The Value Perspective Podcast episode – Meet the Manager, with Roberta Barr

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RG: Hi, I’m Rob Gardner and I am here today with Roberta Barr, who is not only a portfolio manager at Schroders but also the head of ESG for the company’s Value Team. Roberta, it is great to meet you. I know you and I share a passion for sustainability – and we will get into that in a moment – but, first, what was your path to being head of ESG for the Value Team at Schroders?

RB: It is great to be here with you, Rob – I am really happy to be having this conversation today. I guess my journey into the Value Team at Schroders – and specifically into the sustainability world – started when I studied maths at university. I have always been good at maths – indeed, I have always loved maths. I love the logic of it and the rationality behind all the frameworks you put together – and so part of me wanted to stay in academia, to be honest, and be a maths professor. The harsh reality of the world, however, meant it was much healthier for me to move back to London and try to find a way to make a mark in the corporate world.

I originally joined Schroders in the quantitative equity products team, which suited my maths skills – I could code and understand their algorithms and I certainly learned a lot in that team. But I was on the company’s graduate programme when I joined and, as part of that, different people from around the business come and talk to you about what they do – and my graduate year was lucky enough to have Kevin Murphy, one of the co-managers of the Value Team, come and give us a really punchy 30-minute talk on value investing.

And, honestly – me and value investing, it was love at first sight! It was like, Yes, this is what I want to do. So I sort of squeezed my way into the Value Team and the rest is history. In addition, I have always had a strong passion for sustainability and, if I am totally honest, that was my only real reservation about value investing – that it did not necessarily sit well with sustainability. Yes, the team has always integrated ESG risks into its valuation frameworks but actually thinking about, Does this company have a net positive benefit to the world? That was not really something that was feeding into the funds or their remit.

So I was very fortunate my passion for sustainability coincided with the investment industry growing more and more interested in sustainability. So, having been the person who had always been a bit annoying, going on about all these ESG issues, I became the team’s sustainability champion – first informally, then formally, before becoming the head of ESG and helping to set up, design and now manage our sustainable value funds.

RG: I do want to unpack ESG and value investing but, first, we were chatting earlier and I know you are a keen runner and you have an ESG story on that from a spell in Australia. Could you share that?

RB: I did a secondment to Schroders’ Sydney office for six months or so and I was very fortunate, obviously, there is such beautiful nature there – so many beautiful beaches you can spend hours running up and down. At the same time, it really upset me there was so much plastic and debris left on the beaches and in the sea so I made it my mission to start trying to clean things up wherever I could. So what started as happy morning runs up and down the beaches soon turned into me running with a massive dustbin bag and collecting litter, with locals looking at me like I was some sort of madwoman. But it made me happy and I like to think I did some very, very, very small bit of good in the world.

RG: Well, you certainly raise awareness about just how bad the plastic issue is for our oceans – and maybe we can come back to that. For any of your colleagues listening, is that secondment still available? If so, it must be really oversubscribed – six months working in the Sydney office!

RB: To be honest, I think Schroders has so many benefits to it – and one of those is it is a global firm, with different offices in different locations. There is a New York office, a Hong Kong office, a Singapore office and so on and it so happened the way the Australian equities team approaches fundamental analysis and looking at companies aligned very nicely with the value investment style. So that is how I ended up in the Australian team but, certainly, if that is something you are interested in, then Schroders is a great place to be.

Are value investing and ESG really compatible?

RG: It sounds like a great opportunity. So let’s dive into ESG and value. Now, before Rebalance Earth, I was director of investments at St James’s Place and I would have this discussion with my value colleagues – you know, It is great we are doing all this responsible investing – but value and ESG? They are just not compatible. What are your thoughts on that? Can you dissect both sides of the argument?

RB: Sure – although, first, I would highlight how strongly I disagree with the statement that value investing is incompatible with sustainability. Just the fact that we have a sustainable value fund up-and-running – I mean, Schroders simply would not put a fund forward that it did not believe was a great investment proposition –  hopefully shows we have at least managed to square that circle.

RG: But why would people think that maybe sustainability is only something you can do with quality companies? Why would people even have that premise in the first place?

RB: Having looked at this, there are two main arguments that I see. One of them is a bit ‘top-down and says, Well, actually, some of the most attractively valued companies out there today are in ‘sin’ sectors, such as tobacco stocks or thermal coal stocks – so dirty stocks, if you will. And, as a value investor, you are not really meant to care about what a company does, you are just meant to care about valuations. At the same time, if you are a sustainable investor, then you cannot hold the ‘sin’ sectors.

So, if you’re a sustainable value investor, then you won’t be able to hold some of the most attractively valued companies out there and you are going to miss out on some degree of performance – and you know what? Academically, that is totally correct. We all know that, as soon as you start to reduce your opportunity set, you are instantly reducing your potential for outperformance. That is maths, that is logic – it definitely makes sense – but it is so important that is not overexaggerated.

We ran a few model portfolios replicating a valuable portfolio, going back 30 years, and we found that a totally unconstrained value portfolio – that could go anywhere, into any industry it wanted – outperformed the market by something like 5.2%. If you took that same portfolio and applied a whole host of exclusions – so no chemical companies, no oil and gas, no tobacco, no alcohol, no gambling, no utilities even ... you name it, it was excluded – that outperformed by 5.0%.

So yes – there is a loss that you make but actually, in the long term, that is a pretty insignificant difference. And I think what it really highlights is that value investing is so much more than just the ‘sin’ sectors – especially today,  there are so many other exciting, undervalued companies out there, where you can still tap into their value premium while not having to go against your sustainability beliefs.

RG: And I suppose there are two parts to this. There is the stock selection part – so a narrower opportunity set, as you say – but there is also the engagement part, right? Once you are invested in these companies, you have the opportunity to engage with the executive teams so to what extent can you drive further value through engaging with those companies on those ESG issues?

RB: It is a really interesting question and certainly one we have thought about a lot. What we do say for our value fund is that all of the alpha it generates comes from it being a value portfolio. Any additional alpha you might see through engagement – which we certainly do in the fund – is additional. But that is not our promise – our promise is that you are going to get the value premium but, having said that, we do engage with every company we hold in the fund.

We only hold ESG leaders – so these are very much engagements to make these companies absolutely the top sustainability business in their industry – and you do see positive changes there in areas such as increased board diversity and increased board independence. We have also seen things like companies strengthening their net-zero targets and companies strengthening their supply-chain auditing. These are changes that might seem a bit small, perhaps, to the outside world but actually, as investors, we know appropriate, responsible, sustainable stakeholder management is absolutely crucial to the long-term success of companies. So while it may seem like a small win today, my belief is, when we make these positive changes and we help to move these companies towards being more responsible businesses, then hopefully that will have a long-term benefit to its profitability. Having said that, that is not something we promised – it would just be a nice extra.

Is ESG here to stay or could it be blown off-course?

RG: I would love to focus on some example companies from the universe but, before we do, let’s talk about ESG. Before lockdown, Schroders CEO Peter Harrison was talking about how ESG was here to stay and, five years on, no-one would be talking about ESG as it would just be part of the fabric of everything – yet, three years on, that does not seem to be the case. Now, I do share Peter’s view but ESG has become a bit of a culture war – it has certainly been politicised in the US, and even to an extent in the UK. As someone who not only invests around the world but also has global investors in your fund, can you map out where people sit on that spectrum? Is ESG here to stay or could it get blown off-course? And, three to five years from now, how do you see the marketplace emerging?

RB: Personally, I have full confidence ESG is here to stay but, like all these things, it takes time. It is difficult, it is an ugly argument in some areas – as you say, it has become really politicised and divisive and people can often cherry-pick certain facts and use them to undermine someone else’s argument or belief. But I think the industry will move on and different people will come into it – and, actually, you made a great point when we were talking about this earlier – it is the millennials of today, who are going to be the CEOs of tomorrow. And as we see the people who today are making all the noise about climate change, biodiversity and so on start to own more and more assets then this should start to drive more and more money into more sustainable areas. But that is not going to be a tomorrow thing – I think it will be a slow burn.

RG: Cutting through the media noise then, as you look around as both a mathematician and a value investor, what are the ‘fact patterns’ that give you the confidence to say, I think ESG is here to stay?

RB: Two things. Firstly, when we speak to clients – clients, who before have been adamant they are not interested in sustainability, that they don’t care about it at all – suddenly they are interested. Suddenly, they do want to have that conversation. And yes, we will approach it from the angle of, What can this do in terms of financial gains? But they are listening to their clients properly, in turn, and they are hearing this is more and more important to people – not just making a return but, actually, how are you making that return? And ultimately, we are a service provider, right? We are providing the population with pension funds, with investments funds, with a way to invest their money – and, if they say they want to do that sustainably, then we have a duty to acknowledge that. So we are seeing increased demand on the client side.

Then, when we speak to companies, that is also really interesting – because in the past, if you brought up sustainability with a company’s CEO, you would get a tut almost of, What are you doing? Now, however, they have all got sustainability divisions, they al know they need to start doing TCFD [Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures] reporting, for example, or having their own impact reports. And SDGs [the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals] have come in, which is really helpful in making companies actually begin to think about what they are doing and how they are doing it.

And actually, when we engage with companies today – for example, in Japan, where previously there has been this perception companies are very behind when it comes to some of the corporate governance standards we might expect from their European peers – now, they are working with us and saying, What do you think we should do? These are our plans. We are going to accelerate this, we are going to accelerate that, we are trying to put together our biodiversity policy – what have you seen our global competitors do that we should do as well? And suddenly you are having really constructive conversations. It has been a slow but gradual shift but I think it is a shift that needs to happen for the changes we need.

RG: From fund-labelling in the UK to fund disclosure in Europe and the SEC’s plans on corporate disclosure in the US, it looks to me like we are seeing a rising tide of ESG-related standards and requirements. For any listeners who are maybe not so immersed in this world, could you give an overview of some of the big regulatory changes that are happening?

RB: The overview, I guess, would be that whatever I say today will probably be outdated by the time this podcast comes out! It is all moving very fast. Different countries are in different places. Europe and the UK are pretty far ahead when it comes to sustainability – when it comes to climate change but also when it comes to things like social inclusion, for example.

Japan has always been ahead when it comes to social inclusion and, with its ageing population, that makes intuitive sense. All the companies are focusing on what they can do for their society but they have always been a bit behind in corporate governance – though that has begun to change now their regulator has told them, Actually, capital allocation by cross-shareholdings is not necessarily the best thing for shareholders.

In the US – gosh – climate change has become incredibly divisive and it will be so interesting to see where that actually goes from a regulatory perspective. As for elsewhere, I was actually on a webinar this morning with South African clients, talking about their country’s net-zero journey and the regulations that are coming in and how that is all going to work. Obviously, that has a huge ‘just transition’ piece alongside it and, actually, you could feel the nervousness – but also the excitement – among these clients.

RG: Closer to home, the FCA has come out with its fund-label framework. To offer some context, what fund label would describe your fund?

RB: We are hoping for ‘sustainably focused’.

RG: And, for those less familiar with FCA labels, what does that mean?

RB: It means that a certain proportion of a portfolio’s holdings – although all our portfolio’s holdings meet this requirement– have to be sustainable investments. So they have to have something about them that makes them good for the environment or for society and so on.

RG: Hence why you target the sustainable leaders in any sector or industry?

RB: Exactly.

Appreciating biodiversity risks and the ‘circular economy’

RG: Just before we dive into company specifics, you mentioned the UN’s sustainable development goals and how climate change has become so divisive. You also mentioned biodiversity, which is something I am very passionate about – and, again, Schroders CEO Peter Harrison has talked a lot about natural capital and the work Schroders is doing in that space. Could you talk a little about what is happening in biodiversity – for example, what the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) means for companies and, on a three to five-year view, what it means for understanding biodiversity risk?

RB: Of course. If we look back at climate change, it has always been focused on carbon emissions – for example, we have the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) showing companies what they need to do to reduce their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. We are all pretty familiar with that now but what is coming down the pipeline – strongly – is biodiversity and people recognising that, yes, carbon emissions are a big part of climate change but so is biodiversity and all the different facets within it.

Historically, I think, people have tended to equate biodiversity with deforestation but what is becoming more and more clear is that, yes, deforestation is a huge consideration here – but you know what? There are so many other important factors that maybe related to deforestation but are going to play a huge part as well. And, actually, the reporting standards around some of these factors is really lacking – for example, some of the certifications companies can obtain to say, Yes, all of our palm oil is traceable, certified and so on, have being shown to be not necessarily as stringent as we might like.

There is also a huge amount of supporting data out there – for example, only a tiny percentage of soy is actually responsibly sourced today. And the challenge companies face procuring sustainably sourced soy – which may not even be as sustainable as everyone thinks in the first place – is huge in itself. So biodiversity is much messier, I guess, than Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions – and that is messy enough as it is – but it is increasingly becoming more and more important and certainly we do expect all the companies we hold in the sustainable fund to meet a certain threshold when it comes to biodiversity.

RG: How aware are the companies in your portfolio about the TNFD’s new framework for businesses [published in September]? Are they asking you for advice on how to deal with the recommendations? Are they building the capacity in their teams to understand what it all means for them?

RB: At the end of last year, we addressed that very point ourselves – asking, Which of the companies we hold are most exposed to biodiversity risks? And where are they in being ready to report on this and meet TNFD standards? Actually, the holdings we were most worried about, we have seen significant progress in and we think they are largely in a good place today. They are companies like Henkel, which uses a lot of palm oil but is increasingly moving to use sustainable palm oil, by its own standards and external standards.

We also own Pearson, which is moving towards its Pearson+ model of digital-first eBooks. Not only do these make education more accessible, which is a great thing for society, it also means all these textbooks are not being printed every year only to be stuck on a dusty shelf somewhere or thrown away. So Pearson is moving to this digital model and it is also saying all the paper it does use will be certified to sustainability standards. These are the sorts of initiatives we look for – companies not only seeking to remove risk in the first place but also making sure any remaining risks they have are reduced.

We have a few telecom holdings within the fund and there is quite a big differential there between European companies and the rest. Orange, for example, is very much on it when it comes to biodiversity. Its policies around it are pretty good – well, actually, I think the company is best-in-class – and it has been thinking about the issue for a long time. Whereas a company like KDDI, which is a sort of Japanese equivalent of Orange, is still working on its biodiversity policy. That is something we are watching very closely – and we have actually been pointing it towards various parts of Orange’s biodiversity policy as an example of what we see as best-in-class and what we would expect from the company as a sustainable leader.

RG: So, just to make that more tangible, what are the biodiversity risks associated with a telecom company and what has Orange done to be ahead of the curve?

RB: There are a lot of different parts here but one of the main issues is the raw materials that go into a lot of the services these businesses provide – and it is the sourcing of those materials that can be really detrimental to nature. So what we like is to see a good degree of supply-chain auditing to make sure there is responsibility within their supply chains – so initiatives like the JAC [Joint Audit Co-Operation], we think, are great. That brings together players within the telecom industry and gives them a combined voice. Together, they can have quite a lot of influence over the supply chain whereas, if it was just one of the companies going into the supply chain, they could quite easily be ignored.

We also like to understand what they are doing about bringing back old phones and contributing to the ‘circular economy’ part of the argument as well. What we don’t like to see is companies thinking, just as soon as a device they made goes to a customer, then it’s not their problem anymore. So we want to see a way that customers are incentivised to return these devices – and then the company actually making sure they use those returned devices to make new products or at least appropriately recycle them.

RG: I am guessing a big part of performance in the future will come from companies adopting this much more circular approach yet, as you know, fewer than 10% of companies have really started thinking about this. So how do you engage here with those not as forward-thinking as, say, Orange?

RB: One company we think does a whole load of good when it comes to the circular economy is eBay. This business is often overlooked because it is not one of the ‘Faang’ companies but actually, when you look at eBay, what it is doing is creating this platform that anyone – regardless of tech skills or financial background or education levels – can use to sell on their used goods or buy other people’s unwanted goods. And, I think eBay is only just beginning to capitalise on the service it is providing society and actually advertise that.

And it kind of comes back to your previous question on where the industry is going. I think, when we start seeing marketing like that from eBay – with the company targeting their customers and saying, This business is actually really helpful for biodiversity, really helpful for the circular economy – that is as good an indicator as any the world is beginning to care about these things and we are beginning to move in the right direction.

RG: As you say, eBay was a bit of a market darling from 20 years ago that, if not forgotten, was left behind by the ‘Faangs’. So that is actually more of an opportunity now than a risk – but do you think the company saw that? Or did it come through engagement – or a bit of both?

RB: To be honest, I think they saw it. I think one of eBay’s problems was it went into too many other areas that were not core to its marketplace business. It got overexcited, tried to expand and, actually, what it does today – and what we really like about the company – is it is bringing it back to the basics. It is bringing it back to that marketplace business now – disposing of these supplementary parts and focusing solely on what it is good at – and I think that was the company seeing it as the financial opportunity it is.

Double materiality – two sides of the ESG coin

RG: Fast-forward – how do you see things three to five years from now, from an investor perspective and a company perspective? I guess Peter Harrison’s point was that ESG shouldn’t be a word or a distinction, which means there should not be a ‘head of ESG’ for the value team! On that timeframe, do you see ESG being embedded in everything? And, within that, can we touch on the idea of impact-weighted accounts and [venture capitalist] Sir Ronald Cohen’s ideas on reporting and disclosure?

RB: Well, ESG is not something that has just started, right? And the Value Team has always integrated ESG risks into its financial analysis because, at the end the day, they are investment risks and that is a really important part of understanding companies. So ESG has been around a long time but what will probably change over the next three to five years, I think – as these regulations you mentioned come through and it becomes clearer about the funds groups are running, what the companies are holding, whether they are sustainably driven or sustainably focused and, actually, what is your fund? – it is going to be less about, Do you integrate ESG?, and more about, What are you doing?

RG: Just to push the point a bit – and this is my experience of meeting all kinds of portfolio managers over the years – let’s consider the concept of single versus double materiality. If you think about it, TCFD is a single materiality – in other words, What is the exposure of my business to climate change? As opposed to the double materiality of, What is the exposure of my business to climate change and what negative externality is my business having on climate change? You see, if I push portfolio managers and analysts behind the scenes, they tend not to see climate change as ‘their problem’. They are worried about risk and impact on a company’s financial performance – not, To what extent is this company contributing positively or negatively? My personal view is you are going to see a huge demand shift and regulation will force double materiality – so how does that change things, from the way investment teams think about it to how executives at the companies you invest in think about it?

RB: I don’t know how much you or the listeners know about it, but Schroders has a proprietary sustainability tool called SustainEx, which is doing exactly that. It takes all the positive and negative social and environmental externalities of companies and puts dollar values against them, so you end up with an overall social value of a company – so the net annual expense the company should be paying the world for the damage its is doing through carbon emissions, fresh-water usage, not paying appropriate tax and so on.

Or, alternatively, the net annual benefit that actually the world should be paying the company for the good it does through paying people more than a living wage, say, or the provision of medicines or power. That is such a useful starting point for us when it comes to identifying these extra externalities of a company – and, actually, it is what Schroders ended up using as the basis for deciding which of its funds should be badged as Article 6, Article 8 or Article 9 in the context of the European SFDR definitions. I think that really highlights just how important those externalities are when you are thinking about whether you are sustainable or not.

I would argue some of these externalities are not reflected on company profit and loss statements today – but that is not going to last forever. At the moment, there is this big cost going into the world and someone is going to have to pay eventually. And I would suggest that cost should move away from increasing inequalities socially – and we should actually start to bring that back to who is causing the damage in the first place. And some of the regulation we have seen, some of the behaviours from populations, some governmental stances as well – it is all beginning to move, hopefully, in that direction. The way that SustainEx looks at things is it takes those externalities as a percentage of revenue so it is very much aligned with a profit margin, for example. It is asking, What is the additional – or detrimental – profit margin to a company.

RG: Which is what Sir Ronald Cohen was kind of arguing in his book, Impact: Reshaping Capitalism to Drive Real Change. So can anyone just log on to the Schroder website and see SustainEx?

RB: This is way above my paygrade, Rob! I know it is currently kept within the business – some clients can see it, it is definitely in our reports, we give some high level numbers but otherwise...

RG: Just so I understand, though, what you are saying is I could take various oil and gas companies and I could feed in $50 or €100 a ton of carbon and say, What does that do to the business model? Which companies are better or worse? So, if you took BP, Shell and Exxon, they would still fare differently – even though they are in the same sector – if you were to change the price of carbon?

RB: It is that sort of idea but it is not just looking at carbon. We have some specific tools for carbon as well but the beauty of SustainEx is that, yes, it will factor in, carbon, which is already pretty well documented, but it will also consider, for example, the just transition, the cost to communities and so on. And also, on the other side of things, what is the benefit to the business of power provision, say, and actually taking that away – as  it is going to have a detrimental impact on society, too.

That is what is so nice about SustainEx – it takes the negative and the positive into account. One of the issues with SDGs, I think, is you can get really laser-focused on one particular point and the good that is doing – and yet it might be to the detriment of another SDG. And what SustainEx does a great job of is identifying, These are the good, these are the bad – and is the good worth it for the bad that is happening at the same time?

RG: And here is the nuance of ESG and investing – no company is going to be perfect so it comes down to how you weigh all of these different factors up? So when your clients invest, obviously, they want to know about return, risk, tracking error and so on but what sort of reporting are people able – or asking – to see on the sort of non-financial performance side we have been talking about today?

RB: Clearly, they now want to see carbon measures by fund but, increasingly, they are also wanting to see other measures. So we are always asked about engagements – and we give them our voting logs, which I think are quite a good indication of the work we are doing with companies behind the scenes. Increasingly, though, there will be other metrics that needs to be included – for example, the new TNFD disclosures.

Best and worst-case scenarios – and a rogue ‘book’ tip

RG: Stepping back and looking 10 years ahead, say, how would you like to see financial markets evolve? Paint your rosiest picture of markets as a force for good – and what does it take to get us there?

RB: My rosiest picture would absolutely be that – so companies recognise the good and the bad they do on their own profit and loss statements. Hopefully, in 10 years’ time – in 2033 – a lot of 2030 net zero goals should be being hit and, actually, that transition should be well underway. And that should be really quite exciting to see – when, you know, all the promises and the promised technologies start coming in. That is what I want to see – and, I guess, then my job as a sustainable investor will only evolve, right? Because you are going to start achieving certain things – but at what cost? Other issues are going to come up. I think it is quite exciting – but I realise I must not get too carried away!

RG: Then let’s flip it on its head – what is the nightmare scenario on a 10-year view?.

RB: The nightmare scenario would be that nothing has changed. I mean, it could get worse as well, which would be even more of a nightmare! But for me, if nothing changes, that’s a fail, right? I think change is needed and change is happening, which is great – but that only needs to accelerate. What do you think?

RG: Well, I share your more positive view but I am also grounded in the reality that it could slow down or it could go backwards. I certainly felt a little bit bearish on the direction of travel about a year ago – you know, that 2024 is a big election year, politics is all powerful and it could certainly slow things down and potentially reverse them. But as we mentioned earlier, I think demographic forces will be the disruptive force – so, while it will be bumpy, I think time will play out and, as the millennials come through and the people born in the 2000s come through, the companies they work for, the war for talent, where they save their money, where they borrow their money, where they spend their money and where they invest their money will all ultimately be drivers. That is my thesis but I also recognise it could be wrong. Now as regular listeners will know, this Meet the Manager miniseries is part of the broader Value Perspective Podcast series on decision-making. So what is your favourite tool that has helped you make good investment decisions? I will be generous and let you have more than one! But, essentially, what most helps you think about risk and return or weigh up the various nuances of ESG? After all, the main thrust of the pod is about compounding good decision-making.

RB: Absolutely. First of all, I like to put numbers on things – even if that is just a headline number, I like to probability-weigh things and I like to put numbers on them. It is just the way I work. I also like to review those numbers in a sort of Bayesian way so when I review an investment case, I will look at it and think, Given what I think now, what has changed here? So I guess I like to try and put structure around a decision.

What the Value Team loves doing – and I love doing as well – is having a checklist. We have a checklist approach to our investment process. And I don’t know if you have read Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto – ah, of course you have! – but I just love it. I think that is such a robust way to go about really thinking about what we are doing. As a value investor, you are so exposed to a huge host of behavioural biases – you are doing what everyone else hates but, at the same time, you want to be a contrarian. So you are already kind of stuck in the middle. But then, as a sustainable value investor, yes, you are being contrarian against the majority of value investors but you are also aligning yourself with a lot of the rest of the market. So you are in this interesting position. What works best for me is I put numbers on things, I write it all down, I make my lists, I go sleep, I go on a big run and then I make my decision.

RG: That is great advice. Now, the last time I was on this podcast, I was asked this question so I am going to have my revenge! What is your favourite book or podcast from the last year that you would recommend every listener seek out?

RB: Well, I knew this question was coming so I went through all my favourite books and thought, Gosh, how many could I choose? So I am going to go a bit rogue and pick what I believe is one of the best learning sources out there – Wikipedia. I think millennials call it ‘doomscrolling’ – when you end up looking at social media on your phone for hours – and yet, if you just translate that instead to Wikipedia, which I do, you can end up spending hours clicking through links and learning about different historical events that happened or what different people did. So you can learn so much. I just I love it as a website and I love it as a concept – and I think that, through Wikipedia, you can learn as much as you can through books and podcasts.

RG: I love that answer – and I actually contribute to Wikipedia because I think it is brilliant and it is great we have that resource. Roberta, it has been great to do this podcast. I have loved every minute of it. Thank you very much.

RB: Thank you, Rob. It has been my pleasure.