40 Minute Mentor

October 9, 2023

Black History Month 2023: Celebrating our Sisters & Honouring Matriarchs of Movements

To recognise and celebrate this year’s Black History Month, we are kicking off a special three-part series, where we once again partner up with Samuel Tholley, Founder of Hidden Pages.

If you’re a loyal 40 Minute Mentor listener, you will have come across Samuel already and there will be plenty more from him over the next three weeks.

Before his podcast takeover next week, we wanted to revisit one of the most inspiring episodes we have recorded to date, with the brilliant Baroness Oona King.

Oona was the second black woman elected into British Parliament, and is currently the VP of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Snap Inc.

Following some highlight snippets from her 40 Minute Mentor episode, you’ll also hear some reflections on what Black History Month means, facilitated by Samuel – special thanks to Karine, Michael, Gafar, Matthew and Prisca for their contributions.

“What the murder of George Floyd taught me is that if you don’t spend time changing how the people within the system think, you’ll never fundamentally change the system.”

Samuel Tholley

Tune in to discover

The reality of being a black woman in parliament [02:03]

Taking action and changing the status quo [05:29]

Losing her seat in parliament [07:49]

Death threats and thank you notes - the scary reality of life as an MP [09:45]

What the murder of George Floyd taught her about changing the system [12:50]

What you can do internally to spot equity and inequity [13:16]

Shifting the burden of DE&I from minority to majority groups [14:48]

Understanding and celebrating Black History Month [15:45]

Listen on

Helpful links

➡️ Connect with Oona: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oona-king-sheher-00ba8414/
➡️ Snap Inc.’s Diversity Annual Report 2023: https://diversity.snap.com/

➡️ Oona’s full 40 Minute Mentor episode: https://jbmc.co.uk/insights/40-minute-mentor/downing-street-death-threats-and-dei-with-baroness-oona-king/

Enjoyed this episode?

Keep up to date with all our latest episodes, by hitting the subscribe button on your favourite podcast platform. And for any feedback on what you enjoy the most and ideas on what we can do to make 40 Minute Mentor even better, please leave us a review.