Hi, I’m Katie, your Model Boardroom Series podcast host, and I want to introduce you to the incredible young people that have joined me in series one.

This podcast series is our answer to your requests for a fun, interesting and accessible way to learn about trusteeship and develop governance skills.

We want to provide listeners with a way of seeing inside the boardroom and demystifying what it means to be a trustee.

Through the podcast you can discover what it means to be a trustee, learn how to think like a trustee and get experience of the topics and issues of the topics a trustee regularly encounters. It’s a safe space to learn and have fun.

I care about trusteeship because I was accidentally elected as one when I was 21 years old. I was elected as Welsh Affairs Officer at Swansea’s Students’ Union, and automatically became a young trustee. At the time, I had no idea what that meant. I went on to be elected as President and automatically became chair of the trustee board at 22 years old. Fast forward to today, I’m a director of the National Academy for Educational Leadership in Wales, trustee of the UK Vegetarian society and Member of Urdd Gobaith Cymru’s International Board. And, I host the Model Boardroom Series!

I want to introduce you now to the other incredible young people I’ve created the podcast with this series and share some of my favourite quotes from them.

Mary is a trustee for Girlguiding and founder of the Now Your Talking network. Mary was one of the facilitators at our launch event, where we explored a real-life boardroom scenario with members of the movement who were role playing being in the boardroom and thinking of how they’d approach the scenario. Read more about the scenario we explored together here.

The need for a diverse board

“I thought in my preparation for the session I’d dissected 80 - 90% of what could be done in relation to this scenario. But in my group we went even further, the ideas kept generating and new things came out of it. I think that just shows the power of diversity of thought, diversity of background coming together to tackle really interesting and topical scenarios”

Ben is an innovation manager at Digital Catapult and young trustee at the Sierra Leone Young Development Trust. He is so passionate about youth inclusion on boards that he was part of the team that initially came up with the Model Boardroom Series idea.

Connection to cause and ability to have an impact

“As a trustee I think you do have a great degree of influence. I don’t think I did it necessarily for something on my CV. I think I did believe in the power of trusteeship to really have big differences in outcomes”.

Pelumi is trustee for Contact Theatre and hosts the Crisis talk podcast. Pelumi is passionate about advocating for other young people and making sure young people have a say in the issues affecting us. Pelumi also produces and hosts a podcast discussing key issues affecting society today called Crisis Talk.

Difference is key to change

“You think, this is how this will go, but one thing about board meetings in general and just having these conversations is that, how you initially think something will go and then what actually ends up happening in the end can be very different. And that’s good, because when you’re shaking up the status quo - difference is needed”.

Leonora is a trustee of 3 UK charities having been a trustee for almost 7 years since she was 22 years old.

Being treated as an equal in the boardroom

“I didn’t actually want to become a trustee initially and I didn’t know what it entailed so I was very hesitant”.  But, after being persuaded by her Grandparents and by the board who was really open to a young trustee, Leonora commented that “It was such an interesting experience to be 22 and at a board table with really experienced people and to be on a level playing field with them at that early stage in my career”.

I also loved when Leonora shared that it’s not “until you're in that first board meeting, where the penny drops and you're like…  it’s just another meeting. It’s not actually big and scary”. Our hope is that by taking you into the model boardroom in this series - you’ll realise just that!

Thank you to Movements For Good for sponsoring this series. If you would like to sponsor season 2, please get in touch: hello@youngtrusteesmovement.org.