002 Building a purpose driven business with Clare Parsons

My guest on today's show is Clare Parsons Co-Founder of Lansons and Fellow CIPR. In the podcast Clare speaks about her background, her journey into communications, setting up Lansons and being a values/purpose driven business. Some of the other topics covered in the podcast are: Purpose and business in a Post COVID/BLM How BLM has impacted her view of the world, the industry and generally lives On creating a more inclusive industry, collaboration, learning from best practice Role of PR practitioners in today’s world The glass ceiling and on being UK’s Top 25 Best Places to work for women and voluntarily reporting on the gender pay gap The Role of Ethics in PR and Lansons own journey as the winner of PRCA’s Very large agency Ethical champion on 2018, 2019, 2020 Steps to making the industry more inclusive Women Leaders, the future of agencies and how they are going to adapt to the changing needs of clients, communities and employees Subscribe to the show on any of your favourite platforms iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts. Memorable quotes from the conversation with Clare Parsons “I've had to spend quite a time reflecting on it myself. And I have to for lots of reasons. I am a, as we all are a product of our time. My feminism is based on the time of which it was emerging and the battles I was fighting. And I had to look at myself and realise that my notion of being colour blind wasn't enough. And being a business that was meritocratic, wasn't enough. And I think that has been a catalyst for so many things. So one is the course of self-reflection. I'm lucky enough also to work with some great people at Lansons, who are looking at this in detail and we're collectively looking at what our diversity policy is and if anyone looks on our website, we've declared what we're trying to do as a consequence source material is important.” “But also, importantly corporate communications through COVID, has really shown that it was on the top of everyone's agenda. That actually boardrooms recognise the significance of their brand, their reputation, their purpose. A reputation is vital for them in these times. And that, again, our role in business had never been greater. And I think that there was a great communications person who always said you can't talk yourself out of something you've behaved yourself into. And, with COVID, this notion of how you behaved in this period, has shown a huge amount of virtue in some of those businesses, not all by any chance, but that we can make changes if we want to. And Corporate Communications is vital to do that. So I think it's an encouraging period now.” “It was always part of our intention. At the very beginning, as I said, I wanted no glass ceiling because I’d experienced it. There's never been any holding back of anyone that has talent at Lansons. And there are role models throughout the organisation to show, you can do it in different ways as well. And that's also I think, really important that people can see themselves in the leadership and see different routes to that.” “We seek those role models, with different voices, to be the clarion call for us. So that we can all learn from each other's stories and vision, and where they see the world. Strangely, Virginia Bottomley, it was her who said, when you recruit, or you look at the people that you are working with, you don't look in a mirror, you look out of the window. And I think that there's never been a more time now to look into society. They are the people we represent. And we have to understand everybody.” Biography: Clare Parsons, Co-Founder and Chair, Lansons a leading reputation management and PR business based in London and NYC. Over three decades running Lansons, formed in 1989, Clare has been actively involved both in the PR industry and the not-for-profit sector. Leading the agency’s international business, Clare is on the Global Board of https://www.proi.com/ (PROI Worldwide). She was Global Chair (2018-2020 )....