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Episode 2: transcript
Welcome back to Black Lives at UCL. In this episode, our host Tunde Banjoko OBE speaks to three members of UCL’s Professional Services Staff.
- Noel Caliste, an Executive Assistant working within the Library Services, and the Chair of UCL’s LGBTQ+ Equality Steering Group.
- Terrie Fiawoo, Departmental Manager of the Department for Population, Policy and Practice at Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. She is Chair of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Group; Co-chair of the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health’s Race Equity Group, and sits on UCL’s Race Equality Steering Group.
- Marcia Jacks, Institute Manager for the EGA Institute for Women’s Health and Co-chair of UCL’s Race Equality Steering Group.
Transcript: Professional Services Staff
Tunde Banjoko 00:05
Hello, welcome to Black Lives at UCL, a new podcast that amplifies the voices of UCL's Black staff and students. In each episode, we'll be hearing from three people from the UCL community about their experiences of race, racialisation and systemic racism, and asking what we need to change in order to be better. My name is Tunde Banjoko OBE. I'm a social justice advocate, UCL alumnus and the founder of multiple initiatives that are trying to help make the world a fairer place, initiatives like the charity Making the Leap, the UK Social Mobility Awards, and our latest venture Black Charity Leaders. I'm here to start a conversation with Black staff and students here at UCL. I want to know more about their life as part of the UCL community, both the good bits and the not so good bits. More than that, I'm going to be asking my guests to draw on their experiences, and talk about what we need to do to change. This is Black Lives at UCL. So, let me introduce my guests. Today, I'm going to be speaking with members of UCL professional services staff. They are Noel Caliste, an Executive Assistant at UCL working within the Library Services, Noel is also the chair of UCL’s LGBTQ+ Equality Steering Group; Terrie Fiawoo, the department manager of the Department for Population, Policy and Practice at Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and chair of their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Group, she is also the co-chair of the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health’s Race Equity Group and sits on the UCL Race Equality Steering Group; and, Maria Jacks the Institute Manager for the EGA Institute for Women’s Health and Co-Chair of UCL’s Race Equality Steering Group. So before we start our discussion about race and UCL's relationship with it, I'm going to chat to each of today's guests to hear a bit more about what they do. We're going to start with you Noel, tell us a little bit about your time here at UCL - when did you join the UCL community and what does an executive assistant do?
Noel Caliste 02:31
This is my second time at UCL, my first time was back in 2015 and my current time has been since 2019, so I've been here for two years. And Executive Assistant, it basically organises the people around them. So their diaries, their lives... make sure they've got what they need for their meetings. It requires a lot of organisation and a lot of self-management, which I guess are skills that I'm good at. But that's essentially what my job involves.
Tunde Banjoko 03:07
You must have liked it to have done it twice.
Noel Caliste 03:09
Er... well, I guess the question I need to ask is, why did I leave the first time. But, yeah, I mean, as an institution, like generally speaking, UCL is a good place to work.
Tunde Banjoko 03:24
Okay, thank you. Now, tell us a bit about the LGBTQ+ Equality Steering Group, and how did you get involved with it?
Noel Caliste 03:31
The LGBTQ+ Steering Group is a steering group of staff and research students set up to provide support and guidance towards the senior management team at UCL to help people feel more at ease about being themselves while at work. So when I was working at a different institution, I crossed paths with the then chairs of the group and we kind of had just a general chitchat in passing, just kind of how the institutions work differently and what our aims were. And then when I ended up coming back to UCL, it coincided with the one of the previous co-chairs stepping down, and I just saw it as an opportunity to kind of make my mark I guess. In recent years, I've become very conscious of representation and visibility and my role as chair of the LGBTQ equality steering group and the wider Out@UCL network gives me the chance to be representative of being a Black gay man at UCL, to celebrate our differences while educating and inspiring others around me as I have been. I think what I struggle with at UCL is not so much recently, but in the past, is a lack of Black people kind of being represented I guess. I would look, so I would look prior to me joining the steering group, I've looked at the group and nearly all the people in the group are white people. And I guess you kind of get to the point where you want to be the change you want to see. And if you want representation, then you kind of have to initiate it. And so that was my thinking behind that. So we still are lacking in Black people on the committee. But I think it's a start.
Tunde Banjoko 05:24
What kind of projects have you been working on to make UCL a more inclusive place for LGBTQ+ students and why are these projects needed?
Noel Caliste 05:33
So our focus is mainly on staff, so it's basically allowing staff to feel comfortable within their working environment to be open about who they are and so it's setting up the platforms to facilitate that. So whether that be a social setting, or whether that be something specific within a department, or just to kind of allow them to be their true self whilst at work. I mean, we had in the... I think it was 2017 survey staff survey, off the top of my head, I think it was only 40% of staff today feel comfortable disclosing their sexual preferences in the working environment. While it shouldn't necessarily be an issue, we then are kind of trying to correct that and trying to see the reasoning behind that. At the moment, we are looking at trying to do a specific staff survey to try and highlight where there may be pitfalls in people feeling comfortable work. In 2019, we had our largest cohort of people attending Pride in London, with 85 members of staff and students taking place. We had our first presence at Black Pride in London in 2019 and first presence at Trans Pride in Brighton in 2019. We also issued a Trans Community Statement of Support, which we felt was necessary as a larger community. It's felt, and I feel, that until we all have equal rights, the fight kind of has to continue for our trans members of staff and students.
Tunde Banjoko 07:17
Thank you, that kicks us off nicely. Okay, now to you Terry, how long have you been a part of the UCL community and what do you do here?
Terrie Fiawoo 07:26
I joined in 2015. By accident - in that I never thought about UCL, I wandered into a part of the Royal Free hospital that was UCL and it made me think maybe I should go there and just get back into that university environment. After studying, I kind of left it... life takes you in different directions, doesn't it? And so you felt or I felt a bit out of the loop. So I came back thinking it might take me to my PhD. We haven't got there yet, but maybe. And I came to PPP only last July,
Tunde Banjoko 07:57
What's PPP?
Terrie Fiawoo 07:59
Sorry, Population, Policy and Practice. I have worked for the Institute of Child Health. I started here in 2016, took a little detour to a different Institute and then came back because I love it here. And overall, I've had a great experience at ICH, I must say they are quite progressive here and they want to make change happen. So I think this is probably the best place for me right now.
Tunde Banjoko 08:21
Okay, well, you mentioned it briefly, but you've got an MA in Social and Cultural History and your studies have focused on Black British History, is that correct?
Terrie Fiawoo 08:30
I feel like there's a huge gap there - we always look at America as our standard of history. And we've got to think America came out of Britain in some way. So to ignore the fact that we have a very strong history of interaction with the world, it doesn't make sense, especially as we colonised most of it at one point. So I always had a really strong interest in the presence of Black people in Britain before, say, the Windrush generation because that almost gets... well it does get forgotten, to be honest. So I used to always just pick the modules and stuff that could allow me to study this in more detail. But what bothered me is that I never learned any of this unless I went searching before going to university - schools missed it out totally. And even today, schools only focus on the negative history of Black people. Our kids are taught about themselves in line with colonialism and slavery and we're never really taught about our greatness, you know, as kings and queens of Africa, you know, and that bothers me. My kids believe their royalty. They are royalty as far as I'm concerned. And actually my grandmother was coronated only last year. She's nearly 100 and some Africans like this kind of thing, don't they? She travelled to the other part of Ghana to become a queen of a nation she's never even met, you know. I think it's important that we realise that we're a great people and we're always only learning about ourselves in relation to what's been done to us, not what we've done for the world. So that's why I kind of tried to focus on my studies and looking at the positive aspect, looking at our presence and our contributions to society, as opposed to just the fact that we have been oppressed. So yeah, that's me going off on one so.
Tunde Banjoko 10:14
(Laughing) it's all good. Passion is good. Can you tell us how this has informed the work you do, as part of Great Ormond Street's Race Equity Group,
Terrie Fiawoo 10:22
What we're trying to do is not just rebrand and cover over and rename things, I feel like we want to give people a voice. But we also want to make real change. And so, for example, one thing that we're looking at along with the Institute's EPI committee is recruitment. Now, this is simple, we always say, you know, we need to make sure our panels are diverse, blah, blah, blah. But the same people always get asked to sit on these panels within the departments. I'm one of those people that gets asked. And there's another lady, she's always been asked, which says to me, actually, we're still not doing it correctly, because we should be, if we're employing correctly, we should have more people from diverse backgrounds, working in our departments. But that number is not necessarily growing. Although we're hitting the target of making sure our interview panels are diverse. So do you understand what's happening here, okay, we're, we're making sure everybody's interviewed by a diverse panel. But that doesn't mean that we're getting enough people from ethnic minorities coming into the university. So we need to start looking at why that is. Because it's all well and good, you're hitting those targets. But really, you're not making a change, you know, essentially, on a basic level. So what I suggest is that we actually start looking at where we advertise, people need to recognise that they can come and work at UCL. Outside of being an academic, you don't think about coming, I didn't, you know, I, I worked at the hospital and it's only because the consultants I looked after were part of UCL that made me think, oh, UCL could be a place I could work. Why is that I studied in university, and I still never thought that I could come work at UCL. It was by accident that happened. So I feel like we need to be getting our name out there into groups of people that don't think that they could come here so that we do get that diverse load of candidates applying for the jobs, instead of having the same people applying. And okay, we have a racially diverse panel, but we don't have racially diverse candidates coming through. So the university space stays the same, that doesn't change. So that's one of the main things we're looking at right now. Where do we go to get a nice balance? Like, you know, the gold is winning 50%, don't we? We need to represent London's population. So how are we going to get that? We can't carry on with the same program and just say, well, we're doing the right thing, because our panels are diverse. To me, that's just changing the name, but not actually changing the structure of it all. So that's one of the things we're doing.
Tunde Banjoko 12:58
Okay. Well, you get no argument from me on any of that, you're also working with the Black Cultural Archives, which I think is a great charity, what kind of projects have you been working on with them?
Terrie Fiawoo 13:12
I just finished a online exhibition called Journey to the Mother Country, which was, it was awesome, actually, because they didn't even realise they had this information in their archives, or from the perspective that I was looking at it. So, it... literally it was... the idea was to look at different reasons or motivations for people coming to Britain over 100 years. And how those reasons have changed over time. And so I just picked three characters, well three individuals. One was brought here as an exhibit from Ethiopia in the early 1900s and she was paraded around like a... the example of a heathen. So she was literally stolen and brought here but you don't hear about that you don't realise that, you know, Black people were paraded around as examples of what you shouldn't be. So we looked at her story. And then we had another lady who came here as a, an employee of the army. And she talks about the patriotism they felt in Jamaica. And you know, it's really interesting the, the feeling of this being their true home, like being a totally different story when they arrived. And so this was in the 40s, the 30s, 40s. And then in the 60s, 70s, you've got people coming over here with a more revolutionary idea of life, because they're hearing people speak more outwardly about the wrongs of colonialism. And the idea that actually, it's not as good as they say it is. So it kind of just showed how ideas change... everyone's still coming to the UK, but the motivations are different and their contributions are different and their experiences are different once they get here. So that's that and then now I'm about to start working on a timeline and digital timeline of the Black Presence in Britain since the Romans, so that'll be interesting.
Tunde Banjoko 14:57
Excellent. Thank you for that, Terry. Okay, Marcia, your turn! So can you tell us what does managing the EGA Institute for Women's Health entail?
Marcia Jacks 15:07
I've managed the whole department. So I'm responsible for HR, finance, estates, health and safety... so everything, you know, around professional services. And I have a team that I work with.
Tunde Banjoko 15:21
And you're also Co-chair of UCL Race Equality Steering Group. So can you tell our listeners a bit more about that group and what it hopes to achieve?
Marcia Jacks 15:32
Okay, so I've been at UCL around 26 years this year and there's always been a Race Equality Group. I think I got involved soon after I came actually, it was in a different form and it was about probably 10 years ago, that I think it was actually the director of EDI, that was Fiona, who suggested that we relaunch it because it had kind of gone by the wayside. And so we relaunched the Race Equality Group, and it didn't quite go as we planned. And I think about eight years ago, I think it actually came from me, I suggested we do a smaller group, which would be a more focus group. And so that's where the term "steering group" came from, so we had a sort of a wider group, and then a Race Equality Steering Group. And the reference for the steering group was that it was a smaller group of about 20 people, and that things would get done and then we would report back to the larger group. And that has really, really transformed and worked quite well over the last few years. The other thing that made it work as well, was the fact that it was previously led mainly by professional services staff and so we brought in a suggestion that we have an academic leading, because then, in terms of them influencing senior staff, it was better if it was an academic. And so we had our first chair, who was a researcher and an academic, and that he left and then I was asked to take on the chair. So I've been doing that for about six to seven years now. But over the last few years, it's really gone from strength to strength. And I think that the culture and the way, and just the climate of where we are with race, it's been really impactful. So the group I chair, so I co-chair with Michael Sulu, previously it was Ijeoma Uchegbu, she was the co-chair, and so we've done quite a lot over the last few years. We've got Vice Deans of EDI on there, we've got a few academics, we've got professional services, staff, and student representatives as well. And all 11 faculties within UCL are represented within the group - two or three people, even perhaps just one person from the faculty.
Tunde Banjoko 17:56
Ok great, and could you tell us a bit about some of the projects you've been involved in and what would you say would be your greatest achievements, your greatest hits?
Marcia Jacks 18:06
So we've been, as a group, we've been involved in quite a lot of over the last few years. So we were involved in the Commission for Inquiry into eugenics. So a few of us were on there, the town hall meeting because of the Black Lives Matter last year 2020 and the town hall meeting that came out of that. So that was major, because major things have come from those projects. Personally, for me, it was... there's a launch of what we call an Inclusive Advocacy Program, which was, I attended a leadership program a few years ago, and that was for Black staff, senior Black staff. And we were asked to do a project - support something within the organisation that we wanted to change. And I was always involved in mentoring staff and it was actually Fiona McClement that showed me the feedback for what we call a BAME Mentor Scheme. And looking at that feedback, it said that mentorship wasn't sufficient to change recruitment within UCL, to change the career trajectory of BAME staff within UCL. So the suggestion was that I looked at a sponsorship scheme, and quite a lot of those were happening in the States. So to do some research around that, so I did that. There wasn't much in academia, but then it's how you can transfer whatever's going on in the sort of commercial field, into academia. So that was a project I worked on, I came up with quite a lot of recommendations, and it was taken forward by the EDI team and HR. And I must say, I didn't see how it would work at the time, but they actually turned it into a scheme for the inclusive advocacy scheme instead of a sponsorship scheme. And it was launched in 2017 as a pilot, and it's now going to be launched as a permanent offering within our organisation development programs.
Tunde Banjoko 20:04
Excellent all of you. Now that we've learned a bit more about each of you, I want to talk specifically about UCL and your experiences of it, especially as you all know exactly how UCL works. You are UCL experts and this is a question for all of you: how visible would you say blackness is in the UCL community? Especially reflecting on your experiences as professional services staff, do you think blackness is less visible than it could or should be?
Marcia Jacks 20:32
So for me, I've been blessed in my career, I think, because I started off at administrator grade six, and I'm now manager grade nine. So when I look I think that, if we're talking about blackness and UCL, there is because there's lots of people on lower grades, there's the security guards, and there's, you know, the cleaners - you do see Black people at UCL, I'm not sure if that's, if that's where we're going with the question. But blackness is, we are visible. So for me, my concern is that we're not visible where we should be in terms of the senior staff, because our student body is actually about I think it's over 50%. And my concern, even when I was an administrator, not very senior, was that when you look around at that we weren't represented at those higher levels. So it's as if we were not able to aspire to be at those higher levels. And obviously, if you can't see yourself, it's less likely that you're going to get there. So I was on a mission, even from a lower grade to change things. So for an example, I remember having to write to communications to find out why when all the brochures were with all white people. There were no visibility of Black people in sort of like the student brochures, anything you see in terms of the brochures that went out, of course, it was all paper based then, about a decade ago and much more paper based. And so that was a concern of mine. So in terms of that, I think we're doing much better now in terms of visibility, even on the websites, etc. So yes, there is blackness but where we want to aspire to is where our students come in, our junior staff come in, and they see blackness at the top level within UCL and they can aspire, so we belong and we can achieve that as well.
Tunde Banjoko 22:26
Thanks. Our audience can't see of course, but I can I can see Terrie and Noel nodding furiously, as Marcia was speaking. So what do you want to say?
Terrie Fiawoo 22:37
Well, I totally agree with Marcia, this visibility is in certain areas and the problem is, I think, when you do get into those other areas, you are very careful about how you behave and how you talk. And you almost become isolated in those areas. You know, I've sat on in meetings, and I'm looking at the Black person who's leading the meeting, and you can see she's biting her tongue the whole time, because someone is just nit-picking at nonsense. And I'm like, I don't know if I could have that patience, but is that because I'm mixed and I'm lighter and maybe I will not be... I'll feel more comfortable saying something. And afterwards I've spoken to her about it and she says she's learned from an early age, she's dark skinned, and she's a woman and so she has to smile. And that saddens me a little bit. Because, you know, when you, even when you get up there, you're, you're still playing their game, you can't just be you. You can't speak your mind. Someone, a white person can say what they want in that meeting and you just bide your time and rip your hair out silently. And that, obviously, and that's because you don't have anybody else with you. You're alone up there. You know, you're the only Black person in that meeting. Or you may come across as aggressive because you've said, "could you stop nit-picking at my spelling mistakes, we're here to talk about something else more important", and that bothers me. And I think that we have to find a way to become... to not be the only one in the room so that we are able to show our true selves and be confident and shut down people when they're talking rubbish and also move forward positively.
Tunde Banjoko 24:22
Noel?
Noel Caliste 24:23
What I would say is that UCL is... yeah, it's getting better, is what I would say. When like I said, when I first came to UCL, I very much felt like I had to conform to the people around me and kind of how they were. Like the chameleon, to kind of you had to, I had to change myself in order to adapt to how the people were. And I really struggled with that. I also struggled with a perceived generalisation that people had, of what Black people were like. So consciously or not, I was labelled or assumed to be a certain way. And if I showed any... not weakness, but kind of showed anything, it was almost deemed as a negative, like, that was a, that was a big struggle for me. And then what I would say is this time around, it's been a completely different experience. Don't get me wrong, I have worked for this, but I feel more like I can be myself and not necessarily have to check myself all the time, and not apologise all the time. In my role as chair of the steering group, it is hard because I am a grade seven and in the group, there are academics - I think I'm the lowest grade in the group. So sometimes I do question my role and my ability as the only Black person, and then again as the lower grade. But then it's a matter of kind of just believing in myself. And I think that because I have the support of the people on the committee, it kind of helps me not worry so much about being Black, and how I'm coming across.
Terrie Fiawoo 26:15
I just wanted to say something about the idea of being a chameleon and having to fit in. I went on a excellent leadership course a BAME Emerging Leaders course. And that taught me to be me while being a manager, while leading people because I lead white people and at first, when I came in, I thought, "Oh, my gosh, I am the only one in our team", and you know, I'm sitting here with my curly hair and they could be just thinking, put your hair in a hairband, that kind of thing, you know, like, all these things go through your mind. But being in this course, it was a very safe space, because everybody was from a different background. And we spoke very freely. But it gave me the confidence to recognise that my cultural background is very important to how I lead at UCL, how I deal with my staff, and I shouldn't try to be somebody else. But I don't think everybody has that opportunity, so they don't have that confidence, which is something that we have to work on. Also the confusion of knowing whether someone's being horrible to you, because you're a lower grade because of your skin colour. I've had people make comments, "oh, you're not academic, you wouldn't know", you know? And is that because I'm professional services? Or is that because they assume I've never studied before because of my colour or background. So you always have this dilemma of working in professional services, as well as you don't know whether it is because of your colour sometimes or because of your station. So that's a confusing one for me as well. But yeah, that's my point, so, carry on.
Tunde Banjoko 27:45
(Laughing) okay, what can UCL do to increase or get better at the areas, in regard to racism and blackness, than it currently is? What, what can UCL do to get better?
Noel Caliste 28:06
I think they need to take more risks. I think there's a bit of a culture within UCL where they kind of go with what they know, especially at the higher levels, I think, and obviously I can be, could be wrong. But I think there's this "we could go for the Black senior academic, who could come in and change things and switch things up, but let's go with the white man who kind of has his foot or kind of has networks within UCL already, because then he'll be the safer bet". And until they kind of, until they kind of take the plunge, I don't see anything miraculously changing. There's all these initiatives, and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're not good, but I just don't think they're doing enough. I mean, they can say there's not enough senior Black academics. But there are senior Black academics. So whether there's enough or not, it's kind of irrelevant. It's like if you really wanted to do something, if you really wanted to kind of if you really wanted the visibility and you kind of really wanted to make a change, you could.
Tunde Banjoko 29:21
Ok, Marcia?
Marcia Jacks 29:23
Right, so as somebody who is what is actually on the committees that are trying to make change, I think a lot is happening. For instance, we do the, Ijeoma and myself - she's the Vice Race Envoy for UCL, and we've been doing these faculty roadshows for the last three years, which is where we take the data on staff recruitment and student awarding gap, and we take it, initially we took it to the Deans of the faculties, second year increased to more people and now it's to the whole leadership teams and within faculties and they look at that data and where there's under representative-under representation, they're actually having action plans to deal with it. So most of the faculties now have their own EDI teams and their own action plan. So coming from where we used to be, I've seen a major shift. In the last few years, when we first started to do these road shows, we had some hostility in terms of how they perceived and how they welcomed us, this year, it was completely gone - people are more engaged. So I think, if you think about UCL, which there are 11 faculties, I hope I'm saying this, I'm sure there is 11 plus the dental divisions, each faculty, as far as I'm concerned, has got a different culture. So it's like 11, plus cultures within one organisation and it's how you get everybody to work the same. And UCL is made up of people and some people will be wanting change, some people will not and I think it takes longer than we probably think it should to actually bring people on board. And it's like a strategy of how do you get these people to change and it is people that's going to change things, it's not going to be programs, it's not going to be initiatives - you can have as many initiatives as you want is how they're going to be delivered and they're going to be delivered by people. So for instance, we are wanting the leadership, the leaders, the managers to have more autonomy and take more responsibility for these initiatives, because they're the one that's going to bring it about
Terrie Fiawoo 31:37
Something that Marcia said, people, as she's mentioned, initiatives, blah-dee-blah-blah, we can do this all day, but it's people. Last October, I done an event, which focused on different people and their successes, you know, pushing through the adversity. And some of the stories that were told for me seemed really light, but I had white people coming up to me afterwards and saying, "Wow, that made me cry, I couldn't believe it and I realised, although I wasn't racist, I wasn't anti-racist". And so you live comfortably knowing you're not the perpetrator of racism, but you don't actually take any action to change it. And so I think what we have to do, and this is something that ICH are trying to do, is start a campaign of anti-racism, teaching people, how they can speak out, teaching people to look at themselves and reflect to how they behave, and how they contribute to the problem, even though they're not doing anything wrong. As such, by standing there, you're complicit - by not making a change, you're complicit. So we have to actually almost get it so that people, individuals are self-evaluating, and then wanting to contribute to the change, wanting to be anti-racist, instead of just not being racist.
Tunde Banjoko 32:56
Noel?
Noel Caliste 32:57
Yeah, I mean, it's just an extension of what's been said, really, I mean, it's fine having initiatives within the faculties and the departments and kind of increasing visibility for ethnic backgrounds, or Black backgrounds. But when the people who are running the institution are effectively all white, you kind of need to wonder how far they're wanting to effect the change. Because until, personally speaking, until they, they kind of mix that up and show visibility of different races, their initiative can only go so far.
Tunde Banjoko 33:34
Thank you. All right, so, it's been really enjoyable and I've really enjoyed your insights. And I'm going to end this episode in the same way that I'll be ending all the episodes, which is to ask you one final question: what is your favourite place at UCL and why is it your favourite place?
Terrie Fiawoo 34:00
My little covered office space.
Tunde Banjoko 34:05
Tell me about it?
Terrie Fiawoo 34:06
You know what it was, it was the telephone room before lockdown. And I was like, "This is my room now". It is lovely. There's no windows or just a little glass panel that people can look at me through if they want to give me something. And it's peaceful. It allows me to just have a moment to myself away from all of the noise and, you know, family life and all of that. And so I actually come to UCL because of this quiet space, which is really sad, you know? Obviously I do my work while I'm here, but it is it is nice, just coming here and having that peaceful moment without having to interact with anybody unless you really want to.
Tunde Banjoko 34:43
Noel?
Noel Caliste 34:44
Mine's... it has to be a specific time - it has to be when it's sunny, but it's to sit on the steps of the Portico. And kind of look out to London, see the skyline whilst taking in the sun. Just seeing the back and forth of students and staff in and out of the gates. It just allows you to kind of escape the hustle and bustle of the day and just catch yourself I guess. So yeah, that would be my, my favourite place.
Tunde Banjoko 35:15
And Marcia?
Marcia Jacks 35:17
Yeah, mine in my office. I think it's larger than Terrie's - I've got a meeting table in there (laughing) so it's larger than Terrie's. I say this because my kids will... I used to work very long hours and my kids were saying it's like your home you know, it's like there was no difference between home and work in the in the sense that I mean, I did some crazy hours at work, but I enjoy my work and so many things happened in my office: the conversations, I do a lot of mentoring and so my office is my place. Obviously, things have changed and I've got used to working from home now. So things will change. I don't think I'll ever go back to being the same.
Tunde Banjoko 35:51
I'd really like to thank my guests Noel Caliste, Terrie Fiawoo and Marcia Jacks. Thank you all very much indeed. I really enjoyed hearing from you all.
Kyla Jardine 36:07
Black Lives at UCL was presented by Tunde Banjoko, produced and written by Kyla Jardine and Cerys Bradley. The music for the podcast was produced by Amine Mabrouk. If you'd like to hear more podcasts from UCL, subscribe wherever you download your podcasts or visit ucl.ac.uk/UCL-minds. And don't forget, you can also follow us on Twitter @UCL. Thanks for listening