changed the national landscape for how we do decision making in the emergency services, which was just amazing. And I've really loved that side of things. We're looking at doing similar stuff in medicine at the moment as well. And I've just got a new research programme, which is a bit of a kind of passion project of mine um looking at dogs and dog learning and behavior and particularly dogs with extreme behavioral problems um and how they can be rehabilitated dogs that are bound for euthanasia oh wow yeah

and that must be close to your heart as a dog lover and dog owner. Oh, it is very close to my heart. Dogs are so important to me. So important. I mean, I've got three. Okay. For starters. But my, when I, you probably know, but many moons ago when I was a teenager, I had quite a challenging start in life.

And I experienced homelessness from the age of, just before I was 16, to the age of about 18. And I had a stray dog. Stray dog, I was 16, to the age of about 18. And I had a stray dog, stray dog, I was a stray girl, it kind of worked. And I know many people had a view, certainly was my experience at the time on homelessness and dogs, and people weren't always that kind about it. But that dog was the only social and emotional connection I had at a time when I was otherwise completely isolated. So that dog-human relationship, that bonding for me is hugely important and it's a relationship that I really, really cherish. So I spend a huge amount of time with my dogs and I really believe in the power of the human-dog relationship. And in fact, I'm an ambassador now for an amazing

charity called Street Vet that do outreach veterinary work for people who are experiencing homelessness who have pets as well. What a brilliant charity. Yeah dogs they've got a couple of cats and even a rabbit on their books actually. Oh really? Yeah they're wonderful absolutely wonderful. Well that is I mean I loved hearing that and reading about your relationship with your dog, Manis. Oh. And, I mean, just for context for people listening, so after your father died when you were nine and your mother's mental health deteriorated, it became possible for you to be living at home and so you found yourself sleeping rough.

And this was a period of time where you have said you felt completely unseen and very, very alone. Yeah. And it's an extraordinary thing to me to think first of all of a girl that young on their own on the streets and i wondered how that i know that for a long time you didn't even speak about it was it like over 20 years where you didn't even speak about it yeah so it's still relatively recent that it's become something that you're so open about but it's so important to talk about these things and I think particularly with homelessness it's I know that homeless charities can struggle because not everybody will say oh I know someone that's homeless or I've experienced

it so you know giving bringing humanity into that is really really important ongoing but also as your daughter has now entered her teenage years has it changed anything about how you think of yourself at that time yeah it has absolutely and I look at her now at 13 and I think wow it was I was two years older than you the first time I had no bed to sleep in for the night and I was sleeping in a shop doorway shivering and being really frightened and alone um and it does it really it challenges me more now when I see her as someone that I love and I cherish and I want to nurture um and to think of to see it in that capacity because I can almost see myself through that lens now um it's it's hard because every person who's experiencing homelessness

or who has experienced homelessness has the capacity to love. They'll have people that they love. They'll have been loved at some point or another. There's an awful lot of absence of love in those relationships because people don't find themselves homeless unless they're completely socially isolated. But everyone has the capacity for for and so I think it's brought a new sadness for me into that space to really think of that and actually when I look back at those times some of the people who showed me the most compassion and the most humanity were also people who were experiencing homelessness and they were those that others would cross the street to try to avoid so there is something to me that is hugely important about how we see other people um and whether we see past just the way that someone is presenting and we see the person that sits behind

it with all of their humanity and all of their potential um and that's why for me now talking about my experience of homelessness is so important, and it was hard, and it's still raw, you know, I still find myself with my, you know, my hair standing on end sometimes when I'm relating some of the experiences to people, and you have that sicky feeling in the pit of your stomach, and you kind of think about it for hours afterwards, but there are people who are still going through that today, there are people who are still going through that today there are people who are still in the same place that I once was and it's really important to me that they know that your circumstances don't determine where you end up just the position that you start from and that's

why I talk about it and actually since talking about it there are lots of people that have kind of got in touch with me to tell me that they'd been homeless once and that they didn't feel like they could talk about it and one one of the most meaningful messages that I had came to me via somebody else and they forwarded the the message and it said that um it said uh something along the lines of wow deputy assistant commissioner in London fire brigade as I was back then um had it had solved the big issue for three years and was homeless. Now, maybe I won't be so embarrassed to tell people that I sold the big issue. And I literally, I had that and I just burst out crying. And Mike was there, he's like, what's the matter? What's the matter? What's happened? And I was like, it's so lovely, look.

You know, and it was really, really meaningful to have that um but I make no bones about it it's still raw and it's still painful but if it feels like that for me I know that it's 10 times worse for other people so if I don't then who yeah and I guess other people who are in the situation don't often get any sort of platform to talk about what they're going through at all and even hearing you speak about it and when I was hearing about you know how the big issue works and how you're saying everybody that sells the big issue is basically being a little entrepreneur and it made me think oh golly you know I must I must remember to buy it more often actually I mean when when you see someone homeless on the street, what do you do when you walk past them? I usually speak to them. And for me, that was one of the biggest things. You know, people

kind of walk past me like I was a ghost, like I wasn't even there. And, you know, I've been punched and kicked and spat at. But I'd also experienced some really human responses from people. But by far, the most re-humanising thing was for someone to make eye contact and smile and say hello, ask me my name. You know, that for me was more important than everything else. And, you know, we're all human. None of us are going to be able to kind of swoop in and fix everything for every person that we walk past.

And neither do people expect that. But just some humanity makes a really big difference yeah absolutely I think um he said when he said like he asked me my name that got me actually I think um you know just my own experience I I always do make a point to make eye contact and smile and say hi. But I think I'm trying to work out what it is that makes you not respond in any way, what made more meaningful sometimes. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's because we're sometimes encouraged to have an idea that there might be, I don't know,

an unpleasant exchange if you take it further or if people might be wanting something from you that you can't give. I don't know. I don't know an unpleasant exchange if you take it further or if people might be wanting something from you that you can't give I don't know I don't know where that comes from well I often get asked that question about whether you know you should give money um or how you respond if someone asks for money and you don't have it and I think it's really easy to just try to avoid the interaction by looking away and I think that there's I think I think it's more powerful for me to say, I'm really sorry, I haven't got any change at the moment. That for me, it was always better

because someone's acknowledging you, they're speaking to you and they're seeing you as a human being. It's really easy to get defensive and to avoid a situation that we think is going to result in conflict, whether that's, it doesn't have to be conflict in terms of arguing with someone,

but even, you know, a kind of negative exchange. And that's very, very seldom the case. Very often our own assumptions of what that interaction is going to be like is very, very different to the reality of it. No, I agree. And I think, I don't know, I suppose I'm thinking back to you in that

situation and finding it extraordinary that people could see such a young girl on the streets and still look the other way that's that's pretty stark it was awful I mean I'll never forget once my teacher saw me selling the bigger shoe and crossed the road to try and avoid me. And I can remember looking down at my shoes and bursting into tears. And I knew then at that point, literally, literally nobody cared. And thank heavens I had Menace with me because I just sat and cuddled into him and he started nuzzling into me and licking my face and licking my eyeballs and all of the stuff that he would usually do um and just for that moment I didn't feel that alone anymore

shame on that teacher yeah teacher I mean you know I look back I think maybe he didn't have a pound or something but come on I think that's yeah but so by the time you were 18 you had decided I'm going to apply to a job in the fire service and it took over 30 different places to find someone that except you is that right yes it was super competitive so when I applied there was something like 9 000 applicants for 12 jobs you know it was super super competitive so it's no good just kind of going into the process in one and waiting until the end to get rejected and then starting another one so I was kind of firing off applications and going all around the place to to get in and I eventually got in um and it's something that I've never looked back from I loved it but you know I didn't

talk about my experience of homelessness mainly because I was afraid that people would judge me for it I was afraid of the stigma and I also just wanted to start again I wanted people to take me for me and not who they thought I was and that's one of the great things about the fire and rescue service is that for me they saw past what didn't present like a brilliant prospect on paper and they took me on the strength of who they believed I could be and that's a principle that I try and live by now but it wasn't easy moving out of you know it's not overcoming homelessness isn't just about the physical resources and having a roof over your head there was a huge kind of emotional and social journey that I went on after that and in the the book, I've written a chapter called The Glass Breadline, which talks about the impact of poverty on women and how difficult it can be,

in particular, it's difficult for everybody to break through the glass breadline and escape poverty. But it is particularly difficult for women. And I read a statistic that really stuck with me. And I kind of felt some of the impact of it, actually. And that's if you're on free school meals today, by the time you're 25, only 28% of men will earn more than the national living wage, which is far too low. But only 18% of women will also earn more than the national living wage,

which, again, is far too low. And there are a number of really complex and challenging reasons for that not least the the impact of being um heading up a single parent household and how that makes you significantly more likely to be experiencing poverty than if you're in a in a two-parent household and the numbers of single mother households are significantly more than single father households so you have that whole dynamic that comes into it but women are over represented in low wage sectors with 17% of women compared to just 11% of men and even within those sectors if you're a woman doing the same job as a man you're likely to get three percent less for doing basically identical work

so it is very challenging from that respect just in terms of the practicalities for women to pass through that glass bread line but for me one of the biggest things that I found was the way that that experience of poverty had made me feel so I'd go into a workplace then and I would look back on my experiences of homelessness and I would always see myself as less than other people around you and it was really challenging and I think that's also one of the reasons why it took me so long to start to talk about it because I'd see other people in my industry I'd see other leaders I'd see other officers who are these amazing people who always seem to know what

to do and what to say who never seem to put a foot wrong. And I'd only ever see their successes. I'd never see them make a mistake. And I used to think, wow, there's stuff that makes me feel so vulnerable. You know, that experience makes me feel so vulnerable. There are regrets that I have through those experiences. So how can I ever, how can I match up to you? And the reality, and I think that this plays into the glass breadline piece the reality is I get everyone wants to put their best foot forward yeah we all want to talk

about our successes but actually when you're only presenting that it's like you're presenting a show reel it's like you're presenting you know you're kind of one picture that makes it onto your Instagram feed rather than the reality of the 500 awful ones looking up your nose with your double chin that you've been um but the reality is every success is preceded by a number of failures a number of mistakes a number of misdirections and squiggly paths there but if we're only ever seeing that kind of the prize we're not seeing the journey then I think that it makes that prize look more unattainable and so for me there is huge value in talking about your mistakes and owning your failures with as much conviction as you'll own your successes because it's more real and it makes the journey there for other people more real and for people

like me who've come from extreme poverty seeing that it can be a journey it doesn't just have to be something that you're born with or that you have to have this experience or you have to have gone to that school or you can't even break through being able to see the reality that failure is okay and that you don't have to necessarily just show the success you've got the rest of the messy stuff behind it that does make it an easier journey and you know what there's a values thing in there as well because I will learn so much more about someone from seeing the way they respond to a single failure than i would do from seeing them respond to 100 successes so it means more to me i agree with that and i think

i think also though you know if you have experienced homelessness and you have seen it do nothing but put you on the back foot, to put it lightly, I think it's completely instinctive to keep that quiet until you're ready to share it. So whilst I agree that when you feel at a place where you feel safe, to be open is brilliant. But we do a lot of things to protect ourselves, don't we? Yeah. As we go. And if you didn't, you were the same person then as you are now. And if you felt like then was that was the time to reveal it,

then that's the time to reveal it. Yeah. You know, not everything has to be out there all the time. No. Because maybe it was quite nice not sharing that for a long time too. And I think I needed that time to heal a bit. Yeah, absolutely. And I think sharing it when I did was more powerful

because I was ready to share it yeah um it was tough it was scary it was I was petrified I'll never forget the day when when I when I when I decided now is the point in time I'm going to share it and I did it in a tweet and I must have written out that tweet and deleted it and rewritten it with about one word different about 15 or 20 times and I was on my something like my fourth gin and tonic before I had the courage to press send and I was like oh no what have I done what have I done what have I done and I kind of put it down and my phone went ping ping ping ping ping like popcorn I was like oh my god oh my god I can't look I can't look and then I looked and it was like, oh, oh, oh, that's really nice.

It wasn't at all what I'd been catastrophizing about. You know, I got the odd bit, don't get me wrong, but that's always going to be inevitable. But, you know, the vast majority was really positive and I feel like I've been able to do a lot of good through my work through that. I'm an ambassador now for the big issues, so I try and do a lot of work in the social justice space as well. And it's something that's really important to me

and something that I hope I'll continue to drive for some time yet. Oh, I have no doubt about that. I did wonder though, when you're someone that's been so solely responsible for your own fate, in what way is that really, what does it give you that's good and what does it give you that's bad um the bit that it gives you that's good i think is that

security and the knowledge that whatever happens nothing is as bad as what you've already been through and that you don't have to rely on other people to be able to move past that so it's that sense of confidence and comfort in your own independence um on the downside I think it makes you feel like you can do everything by yourself and you don't you don't need anyone else so it's exactly the same problem in a funny kind of way um in as much as it can make you feel it can be quite difficult sometimes to let your guard down with others and to really trust so I can be quite slow to do that in guard down with others and to really trust. So I can be quite slow to do that in that space.

And I have to work really hard at it. I'm really conscious and careful about making sure that if my shutters are automatically coming down, I'll stick a wedge in there to keep them back up. So I'm not doing that as much. But I think the positives are definitely that you know that whatever happens, you can push through that. Tomorrow's going to be another day and you'll come through it. But I think at the same time, you have to be very careful

not to shut other people out. Yeah, because you're being so forcefully capable and resilient and that makes it hard to let the vulnerability in yeah i think the way i describe it sometimes is a high functioning trauma response well there must be quite a lot of a trauma response you have to deal with with your day job um because obviously you're so exposed to stress and um some days must be you must have seen and experienced things have been horrific when you're responding to fires firstly i think it's really amazing and incredible of your instinct that you actually wanted to help people that's a lovely a lovely thing that stirred in

you from all of your experience in your your childhood and when you're a young person but also i wonder how how you deal with this the stress of that and and when you're a young person. But also I wonder how you deal with the stress of that. So when you had your baby, when you had Gabby, what stage were you at with your firefighting career at that point? The day I went off on maternity was the day that I became an officer substantively. So I'd been doing it kind of temporarily. I had a temporary promotion.

And the day that I went on maternity was the day that they went yep that's permanent yay which is fantastic yeah it was really cool it was really cool um so by the time she was born and I was back into work you'd kind of do your day job running a department but then um I'd be on call and the kind of jobs that I would go to as a as a station commander at that time would be the more serious ones where there was a life risk or there was a risk to firefighters so it would be a fire in a house where you know somebody's trapped or a car car crash where people are trapped in there so um you I found that I tended probably to see more of the trauma at that phase in my career as well. And it was an interesting one, you know,

because having Gabby made it completely change my perspective on the world. And on the one hand, nothing else in the universe mattered as much as she did. So it was a real kind of perspective shift. But I think because of my job I really recognized and respected the fragility of life and I had a newfound appreciation for our own mortality when I had someone in the world that meant as much to me as as your first born child does my only born child she's my only child um and so I found that I found that quite a beautiful duality in many respects because I think it increased my propensity to love but also made me more fearful of the loss as well and so I'd do things where you know for example

I'd go out and I'd be on a I'd be on a fire all night and then I'd come in and I'd jump straight in the shower because when you've you know you've been at a fire you're full of contaminants I wouldn't want any of that in the house or anywhere near Gabby so I'd get straight in the shower I'd wash myself off and then I'd just poke my head around her bedroom door and I'd just look over just to make sure she's still breathing you know stupid little things like that of course she's still breathing but you just have to see it for yourself at that very moment in time to give you that kind of reassurance and so it certainly I think makes me appreciate just the smaller things in life you know the way

that the colours look on a on a spring morning like this morning when you you know you're walking past a a tree and it's in blossom and just those little moments that you otherwise walk past and you forget about completely and it's not until all of the trees in the world have disappeared that you'd kind of look back and go oh I wish I'd stopped and really smelt that smell that flower on the tree you know so it's just it makes you more thoughtful I think about those little things but you know it is it is challenging and mental health in the emergency services for all frontline responders is a real challenge and um mind did a brilliant piece of research a while ago that found that people in the emergency

services are more likely than the general population to suffer with their mental health, but they're also less likely than the general population to ask for help. And when they unpick that, actually being a first responder becomes a huge part of your identity. It's not just a job, it's what you do, it's how you see yourself. So to be the one that is usually the protector it can be quite a big thing thing then to say I think I need protecting I'm I'm struggling and also I think we see the extremes of mental health we see the after effects of trauma we get called to deal with the aftermath of someone that's attempted suicide or that's committed suicide and those kind of experiences

so you do see the very kind of extreme side of mental health and if you can't relate to that bit directly you know saying any of it can sound scary yeah so it has been a challenge I think we've come on a really long way certainly even over the past five years in the emergency services around that and started to encourage more conversations and I certainly see more mature conversations around mental health now and a reduction in that stigma which is a really really positive step yeah I agree I think the way that we speak about mental health has shifted enormously all for the better but I think I can totally understand why if you're a first responder you feel like part of the job should be being able

to cope with all those things so actually you feel like well if i pull at that thread that says that i didn't cope with that what does that mean about the rest of my ability to do my job and that can be really tricky can't every have to hold it you know hold that up to yourself yeah yeah you know there's a lot of things that hold people together and you sometimes don't know if you're allowed to let that go do you know what i mean but the reality is unless you pull at the thread you can't tie it back up again no that's true so it's really important I think to embrace these things and to recognize that it's not you know finding something hard or finding something overwhelming is no weakness it's human absolutely and sometimes you just need to sit with that feeling as well and

it's okay to feel rubbish about something it's okay to say that was really hard and to you know to have a have an evening where you just think right I just need to turn off from the rest of the world and just feel crap for the night that's okay yeah let that feeling come yeah and then once it's come it'll pass yeah and that's when you can start building on what you do next yeah and talking about having just knowing what works for you in terms of like who you need to speak to or the thing you do that just gives you that space yeah um so many things i want to ask you about but i think i'm going to go back to i promise i asked this of lots of my guests but also i would also ask if your husband was here when you had your baby was there a part of you that thought about maybe changing the way you were working um in terms of the job or yeah all of it because

you know I went on turbo I started my PhD the day that she was born the day she was actually born yeah that was my it sounded like you said I started a PhD the day I was actually born yeah that was my it sounded like you said i started a phd the day i had a baby i didn't do a lot that day you know just to be frank but um you know the the phd started the day that she was born um and so you know the first couple of months were reviewing literature and things like that and i would speak to rather than i know normal people would like read children's books but i was like i could do that or i could read her this neuroscience paper because then i'll be able to read it and i'll save time when she started talking we were doing animals it was really funny because she kept calling um hippopotamus a hippocampus so I knew some of it had something gone in some of it has stuck not much but some of it um so no I think I pressed turbo um and you know we had um you know we tried for a while

to have Gabby and it was you know it was amazing absolutely amazing when it happened for us um and I'd actually said because my PhD was due to start and I and I could remember saying to my well you know we'll we'll try and if it doesn't happen now then you know maybe after my PhD and it would be wouldn't it that exact point in time that it happened and you know but I think that in some ways um I thought I felt like it was really important to me that Gabby was able to see that you know you can do these things and that you don't have to be defined by other people's idea of your gender role um and that you know if you've got something that you can add to the world, then never mind the logistics, you can find a way around that. It's really important to do it.

I think in retrospect, I probably didn't give myself enough of a break sometimes with some of that, and it can be a really difficult juggle. But no, I think I pressed the turbo button and then never looked back. I'm very impressed. And also, I think when people say, oh, you know, I've spoken to a lot of people who say, oh, I kind of took on quite a lot.

But I think sometimes when you've got all those hormones flying around, something happens where you're just like, let's do this next thing. You know, and however you, you're the only one who had your baby, you know. It's like what works for you is what works for you. And I think sometimes you do kickstart this thing of like right I feel kind of energized and it's like everything that happened before is like old news so you're kind of like right we're living in the next bit now and I think a bit of me as well was like why shouldn't I why shouldn't I do this you know there's two of us that created a baby why shouldn't I continue to do the things

that are important to me professionally and educationally and and that uh you know I did my PhD because I wanted to make a difference after I had an experience with Mike where another firefighter was severely burned and I thought it was him you know and that kind of gut feeling that you have when you think someone that you love might be might be hurt you know I wanted to do that research to stop other people from getting hurt so I had a it was really important to me to to do you know so um yeah I think a big part of me was kind of like absolutely determined to to see it through as well um and I've got to be fair actually me and Mike have got quite a tight family unit and when she was born he was really engaged and really keen and I shouldn't be you know he shouldn't deserve a high five for that because ultimately he put

you know he he had an equal an equal contribution in making that baby you know I couldn't I might have gestated her but I couldn't have created her on my own um so you know but he was very engaged and I can remember you know even things like when I was feeding her I was I was so tired she when she was a baby she would only sleep on my chest she had to hear my heartbeat and um she is as tenacious as me probably and twice as stubborn and so you'd put her down in the cot and she'd start crying and you'd pick her up again and you think okay I'll leave her for another couple of seconds and no no she's not stopping is she and it's like I've got to pick her up again so she had to hear my heartbeat.

So I can remember feeding her and I'd just managed to get her to sleep and I was so hungry, it was ridiculous. And Mike had made me spaghetti bolognese and I just had this craving for spag bol and he brought it in and he'd made it with brown rice. I was like, that's fine, I'll eat it. And he went, why are you looking at it like that? fine i'll eat it and he went why are you looking

at it like that and i'm like what's the main ingredient spaghetti bolognese and he went well spaghetti i was like yeah he was like i'll make you some i was like no no no don't worry don't worry i'm just glad that you've made me some food but bless him he was holding the plate yeah that's quite a tricky one with the baby on the front she was basically a human napkin she was she was a human napkin so of course i'm there like a like a giraffe trying to strain my neck and bless him he had the plate and he was literally feeding me this spag bolster brown rice just so i could get some sustenance while i was trying to nurse this child so you know he was he was really helpful and you know when I kind of think about other women who

are in my situation who didn't have a supportive partner or who were doing it on their own you know I think that they are the most incredible women in the world to be able to drive forward and to do that um in a way that actually I don't know if I could have when I look back what been on your own with that well I certainly couldn't at this point in time don't really doubt your case of anything even when you said I couldn't have created her on my own thinking if anyone could no I think that you know to be able to have done the PhD to be able to continue working and to be able to you know to raise a family I think that the support network yeah was super important and I didn't have a huge

support network it was just me and Mike yeah um and so that the partnership that we took to doing it I think was crucial yeah it sounds like it and I get the impression just from you know hearing you talk today is it that you when you're talking about trust but it feels like Mike is very much your person like yeah you've sort of found someone there that you could immediately just be like okay I can be my whole self and when you have that person with you it lets you sets you free to take on the things you want to do which is brilliant yeah um but I I wondered with um sorry i've lost my thread i was going to ask you something really good and then it just popped out of my head

you just have to rest assured it was a really excellent question but i did wonder where it comes from with you because i can see that there's a real thread of you never always wanting to leave things better than you found them where do you think you get that from with you know with with when you said mike was in an accident and then you thought, well... Because sometimes when people would think, oh, if only the fire service were trained to respond to things in a different way, but to actually take on the research, put forward the case, win awards and how it changes how things happen,

where does that sort of impetus come from, do you think? Do you know, it's a really great question um and I think that for me there is something about the early influences that you have that are super important um and people talk about a role model don't they and they talk about you know someone that's inspired them in some way and often when I hear people talk about that they'll talk about someone amazing who's changed the world in some way, some household name that you'd all know. But I think mine is my grandmother, who had a really big impact on me growing up. Now, my grandparents are Moroccan Jews. My grandmother was from Rabat. My grandfather was from Ujda, and they lived together in Jarada. And in 1948,

lived together in Jarada and in 1948 she was caught up in some anti-Jewish riots and she was attacked with a machete and they actually tried to behead her in quite a frenzied attack and my grandfather went to collect her body and he pulled her out from what I can only describe as a pile of other mutilated bodies and he pulled her out and she gasped for air she was still alive and so as soon as she was well enough they fled Morocco as refugees and they started again now when my father was terminally ill my grandparents lived with us because they were helping to care for him and despite this awful experience that she'd had she would never ever talk about what she'd lost or what she left behind but she'd talk about the opportunities they had to build and what they'd done as a result you know and the new when one door closed another door would open um and you

know she would even talk about her attacker with loads of love and compassion and you know she'd say things like i hope that he can forgive himself. I don't want him to lie on his deathbed and regret it. I want him to be able to forgive himself because I forgive him. Because do you know what? Imagine being in an environment filled with so much hate and frenzy that you could do that to another person. I'm sure that he regrets it um she's the most incredible woman and to have those negative experiences but still approach the world through a lens of such love and compassion and empathy for me was a huge inspiration huge inspiration and she is someone who no matter what happens in life she will look to do what she can to make something better even if it's only a little bit

better that's what she'll focus on doing um and so I think that seeing her and seeing the way that she responds to the world has been a huge huge inspiration for me and I take a great deal of influence from that um so yeah I think from that from that capacity definitely and I don't always get it right you know I have I have my bad days I have my moods as much as anybody else does um but you know what that's human and when that happens I'll you know like we said earlier on I'll let myself sit with that feeling I'll have my I'll have my evening to mope and feel like crap and you know get really grumpy about stuff but then the next day that's when I do something because you can't control what happens in life

you can't you can't even control how you feel about it but you do have some agency over what you do about it next and no matter how bad the day tomorrow will always come the world will turn the sun will rise and tomorrow will always come and it's up to you what you do about that indeed you had your grandma sounds like an amazing woman and actually that thing of being able to see the good in people probably is a very good way of her to be able to live her life because it liberated her from being you know yeah sort of stifled by an incident that happened that stopped her being able to then live even though she survived yeah so sometimes having being able to put perspective on it that makes us cope like that is incredibly powerful like the mindset of that absolutely amazing i found it really helpful when i was

experiencing homelessness as well um especially when i'd look back on it because i'd experienced you know some really dehumanizing things from people and you know like I said earlier on I've been punched and kicked and spat at and attacked and you know people shouted at me in the street and you know people would look down on me like I was they'd already judged my worth they'd already judged my value as being zero and they treated me like that. And I would always think that, okay, that's you on a bad day. That's one interaction. That's not you as a whole human. On another day, I'm sure you're a very good person.

I'm sure that there are people in your life who you love dearly. I'm sure there are people who love you dearly. I'm sure that you do good things in the world as well. I've had a bad interaction with you on a bad day, which I'm sure in the cold light of day, you'd regret. And so I'm not going to judge you on that. I'll take that. I'll put it down to a bad experience, a bad couple of seconds that have come and gone, and they're nothing but a figment in my memory, but they're gone. And I'll give you the benefit of the doubt to know that

you also have the capacity to be a good person too wow i think that's an amazing way to look at it and i can see where you're coming from but sometimes i've definitely not responded to people in that way it might not be the first word I promise to be more Sabrina from here on in I promise um I was thinking so much of what you're talking about as well is about I mean sorry to be a bit twee with it but it's about response because you're talking about your response to your circumstance then you have to respond in your day job then you have to respond to an incident where you thought Mike was injured and do something about it. Responding is quite a big, big element of what you do, isn't it? Yeah. And I've heard you talk as well about hypervigilance. Is that something

that started when you were homeless? Yeah, definitely. Well, probably just before because, you know, we had quite a difficult time preceding the homelessness. And I think it was then that you know you really started to think about the danger in your every day um you know we had some really difficult times and certainly when I was experiencing homelessness that was that was when it really heightened because you just never knew you never knew what was coming around the corner so there was one place that I used to sleep that was a derelict building and the thing thing is, when you find somewhere that's, you know, giving you a bit of shelter, so do other people. And there were lots of other people there that used to sleep there and use it as a drugs den. So, you know, I'd go to sleep and the first thing I'd do is kind of sweep around me to make sure that there were no dirty needles lying on the floor.

So that, you know, if I rolled over, I wasn't going to roll over onto one of them. needles lying on the floor so that you know if I rolled over I wasn't going to roll over onto one of them um but I'd find somewhere to sleep and I would make sure that I knew at least three exit routes and I'd in my head I would plan out what you would do to get out of those exit routes and I would put things like stack paint cans I found in a skip by the doorway so that I knew that if I had to escape then I could slow somebody down behind me and like piles of newspapers I put places if I needed to I could just kind of chuck them in somebody's face to give me those extra couple of seconds to escape so I'd kind of do all of those things and so I found myself whatever situation I was in I would not just be kind of like looking at

my surroundings and thinking oh it's a lovely day today I'd be kind of looking around thinking okay what can hurt me and what can I do to make sure that it doesn't? And you'd almost kind of play through those things. And it's, it's interesting, because one of the studies that I talk about in the book, looks at people that are, that are successful. And it talks about people who were told, aren't we just visualize success, visualize success, and it talks about people who were told, aren't we just visualise success, visualise success and it's more likely to come. And what this study showed is that a group of people were told to just visualise success

and another group of people were told to visualise the success that you want, but also all the barriers that you are expecting to face. And it was the people that also visualised their barriers and what they do about it, that one ended up more happy, but two ended up more successful at the end of it. So I think, you know, there's some method in my madness in that sense. And it certainly kept me safe. I know that.

But there are also times when, you know, now when the danger isn't anywhere near as severe as the danger I was experiencing when I was sleeping rough. You know, there are times when you kind of still have that wasn't anywhere near as severe as the danger I was experiencing when I was sleeping rough. You know, there are times when you kind of still have that and you kind of end up feeling quite anxious about things. You can still be quite hypervigilant and it manifests in overthinking things. But equally, you know, there are times when that's been really helpful. So there are times for me operationally when I've been at a fire and because I'm constantly hypervigilant and overthinking things, I've noticed something like a really subtle change in wind direction that meant we had to completely change the way that we were doing the operations and you know saved an adjacent building

as a result of that otherwise we'd have kind of lost we'd have lost the warehouse and the garages if we'd have just carried on with what we were doing so there are times when it's also been really helpful but I do think just for me personally in terms of life in general I do have a tendency to overthink but because I overthink I think about what can go wrong and then I think about how we can avoid it and I think in some respects doing that has made me less afraid of the failures and the potential mistakes and the pitfalls because I've already thought about them. I've also then processed how it's going to feel when that happens. And I've also thought about what I can do,

one, to avoid it, but two, to overcome it, the other side of things. So I do spend an inordinate amount of time just thinking, but I quite like that as well. Did you do that with your daughter when she was little and thinking of that thing where you sort of worry about all the things that could happen? Oh, my God. It was like spider senses, wasn't it?

Because that's quite, it can be quite hard to stop that. Yeah. Because sometimes it becomes almost like intrusive thoughts of like awful things that could just happen. Yes. But, yeah, I was imagining with you, like with your hypervision, as you say, like a spidey sense.

Yeah. The whole house was covered in cotton wool. And I'm picturing her with like a big, like, helmet on. as you say that's body sense yeah the whole house was covered in cotton wool well fortunately i think a little bit of risk is healthy as well isn't it just yeah so she'd have all the padding but no helmet there's a metaphor there somewhere well i think it's so amazing everything you've achieved and I just have no doubt you're going to continue to do great things have you got are you someone that thinks in terms of planning ahead or are you quite more like following your nose with stuff um at the moment I'm I mean I love my career I love being a chief fire officer and I think that

we've still got a huge amount of work to do in fire and rescue services um and there's a lot of work that i'm doing in my service around culture which is really important to me so i'm really enjoying that the research is something else that's hugely important to me and i love the decision making stuff but i'm really enjoying the work that we're doing with dogs at the moment as well yeah and i really hope that we can find some success in ways to rehabilitate dogs and reduce the euthanasia that's happening. In fact, the biggest cause of euthanasia for dogs under three are behavioural issues. So there's, you know, there's a real impetus in doing that. So I'm really enjoying that work as well. But also the opportunity to have conversations like this to perhaps challenge the way that

people are thinking, particularly about gender. And just there's something for me that's really powerful about getting someone to think differently to the way that they might have done before definitely um and so you know i'm really enjoying doing that work as well so pushing forward on all of those fronts yeah it's very close to my heart as well when i had my first baby who happened to be a boy it it was it sort of baffled me how much was expected of him just because he happened to be a boy yeah and i get very uppity about the presumptions that are put on gender from birth it drives me absolutely nuts um even down to things like why why dogs tend to be on boys clothes and cats on girls clothes things like that like what is going on with the world and i sometimes feel like the better we've got with conversations about um people being non-binary and redefining

their gender as grown-ups the more binary things have got in childhood as a sort of weird knee-jerk of like well let's make sure it's very clear when they're i don't know i don't get it do you know you're absolutely right there's a fascinating study that i wrote about um that looked at risk actually in the way that our risk appetite develops and There's a fascinating study that I wrote about that looked at risk, actually, and the way that our risk appetite develops. And there's a huge amount that shows that risk appetite is something that we absorb culturally. It's from our interactions with people and our experiences as opposed to something that's more innate. And there was this lovely study done where psychologists were watching parents responding to their children engaging in risky play. They were playing on a fire pole, ironically, in a playground, as it happens.

And they were looking at the way both mums and dads were responding to boys and girls. And they found when the little boys wanted to play on the fire pole, parents would encourage them. And if they showed any sign of trepidation, they'd advise someone how to do it independently. They'd say, come on, you can do it, you're brave,'re brave you've got this you're really strong you know what to do um whereas when the little girls wanted to play on it they would spontaneously interject to help significantly more than when they would with little boys and they'd say things

like oh be careful or wait wait for me i'll come and help you or be careful you don't get your dress dirty things honestly things like that um so you think about the messages that are being internalized then the little girls are being told you're delicate you can't do it on your own you need help the little boys are saying are being told you're brave you're independent you got this you fast forward to the world of work the Hewlett-Packard study showed that on average women will only apply for a job if they meet 100% of the job criteria whereas guys would apply if they met 60% but of course you think about that internalized message and how that plays out it affects your world view your life chances even your economic success it's huge and in fact there was a another study that I thought was really, really elegant in this space that looked at the way that people would respond to both men and women taking risks.

And what they found was men will take more risks than women. I'm not surprised because they've been kind of socially rewarded for it for generations. But also that people would respond more negatively to women who then took a risk and I could relate to that with my experience where people are like oh but you're in the fire service isn't that risky what about your children you know so you can definitely see how people respond to you differently but it's massive the way that we talk to our children and gender stereotypes are set between the ages of five and seven and there was a lovely social experiment done as a part of

a campaign called Redress the Balance. It's on YouTube if people wanted to have a look. And basically, this group of children, primary school children, were asked to draw pictures of a firefighter, a doctor, and a pilot. And out of 61 pictures, only four were of women all of the others were of men um and you know it was a lovely piece and these kids were really happy and really excited and you know enthusiastically talking about their pictures as they're colouring them in but then in walks a real life firefighter a real life fighter pilot and a real life surgeon and they've got their masks on and then they pull it off and they're all women and the kids are like oh oh how cool and then they're just asking loads of questions

and the thing is then those children's uh they're they're kind of mental files if you like with all of that information they're then changed and they're like oh okay so that category also has women in it done rebalanced redressed um and you know they're asking all of these questions and they then don't have the same stereotype it's really easy with children it can be so much harder with adults yeah to get into that and um in psychology they've identified something called the backlash effect which is certainly something that i've experienced where if you're um a woman and you challenge a traditional gender role or if you're a woman and you challenge a traditional gender role or if you're a man and you're challenging a traditional gender role by for example doing

a job that's usually associated with the opposite gender or by dressing like the opposite gender or by looking like a member of the opposite gender or whatever then people go they see that and it clashes with their mental file and they backlash they feel negative about it they might not intend to they might not do it consciously but they they they subconsciously feel negative towards that um and there was a lovely study done um uh about a woman called um it was a case study sorry uh based on a woman called Heidi Royston, who was this amazing businesswoman who caught the eye of a professor at Harvard Business School. And so he wrote a case study to give to his students and he decided to make two versions. One case study had a different word.

That was it. One word changed. Half of the students had the case study of Heidi Royston. The other half had Howard Royston. And when he surveyed them afterwards they recognized them both as equally successful so that it was good but Howard they all thought he was a really inspiring leader an amazing guy everyone wanted to go and work for him but Heidi they thought she was cold and political and out for herself and very self-promoting and no one was sure about her

aggression and they didn't trust her no one really wanted to go and work for her and the only difference was the word and that's the backlash effect playing out there because people didn't expect a woman businesswoman to be in charge of a company to be doing the things that she was doing to be assertive it was perceived as aggressive um even though those are things that were required of the job you you know, isn't that fascinating? Well, I'm also wondering how he broke it to Heidi afterwards. The good news is they thought you were really capable. Yeah. But only when you were presented as a man. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. I mean, it's fascinating, isn't it? Because no one would stand by the water cooler and go, I really don't like Heidi because she's a woman, you know? I know, but I think people are so reassured by the expectations as well because i'm when i've uh occasionally gone on one of my little rants about you know kids expectation stuff the gender expectation a lot of people look at me kind of blankly i don't think i think it just really bothered me when i had my first especially because i was like i don't know who he is yeah i don't know what he wants to play with or what he wants to wear and I didn't like

the fact that it was all so rigid rigid in the expectation yeah even down to at nursery you know he'd be sent home with a sticker with a dinosaur and his little friend who was a girl would have a princess on it and I'm like why are they getting different stickers yeah you know I've got another kid who loved the color pink until he went to nursery and he's like that's a girl's color and I do my whole like actually in the victorian times it was all the way around really fast amazing honest um oh i know i wanted to ask you do you still write an email for gabby with your thoughts and questions and things i do that's so nice you do that i do so i started when she was um really small and I set up

a separate email address a separate email account and every so often I'll just email her I don't do it hugely often you know a couple of times a year I'll just send her an email with you know thoughts stuff about what's going on maybe the odd picture um and just kind of like thoughts about you know life in general because my I lost my father when I was nine. I never had the opportunity to have a conversation with him as an adult. I only ever knew him in that kind of child parent way. And so everything I learn about my father is vicariously through other people, through their interactions. I've never had that.

And I think doing the job that I do, you do recognize the fragility of life. And, you know, nobody knows what tomorrow brings or if tomorrow's even going to come. It's not guaranteed for any of us, is it? So I think if I can do that and just have those kind of conversations and musings, then it's something that, you know, if something did happen, then at least she'd have that to look back on,

which reminds me, I've got to give the email address and the password to someone. Yeah, where are they? She's going to have to play super sleuth and try and find it herself. I'm sorry you lost your dad, Sabrina. I feel like we've spoken a lot about the times when you were homeless, but actually losing a parent when you're nine is pretty huge. Yeah.

And I bet that you've had to find ways to still involve your dad in your life now because he sounded like he was an amazing guy. He was cool. He was really cool. Good at poker, so I understand. Very good at poker. A little too good at poker, but that's how he and my mum met. So my dad was incredibly gifted mathematically

and would... Let's just say he was excellent at uh playing cards and probably leaving at that but my mum was a playboy bunny croupier in the playboy casinos and so they met there and the rest was history um but yeah my dad was pretty amazing but you know even little things like when we got married we had a picture of him we had a place at the table with a picture of him in his place. So we always make sure that he's included in some way. You know, I always make the kind of pilgrimage to his grave and make sure the grave is kept clean and tidy. And he's buried in a Jewish cemetery which makes it slightly more challenging

because the security you need it's really sad actually and I'd go there and I'd visit and you know someone had broken in and painted swastikas on the yeah yeah oh honestly it's so it's a mission to even get to the graveyard you know you've got to either go to the chairman of the synagogue or you've got to go to the rabbi directly and get a key you can't have your own key you've got to go there you've got to open it you've got a lock up ritual that is massive um but i always go and make sure that his gravestone is cleaned and i put a candle there um and in uh in judaism we don't we don't put flowers there because flowers can kind of die and and they wither away we put stones

there so wherever I travel I'll pick up a stone and I'll make sure that I'm taking a stone back to him and I've actually just got back from Morocco after everything that happened to my grandmother and no one's ever been back to Morocco but Morocco is a huge part of our of our family life our family traditions and moroccan traditions our family recipes and moroccan recipes so i was the first in the family to go back there and we did this amazing tour all around morocco and um i picked up a couple of stones from the sahara desert and uh and i brought them back so they're going to go on his grave next summer i make the trip down there so yeah that's lovely idea the stones like that. It kind of keeps him knowing where you are and where you're going and where you've gone.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for everything. And for what it's worth as an extra, I've also felt incredibly safe while you're here. I was like, you know, normally I'm really scared about house fires, but I was like, if it's sometime within the last 90 minutes,

I just know we would have been all right. Can I keep you on speed dial, please? Of course, of course. You can have a button. I like that idea. Thank you so much. Pleasure. Also, amazing recall with all that stuff.

I was thinking what your dad could memorise with cards you've got with the research. Impressive stuff. Yeah, I think Gabby only got it for the hippocampus thing. Must have been impressive in nursery though, come on. My word. How do you feel after hearing her story?

Pretty flipping amazing, right? Thank you so much to Sabrina for coming over to chat to me. Honestly, I think, you know, I said at the beginning of talking to her, there are some people you meet where you just think, I could just sort of sit here and just, like, I don't know, think about what you've done without saying very much and be kind of, it's a bit of a marvel. Obviously, it wouldn't make for a very good podcast

if all I did was just sit there going, whoa, you're so amazing. I think you'd find that quite boring i think my guests would find that really weird and i'm nearly done here packing up my stuff for the day i'm bound to forget something aren't i uh i'll tell you what i haven't forgotten fabulous hair and makeup thank you lisa honestly i can see myself in the mirror i look oh it's OTT and I flipping love it you know there are some people aren't there that kind of get up early and they do actually make sure that they look kind of next level all the time I might try and build that into my future I quite like the

idea of being that kind of woman what's this space I'll work on it I'll let you know I'll get on anyway wish me luck with my wandering around Romeome and um i mean i'm really looking forward to going home and seeing the kids of course but i've got to be honest i could happily stay a little bit longer here and just bask in the italian sunshine and eat some more pasta and drink some more negronis maybe in the future anyway have a wonderful uh week whatever you're up to and i will see you next week thanks as ever for lending me your ears thank you to richard for editing this while he's at the hotel so that he doesn't he misses out and come onto a bit of the video shoot with me he's here with me he's been helping but now he's got to edit sorry um he's fine with it really

and thank you to claire my producer thank you to l fine with it really and thank you to Claire my producer thank you to Ella May for the lovely artwork thank you to Sabrina for coming to chat to me but mainly thanks to you

otherwise it's just a conversation into the void alright take care lots of love see you soon bye Thank you. On each step with Peloton, from their pop runs to walk and talks, you define what it means to be a runner.

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