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TEBI podcast 47: Rozina Breen on taking a purposeful leap into the not-for-profit sector
333 Plays11 months ago
In the seventh of a series of 12 TEBI episodes looking at meaning and money during later careers or second lives, Jonathan Hollow interviews CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Rozina Breen.
Rozina candidly shares her journey from a working-class background to leading a not-for-profit newsroom, reflecting on the choices, challenges, and resilience that shaped her highly successful career path – through the BBC to her current role.
Together, they talk through the benefits of investigative journalism from a not-for-profit space, and her fresh mission to spark change and expose justice.
Rozina's journey and travels, resilience, and the choices she made unfold, providing a glimpse into the intricate balance of family, career, and risk-taking mid-career.
This podcast series has been developed with financial planning firm Mulberry Bow, who chose TBIJ as their philanthropy of the year 2023. Based in London, they offer a highly personalised service to around 150 individuals and families. Robin Powell and Jonathan Hollow are very grateful for their enthusiastic support for "Second Lives”.
Transcript of this episode: https://www.evidenceinvestor.com/second-lives-taking-risks-with-investigative-journalism/ --
Links to key mentions in this podcast:
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/ —
To donate - https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/support-us —
Mulberry Bow financial planners: https://mulberrybow.com/ —
How To Fund The Life You Want: http://tinyurl.com/how2fund --
Transcript
Introduction to 'Second Lives' Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
I'm Jonathan Hollow and welcome back to Second Lives, a series of 12 podcasts for the evidence-based investor looking at how lives can take a new direction. I'm talking to 12 fascinating people who are either living out remarkable second lives or who are experts on money and meaning in later life.
Guest Introduction: Rosina Breen
00:00:21
Speaker
Our guest today is Rosina Breen, who runs a highly distinctive investigative journalism organization. If you've read recently about the scandalous, misinvestments of Thorek Council, which funneled council taxpayers' money into a private jet and a luxury yacht, it's only because of the work of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
00:00:43
Speaker
Rosina is the bureau's CEO, a role she took on after a hugely successful career in the various news operations of the BBC, as head of the BBC for Leeds and the North, a digital editor at the BBC World Service, and head of news for BBC Five Live. As you might imagine, with the Five Live role in particular, she had a total grasp of how to deal with the flow of instant news and rapidly shifting stories.
00:01:10
Speaker
By contrast, at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, she is now leading a team that truly digs deep for as long as it takes to see what's going on behind the passing headlines. Rosina is also chair of the Leeds Playhouse.
Rosina's Journalism Journey
00:01:26
Speaker
We'll be discussing why a not-for-profit is a good platform for journalism, how it can change lives, and how Rosina's life has changed from Dar es Salaam to London with Leeds and Wales in between. But just before we roll this interview with Rosina, I'd like to say a word about Mulberry Bowe. Not only is this podcast brought to you in collaboration with them,
00:01:49
Speaker
but Mulberry Bowe selected the Bureau of Investigative Journalism as their philanthropy of the year 2023. Mulberry Bowe are a very different chartered financial planning boutique in the City of London, one that offers highly personalized service to around 150 individuals and families.
00:02:09
Speaker
Robin Powell and I like the fact that the team at Mulberry Bowe do not have sales targets nor their own financial products to sell. As they like to say, they sit on your side of the table. For more information, just google Mulberry Bowe wealth planning or follow the links in the notes for this podcast. So now to Rosina Breen.
Importance of Not-for-Profit Journalism
00:02:34
Speaker
Rosina, since 2022, you've been the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Listeners might be intrigued to learn that it's not for profit. Why do you need this kind of platform to pursue investigative journalism?
00:02:49
Speaker
It's a good and complex question, I suppose, having come from a career that was largely at the BBC, which is a publicly funded organisation by the licence fee to a newsroom or an organisation that is funded largely by
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foundations and individual giving. And I think there is a need for many newsrooms in the space. The need for deep investigations that take time that aren't influenced by commercial pressures or time pressures or getting a story out.
00:03:23
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is so important. My first senior leadership role in news was as head of news at Five Live and I started during the week of the EU referendum and since then we have had a ferocious, angry daily news agenda. And you've chosen, I think, five overarching themes to make a distinctive contribution and work in areas where you know you're complementing what else is going on in the industry. What are those five themes?
The Bureau's Five Themes
00:03:53
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I inherited a brilliant portfolio from my predecessor, Rachel Aldroit, who was in post-verb eight years as CEO and put together a really impressive set of what we call verticals. So essentially those are topic areas and they currently cover big tech.
00:04:15
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global health, the environment, enablers, which is the flow of dirty money through London, and our bureau local team and the focus for our bureau local team at the moment include justice. So we have some seed funding to look at ways of working with lawyers on cases that illustrate the need for systemic change in the legal system. We have launched a pilot this year, which is exploring how we can equip communities to
00:04:43
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essentially decide on what investigations to do, how to tell the story, which voices to use. Our recent expose of thorough counsels, misspending of, you know, hundreds and thousands or indeed millions of pounds on investments that are questionable, typified the absolute need for that.
00:05:08
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And within those areas, there's still loads of choices you could make. So do you have a process for narrowing down which stories you think it's right for you to cover?
Impact of Investigative Journalism
00:05:20
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We always think about our impact before signing off any commission.
00:05:27
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Our mandate is to spark change. So our tagline is exposing injustice, sparking change. And we are a mission driven organization. So every story that we do has a commissioning process which involves what is the expected
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impact of any one investigation. So, for example, where can we work with stakeholders who are also pushing for a fairer or better outcomes? Where can we help policymakers understand the need? What other media organisations could pick up our story in country in order to sort of push on the back of the investigations that we have done?
00:06:12
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Is there a story that you've worked on with your journalist since you started at the Bureau that sums up what really makes you proud of the Bureau's work? Every story that the team does makes me proud in different ways, and I think there is something pretty special and magical about belonging to a non-profit newsroom. But I suppose some recent examples
00:06:36
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come from a big tech team who recently delivered an investigation about TikTok moderators in Colombia and are lowly paid and exposed to awful content as a result of their investigation teleperformance, which is the subcontractor for TikTok in that region was investigated and the labor ministry in Colombia
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also decided to investigate so that's a good outcome for us and illustrates perfectly what our aims are in terms of where we want our investigations to go and how we want them to land and what we want to happen on the back of them
00:07:23
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I'd like to talk a little bit about you and then we'll come back more to the Bureau later on.
Rosina's Upbringing and Influences
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I'm interested in often finding that people's attitudes to taking career risks are shaped by their earliest years. So can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up and what your school and studies were like?
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I suppose I feel privileged that I was raised by a strong woman who had strong ethics, was aspirational for us, really determined. And also on the back of that, I don't take anything for granted.
00:08:03
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I was born in North London in a leafy suburb to working class parents. My parents were Tanzanian. My grandmother is from Zanzibar so my dad had a family business out there and my parents had met out there before emigrating to the UK.
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I spent some of my childhood in Dar es Salaam between the ages of three and eight. My parents separated when I was quite young, around the age of six, so eventually we ended up living with my mum.
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in London from the age of about eight, a slightly circuitous story as to how we got there. We essentially were sent to live with our grandparents in Brighton after leaving East Africa and ran away to be with our mum. We went to a comprehensive, was on preschool meals, and every day
00:09:01
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feels a privilege. I feel lucky to represent, I suppose, people like me, whether it's class, ethnicity, gender, to be able to let people know that if I can do it, they can do it too. After school, I took a gap year and went travelling, spent half the year in India, travelling around India, which was, I'm not sure I'd have the courage to do that solo alone today, but I did it back then.
00:09:31
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This is Jonathan Hollow and you're listening to Second Lives. I'm interviewing Rosina Breen about her journey from the BBC to running a remarkable investigative journalism organisation.
00:09:43
Speaker
It sounds like from what you say that your mum always wanted to encourage aspiration and presumably independence if she was keen on you going away to India on your own for a year. Is that right? That she would have seen this as a natural path for you?
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I think she was highly nervous of me going to India on my own, but I, you know, at age 18, 19, you know, those are difficult conversations, aren't they? And I would say that she was never specific about what she wanted me to do. And I feel
00:10:24
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the privilege of that really. She didn't try and drive me down certain career pathways. She was very open to the arts, which I think was quite unusual perhaps from a sort of community point of view and ultimately wanted, I have a brother and sister ultimately wanted us to feel fulfilled and happy also to be able to pay our own way. She always encouraged us to
00:10:52
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to try our best and to feel fulfilled and to achieve our potential wherever that may lie. So I felt very emboldened by her. So what was your journey from that sense of encouragement into journalism?
Career Path from Local Journalism to the BBC
00:11:08
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I then went to university in Aberystwyth which is part of University College of Wales and had three wonderful years there studying English and drama and also quite importantly for me was being by the sea.
00:11:25
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spend formative part of my childhood in Dar es Salaam growing up by the sea. And so that was always very special to me and the campus and the theatre, Aberystwyth, was perfect. It's exactly what I was looking for and made great friendships. I was at the point of
00:11:48
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thinking what next. I failed to get into journalism school at Cardiff. I wasn't ready and, you know, there were far better candidates than me. But I had seen a master's course advertised. It was a new master's course at Leeds University.
00:12:05
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So I moved to Leeds for the year-long Masters, had a ball, loved the city, got a foot in the door through my local radio station, BBC Radio Leeds, working on a casual basis as a radio production assistant, which essentially in local radio means everything and anything, delivering brilliant local journalism, learning the ropes.
00:12:29
Speaker
And then it was just a series of career moves, I suppose. After a year and a half there, I applied to be a researcher in Muse and Current Affairs Radio, which was largely radio for Current Affairs and some five live Current Affairs and some TV Current Affairs.
00:12:46
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I thoroughly enjoyed my time. I think feeling empowered and enabled to be able to bring myself to that role, to learn, and to, again, develop really respectful, key friendships in life.
00:13:05
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I've learned to lean into what makes you feel like you will thrive, to take career choices that will help one grow. Also, I suppose to walk around the barriers in terms of geography because I've moved from North to South, South to Northern, and vice versa, and there have been challenges there especially
00:13:30
Speaker
when you start families. I feel I've had a rich and varied career so far and feel lucky from where I've started that I am where I am, but also recognize the value of what my history brings to me.
00:13:47
Speaker
So it sounds like you're obviously quite adventurous in many ways. So how have you balanced out in your working life a sense of safety against a sense of taking risks or having new adventures?
00:14:03
Speaker
I wouldn't describe myself as adventurous. If I look back and think if I had my time again, I would spend some time working abroad, maybe think about self-development much earlier on in my career, take more risks earlier on in my career. I'd say I'm a slow-burning that it takes time to develop
00:14:28
Speaker
the confidence and the courage to do things and also it helps having people around you who know you well, who you can take advice from and who can really interrogate and question your decision making. I use the word lucky a lot really and I do feel lucky that I've had the opportunity to go for
00:14:49
Speaker
jobs and to see parts of the world and to really understand different platforms. I've gone for things where I felt excited by them or wanted to be challenged by them or felt that I could bring a lot to that role. And sometimes it's, you know, being encouraged to go for roles where
00:15:15
Speaker
I've maybe discounted myself, but then had the extra boost of confidence to go for it based on a tap on the shoulder or a question from another leader or manager to go for it. Now for a word from Mulberry Bowe, who have collaborated with us to develop this series. I spoke to Simon Bullock of Mulberry Bowe.
00:15:43
Speaker
Why did Mulberry Bowe fund the Bureau of Investigative Journalism as its 2023 Philanthropy of the Year? Here's what he had to say. We set up Mulberry Bowe eight years ago and it was at least three years before we knew we had a thriving business on our hands, a practice that would last as long as our clients needed our help. With the business doing well and perhaps because my wife and I had children I began reflecting on how best to give back, I saw the film Spotlight.
00:16:13
Speaker
investigative journalists, bravely taking on one of the most powerful organizations in the world, the Catholic Church. And I realized that if you believe in democracy and the rule of law, there's probably no better cost versus benefit payoff than supporting an outfit like the Bureau. There's a saying that sunlight is the best disinfectant. I believe the way they hold the powerful to account shows just how true that is.
00:16:37
Speaker
That was Simon Bullock, the founder of Mulberry Bowe. And now back to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism itself with Rosina Breen, looking at how she has found a reinvigorated purpose in running
Transition to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
00:16:49
Speaker
it. You made a big change. I think you were in your early 50s when you made the move to the Bureau and obviously you moved from
00:16:59
Speaker
the BBC, which is a very safe, large organisation to, I think, lower pay and a riskier funding environment. So talk to me about what you weighed up at that point and the kind of conversations you had and with who to make that decision.
00:17:14
Speaker
I suppose there are a couple of things at play. One is as a mother and wife, you know, there is a lot to carry for the family and also wanting to carry a lot for oneself as well and to feel enlivened and to feel like you're thriving and being the best that you can be. And I don't think they're necessarily competing. I think they can be compatible.
00:17:41
Speaker
But it takes a lot of discussion and I have to say a lot of understanding of who I am and what drives me from my husband and kids. They want me to be happy and feel fulfilled and to be doing great work. And so throughout my decision making during my career when I've had a family, they have been involved in
00:18:07
Speaker
The conversations, probably two or three jobs ago, I launched a digital hub for the World Service, which required working in London Monday to Thursday. And at that point, the kids were teenagers. And I said to them, I'd love to take this opportunity. I've got two boys and a girl. I wanted to show the boys that actually dads can be in charge at home.
00:18:35
Speaker
I wanted to show my daughter that women can be aspirational in the workplace and that actually walk round barriers and make things work. But I always said to them I would always be home for school report days, sports days, anything that they needed me for and ultimately if it wasn't working.
00:18:57
Speaker
I would give the job up and find something else. And it was a promise to them that it had to work for the family. And so in this case, they're all young adults now, so it's a slightly different scenario. But, you know, there were quite a lot of
00:19:15
Speaker
I would say in-depth conversations with my husband who is more risk-averse and really wanted me to interrogate the pros and cons of moving from, you know, much more securely funded organization, albeit with a sort of license fee caveat, to something
00:19:35
Speaker
That wasn't as well funded and lower salary and so on. And I loved my previous job, but I was ready for the next stretch. And I think you have to put yourself out there and feel the discomfort at times. And when you made that decision or as part of making that decision, did you have to think ahead in a new way about money, pensions and so on? Did it sort of change your kind of money
00:20:04
Speaker
planning horizon? Yeah, definitely. There are points at which, in my old job, I might have thought, well, you know, we can do X, Y, and Z, and now we can maybe just do X. But that's fine, because the, as I say, the sort of purpose and, you know, work is so much of one's life that the sort of thrill of that, the pleasure and reward of that makes up for it. I mean, I'm not
00:20:34
Speaker
I hope I'm not sort of seeing it through rose tinted glasses. It's, you know, sometimes difficult decisions, but I'm lucky enough to be able to make those decisions. As I say, you know, I moved from one hench and pot that was more generous than the nonprofit.
00:20:50
Speaker
pension pot and I've slightly turned a blind eye to that. I mean, I, you know, really need to lean in, especially if we think about women and pensions, but there was a bit of bravery that I needed to do and take and then park something in order to come back to it. I suppose maybe I like to think it's
00:21:15
Speaker
my working class background, my husband is working class Irish background. So, you know, we learn to adapt and to
00:21:34
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spend differently or to save differently or to say to the kids that actually more self-help is needed now because we can't necessarily do everything for them all of the time. So let's talk about how it's developed you as a person to move from being a senior leader but in a very large organization to be
00:21:58
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the executive leader in a small organization. So what's that been like for your personal development?
Leadership and Empowerment
00:22:05
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there is no point feeling or being safe if you want to achieve, you have to have a stretch in order to grow. And so it was this sort of very much fear excitement approach that drove me and ultimately drawing on some really key tools, I suppose, in terms of
00:22:31
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having a gang around you and these are trusted people who you can lean into and ask questions of and advice from council, people who can really interrogate because they know you and to know that you're not in it on your own because leadership is
00:22:53
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lonely at the top, you can't share everything with everybody all of the time. And so having that gang of peers or people above you using the board well, using your peers outside of the organization well in order to sort of share and learn and grow has been great. And ultimately, I think also
00:23:15
Speaker
I value being more of my authentic self and leading in a way that I feel is good and fair and equitable and authentic, hopefully. And allowing teams to see some of that vulnerability can be a powerful thing because we don't have all of the answers all of the time. And there is a saying that you want your team to be better than you. And I think that's absolutely true.
00:23:46
Speaker
This is Jonathan Hollow and you're listening to Second Lives. I'm talking to Rosina Breen about leadership, purpose and life planning. A couple of words that you've used a lot in relation to your work at the Bureau are purpose and impact. Can you just say a little bit more about how you lead your journalists and colleagues towards those and what they mean to you?
Mission-Driven Journalism at the Bureau
00:24:12
Speaker
I'm lucky in that purpose and impact are part of the soul of the Bureau since well before my time, indeed, from the time that one of our co-founders Elaine Potter, who was a pioneering journalist at the Sunday Times, brought in spirit and soul and thinking. So the Bureau's sort of very birth came from
00:24:37
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mission and purpose and everybody who joins it seems to sort of have this magical quality around purpose and mission. We talk about it all the time. We have a brilliant impact editor Miriam Welles who's sort of transformed our thinking around
00:24:54
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impact on what we can achieve through our public interest investigation. So it's the sort of soul of the organisation. People join the organisation because they feel already aligned to our mission and purpose. And it's in our daily narrative, whether that's
00:25:15
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commissioning, telling of the story, long tail of the story. You know, you have a sort of fierce courage and spirit that you're kind of fighting against the grave or the wave. And that's what makes you stronger and more determined to do brilliant stuff. You are passionate about both being a female leader and developing female leaders.
Women in Leadership
00:25:37
Speaker
Do you have a take on the strengths of women as leaders?
00:25:42
Speaker
It's a good question and also a complex one because it's also about style and what you bring to the role and you can have brilliant female leaders, you can have bad female leaders, you can have great male bosses and bad male bosses and everything in between. So it's a sort of more nuanced
00:26:03
Speaker
It's probably about a human approach which brings sort of understanding, empathy. I think where the sort of, you know, gender issue comes in is where women will tend to more discount themselves from opportunity compared to men.
00:26:23
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because, you know, there is a stat that if you're looking at a job and you see ten competencies for a woman, you know, you'll have to feel that you are fulfilling eight or nine or ten out of those ten competencies. Whereas for a man, it's fewer. I'm keen to lend a hand up where there is discounting going on and to help
00:26:54
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everybody especially from underrepresented or marginalised groups know that they can achieve and that we especially need those groups to come forward if we want our journalism to be relevant. I mean the sort of diversity of not just UK but global audiences is
00:27:12
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impressive, phenomenal, an opportunity for us. But if a museum doesn't look the same as society is, or we don't open the door for more talent to come through the door, and if people don't see people like themselves in an organisation or indeed at the top,
00:27:32
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they will naturally discount themselves from that industry or those positions. So it matters. And I think I've been really lucky to have bosses who have hired me not in their own mould. Have you come across women mentors, maybe not in your direct line management chain who have inspired you?
00:27:58
Speaker
Yeah, I've got a load of women who inspire me. I suppose for me a pivotal point was in 2015 when I applied for the BBC News Women in Leadership.
00:28:16
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programme and that was run by an amazing woman, Katie Lloyd, who is then Director of Development at BBC News and launched a programme to get more women or at least to open the doors to more women securing higher grade jobs at
00:28:34
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BBC News and had very clear targets for that programme. So I applied, was lucky enough to be on the cohort of, I think it was 14 to 16 women, and that became a sort of a gang of women who would push each other, endorse each other, give each other space in the room to talk through challenges, opportunities and
00:28:59
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and so on, and actually, you know, there are so many next-generation women and next-generation women coming through the pipeline.
Supporting the Bureau's Work
00:29:15
Speaker
Finally, if people want to access the journalism from the Bureau or they want to support the Bureau's work, tell us about how they can do those two things.
00:29:28
Speaker
If they search for TBIJ or the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, they'll get to our website. We're a slightly pre-designed site at the moment so that they can access our work on that site.
00:29:44
Speaker
And also, you know, we rely increasingly on individual giving. You could subscribe to our newsletter, donate monthly if you're able to in anything from a five upwards monthly is also very welcome. Thank you very much, Rosina. It's been a pleasure to speak to you.
00:30:08
Speaker
So that was Rosina Breen. Do follow the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on social media to keep on hearing about their highly impactful stories. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please bookmark this podcast in your app so that you don't miss the next episode of Second Lives. I'll be talking to Jonathan Clements.
Preview of Next Episode
00:30:27
Speaker
He's a British-American author who has compiled a book of life stories from people looking back at how they have made and lost money and what they learned about planning and meaning along the way.
00:30:38
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And I'd like to thank again, Mulberry Bow, the chartered financial planning boutique in the city of London that has worked with us to develop this series. For more information, just Google Mulberry Bow Wealth Planning or follow the links in the notes for this podcast.