[00:00:00] Ellington Brown: Welcome to SpeakUP! International with Rita Burke and Elton Brown! 

[00:00:18] Rita Burke: On SpeakUP! International. We have had the good fortune of having conversations with people from all over the world. We spoke with people in South Africa, in Nigeria, in Ghana, in England, in Brazil, in the States, in Canada. But today's the first time ever we're speaking with someone from Wales, which is in Britain, and that person is Leah Brown!

She is a problem solver with a distinguished legal career. She's the founder and CEO of the way Finding group. Leah is also an accredited mediator who is dedicated to promoting authentic accountability and rebuilding trust. She is a dual US and UK National and a regular commentator on the Mid-Atlantic Podcast.

And as we say on SpeakUP! International, we prefer for a guest tell their own stories, even though there's much more I can say about Leah Brown. I'm welcoming you, Leah, to SpeakUP! International! 

[00:01:42] Leah Brown: Rita, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here for this conversation. 

[00:01:47] Ellington Brown: It's amazing what we can do with Zoom, being able to connect all over the world to individuals such as yourself, and it still feels fresh and exciting regardless. What kept you moving forward when, let's say the odds were stacked against you during your early life or whenever pick a time.

[00:02:14] Leah Brown: I've always been somebody who is extremely tenacious and I don't think I really saw the value of that until my late twenties. I've always been somebody who's very driven and I would careen from achievement to achievement and that kind of was my escape. So whether that was pouring myself into team sports or whether that was excelling in music as a violinist or whether that was being intensely focused on winning the spelling cup every single term. 

I was very much driven by short term rewards and. As I got older the stakes got higher and the rewards got bigger, but the payoff got less. And so eventually I had to have a reckoning where I confronted this tenacity and I was very resentful of it because it gave me a quality where I wouldn't give up.

Even when the chips were completely stacked against me and there have been many things that have happened in my life, whether that was nearly being deported or whether that was struggling to get a job where I could qualify as a lawyer or whether that was. The challenges of starting a new business where giving up is just not an option!

I solve problems and I will figure it out and I will make a way where there is no way because my faith depends on it. And so I don't know. I think I am up for life's challenges and I've got a track record of getting through it. So I guess that's the mindset thing that has kept me going. 

[00:04:01] Rita Burke: You talked about being tenacious and I see tenacity as such a wonderful characteristic.

As a matter of fact, in this world today, if you haven't got that, you are in trouble in almost all sectors. I wanted to talk about what got you started in the legal profession.

[00:04:28] Leah Brown: That's a great question! I was studying philosophy at university and I had spent a lot of time pursuing my music. I thought I was gonna go and become a professional solo violinist and I couldn't afford the fees. And I had gotten accepted to both the Royal Academy of Music in London as well as the legal course providers for the graduate diploma in law.

And I didn't grow up around a bunch of lawyers. Most people in my family are scientists. And I was attracted to law because I could deploy these problem solving skills. A lot of people go into law because they want to fight for justice or they really wanna see justice in action, or they're really keen to right specific wrongs in a particular area.

And I knew from the outset that wasn't me. Now there's a great irony here as I'm sure we'll come onto another question, but it turns out that I'm very passionate about writing I justice. And actually maybe at the root of the heart of the thing is that yes, I was very interested in securing justice, but I spent most of my time focusing on the fact that I could assimilate huge amounts of information.

I could make very complex things simple so that ordinary people could understand them. And I wasn't unafraid of the kind of dysfunctions or the challenges that would put a lot of people off dealing with difficult situations. And so it was with that outlook and that self-awareness that I decided to pursue a career in transactional work.

Corporate mergers and acquisitions, the stuff that's on the front page of the Financial Times huge money flows. Huge pressure, high stakes because. Again, I was very comfortable with chaos and I was willing to bring order outta that chaos, and so it suited me well because you had this lifecycle of a deal, so you'd be really busy and then you'd be completely quiet and then you'd be really busy and then you'd be completely quiet.

And I liked that more than working on cases that would go on. For years and years, and that would determine whether your career progressed. One footnote on that though I never intended to be a corporate M&A. Solicitor as we have in the United Kingdom. I actually was called to the bar and I wanted to be a barrister.

I was singled out at law school or being a proficient advocate and somebody who was confident in public speaking and who was able to distill those ideas orally as well as in a written fashion. And I did very well in my bar exams, but I was not able to secure the necessary immigration. Status to be able to pursue my career at the time in England.

And I always wondered whether I would regret that decision of not finding a way, not sticking with it long enough to find a way. And I didn't. I jumped into this career as a corporate mergers and acquisitions lawyer with both feet, and it's 20 years on that I'm like, oh. And I've ended up full circle.

If I just stuck with that, I would've gotten here a lot quicker. So you live and you learn.

[00:07:39] Ellington Brown: For someone who, who claims that they don't have a sense of humor why is my stomach hurting? That's one question. You don't have to answer that one. How did your personal experiences shape your decision to find the Wayfinders group? 

[00:08:01] Leah Brown: Oh, there's a saying and there, there are enough situations in my professional CV that you could be forgiven for thinking I was the common denominator in all of the chaos.

I, I careened from challenging management environment to challenging regulatory environment to investigating embezzlement and fraud to dealing with leaders who had been found to have. Been sexually inappropriate with members of the workforce. And I've been through the whole kind of gamut of governance challenges in quick succession.

In fact, every day at the office for about five years, felt like I was in a different episode of succession and I found my feet working for a FinTech organization. Goldman Sachs backed venture that was working in financial services to make mortgages and protection insurance available to the average customer in the United Kingdom so that they could buy homes and have the requisite insurance to keep them safe if anything went wrong.

And I was doing a particularly difficult deal where we were selling the business to the gentleman who fired 900 people on Zoom. In the pandemic. And I was dealing with a leadership team that didn't want to call the fear that they were experiencing about the lack of certainty about the transaction.

They didn't wanna call a spade. That created a whole bunch of tensions. Trigger points where I was in the firing line for other people's emotions and I was here doing my job. I'm somebody who does what I say I'm gonna do. When I say I'm gonna do it, I do not have a track record of overpromising and under-delivering.

And so I couldn't understand why there was all of this nervous energy around me. I was like, guys, I've got it. Like I'm on it and we're gonna get this done and we've got a plan and if I need to deviate from the plan, you'll be the first to know. But if I say it's gonna be okay, it's probably gonna be okay.

And I couldn't, understand why people weren't willing to share the fullness of their experience with one another so that they could have solidarity together in it as a board of directors. And so the Wayfinders group was born out of this recognition that I wasn't just performing my role as a lawyer.

I was also performing a role as a mediator where I had to really get underneath the surface of the concerns of each individual leader. What was their experience? What did they need? How could I be communicating with them more effectively? How could I be giving them greater comfort? How could I be giving them a greater awareness of what their options are but also how could I help them to work better together in the common goal that we all needed in order to find freedom from that situation. And there were some relationships that were irreparably challenged by that process. And most of them were successfully rebuilt.

And so now what I do at the Wayfinders Group is I spend time holding space for leaders who are going through change or conflict or crisis. And I help, whether that's rebuilding trust or effective communication or helping them work out strategically how they want to move forwards. But part of that process is learning about yourself and how you are showing up and finding agency to, to empower people so that they recognize that.

If they got the job for a reason, they're the expert in this particular area. I'm not here to do their job for them, but I am here to help people become the best version of themselves. And I do some legal advisory work within the Wayfinders group but we're really about helping people find a way where there is no way, charting that uncharted territory.

And saying, we're not gonna take no for an answer. We're putting that tenacity into action through values driven problem solving to help individuals achieve their goals.

[00:12:00] Rita Burke: That's a book. What you just said to us is the story for a book now. You mentioned that the Wayfinders group hold space for leaders. Talk about who those leaders are. Are they from one particular sector, profession? Who are they? 

[00:12:24] Leah Brown: No. The Wayfinders group is multidisciplinary we're not just mediators.

Most of the mediators have subject matter expertise. So for example, I'm also a lawyer. We have some mediators who are HR practitioners who are expert facilitators who are change management consultants, who are politicians, who are the whole gamut. But, the vision was for public sector as well as private sector, as well as third sector or charity leaders.

Because the common experience is finding oneself in uncharted territory and not knowing who to call. So traditionally in the olden days, the first person you would call would be your lawyer. People don't wanna do that anymore because their lawyer is gonna charge them and it's gonna be ridiculously expensive.

And they don't necessarily want the legal answer to the problem that they face in a situation where it's a crisis situation. The first person that they will historically call is their PR firm. And that will enable them to respond to whatever crisis in real time, to manage the external stakeholders and maybe to manage the internal stakeholders in the business.

What happens if you don't want any of your external stakeholders to know what's going on and what happens if you cannot let it get out, that your internal stakeholders are having such significant problems, that you are not actually effectively able to run the company. You need somebody who's both independent and discreet and completely unrelated coming to it new, but you know that you can trust them to effectively figure it out and help you move forward.

And so I do a lot of board mediation. Where I manage processes for between 10 and 15 people, and I work with them sometimes for a day, sometimes for several days, sometimes for several weeks to really help them understand what's going on for them and what's going on for the people around them.

Because the fast thing that goes. When there, there's that type of conflict is awareness of the experience of somebody else and the ability to really check in with what you are really feeling about the situation. 

[00:14:29] Ellington Brown: Wow. That was a lot of information that you packed into that small amount of of time. And I remember earlier, are you saying to the effect that, you work through the chaos which you remind me of somebody else, but we're not going there. And so I'm just wondering how do you maintain your own wellbeing while you're navigating through the chaos?

[00:15:02] Leah Brown: Yeah, that's a really tricky one that I continue to grapple with because it's one thing to be a practitioner and to be holding space for these situations in whatever form. It's something quite different to also be a founder and to be in the trenches experiencing some of the similar experiences and challenges that your clients are facing at the same time.

And just so your listeners know, I don't live in Wales and I'm not from Wales. I'm very well accustomed to Wales. I spend a lot of time in Wales, but I actually grew up in North Yorkshire in England, and I live down in southeast Kent. I am about 15 miles away from Dover. I live in broad stairs, looking out over to France, and it is beautiful.

It is one of the most calming experiences to get up in the morning and go for a walk with my dog on the beach. I think people have a huge part to play in the sense of perspective. How do you recover after a really challenging work encounter. There's nothing quite like sea, air to blow away the cobwebs.

I'm also involved in a discipline called flotation. So I go to a flotation tank in London. They use it for military. Veterans or people who have complex PTSD which I also have, and you experience weightlessness because they put 500 kilos of Epsom salts in those baths and you, its sensory deprivation.

And so I'll spend an hour or two hours in there at least once a month, and I always feel better after I've done that. Then you have supervisions. So we as part of our professional practice meet with other mediators to share concerns and keeping a professional training diary to work out. If something hasn't gone well, what could I do better differently? 'cause one of the rules in mediation is listen. And the other one is, do no harm. 

And sometimes when I get very tired, I can feel myself edging towards doing harm. And so there's a huge onus and obligation on me to ensure my own emotional health before I go into one of these processes.

And to answer your question, I can't do too many concurrent or consecutive processes without sufficient time to recover. Or to regroup or to recalibrate. And that is a I suppose one of the challenges of doing work like this. But I also have a fantastic high performance coach and as I have a great spiritual advisor and there are a lot of people that I also, go and spend the day with them whilst they are doing work like me, who are much more senior than I am. And then I learn from them and I share my experiences with them. And it's informal supervision process, which I really enjoy. 'cause it definitely makes me feel better about what I'm trying to achieve.

[00:18:10] Rita Burke: I like what you said there. And how you emphasized the importance of listen listen, do no harm. And that thought that I need a concept. That notion could be applied to absolutely any sector, any profession. This is what I want you to unpack for us right now. The term restorative approaches. Tell us what that, the significance, what does it mean?

[00:18:42] Leah Brown: Yes. So restorative approaches recognize that a harm has occurred and a restorative approach prioritizes healing that harm over punishing the person who has called to that harm. And so it's not transactional, it's relational. So if traditional justice focuses on who's to blame for what happened here, a restorative approach asks instead what happened?

Who was harmed? How can we repair this? So it, it's all about taking a different view of the harm, focusing on the survivor of that harm and what does it look like to take accountability for that harm and then building. Specific actions that rebuild trust through that accountability, through that acknowledgement, through maybe an apology or amends that are agreed upon between the two participants so that you can have concrete evidence of desire for rehabilitation rather than meaningless words that don't change anything.

[00:19:57] Ellington Brown: I'll call it mantra where you're saying listen, do no harm. I, I. I can see where that can fall under many different topics. Could be in your own personal life, it could be maybe just with when you are in, with a group of friends.

But I do think that this is really important. And in fact Rita, I think I'm gonna make a speech out of that's really catchy. So I'm going to, I'm going to use that. I hope you don't mind, Leah. 

[00:20:26] Leah Brown: So mediators across the globe will love you for that! 

[00:20:31] Ellington Brown: I love being loved! You said about institutions and you said something about Mark their own homework.

Did I get that right? Yeah. And if that's the case, what are, what's marking on their own homework? 

[00:20:52] Leah Brown: Okay. So let's drill back a couple of steps. So we've talked about harm. If somebody experiences harm from another person what would a restorative approach look like to remedy that harm or bring about healing?

But what happens if an institution causes harm? So whether that's, I don't know, maybe a hospital or maybe a police force or possibly a charity. That has a specific purpose. What happens when they cause harm, or an employer, what happens if they cause harm? And I suppose the point here is that in England specifically, and I know that this is also true of the United States, we have institutions that really aren't accountable.

They're funded by the taxpayer and they have a budget and they have a purpose, and they have a very clear scope or times of reference. And let's say they breach that so they cause harm. So the best example is probably. The Windrush the Windrush scandal that has been satellite as a result of the home office in the UK's management of those who came across on HMS Windrush and who were given citizenship in the United Kingdom and therefore should not have been up for at any point in time.

Deportation. They served the country through the war. And, um, worked in public services, but they were issued with no paperwork and therefore, when asked later down the line, were not able to prove that A), they'd come across on the wind rush, or b), that they'd been working in these approved jobs. They were legal and also evidence how long they had been in the country.

Many of them don't have passports. Okay so coming on to marking your own homework. So the government eventually discovers that it has been treating Windrush, let's called them survivors, or claimants inappropriately. And what has ended up happening is they've created a scheme or redress. But the department that has caused the harm, so has been illegally deporting people, that has broken up families, that has sent people back to their host nations, even though they were not born anywhere except for the uk.

So how are you gonna send them to Jamaica? Help me understand. They're responsible for determining not only who gets compensation, but how much compensation they get. Regardless of whether that person is legally represented or not, and therefore both the scheme and the system and the compensation is subject to no kind of oversight or independence or accountability.

And so this is an organization saying aren't we great? We've made amends for our wrongs, right? Here's this big compensation scheme and where everybody who's eligible can get the money, but it's no, you're really passing yourself on the back here because if you really were sorry, you would ensure that no stone was left unturned to ensure that the compensation reached the people that it needed to reach to ensure that justice was done, to acknowledge, but also make amends for your failure to enable them to achieve justice.

Now there are many other examples of institutions coverups. So the marking of your own homework is effectively tantamount to a coverup. It's any situation in which an organization has a duty to act in a particular way, has chosen not to, and then in order to not be found out, has created a work around so that they can still look good and continue to operate.

Most importantly, without any resignations of the leaders at the helm.

[00:24:31] Rita Burke: But it's fascinating. We're talking with Leah Brown and on speak of international. We seek to inform, to inspire and to educate. And believe it or not, I am being educated and I thank you for that. Recently you presented a white paper. I want to hear more about that project, please. 

[00:24:59] Leah Brown: So it's on this very theme. So the full title of the white paper is From Harm to Healing, rebuilding Trust in Britain's Publicly Funded Institutions, and it effectively sets out a mandate for change. So what would frustration look like. What would a framework or blueprint we're calling it, a blueprint for change look like and it makes three primary recommendations to the government.

The first recommendation is the creation of an office for institutional accountability. The second is a national restorative framework to be a adopted so that all public servants have to work within that framework. And then the third is this kind of unpicking of the leadership and the cultural and mesh that has allowed these coverups to persist.

Now taking a step back, the blueprint is this four stage process, which I've mentioned as we've been talking. So that's the acknowledgement, the apology, the accountability, and the amends. And the idea that we're trying to achieve is to enshrine in legislation this blueprint, so this restorative framework, but also to create a situation where for all of the scandals for which there are compensation schemes, and for all of the future scandals for which there will be future compensation schemes, we need an office to both be reactive to those scandals. 

But also seek to prevent them. What is the point in continuing to make provision for future compensation schemes if we don't do anything to get to the root of the problem, which is how do we prevent these from happening in the first place?

Which is why that recommendation three about that leadership and cultural challenges that we have within British society are the real. That's harder to change than legislation because what you have to do is both embed in the hearts and the minds of people, both that other people are being hurt by their conduct, the severity of that conduct the unacceptability of that conduct, and a real, I think, empowering of why you are a public servant in the first place and what your responsibility is as a public servant.

And it's not very popular when you tell people that they're not doing what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it. We're gonna start with the legislation and see if we can there's a piece of legislation that we are hoping Parliament will be considering in, in its next docket, which is the Public Accountability, public Authority Accountability bill which is also known as Hillsborough Law.

And for those listeners who aren't familiar with Hillsborough there was a disaster 34 years ago in a football stadium. Which involved the police, which is run by the home office, the same home office as involved in the Windrush scandal. And basically there was an institutional coverup as to what happened and who was responsible.

And the families of the victims have fought for 34 years to get a legal duty of candor passed in Parliament. And the current prime minister of the UK Kiir Stama. Er promised that this legislation would be considered in parliament and there's been a huge amount of challenge over the summer to say, we're not considering this bill.

We don't know when we're gonna consider it. And yet it was a key election promise. And so we're hoping that by embedding some of our amendments, we will both be able to revive the consideration of that legislation and improve it in a way that makes it palatable to the wider stakeholder group, no small feat.

aNd really put the survivor voice at the center because we would be doing survivors a huge in injustice disservice, I think would probably be a better word if we continue to focus on reactivity rather than prevention.

[00:29:01] Ellington Brown: What is the misconception that people have about restorative justice? I'm not gonna have any brain cells left when this is, this conversation is over, but go ahead. 

[00:29:16] Leah Brown: I don't think that's true at all.

So first misconception about restorative justice. Okay. Historically, we as humans associate restorative justice with the criminal justice system, okay? It is for somebody who has been convicted of an offense that is a criminal offense, and somebody who has had a criminal act that they have experienced, and it is to bring them together to enable the victim to heal.

We prefer the term survivor, but in this context, traditionally criminal justice system, perpetrators and victims.

We have a social cohesion problem. Most Western countries are grappling with this at the moment because of polarization, because of pluralism, because of social media, because of all of the things that we are struggling with in 2025. So the number one misconception in my mind is that restorative justice is only for the criminal justice system.

It applies to our workforces, to our churches, to our houses, to our personal relationships, right? We are so good at holding grudges for things that people have done to us, whether that's generational trauma whether that is something to do with a sibling or a friend or an ex-partner, or people who won't even set foot.

In a church because of something that they've experienced there. We have huge problems with safeguarding and spiritual abuse in the uk, which is also in our white paper. And the reality is we don't know how to heal effectively because it is not part of our literacy growing. And therefore this idea that there is a process that could be available to people to help them be healed, people in society rather than the hurt people who hurt people seems like an own goal.

We, we could be integrating this into all of our environments for such a benefit. I don't understand why it's not part of every disciplinary process. It's not just about the carrot and the stick. What if you could transform the people who work with you, not just so that you can solve this individual problem, but so that you can.

Build a cohesive culture so that you know that when they go on from here, they've taken something from this environment. They've developed themselves, they're closer towards becoming the best version of themselves. It's not just about criminality or the things that drive people into that criminality.

It's recognizing that we are hurt by so many different things as we ricochet through life. And I think there's a real opportunity here to rethink the way that we do human relationships. I, 

[00:31:48] Rita Burke: I quite agree with you on that one. I, as you speak and describe that, I think of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee or group in South Africa and stuff that's been done in Canada to our Native Canadians, but that's gonna be a different story.

But I think about that as you speak about restorative approaches now. You explained in your bio that as a child, chaos was your world, chaos, was your world. Talk to us about that.

[00:32:26] Leah Brown: Yes. I'm, the eldest daughter of two and I grew up in an environment where both of my parents worked. And my, both of my parents were studying for their PhDs whilst working full time, and my brother and I were very busy and involved in a variety of activities. And so there wasn't much consistency.

So whether that was who's supposed to pick us up from school or do we have food in the fridge for the week ahead, it was just, it was very chaotic. When you then add to that cha challenging marital relationship my, I, my, my dad's job wasn't. The most normal of jobs. He worked in intelligence.

And my mom has some mental health challenges that have emerged as time has moved on. And so it was a very challenging environment. It was very emotionally volatile. Sometimes physically volatile. Unpredictable. Inconsistent. And for somebody who loves order. And who loves routine and who really thrives when I feel safe.

It was not the easiest of environments to navigate. What I found particularly interesting is that my brother doesn't have the same reflections on our childhoods. And I know that is in large part because he had me.

[00:33:58] Ellington Brown: There's many levels that you were traveling at lightning speed. But what you talked, we talked about, I'm going back to something where you said listen. Do no harm. I love that. And I'm just wondering what patterns of harm do you see that often encounter in institutions like maybe the police or education systems and NHS for an example.

Can you speak to that? 

[00:34:33] Leah Brown: Yeah, you framed it for me perfectly, so the Listen listen. What if you don't take. Patient's concerns seriously? Or what if you don't take the process stations, that it's a mistaken identity case if, if it's a stop and search case for the police or what if a survivor is desperately trying to tell you that they have repeatedly been abused in so many different ways with proof points, and there's whistleblowers and you're just bearing your head in the sand and pretending that nobody has disclosed anything to you.

So that's the listen listen. The do no harm, if you have a police, I, I run part of what we do at the Wayfinders Group for social responsibility is run the local mediation center in, and the number of domestic abuse related calls I get is increasing by the week, and sometimes it is the dad who has not been able to see his children because his ex-wife has got a restraining order.

Or because there's no centralized point where they can drop off the kids, where the ex-wife can still feel safe or there's no immediate family who can perform that role to ensure that the children can still see their father. Or it's the woman who is desperate to pick up the kids and go somewhere else but doesn't have exclusive.

Rights when it comes to visitation or there's no child order in place. And so I'm often facilitating these complex shuttle processes trying to ensure safety of the individuals. And part of doing no harm is not letting them meet, right? Not having a process where everybody's sitting at the same table.

But my point is this about do no harm. What are the police doing when they're called to the scene of that house and the ex-wife is explaining very clearly what has happened and what her experience has been. Why are they not taking that seriously? Why are they not supporting the person who is alleging domestic abuse?

To enable them to get access to the services and the support that they need, rather than not reporting that onto the authorities or taking a record of it. Because when the court case happens four years later, they're having to issue apologies or notices that they accept that they failed to do something that they should have done and that is causing harm.

Whether that's in rape cases, domestic abuse cases assault cases, theft, burglary, you name it. So that's an example where authorities can do more harm in the actual incident, but also hospitals, right where they can make matters worse again, when concerns have been alerted to them and they choose to disregard them.

So not taking a doctor who's dangerous afterwards or not taking a nurse's concerns when they're saying, look, I've seen this pattern. Do you, do we want to investigate or switch things up? Oh no. It's fine. It's fine. We'll let them take the fall so that, look over there so that you don't look over here.

Yeah. It's all harmful. And I think this kind of pa past the buck idea is about self preservation. That's at the root of the issue. It's about, it's not my responsibility or it's above my pay grade, or it's always been like this. There are litany of excuses, but that doesn't take away from the fact that there is somebody at the end of the story who has a story that is being worsened.

They're being re-traumatized by whatever it is they're experiencing. After the person who's caused the harm refuses to acknowledge it. 

[00:37:51] Rita Burke: Yeah. There's no excuse for harmful behavior, but that's how we live in Western societies. You bury our heads in the sand. So then Leah Brown, is there anything that you have not shared with our listeners that you would like to before we wrap up today?

[00:38:15] Leah Brown: I think it's this. The same dynamics that hijack individuals, also hijack organizations, right? You've talked about the systemic challenges that we have both sides of the pond, but I think by focusing on healing. Making that the end goal. Moving from blame to accountability. We are really empowering a generation of survivors who are only asking for honesty and action and the opportunity to heal and to be believed.

And I just wonder if they're reflective. Rhetorical question. I just wonder how much would change for the next generation if we started taking Survivor stories Seriously. 

[00:39:02] Ellington Brown: I would definitely think it would make people think as opposed to relying on knee jerk reactions to which that, that falls into the harm part.

Usually those knee jerk reactions do not farewell because they're not thought out. I wanna thank you so much this evening for having this conversation with us, we got an opportunity to talk to you about your personal journey, your vision, authentic accountability ability, which I think really the word a authentic really fits so well in this space.

Because if you're not able to be yourself, then that's a whole nother category that you have, that you're bringing into the mix. If you're not yourself and it doesn't allow you to. Be at your best when you can't be yourself and your professional practice and the impact that it's caused, and also the broader context and a little bit about cultural change.

So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your. Insights and your thorough responses to our questions. Rita, is there anything you wanna add to that? 

[00:40:25] Rita Burke: You summarized it quite well Elton and thank you so much Leah, for having this conversation with us. I quite agree and I applaud the approach that says healing should be the end goal, although maybe prevention should come before the healing, but.

So I thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for educating and inspiring us today on SpeakUP! International! 

[00:40:54] Leah Brown: Thank you so much!

[00:40:55] Ellington Brown: Thank you for listening to SpeakUP! International. If you wish to contact our guest, Ms. Leah Brown, please be prepared to submit your name, your email address, and the reason why you wish to contact Ms. Brown at leahtalks.com. Ms. Brown has other social media accounts you can use to connect to her that will be listed in the description section on Spotify and other social media platforms. 

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Don't miss our next episode! Join us again on SpeakUP! International where we aim to inspire to inform, educate, and entertain you!