Who we buy from matters: so I’ll gladly shout about Gousto being a ‘B Corp’ When I first heard ‘B Corp’ I thought B*Witched might at last be taking over the world. Turns out, it’s even more important than that double-denim dream. A ‘B Corp’ is a for-profit company that goes beyond the legal basics to have a more positive impact on the world around it. These firms are certified by the global not-for-profit B Lab, and while they exist to make money, they do it in a better way than most, with more care for society, transparency, their people and t ..read more

Fancy a box of family-friendly meal kits delivered to your door each week? Gousto is officially the UK’s best value recipe box… (Sponsored) It’s the trudge to the shop versus opening the front door; choosing a meal versus choosing a list of things you might eventually make into something edible. Each week, a beautiful red box arrives on our doorstep as assurance that I’ll never have to stand bewildered in the wrong aisle of our local supermarket again. In that red box are four perfectly proportioned meal kits, each with food for two adults (which usually has enough to feed our two young kids a ..read more

With the corporate hot air blowing around International Women’s Day, I wanted to speak to someone who could cut through the blather. Professor Sue Vinnicombe is the professor of women and leadership at Cranfield School of Management and heads their brilliant report on the progress of women on FTSE boards “We write a lot about the myth of meritocracy. That actually it’s who you know and who’ll personally sponsor you,” says Sue Vinnicombe, and I think most of us will recognise that already. That you can get all the qualifications, prep the shiniest PowerPoints and smile nicely round the water co ..read more

The other day, The Telegraph wrote to me to ask me to write a piece about Ukraine, and the events unfolding. ‘We want to know how you feel about seeing the flag unfurling so often, in the media.’ The Flock Magazine asked me similar questions.  How do I feel? How do we feel, as a people? It’s a complicated question to answer.  My grandparents on both sides survived escaping Ukraine in WWII, and their subsequent time in German labor camps. I grew up with Ukrainian as my first language, I grew up listening to their stories, knowing that Ukraine was always the borderland under the t ..read more

I have a dream of what the future of work could be. What does yours look like? This blog post is in partnership with Cisco. I’m writing this with toast crumbs scattered over the kitchen table, one child hollering for the volume to be turned up on Paw Patrol and a to-do list bouncing about my grey matter. This isn’t the office I imagined when I was released from university into the working wilds. It’s not even what I imagined in 2019. But as we reach the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the UK’s first lockdown, do I want to simply slip back to the ways of the past? Would I want a commu ..read more

As lockdowns place an increasing childcare burden on women, Emma Davies writes about the lack of role models for aspiring stay-at-home dads My Mr B is the football-loving geezer that you see at Stamford Bridge, chanting for his beloved Chelsea with a pint in hand or shouting at FIFA on the PS4 in-between irl games. He’s the joker, the lad, the football one. Our chosen spot for life as adults is the big skied, sandy beached and sultry beauty of Norfolk. In our three-bed rental, the box room is the cave of football dreams, dedicated solely to Chelsea football club with football cushions, signed ..read more

Martha Deiros Collado on discovering as an adult that she was mixed race, and how she is determined that her own daughter will know more of her heritage We use stories to understand our place in the world and create our identities. As a clinical psychologist working with children and families, I recognise the power of the stories we share and those that lie silent and unheard. The stories we tell about ourselves are a window into our internal world. This is my untold story of the past and my script for a preferred future. We form our identities in our relationships, discovering who we are thr ..read more

Zara Oteng writes a letter to her two young daughters to mark Black History Month My dear daughters, It’s Black History Month. Usually we’d be celebrating Black achievement, culture and art. But these are difficult times and I’m not sure I’m in the mood to celebrate.  You’re too little to know that there’s a global pandemic that’s killed tens of thousands of people here in Britain, a disproportionate number of them Black. You don’t know that there’s another pandemic of inequality plaguing society. This one is more permanent. And it’s been here for a very long time. But maybe things can c ..read more

Zara Oteng writes about the pain of family estrangement and the road to independence On my wedding day in September 2018 I was the only member of my family present. The day was a somewhat lavish affair, with friends, in-laws, aunts, uncles and godparents in full attendance. But my mother, brother and two sisters were conspicuously in absentia.   Image: Charlotte Rawles Summer 2014 was the start of the schism between my mother and me. Periodic estrangement set in and we were on-again, off-again like old lovers until October 2017 when we spoke for the last time. Still, in my mind it wa ..read more

The mental health of babies is too easily overlooked, writes Sally Hogg of the Parent Infant Foundation, especially in a time of lockdown Last week was Infant Mental Health Awareness Week. There’s an awareness week for everything these days, but this is an issue where awareness-raising is needed. Infant mental health is not widely understood, and as a result, it is not valued or invested in. This needs to change. Infant mental health describes babies’ emotional wellbeing and development. Like all of us, babies experience a range of emotions, which are influenced by what is happening around th ..read more