Navigating the Intersections of Science, Business and Mental Health with Dr. Natalie Kenny

Join us for an enlightening journey with our wonderful guest, Dr Natalie Kenny, the CEO of Biograd and the recent recipient of the Outstanding Entrepreneur and Inclusive Innovation awards at the Northern Power Women Awards. This episode reveals the riveting narrative of a girl with a dream of becoming a scientist, who found herself as the leader of a blossoming business.

Natalie lays bare the unexpected pathways life has taken her, underlining her unwavering commitment to her scientific roots while nurturing her business and personnel to fruition. Don't miss your chance to hear wisdom from Natalie's journey and her sage advice on striking a balance between work, life, and mental health.

Listen to Learn:
🎙️Natalie's experiences and lessons gained from establishing her own business
🎙️The impacts of toxic positivity
🎙️The importance of self-awareness and tuning into your body's needs
🎙️The significance of a work-life balance

Listen here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1981646

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:38

The Northern Power Women podcast for your career and your life, no matter what business you're in. Hello and welcome to the Northern Power Women podcast. My name is Simone and every week, I speak to amazing, remarkable, inspiring and just kick ass individuals who are using their power for good. As we continually over here we are Power HQ strive for that more equal, diverse and inclusive world, and this week I am chatting to the incredible Dr Natalie Kenny. I always think that then there should be letters. They've got to be coming. Dr Natalie Kenny, who is the CEO of Biograd and the winner of not just the outstanding entrepreneur category this year, but a cheeky little commended for inclusive innovation at this year's 2023 Northern Power Awards. Natalie, natalie, natalie, welcome. What do you think about the letters? Welcome to the podcast, let's talk about them.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Letters I'll take whatever I can get to be honest with you.

Speaker 1: 1:35

It's nice to be here finally, oh, it's great, it's great to see you and you have such an amazing story which we're going to jump into and we're going to sort of navigate, sort of from the Amazon jungle to extra Madura to where else are we going to go? Neurological research, respiratory diseases and everything in between. Talk to us about how you got to where you are now as the chief exec of the Biograd group, not even company a group.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Do you know what? It was never a conscious plan. So when I was a kid right, I don't know if you remember this Do you ever remember seeing a film called Medicine man? It was Sean Connery and he went to go live in the middle of the Amazon jungle and he lived with the tribe and he found a cure for cancer. I was a little girl growing up in Birkenhead and I said to my mom that's what I want to do. Mom, I realized that and Dr Quinn medicine woman, you know, when she traveled around, like you know the wild west, and cured people. So I always wanted to be a scientist.

Speaker 2: 2:35

But it's really difficult, isn't it? Because you say to your parents or to your teacher I want to be a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, a lawyer, a dentist, a police person, all of this, and they can give you a plan because we see what those people do. But I didn't want to do any of those. I wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to change the world, make a difference, help people, explore the world, do really cool things. I didn't really want to care for people, I wanted to go, I wanted to see things, and so my careers advisor at school gave me a full plan to be a landscape gardener because I said I wanted to work in the jungle. So it was a little bit lost. Really I didn't see the point in doing my. I didn't see the point. You know, I was doing A-levels. I could not see the point because I didn't want to be a science teacher and I didn't want to be a doctor and, yeah, I'd never met a scientist, seen a scientist other than what you see on TV. So you know, I sort of got to it in a roundabout way, much like probably most other scientists. I did my A-levels, didn't do particularly well, moved to Ireland for a year, worked in a shop, knew I wasn't where I wanted to be but didn't know how to get to where I wanted to be.

Speaker 2: 3:40

So did my undergrad, did my post-grad and then ended up working in Peru for Johns Hopkins Medical School as a neurological parapsytologist. I was working in Lima and then up in the Andes as well. Then I ended up in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. That was my dream job, working for St George's Medical School. Then funding fell through. We've back to the UK, worked at Pfizer for a few years, then did my doctorate in translational medicine. Oh, I worked in Ectromodora in Spain as well. You mentioned that for a bit. I forgot about that Sort of I always wanted to be a scientist. It's all I ever wanted to do. And then I did a couple of post-docs in the Institute of Environmental Health. I worked in Cambridge for a bit, was really happy as a scientist, never wanted to be anything else. I was very happy with my life.

Speaker 2: 4:27

But you know, strange things happen then and life is never linear. You have your ups and downs, and remember somebody who wants. One of my cousins once told me life is like a wheel and sometimes you're at the top and sometimes you're at the bottom, but you will never stay where you are. And then I felt like, you know, I sort of went from the bottom and over sort of 10, 15 years, sort of far away, up to the top, and then my life from the outside wasn't necessarily what my life was living it. And so I did something really against my normal nature. I just couldn't see any other thing to do.

Speaker 2: 5:04

I was a scientist. It was intrinsically part of my nature, it's my identity as a scientist, and you can't be a scientist without a lab. So I walked into a science park and I rented a lab for a year with no way of knowing how it's gonna pay for it. But I figured out. I just figured that out on the way. So that was 2014. Yeah, and then the company's grown and grown and grown and grown since then, you know. So it was never. We'd never, I'd never aspired to do, to be a CEO, I'd never aspired to own a business. It all, everything grew around the science and I put a really good team in. It was definitely not easy. There was there's, no clear path. I think people sometimes see the awards and think, well, she's done that because anybody could do that. But it was a labor of love and it was difficult, but it was my way of staying sane.

Speaker 1: 5:52

I just want to go back to. We started off with medicine woman. Sean Connery, the Amazon I'm almost throwing 007 in there because I think you're definitely a superhero. I think you're in secret agent in there, but they're the letters after my name, 007. I'm going back to that piece of paper or that pack that you were given with the landscape gardener on Just at what point. I'm trying to see where that jump is, or for that massive. Maybe it is the 007 dive, isn't it? From someone trying to put you in a box over here and get you to go and be a landscape gardener, which is amazing career, but you knew you wanted to be the scientist. Where was that bit in the middle, or that bit that just went? I'm just gonna.

Speaker 2: 6:36

Well, do you know what's really weird In my life? Any of those big decisions that I've made that have ended up being life changing have always come because of something that I perceived at the time as being negative, and I'm sure anybody listening to this who has got older relatives or people advising that are a certain age my nan used to say to me it's just not meant to be. I applied for jobs that I was absolutely sure were made for me and they say it's just not meant to be. And now I believe that I think sometimes these really horrific things happen in life to test us and to actually give you a bit of gumption, I guess is the word. Because I didn't drop out of college. I just never really went, my grades weren't that good, I didn't see the point of it and I was doing something I was really unhappy with and that forced me to go. I went and did my undergrad in molecular biology and that was it.

Speaker 2: 7:36

Once I got there, so many doors opened up once I got to university and I knew that there were options. So once I was at university, that was great. Getting into university knowing that there were gonna be career options available for me took me around a couple of years, longer than it would have maybe taken Most people who might have had different advice. But actually it was right for me. I was a couple of years older, I was more determined, I was less likely to listen to negative comments Because I, just, I, just I didn't have the energy for it. I didn't have the energy for it. So many people are told maybe the scientist was not a feasible life choice, and I guess once you're on that journey you're like can I swear on this? But yeah, you just see, you know I'm here and I'm gonna try, and if I don't try I'll hate myself forever.

Speaker 1: 8:29

Who or what was it that made you believe that you could we?

Speaker 2: 8:32

see all of Northern Power Women Awards and all these awards. You see these women that are inspirational and incredible. For years, you know, I'd see these women. They'd definitely be women to aspire to be like, but I would hazard a guess that every single woman there's ever one and if your we are power awards has gone through something that could have broken them. And part of coming out the other side is that self-belief, and sometimes there isn't anybody to have you back. Sometimes it just isn't, and sometimes it's not even that you believe in yourself, it's that you cannot believe in the alternative. So it wasn't that there was that support, necessarily. It was that the alternative to me succeeding wasn't an option that I could let into my reality. And what would you?

Speaker 1: 9:24

say to anyone out there who's listening? Because, like you said earlier, people look at you and you know surrounded and multi-award, winning, you know lots of accolades, but what would you say? And people like she's all over it, she has it all going on and we just highlighted that sometimes you just have to scratch a little bit and you see that Actually we don't. What would you say to that? You know that individual, or those individuals like they're listening today to motor them to know that actually they can get through this, they can have that belief. That's a really good question, I guess nobody has it all going on.

Speaker 2: 10:00

I think this toxic positivity, this social media, this concept that women have it all, you can have it all but you can't do it all. And I feel like you know I'm saying here there was some hardship, but I certainly don't think that you know, if you scratch onto the surface, I don't have. I feel like I have it all but I don't do it all. And that is probably my biggest shift in mentality from probably the last time I was on the show, probably the last seven or eight years. I outsource a lot. I get people in and I've heard this on podcasts before from other people that say you know, when you start an upper business, employee experts I like to think how the hell am I going to afford to employ experts? I haven't got any money. But actually it is one thing that every time we've made a profit, the profits come back into employing people to make my life easier. So yeah, I do, I do. You know, I have a really nice work-life balance. To say it's easy would be untrue. But if it was easy, it would be boring and I couldn't do that. I just I couldn't. I couldn't do something that's repetitive. I'm not built to do the job, where I get up at nine. You know I'm in work nine till five, 48 weeks a year and I have a few weeks holiday. I could not live like that. I've never lived like that. I'm an all or nothing person. I go until I burn out and then I have some time off and then I go 100% again. That is my personality and that suits me really well.

Speaker 2: 11:27

I think it's quite common amongst entrepreneurs. I think you're hyper focused on things, you get excited about things and you push past that tiredness. Any of that sort of normal physiological things, of that would normally stop you. You sort of go through it and I guess that's what allows you to achieve amazing things. I certainly think that's common amongst scientists and it's certainly common amongst entrepreneurs. I am so. It's just listening to yourself, isn't it? Listening to your body, listening to your capabilities and knowing that you can only go full pelt for a certain amount of time. But you can. Nobody wants to have it all. You have to be desperately miserable. If you had it all, what else would there be to get?

Speaker 1: 12:05

But I certainly feel happy and fulfilled for sure, but not because life's easy and we always talk about things, those slogans on those tote bags or these t-shirts and it's, you know, it's that whole. It's okay to have it all, but you don't have to do it all. You know you can easily, and I think that's a big difference. And we talked just before we pressed record on today's part about something that you're intentionally doing. You spent the pandemic just being totally accessible 24 seven and just driving forward at 4,000 million miles an hour, and and you're actually now going to actually do a bit more of that intentional kind of timeout, aren't you? Is that a big decision? Was that easy for you to go? No, I'm just going to do this.

Speaker 2: 12:50

No, it was dead easy. So pre pandemic I was really good with my timescale. So obviously single parent, child at nursery and in school. So there were very clear hours as to when I worked. So I would usually work from 4 till 7am. I get up at 4, I'd plan my day by 7am. I could have responded to all my emails on the day before, message my assistant or the people in the office that everything's sorted for when I get in at 10. And that would give me 7 till 8 to get my son get into school, get to the office for 10. I would be in their tensile to and it'd be meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting. I do phone calls in the car on the way to work, nine till 10 phone calls on the car, from two till three for when I got to school and then I would switch my phone off from 4 till 8 or, sorry, 3 till 8. And that would be my time with my son. I was very, very clear cut during COVID.

Speaker 2: 13:39

The company just grew exponentially and the stakes were higher for people's lives the diagnostic services that we did and moving into more work that we're doing around stem cells, regenerative medicines, neuroscience work. It has been 24-7, it's been more critical. So generally we had a rule that my phone would be off between midnight and 4am so that I could sleep those four hours. But you can't keep doing that forever, so that's been for a few years. So for me, I'm taking six weeks just to grow some, get back into the habit of being healthy and to have that work-life balance. That just wasn't possible during COVID. So for me, six weeks which will allow me to take my son to school, go to the gym, have a coffee with friends, just reset and then get back to work and have the ability to be a bit more balanced, because then that's really important.

Speaker 1: 14:32

And how do you stop getting ahead of that? How do you stop planning for six weeks ahead? Or are you already there? Do you already know what you're going to come back to with that? The bag of great new ideas to change the world and support next-gen talent, because that's something you're massively passionate about.

Speaker 2: 14:49

Yeah, yeah, well, to be honest with you, I'm sat on my other screen at the moment. I've got my R&D plan for the year, which we're just sort of calculating at the moment. So obviously, we're a science research company and we have in one of our companies we have six R&D projects on at the minute and the other one we have four, so we have some amazing scientists. I employ people with more experience and skills than I've got. We've got some really exciting things on, so people are perfectly capable of running their own departments, the group to. Really all I am at the moment is I coordinate to make sure that the different groups are aligned. But, to be honest, we have a great management team that do that and I go out and speak to people about what we do. But, again, we have some really great departments that do that. So I guess at the moment I am more of a hindrance to my company than anything else.

Speaker 1: 15:41

So everyone's getting a holiday, right, or they're all, but everyone's just going to be anticipation. You know, in anticipation of that, right, I've got a pad here or I've got a file open. I'm ready to share, do you?

Speaker 2: 15:53

know what. I went to a talk and somebody said the worst thing ever. Everybody knows that when an entrepreneur goes on holiday for two weeks, the list they come back with is awful. But, to be honest, our projects are big. I mean they're really really big organized projects. So the dendrocyt cell manufacturing that we're setting up, the cartes cell therapy work that we've got ongoing and the Parkinson's research that we have, they're really well organized and there's less chance now, given that the company is so much bigger. There's less chance of me just rocking up and going by the way, although saying that that's probably how all six of these projects started. So I don't know, wait till January we'll see, we will see.

Speaker 1: 16:37

And I'm just talking about you, talked about you have, you know, we've recognized the fact that you have achieved so much and you have been recognized with so many awards. But obviously the Northern Powering Awards, that's something entrepreneur, inclusive innovation was the highlight exemplar. But seriously, what do awards mean to you? You know?

Speaker 2: 16:57

I want to go back to that point of seeing other women win these awards, and I don't know if you've experienced this as well. So, as girls, we're often told to be polite, to stay quiet, to be calm, to stay within our box, and I think now we're a generation of women that are really angry and frustrated and we're hitting men of wars and we're just even more sort of angry, and so we're saying more about inequality, we're talking about it more, we're shouting about it more, we're helping each other more, and it's great. You know, I see other women winning these awards and think, you know, look at them, they're a beacon of hope for us. That's what we can achieve. But I wonder sometimes, if I spoke to other women as Zed, do you ever feel exhausted for the amount of fighting that you have to do to achieve something that other people can achieve without fighting? Do you ever have self-doubt because you feel like you're the only person doing it? And do you ever feel like, by shouting about inequality, that maybe people perceive you as a victim and none of us, I don't think, perceive ourselves as a victim?

Speaker 2: 18:09

And so I guess for me, what this award really did was show me, I guess, or make me feel whether it was something like this.

Speaker 2: 18:18

It made me feel like I wasn't alone, that other women agreed with me and that there was some sort of support there, because not everybody's voice gets heard. And I've been lucky over the last few years that some of the things that I've talked about have been picked up and have been shared. And to know that I'm not the only person that feels like that and that the work that I'm doing is in the right direction. I think that's what the award means to me more than anything, because it encourages me to keep going. And I think if I hadn't won the awards and this sounds awful I thought that self-doubt is always there, isn't it? And you think am I doing the right thing? Am I too loud? Am I too obnoxious? Am I irritating too many people? Am I too much of a disruptor? And these awards, I guess, give a barometer for general society to show that actually, no, there's a lot of support for disruption when we're talking about quality.

Speaker 1: 19:13

And absolutely not. Every Northern power woman comes in one size, shape, voice, background. That, for me, is always a thing, and you talk about platform and using that voice for good. That's where it's about that disrupting, then, using that power for good and having your voice heard and really accelerating that. Dr Natalie, medicine woman, superhero, agent of change, disruptor, entrepreneur, defender of the good, and about to be, I'd like to say, a lady in a leisure but I'm literally kidding myself for laughing inside and saying that outside but actually you're gonna come back with salsa skills, because that's one of your things that we talked about before. You're gonna do a few little salsa moves and we will see that on stage. It's strictly come Northern power women, maybe next year. Yeah, natalie, thank you so so much for joining us today. We didn't get even through a half of the questions, but we had a great rich discussion, as I knew I would, with you. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. I thank all of you for listening.

Speaker 1: 20:13

Please do stay connected on all of our socials at North Power Women on Twitter or X and Northern Power Women and all the other socials. Leave us a review podcast at northernpowerwomencom. That's old school, isn't it A good old email? And don't forget to sign up to our digital hub at wearepowernet, where you can absolutely look up all of our fantastic role models, including Dr Natalie, and watch out for our forthcoming power profiles, which are video bite size snippets of the brilliant role models that we've got across the Northern Power Women community. My name is Simone. This is the Northern Power Women podcast and what goes on media? That's old school.