Today on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, host Andrew Lewin speaks with Katrina Ryan, the founder of Mindfully Wired. Katrina discusses how her company is dedicated to helping the planet, particularly the oceans, through innovative projects focused on conservation and policy. They delve into the unique approach Mindfully Wired takes in combining scientists, policymakers, and communication experts to make a positive impact.
Tune in to learn about the projects Katrina has led and her vision for the future of ocean conservation.
Mindfully Wired: https://www.mindfullywired.org/
Follow a career in conservation:
https://www.conservation-careers.com/online-training/ Use the code SUFB to get 33% off courses and the careers program. Do you want to join my Ocean Community? Sign Up for Updates on the process:
www.speakupforblue.com/oceanapp Sign up for our Newsletter:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/newsletter Facebook Group:
https://bit.ly/3NmYvsI Connect with Speak Up For Blue: Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube
Mindfully Wired is dedicated to positive and optimistic projects that offer solutions to environmental challenges, as discussed in the podcast episode. The company's strategy involves addressing complex marine conservation and fisheries management issues in a manner that promotes change and reduces anxiety. By focusing on projects that deliver tangible solutions and positive outcomes, Mindfully Wired aims to inspire hope and optimism in the face of environmental obstacles.
An example of this approach is the collaboration with Surfers Against Sewage, where Mindfully Wired facilitated the co-authoring of the first youth ocean and climate manifesto. This initiative empowered 200 youth activists to express their concerns and aspirations for clean water and sustainable surfing environments. By engaging with the public in this manner, Mindfully Wired not only amplifies the voices of the younger generation but also instills a sense of agency and empowerment in addressing environmental issues.
Furthermore, the company's involvement in initiatives like the Blue Carbon Action Partnership demonstrates a commitment to driving high-quality blue carbon projects globally. Blue carbon ecosystems, such as salt marshes and mangroves, play a crucial role in carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation. By actively participating in projects that protect and enhance these ecosystems, Mindfully Wired contributes to the broader goal of environmental conservation and sustainability.
Overall, Mindfully Wired's emphasis on positive and optimistic projects aligns with their mission to effect meaningful change in the marine conservation and environmental realm. By highlighting solutions, collaboration, and communication, the company not only tackles environmental challenges but also fosters hope and progress in the face of complex issues.
Mindfully Wired collaborates with a diverse team of experts from various professional backgrounds to work on intricate environmental projects. The founder, Katrina Ryan, mentions that the team at Mindfully Wired includes individuals with backgrounds in science, policy, linguistics, and communications. This diverse team enables them to address complex environmental issues such as offshore wind, seafood supply, and forestry. The team's expertise in science and policy aids in developing projects that are technically sound and aligned with sustainable practices. Additionally, the team includes agency communications experts who bring a senior dimension to the projects, ensuring effective communication strategies are in place.
The company's approach to building a diverse team reflects their commitment to inclusivity and collaboration. By bringing together individuals with different expertise and perspectives, Mindfully Wired can develop innovative solutions to environmental challenges. The team's ability to bridge the gap between technical knowledge and effective communication is highlighted in their work with clients and projects. This collaborative approach not only enhances the quality of their work but also allows them to engage with a wide range of stakeholders, including governments, NGOs, retailers, and local communities.
Overall, the diverse team at Mindfully Wired plays a crucial role in driving positive change in the environmental sector. Their ability to work together, leveraging their unique skills and experiences, enables them to address complex issues and advocate for sustainable practices. The company's success in working on a variety of projects, from advocating for better fisheries management to promoting blue carbon projects, showcases the power of collaboration and diversity in achieving environmental goals.
Mindfully Wired engages with the public through various projects and initiatives to drive positive change and raise awareness about environmental issues. One example is the collaboration with Surfers Against Sewage to facilitate the co-authoring of the Youth Ocean and Climate Manifesto. This project involved bringing together 200 youth activists to create a manifesto advocating for clean water and environmental protection, which was then delivered to 10 Downing Street. This initiative empowered young activists to voice their concerns and contribute to meaningful change in environmental policy.
Additionally, Mindfully Wired conducts training courses at universities for master's and PhD level scientists in the environmental field. These courses focus on helping scientists communicate the impact of their work effectively and develop their communication skills to engage with a broader audience. By providing training and guidance to emerging scientists, Mindfully Wired contributes to building a community of environmentally conscious professionals who can effectively communicate their research and advocate for positive change.
Another significant project undertaken by Mindfully Wired is the Blue Carbon Action Partnership, hosted by the World Economic Forum. This initiative focuses on driving high-quality blue carbon projects globally, emphasizing the importance of blue carbon environments like salt marshes and mangroves in storing carbon and supporting local communities. By collaborating with NGOs and stakeholders, Mindfully Wired works to protect and invest in blue carbon projects, highlighting the critical role these ecosystems play in mitigating climate change and promoting sustainable practices. Through these collaborative initiatives, Mindfully Wired actively engages with the public, policymakers, and stakeholders to raise awareness about environmental issues and drive positive change on a global scale.
Imagine being able to design your company, a company that you came up with to be like, "Hey, I want to help the planet. I want to help the oceans, especially." And be able to come up and design projects that actually help the ocean, not in your traditional ways of like saving a reef or going out and doing like marine biology and science stuff, but actually helping conservation, helping policy and building a company that has all those people, has scientists, that has policy makers, it has communications people, it's just a great company. Imagine building that. Imagine being able to work on projects that you want to work on, that even you come up with yourself as well as help others with. Well, that's who we're going to be talking to today. We're going to be talking to Katrina Ryan, who is the founder and in charge of Mindfully Wired. We're going to talk about some of the projects that she's been able to do and some of the projects that she hopes to do in the future. It's going to be a great episode. Let's start the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. Now, today's episode, usually on the Wednesdays, we usually talk about science communication. And I thought that that's what this episode was going to be about. I hit up Katrina Ryan on LinkedIn. We hadn't spoken in a few years really often on through email, but not really online. Though I first connected with her, we talked about how her Mindfully Wired company was helping market a straight-to consumer, a direct-to-consumer seafood plan from the fishermen and fishing villages in Cornwall, UK, really being able to offer a plethora of like 40 different sustainably-fished species to the UK people in and around the area of Cornwall so that they can have fish during the pandemic because imports weren't coming in properly because of the whole pandemic and the shutdown and everything like that. So she was able to help keep a lot of those businesses open just through Mindfully Wired with her colleagues. And now she's built up her company to almost 20 people. That's amazing to be able to say, hey, in a few years we're going to start to work on these different projects. We're going to assemble the team, not just of marketing people and communications people. We're going to put some policy makers with this. We're going to put some lawyers. We're going to put some scientists. We're going to put all these different people in and we're going to be able to have this company that can offer a plethora of different services. And I think that's amazing. And I want to have Katrina on to talk about some of her projects, which she did. And some of the projects he's actually, you know, with the help of her colleagues, been able to design herself and have them funded. And I think that's something that's really admirable but the companies that are coming out now is really a for-profit being able to design something that is insanely wonderful. And so that's what we're going to talk to Katrina about today on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Here's the interview and we'll talk to you after. Hey, Katrina. Welcome back to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about all things marine science communications? Hi, Andrew. It's lovely to see you again. I've missed I've missed our chats. Yeah, of course I'm ready. I'm always ready. Absolutely. It's been a long time since we've actually chatted. We've we've communicated over email and over LinkedIn a number of times, but I'm really happy you were able to come on the podcast again today. This is a bit of a catch-up call for both of us. As you know, we love chatting with each other and catching up on what type of work we've been up to and these and things like that. But today I want to share that with the audience and just be like, look, your company has grown in a number of people, the number of diversity of projects. You know, we first interviewed you when it was during the pandemic and you were talking about helping, you know, fishing fishing communities in Cornwall, you know, basically save their businesses in a way with your communication strategies. And I feel like that's just grown from there into all different sorts. And going on your website now, you know, you see you have linguists, you have policy people, you have communicators. And it's just great to kind of just get to know how you build a company like this, you know, how you build a firm like this to serve the marine conservation and science community. I think it's something that is unique. And I wanted to share that with people to show that, you know, you don't always have to go the quote unquote traditional way with joining one organization, even create your own and develop it from there. So I'm looking forward to that. But before we get into all that, Katrina, why don't you just remind the audience of who you are and what you do? Yeah, happy to. Although I'm never great at doing this in a super picky way, despite my job. So my name's Katrina Ryan. I'm the founder director of a company called Mindfully Wired. We're a specialist communications consultancy working in that kind of ocean, marine protection, marine biodiversity and fisheries space. I guess we'll delve into a little bit more about what that means. But really, we work with such a broad church of stakeholders, could be fishing industry, seafood sector, governments, research, NGOs, retail, the whole mix. And we work all over the world as well. Yeah, it's it's quite interesting to see how diverse you've gotten. I think when we first met and discussed on the podcast, a lot of it was essentially seafood, right, I think was at the first sort of iteration, I guess, or first types of clients that you had, but you've grown quite a bit since then you've grown in the number of people as well. Can you kind of just take us through a little bit of that growth through the pandemic? Not a lot of people have their companies grow in people, especially during the pandemic. Can you just kind of talk a little bit about sort of how things have changed since the last time we've talked? I know we probably don't have the amount of time that it takes to go over how all those changes happen and things, but if you could briefly do that, that'd be great. Yeah, of course. And the first thing I'll say is, yeah, we've always worked with the seafood sector and fishing communities. But the mission at the heart of Mindful Word has always been about, you know, a better future for people and the ocean. So it's about, I really believe that we can't just have conservation conversations in isolation. You've got to work with the people that live on the coast and that make a living on the sea. You've got to include industry and conversations around conservation, and that is the slightly complex space that we've always tried to hold for the projects that we work on. You know, it's it's not flying a flag in one direction or another. So, as you said, you know, we first came across each other during the pandemic when Mindful Word pivoted quite abruptly to kind of targeting all of our efforts on supporting coastal communities here in the UK during the pandemic. Obviously, as with elsewhere, their markets were closing off. fishermen weren't able to sell their catch into restaurants. And as I'm sure you're aware, you know, the lifeblood of coastal communities is often their their fishing industry and coastal communities are 75% more likely to be deprived than inland communities. So it's essential to maintain this kind of jobs and employment and people need food. So we kind of overnight became fish merchants working with some of our clients in the Southwest and redirecting healthy, sustainably caught seafood to people's houses contact-free. And that was obviously that was wild for us. That was really odd, really exciting, really energizing, completely restructuring the business, working with new partners. But behind all of that, there was still important advocacy and communications work to be done. The bigger seafood and fisheries and marine conservation organizations still needed to advance their agendas during the pandemic. But because they were larger and often government-funded bodies, they were more likely to have to furlough big chunks of their staff. So Mindful Word, as a nimble consultancy at the time of about six staff, we decided we would kind of try and outpace the economic shock of the pandemic and be there to service those projects as a born nimble bolt-on. And you know, it was a time for a lot of growth in the company because there was a lot of important work to be done. And I think we closed out the pandemic with about 20 staff. And our project during that time was everything from supporting governments and facilitating international meetings with their peers on important marine science issues through to furthering the work we did in coastal communities on marketing locally caught in sustainable fish, helping universities with communications training for their science graduates, developing new coastal connectivity initiatives and new geographies, just a bit of everything. It was really exciting. But it was almost a time of such rapid growth that you couldn't keep track of it. You just had to keep going, you know, seven days a week. Well, that's what I was going to ask. I mean, that's a lot of work to be able to, you know, starting off with six people and then pivoting so many times, you know, you pivot for the seafood industry, helping them basically redefine the industry there. That's essentially what you did there, not only redefine the industry, but also reintroducing the people of the UK to their own species. Because a lot of the times I've covered stories on this where most of the fish that they have is imported. And then now here you have this fishery in Cornwall being like, look, we have about, I think it was like 40 species, 40 different species of fish that could be fished. And you're offering it to the people of the UK. And so they kind of got to rediscover which could happen not just in the UK, it could happen in Canada, it could happen in the US. We just tend to, you know, eat the popular types of fish, you know, that we know and we're comfortable with. But there's so many different fish species that it could be sustainably fished and offer to us. We just don't know because it's different and it's changed and things like that. Well, the pandemic was all about change. You offered that in a communication style and the people of Cornwall and the fishing community offered that in product and it worked out really well. So love to hear that kind of stuff. But then to be able to offer the services that you do to a number of different organizations, you know, in and around the UK or internationally, that's a lot of work to be able to do that. Did you have the network at the time to introduce mindfully wired to these organizations? And can you just maybe mention a couple of the ones that you did work with right off the bat, like during that time? Did we get cut? Oh, I'm sorry. I lost the last part of that question. Yeah, sorry. No, I'll repeat it. No, that's my point. It happens every once in a while. It gets cut. So I apologize for that. Essentially, what I asked is like, did you have the network of people where you could introduce mindfully wired to or did you have to sort of go out and find, like develop your own network during that time online, of course, because you couldn't do it in person as much because of the pandemic? And then, you know, was that it was a difficult thing to keep up with all that work to keep up with and be able to do the work for those organizations? Yeah, oh, there's so much to respond to that. I think one thing I'll say is that it's always difficult to keep up with all the work that we're doing. There's so much to do. It's all really exciting as I've kind of already alluded to. It's often quite complex that the work that we're undertaking. And that's partly about the DNA of who we are as a business. And I can come back to that because we're by no means the traditional comms consultancy. But in terms of that work coming to us during the pandemic, I think mindfully wired already had one really important key USP, which is that we've been specialist in our area from day one. We're 10 years old now, and we've always known fisheries inside out and the marine world inside out, we can engage with science. So there's very few bolt on agencies that can also bring creative thinking that can engage at that level with the complexity of marine management and fisheries management. So we had a good network in the sense of people knew kind of who we were. And I think what the pandemic was was the time for us showing the breadth of what we mean when we say communication. So I don't mean an off the shelf PR package. I mean, we can build your website, we can make you an incredibly moving film that we'll also script and package and distribute. But we will also develop your long term strategic vision for your organization and write a comms and governance strategy that sits alongside that will help interpret your science and communicate that better. We will hold events for you whether that's online or in person. It's kind of anything that helps bridge gaps between groups and that helps people communicate more effectively is what I include under my umbrella definition of communication. So it's kind of much broader. And in that sense, we're almost like a blend of an NGO and a traditional comms agency. We come to think of it as a cause and effect agency. So we try and create change with the way in which we communicate about these things. And the pandemic was a real time for testing and proving that. Another thing that we had to do as we grew during that time was become bolder in the work that we went for. And that was a huge thing for us as well, kind of living our values through some larger projects. During that time, we were invited to pitch for a project on promoting safety in fishing communities amongst fishermen. It's the most deadly profession in the UK and globally it's an enormously deadly profession. So anything to improve safety at sea is vital. And I remember getting the tender on my desk in the middle of the pandemic being so intimidated by this big piece of national work. And you know, could we actually bid for it? Could we win it? And talking to my kind of seconding command at the time, Harriet, and saying, oh, do we have the guts to go for this? And thinking, yeah, we're going to do it. You know, we're going to flip the safety narrative on its head because all people do at this point in time in terms of safety comes to fishing communities is tell fishermen they're going to die and that they should wear a life jacket so that their body is brought home for their wife. And we wanted to talk to them about reasons they had to live. So we went out and spoke to fishing communities about what they care about, what did they come home for and developed this campaign called Home and Dry. And that was, again, that was a real mission that energized us during the pandemic. And that campaign went on to create an enormous amount of impact in fishing communities. It was seen by 77 percent of the fleet. You know, around 70 percent of people took action as a result of it. We've won awards. We had a award-winning artist, Johnny Flynn, write a song especially for us to be the track behind the video. And you know, it's been one of those campaigns we could feel really proud of because at a time when fishermen were perhaps more desperate to get out to sea, to catch when they could during the pandemic, we wanted them to be safety minded as well. So when I think back on that time of crazy growth and pandemic, it's also a time when we were perhaps more or most fully expressing our values in the type of work we were acting on. Well, and this is what it really comes down to, I feel, and this is a lot of other companies that I've noticed. You know, I want to reiterate this point that I've been putting together for a number of episodes is it comes down to the business's values, right? I've talked to a lot of businesses around here. I've looked for a lot of businesses. I've always looked for eco-friendly, sustainable businesses. And not a lot of businesses will necessarily sell for environmental reasons. You know, they're like, oh, well, you know, buy us because we're sustainable clothing or we're this we're good for the environment. It's biased because our product's the best. Like that's why here's, you know, here's the coolness factor. If it's a company that sells clothes or things like that, but it really comes down to their base values. When you go to the about page on their company, I have never gone to more about pages on companies now where it's like what's their intrinsic value of starting this company? Was it to make the world a better place and offer their values in that product? And I find the product becomes better that way. It's more eco-friendly. It's more sustainable in that way. I feel the same way just talking to you, Katrina, about your company. It's look, we talk down a lot to the fishing community. You know, you can't do this. You can't do this. You can't fish here. You can't fish. That's what a lot of times when I speak to fishermen, that's what they hear. But they love the environment. They love fishing. It's a, it's a cultural thing for many of them that I've spoken to. It's something that they love. They take pride in. And when somebody says you can't, you can't, you can't, it's almost like, hey, you can't go out there without being safe. Like you need to be safe. You need this. It's no, no, why? Like, what are your values? You know, what are the fishermen's values? Like, you want to come home and you want to be with your family. It's fishing is life, but it's also your family's life too. And sometimes we all need to be reminded of that with work and, and things like that you and I need to be reminded of that. Like we have a life outside of work and we want you to enjoy that life. So how about you come home safe? Like let's, let's like flip the switch and put it into a positive manner and, and sort of tap into their values of family. You know, you want to be able to explain to your next generation of how to be able to fish. Well, you can't do that if you're not around. You know, you can only do that if you're around. And, and I think by putting that message together, that's just, it flips everything. If you think about that. One thing we'll never do is negative campaigning. You know, I think because we are always trying to tell a positive story, because I think that's where you create change. We're trying to shine a light on things that are positive so that people want to travel in that direction, you know. So yeah, that, that was a real lesson for me as well in just how much people can exclude groups from conversations that are about those groups. So no one had thought previously in developing these safety campaigns for the fishing community to go and talk to the fishing community in depth about what might motivate them. And I'm, yeah, I'm not one for people being excluded from conversation. So I think that's, that's very much where Mindful White has grown up from is that and dear that we all work better if we're collaborating and if things are inclusive and positive. So that's just one example of how that carries through in our work, but it's certainly one that we're really proud of. So for, for the work that you've been able to do, you mentioned this, the work with the fishermen, that was a bit like you had a tender and you bid on it against other, other companies who wanted the same type of job. Are most of your jobs, you know, from grant writing or from bidding on specific things or some of them just from relationships that you've built with some of the companies or organizations over the years? Because I mean, if you think about a lot of nonprofit organizations where most of the work you would think would come from marine conservation, they don't necessarily have a lot of money to be able to pay an organization where it's profitable for, you know, your company to do that. I might be way off base here, but I was just wondering like, where, how do you land a lot? And I don't want, don't take any secrets, don't tell any secrets here, but how do does a company like yours land a lot of the jobs? Is it through tender? Is it through just sort of relationships? It's a little bit of both. How does that work? So there's, there's three pillars to this and no secrets at all here. Just the first one is word of mouth. We've always benefited enormously from that. We get a lot of organic outreach from potential clients. We get a lot of repeat business. That's our stickiness factor. Lots of our clients stick with us for years on end, which we're very grateful for and we love building those long-term relationships. Then we have the tenders where we'll see something and we think, God, that just feels so mindfully wide, we're definitely going to, we're going to go for that one. And I think it's not just me on the team. Lots of us love a pitching moment. So those can be lovely creative times in the team when we're coming up with a vision for a project. And then the third one is the one that maybe it cites me the most and is again, perhaps an area where we're slightly odd or rare as a business, is that we'll identify an issue that exists, something that we think needs addressing and resolving or isn't getting enough attention. And we will develop a project that we think can, can plug that gap. We'll see who we think we want to work with on that and we'll go out and find the funds and then create that project ourselves. We'll introduce that into the ecosystem, the landscape that we're working in. And those are some of my favorite initiatives. So yeah, I get butterflies just think about it. I have time to give you just three quick examples. Absolutely, yes you do. So the first one, our oldest one is kind of a concept we developed and then went out, got funded and is still running to this day, which is six years later, is we run the, something called the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fisheries in Westminster. So that is a fully cross-party platform within the system of Parliament that holds events and conducts research to basically increase the knowledge base on fisheries and marine issues within Parliament so that the legislature can make more informed decisions around policy and law. That was something that I had in my mind, you know, well before mindfully wired that I wanted to do and then when the Brexit vote came around and fisheries was such a totemic issue in the UK, but it's so complex and it's so different depending on where you are, it felt like a real moment for Parliamentarians to need to have access to some free like broad sector-wide source of information brought to them so that they could comment in an informed way on these important issues that are at the heart of Brexit. So we secured some funding to run that within Parliament and we do run that. I should say at the moment we technically don't exist because we've just had a general election over here, but we are out recruiting new MPs to come on board with our all-party parliamentary group and we have an enormously ambitious program of research and events moving forward and that is about open access to democracy, it's about open access to power for the sector, it's about our decision-makers being really really well informed and it's about there being a space for everyone at the heart of Parliament. So I love that and we've been very lucky to secure continued funding to keep that going so that's one of our own. Even just to have that level of federal government not influenced, but like you're putting that together at the federal level, that's going to change things as a company, it's like that's going to change things. For us the importance is that our role is neutral, this isn't lobbying and again that speaks to a personal passion of mine which is that lobbyists are expensive, you're talking a minimum 25,000 a month plus, I used to work in Westminster so I know lobbying, I just need not to use that because it's an exclusive form of access and I think people should be able to approach their decision-makers on an equal footing. So by creating this all-party parliamentary group we can have fishermen from Scotland, Corbel Wales, the east coast there with academics and people who would never have a lobbyist can be there having the conversations they need to have. So then a really exciting project, I feel like you'll like this one, is a piece of tech development that we formed a consortium around a few years ago with a government science body called CFAS, the Zoological Society of London and an engineering firm called Arabada, who are amazing, to think about how to improve axi monitoring systems for fishermen so that they're less burdensome for scientists to interpret the data from, at the moment you just get 24 hours of video footage, they're expensive, big chunky pieces of kit, 15-grounder system, that kind of thing, and specifically we wanted to work on one that might work to capture better data about interactions with a danger species like dolphins, porpoises. And so that project again is ongoing but we're also now kind of really testing out in the field a project that we call Insight 360, which is a small kind of plug and play machine learning device that has a voice activated node and underwater acoustic recorder and continuous video monitoring. As I say it's continuous learning it's AI so it's better with time and fishermen can speak directly to it and effectively therefore annotate the video footage that is bounced back to scientists by a satellite so it's much more efficient but at the end of that project that all the designs, all the specs will be made totally open access for other people to build the same thing, the point of the kit is it should cost just 100 quid or so, you know, really really affordable and we want it to go global because it can help fishermen, it can help the marine environment and it shouldn't cost so much money to monitor effectively at sea so that's another one, that's been incredible to work on because I'm no engineer but I could, you know, we each tripped in our little bit of expertise and then the third one I wanted to mention just quickly because it built on that coastal communities and spreading knowledge around seafood, kind of improving a seafood palette from a breadth perspective, you know, tasting local, we also secured some funding to do a brief pilot study in Cornwall after the pandemic, working with a processing company, a local fleet, environmental consultants and a chef to identify two top species where, you know, if we ate more of these, they're totally sustainable, it would take pressure off other slightly less sustainable stocks and the consumer doesn't know anything about them, how do we introduce them, what are the constraints from a processing perspective, how much does the fleet need to make per kilo for these to be viable target fish, what can our chef do to introduce these to a broader audience and we did a three-month feasibility study on these two fish, Megram Soul and Spider Crab, we rebranded them as Cornish Soul and Cornish King Crab by the end of our three months, yeah, love that, by the end of our three-month blitz of research, you know, menu testing, consumer tasting, processing, engagement retailers, they were, you know, I think Megram Soul or Cornish Soul was maybe the second most soul fish in in Cornwall and there was a contract for Cornish King Crab to be sold into one of our major retailers here in the UK, so that in, that's had real longevity, that was only a three-month project, but it's kind of rolling and rolling and we hope that the Cornish Fish producers organisation down there is doing more on that front, so yeah, so just three examples there are things where we were like there's a need here, we think we can do something to plug our gap and we'll go get some money in a team to do that. Can I just say something, first of all, unreal, like all three of those projects are projects, you know, as I was thinking, I've had conversations with people, not obviously about those specific projects, but conversations with people, like ideas, like, you know, when you're at conferences and you're with other people that are in the same business, you throw around ideas and you're like, oh, that would be really cool if we're able to do this or that would be really cool if we're able to do this, but here are the challenges and here's the thing, and it's like the ideas that you mentioned feel very similar, obviously not the same, but very similar to be like, yeah, there are a lot of challenges in this way, you know, but if we partner with the right people, we collaborate with the right people or we speak to the right people, we can really get this going, and if you have that network or you have that ability to be like, let's, this is a great idea, let's find the funds to get it, let's do, you know, let's put all this together, let's put the collaboration, let's put everybody in the same room or on the same computer, in the same zoom color, whatever that might be, and let's have, let's have us talking, maybe we can get this going, and then three projects right there that you're able to get that going, this sounds more like NGO type work, you know, where it's like you have your own projects, you're just able to do it, but because it comes from your ideas, all of them have, or it will continue to create change, you know, in whatever they are, like you're, you're marketing you or not new local types of food, how do we get this local type of food into a market, how do we get access to data and equipment that's affordable, how do we get to do that, boom, we've done it, like that, just, like just those two alone, you know, it's just like, it's unreal to just think from idea to actual put into place, and it seems like mindfully wired, it's just, that's what you guys do, it's like you take the ideas and you're like, okay, let's talk about these ideas, let's formulate, you know, a plan, let's put it together, let's put it in place, three month project, now of all of a sudden you get like a contract to put into one of the major retailers, come on now, that's unreal, like that's awesome, Katrina, that's fantastic, I mean, it obviously like, you know, you have the people to do that, right, and it's, and that helps, right, you invest in your people, so you mentioned at the beginning, it's a, it's a very unique company because you don't just have comms people, you have all different types of people, can you just talk about how that came to be, you know, where you have so many people from different sort of professional backgrounds coming together to work on these, and solve these problems, essentially, is what you do, you guys are problem solvers in the marine conservation world. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Of course, well, and I think there's something to be said there, just a broader point about the fact that it's one of the luxuries of being a small business versus, you know, a big NGO or a government department of perhaps, there's never been any constraints in my mind about how nimble we can be on acting on something, you know, there's no bureaucracy, because we've been tiny and, you know, we're less tiny now, but there's still, there's no need to have meetings for meeting sakes and put things through a system, we can kind of just see something and jump in there and get going and we have the confidence to do that, I think, partly because of the structure, but yet in terms of the team, it's a great question and it's actually something I've only reasonably recently realized is quite strange, right? It's that we're a comms consultancy, but the vast majority of our staff are not people from a comms or PR background. To me, it just made perfect sense because we're talking about technical environmental issues, you know, whether it's offshore wind or seafood supply or even, you know, we do some things on forestry, it's good to have that science base in the team, it's a real luxury, but you look for those scientists that also have a way with words, have a way with art, have a kind of desire to make their work more accessible, because it's something that I believe is so important more broadly, right, when the biggest issues of our time are environmental, we have to be able to communicate them. Then, you know, drawing in linguists and people with policy experience, it's the same thing, I feel like we've been able to incubate comms skills because that's about connecting to people, it's about using words and art and design and digital in a specific way, but having that knowledge base behind it has been incredible. More recently, in our kind of more recent expansion, we now also have the luxury of some seriously impressive and experienced agency communications experts in mindfully wide as well, lending that kind of senior dimension from across the more traditional communication space, and so now I feel like mindfully wide is in its best iteration yet because we have that almost like a hub of scientific and policy knowledge delivering on complex and technical projects, and then we have this wraparound of creative vision and traditional communication skills, and we're able to bolt the two together and work on projects in a way that means, you know, as I've said, we're starting to see ourselves as a cause and effect agency because we can develop the projects and work on the science, then we can also communicate them, we can have those big mass market skills and expertise that you get in larger agencies, but we have them in our small nimble environmentally focused agencies, so but yeah, the breadth and diversity of the team's expertise is one of my favorite things about working mindfully wide, it's never a dull day, and there's always someone that is a subject expert on whatever it is you need to talk about, so that's great. Well, and what I love too, it's like, as you mentioned before, it is you are putting together positive optimistic projects that may not necessarily, I mean, mind you, you know, you've put together something that has potentially a federal impact, you know, on fisheries, so that's pretty big from a national perspective, but you know, we look at the problems that we face with our oceans, climate change, you look at overfishing, you look at plastic pollution, all these major things that can really provide people, give people anxiety, you know, we call the climate anxiety or ocean anxiety, and it's very difficult, but you are focusing on these projects that provide, you know, results and positive results in the way, like even in their potential, from a futuristic point of view, but also from sort of the impact level, and you're kind of like, you know, cutting away at some of this anxiety, like taking it away and kind of giving people sort of this positive outlook, like that's how I see it, you know, from my perspective anyway, in terms of the work that you're doing. I know a lot of the work is focused around, you know, helping these organizations and helping, you know, sort of like a fishing community, you know, to get more access and things like that. Do you talk to the public or do you have mechanisms to talk to the public to provide some of the like information on some of these projects that you're doing to show some people like in the UK, like I know the UK you've gone through a lot of changes over the last couple of weeks, and people are asking for change, you know, just stop oil, one of the organizations that making headlines around the world with their protests and people wanting change in Europe, you know, you have the Greta Thunbergs of the world who are trying to make change, but oftentimes it gets aggressive feedback, let's just say, you know, from from sort of deniers and naysayers, the work that you're doing, do you have those mechanisms to the public to just kind of say, hey, check out what we're doing here. It's pretty, it's pretty cool that we're doing this and because it's such a positive thing. So that's a really interesting question. We don't go out and do a lot of proactive storytelling about our work because, you know, what we do is for the most, the vast majority, it is the work of our incredible clients. We are lucky to be bolt-ons to their teams and so we want their projects to become visible and for some of those that is a general public audience, that's a consumer audience, for some of our projects, it's governments, for some of them it's science. So I guess we always try and stay slightly out of the limelight in that way. It's actually unusual for me to talk about mindfully wide and it's a treat, it's really nice to talk to you about it, but it's not my normal kind of speed. I'm more used to talking about a client's mission than my own for our own because it certainly is collective within the team. But we, you know, we also try and engage the public in ways that help them craft and deliver their own mission. So a really brilliant piece of work we did a couple of years ago was with Surfers Against Sewage to facilitate and bring together, I think it was 200 youth activists for climate and co-author the first youth ocean and climate manifesto to deliver to 10 Downing Street and so that was a lovely way of kind of directly engaging with a new constituency of the public and oh my goodness, these youth activists knocked my socks off, they were like 7 up, they were so informed, so charismatic, so clear on what they wanted in their manifesto and how they wanted to be expressed. So that was an incredible piece of work reaching a kind of new sector of the public and I'd say another thing we do in terms of kind of public or perhaps more public outreach is we go into universities and run training courses in normally for kind of masters or PhD level scientists in the environmental space and helping them think about what their work is, the impact it could have and how they might want to communicate that impactfully as they develop their own careers. So I like to kind of spread this gospel of, you know, don't work hidden away, don't work in a silo, reach out, connect, collaborate, communicate, if you don't know how, find someone who does work with them, you can make amazing change if you can develop partnerships and that's, that's, you know, good communication skills are part of developing effective partnerships. I completely agree, I do think you should talk about mindfully wired more often just as from a personal standpoint, I would love to see the behind the scenes of a lot of the things and but I think, I think you're right, you know, your work speaks for yourself and your work speaks for your clients and, and, you know, when you talk about, you know, 200 youths coming out and saying, you know, we want to make sure that we have clean water and clean access to water for, especially for surfing. That's a, that's a huge, that you have a huge impact on not only the people but to say, hey, not only are we putting this, are we activists and putting this protest together, but we're putting a manifesto so we're heard and it's going to the right people and you have the way to get to the right people and I think that is, you know, that's the communication that I think really matters in this, in this point of view but because you speak for your clients, I think that's, that's the, the beauty of, of this whole thing. I know we're, we're, we're coming short on time but just a, a last question. Do you have a project or a couple projects that, that are sort of developing that you're excited that you're able to talk about just to kind of give us a little sneak peek because obviously I'd love to have you come back or some of your, some of your staff come back to, to be able to talk about this or partners and collaborators but, do you have anything that's, that you're excited about? I'm sure you're excited about all of them but do you have anything that's, that's in the development? Yeah, I should say the outside of course have no favorites. All of my clients are my favorite clients and I will certainly run over time in order to talk about my clients. There's a, there's kind of like a stable of clients I want to talk about briefly which is about the market acting in a really interesting way to push for better conservation and environmental outcomes and then there's one project that's making some exciting announcements in the near future that I can give you a little sneak preview on but I hope you might also speak to you about their work in lots of detail because it's fascinating. So in the first instance, just to talk about again, talk about the kind of complex space we occupy that isn't always about working with an NGO on a pure conservation issue but looking to how other people can act in a way that benefits people on the planet, we've got a kind of three client stable at the moment at Mindful Wide of big like pre-competitive collaborations between huge companies in the supply chain, retailers, buyers, processors, literally billions of pounds of global purchasing power and they, it's fascinating to see this movement now. These coalitions forming around specific environmental and social issues where they want to drive positive change and they're saying government isn't moving fast enough, we the supply chain are going to try and use some of our heftar perspective. Our point of view on this to help push change in a positive direction and that's been a new form of project for Mindful Wide of the last two to three years. They're very advocacy focused but you know we've got three clients we're working with at the moment. One, the North Atlantic pelagic advocacy group is pushing hard for Europe and Iceland, Greenland, the UK, Norway, Russia, all vested coastal states to come together and act responsibly follow the science and fish three pelagic stocks in line with sustainable science based management in the North East Atlantic. That's a big mouthful but we're talking about Atlantic Scandinavian herring mackerel and blue whiteing. Iconic stocks in the most data rich fisheries on the planet that are currently being fished beyond scientific advice due to a lack of political agreement and that client is a bunch of businesses putting their competition to one side to come together and think about new ways to campaign and drive change for those fisheries so that we hope in as soon as possible the coastal states and gosases come together and and come to a science based sharing agreement. It's it's changed on an ecosystem scale you know if it goes wrong or right it is generationally impactful so there's there's no option for it to go wrong but it's tricky because it is the most intense and entrenched politics you could work with so that is a really fascinating project and we have other clients using a similar model to advocate for better human rights protections and avoiding social labor abuses during seafood as part of the seafood supply chain and advocating for better tuna management so again huge issues but you know over the horizon offshore out of sight easy for people to ignore and they're for all the more important to communicate about and advocate for and then the one I'll give you a little sneak peek on is is a client the blue carbon action partnership which is really you know we love action at Monfue White and this is a really action focused collaborative initiative hosted by the world economic forum but to drive high quality blue carbon projects around the world so blue carbon is amazing environments like salt marshes and mangroves where they store they suck in and store carbon they're beautiful they're precious they're often very fragile have enormous importance to local communities and it's it's it's a very complex project again it's about creating pipelines for investment and protection it's working with NGOs and and that the heart of it is the importance of local communities and that projects but let's fix that step around the corners of announcements to be made so I'm I'm hoping that you would have a chat with some of the scientists and the people involved in that because that really is another project that is on a global scale trying to make exactly the right kind of change and bring to life these blue carbon environments that are just so precious so yeah you can hear from how I talk about them it's all it's all too exciting there's not enough hours in the day but thank you for asking I love that I I'm I'm excited maybe we can have some of your partners on to talk more about those those projects on in the future and of course Katrina we'd love to have you back on to get updates and talk more about science communication and and I think it's bringing you know I think it's what you've built and what you continue to build with with your with the people that you have you have in the company is not just communications it's it's changed and I think that's really really huge and it gives me a lot of hope in this industry of of communications and conservation and inclusivity and diverseness I just in diversity I just think it's it's it's really great I really love what you what you continue to build here and love to have you on and talk more shop and and so forth on the podcast and maybe off the podcast but definitely on the podcast so the audience could get to hear about all the wonderful projects that you're working on and that your company's working on so thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate it thank you anytime it's been a pleasure all right thank you Katrina for joining us on this episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast I just love the fact that I got to hang out with Katrina there's so many more things that I wanted to ask her and I'm hoping that she'll be able to come back on soon to be able to talk about more of the projects that she's working on with mine through mindfully wired and why you know I think you when you start to look at the way people are building out their projects people are building out their firms and their companies and what they want to do around oceans I've met a lot of people in different avenues from storytellers to marketers to business people to startups to scientists and they're all doing different things but with the goal of protecting the ocean and over the next number of months I'm going to be trying to interview people who are working with companies working or building their own company to provide options alternative options to what we think are wasteful options in fact on Friday's episode next episode I'm going to be talking to Regan Kelly who is one of the founders and people like of her family that work on better for all which sell compostable cups commercially compostable cups this is something that is absolutely amazing she's working on this she they just did a job where they supplied all the cups for the tortugo festival tortuga festival in Florida and it's just it's great to see like companies and organizations working towards this common goal of just being sustainable and putting it out there not expecting you know handouts from the government not just saying hey you know what here's a problem that we see we're trying to solve it because that's what business people do and we're trying to solve it in the right way that they can feel good and follow their family values and I think that's really important so we're being able to do that we're able to do that with Katrina Ryan and next episode we're going to be able to do that with Regan Kelly and I'm super excited to be able to present that to you so if you don't want to miss this uh the next episode or episodes after that don't forget to follow or subscribe on uh with your favorite platform and just to let people know those of you who are listening all the way through uh those of you who are listening on through Spotify you can now add comments I think they start to add out comments I'd love to hear your comments if you're listening to do Spotify or if you don't normally listen to Spotify maybe you listen to it later on and so there's there's options there that you can do that you can use so there's comments we're going to put polls together in the future and there's just a much more interactive way to engage with people through Spotify with your pod favorite podcasters like myself hopefully I'm your favorite but you can check that out uh and you can also see I'm actually started to put up video podcasts on Spotify because they're now allowing that so a little different way of doing things but it'll be a lot of fun so I hope you enjoy that let me know your experience on Spotify if you normally listen to it or if you're converting over to that love to hear your experience with that but it doesn't matter how you listen to the episode I just want you to hear it and share it with your favorite people so that they can get the most out of this podcast and you can get the most out of this podcast and we can share that message of how to protect the ocean I want thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast I'm your host angel and have a great day we'll talk to you next time and happy conservation
