Jennifer Britton: Author of Reconnecting Workspaces: Pathways to Thrive in the Virtual, Remote and Hybrid World

A conversation with Jennifer Britton, a renowned author known for her pioneering work in group and team coaching. 

Britton, who transitioned from a significant role in the United Nations to coaching, emphasizes the transformative power of effective group dynamics in virtual, remote, and hybrid environments. 

With six publications to her name, including "Effective Group Coaching," Britton shares insights on facilitating meaningful conversations and achieving focused results. 

Her approach advocates for leveraging technology to enhance coaching's accessibility and impact, underscoring the importance of simplicity and inclusivity in coaching practices. 

Britton's journey illustrates the evolution of coaching from traditional methods to embracing digital platforms, highlighting the crucial role of adaptability and innovation in expanding coaching's reach across diverse settings and cultures. 

Her work champions the idea that coaching can significantly influence team dynamics, promoting a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.

Transcript

(interview blurb)

Jennifer: In any group or team, there is so much more diversity than when we’re sitting down with one person and so we need to have just a wider toolkit, a wider range as well.

(intro)

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal, CEO of Coaching.com, and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. My guest today is a coach and writer. She supports teams and groups in having better conversations and having more focused results in the virtual, remote, and hybrid spaces. She’s an author of six publications, including Effective Group Coaching, and her latest book, Reconnecting Workspaces: Pathways to Thrive in the Virtual, Remote, and Hybrid World. Please welcome Jennifer Britton.

(Interview)

Alex: Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer: Hey, Alex. How are you doing today?

Alex: Good. How about you?

Jennifer: Doing well. Looking forward to our conversation today over a cup of water.

Alex: Likewise. Well, you beat me to it. We usually start by asking our guests what are we drinking today, now you did the big reveal. So we’re drinking water, huh?

Jennifer: Just going with something simple, right? I work in the realm of teams and groups and sort of the mantra is keep things as simple as possible, because the complexity is with the group or the team. So, hence, water.

Alex: That is very true. Yeah, and the water selection’s on the rise. I feel like there’s been a lot of episodes lately with water. It’s good for you.

Jennifer: It’s good for you and it’s a core element. I’m a swimmer, which is why I also chose water. I really love to surround myself, I live on the edge of a big lake here in Canada. I just came back from the Caribbean where I used to live and work and that, of course, is in the middle of water. So sort of is my element, which is why I chose it today.

Alex: Wonderful. Please take me to your journey. You’re very well known for having been an early adopter in team and group coaching, written, I believe, seven books, so you’ve had a really interesting career and a lot of people that got started in coaching when you did, there wasn’t really a pathway that was clear to become a coach. So, please take me through your journey of discovery and the journey of your career and let’s start, if you remember, the first time you heard about this thing called coaching.

Jennifer: I do. It really stands out. So in those days, I was a leader for the United Nations. I used to work in post-disaster management and, like many leaders today, I was totally burnt out. I was traveling the world, my bosses would call me on a Friday and say, “Hey, Jen, we wanna send you from the Caribbean to Germany to go facilitate a retreat. Retreat’s Monday, you gotta be on the flight out Friday night.” And so I found myself a conference in 2001, I think, in New Orleans, which is the Canadian way of pronouncing New Orleans, and so it was for ASTD, which used to be — now it’s ATD and it used to be the American Society for Training and Development and, of course, I wanted to really get tools in my toolbox for retreat work, because that’s really what I used to do a lot of, helping teams develop their strategy, helping governments identify their plans, climate change, you name it, that was my world. And I found myself in the session with a coach who was doing something about work-life balance, and I’m like, this is a little different. And so she brought out the wheel of life and she said, “I’m a coach,” and I wasn’t hearing about coaching in those days because I lived in South America and the Caribbean and that really was my introduction. And so, flash forward, a couple of years later, I find myself actually with a crisis point in my life, which many of us wind up changing careers. I woke up one morning with an eye infection that literally led to permanent vision loss in one eye and that’s why I do what I do today. And so I had about a year to figure out was I going to move to New York out of the field and go and still work for the UN but sit behind a desk or was I going to continue to follow my passion of helping teams and groups and entities do their best work? And so this coaching session in 2001 sort of tripped me into the co-active coaching world. I found myself in 2002 and 20023 flying from my duty station in the Caribbean back to Toronto, which is originally where I was from, and every month training as a co-active coach. And week after week or month after month, it was like, “This is great but I’m not gonna sit down one on one. Can we do this work with teams and groups?” because I’m going back to work with a community or in government. And in those days, it was always the same response. “No, Jennifer. That’s training, that’s facilitation. We really just coach one on one.” So here we are, 2024, group coaching, so well received, team coaching, so well-known by coaches, organizations alike and so, so much has changed and, really, looking at my work as a researcher, a writer, an advocate, it’s like how do we bring coaching to the masses. That, for me, has really been part of this work, one of the reasons why I chose water and my company is Potentials Realized and in that coach training sort of owned this logo notion of a water drop, because my entire career now, over three decades, has been how do we empower other people to make the changes they need to make in their arena, whether that is in my backyard, half a world away, etc. And so I see, really, that’s where we can look at group and team coaching as really changing the trajectory of not only organizations but, by default, communities and nations. And I’m sure in our conversation, this business turns 20 in a few months, and, over the last six months, especially, and going back to the Caribbean, I’ve had a lot of privilege of seeing seeds and conversations that were planted two decades ago and really having changed the trajectory of people’s lives. And that’s what we do as coaches, right? It’s not just an immediate aha. Coaching is really about sustainable change.

Alex: Thank you for that. Appreciate it. Appreciate you guiding me through your journey. So you mentioned kind of being able to provide coaching for more people and expand access around coaching. What have you seen over the last, let’s say, five, ten years, you’re excited about in terms of expanding coaching? We’ve seen a lot of technology push the envelope, many people think in many good ways, some maybe not as much, there’s the whole commoditization versus democratization of coaching conversation that’s interesting. So let’s focus on that first and then let’s talk about the role of group and team coaching and also enhancing access for coaching.

Jennifer: Absolutely. The whole domain has really shifted. When I sat down in 2008 and was approached by Wiley to write Effective Group Coaching, my first book, which was the world’s first book on group coaching, as a practitioner and coach trainer at the time, I was really intrigued, like where’s this work going? What is happening? Not only in organizations, but at that community level, at the social change level as well. And I think that’s really where we’re seeing some very interesting nexus points now, where my affinity always for virtual, because this business was started as a virtual business in 2004 where we didn’t have Zoom, we didn’t have Skype even, it was all bridge lines but my vision as a CEO was how do I continue the conversations with those people that really want to have change in their world, yet I’m not going to fly there, they’re not going to come together, we’re going to have to really look at leveraging technology. And so I think, really, there was a big shift in about 2014, 2015, as Zoom came on into the world. We used to do Skype calls in 2008, ’09, ’10, ’11, Skype calls with groups and organizational individuals or even teams, not the same ease, and I think as the world changed in 2020, literally overnight, as I share in my first TED Talk, which is virtual remote hybrid checklist, we had 3 billion people going virtual and digital overnight. And, for me, as a writer, 2017, I released my third book, Effective Virtual Conversations. It had a good receipt, until 2020, when my former editors said, “Oh, we wish you hadn’t done that self-publish. We wish we’d accepted that proposal that you’d put into us,” because I think now accessibility is such a different conversation. As I like to put it, people that I worked with in the mid 90s in a country in South America, it would take me three days of overland and overwater travel to reach those communities. Facebook mobility now allows us to just get on our phones and connect like that from wherever we are in the world. And that changes not just the accessibility of coaching but it changes the whole way we communicate and affect change as human beings. So that’s what I get excited about and I think certainly the understanding from a client base of how do I access coaching, how do I learn with and from others because, really, with group coaching, especially, it’s about that peer-to-peer learning experience that is so different that we don’t get necessarily in a one-on-one. And so I think we’re seeing continued hybridization as well, like most group coaches may include in their group coaching some one-on-one time to allow the client to go deeper, but then also have that breadth and width of the peer-to-peer dialogue that is so powerful. And that, of course, is different from teams where we always are looking at alignment. So it’s an exciting time. I think we’re coaching is in 2024, there’s a lot of best practice we can keep building on to and there’s still a lot of ways that we can look at how do we fuse, what’s emerging, so whether it’s AI, whether it’s my son is in his first year of university, they are the digital natives, their whole way of communicating, interacting, seeing the world is so different. I just think his generation is also going to be taking coaching to the next level as well.

Alex: Yeah, it’s certainly an interesting time for coaching. We’re talking a lot about group and team coaching so it’d be helpful to — I think a lot of our listeners may be very well acquainted with group and team coaching, maybe others are not, so I’ll tell you kind of how I think about the difference and you being an expert in the topic, tell me what you think of that and definitely expand on it. Typically, and I remember doing research when I was at the Center for Creative Leadership many years ago, around team and group coaching and that must have been like 2009, ’10, ’11, so it was kind of like those early days, right? 

Jennifer: Yes. 

Alex: And, ultimately, we came up at CCL with a way to think about this where every team is a group but not every group is a team. So we have this moment and we were like, “Huh, that actually kind of makes a lot of sense,” so that was a start to kind of think about what are the differences, but then there’s a lot of nuance and I think you were already referencing some of that. So what do you think of that distinction and how can you build up on that?

Jennifer: Yeah, well, I’ll build on it. I think it’s a great starting point, and I think what typically happens is people, coaches get invited into an organization, and someone says, “Hey, we’ve got a team that we want you to work with,” and as you unpack that, we want to be asking is this entity, is this grouping, do they have shared purpose and shared vision and shared mission? Because teams exist for a reason. They exist to get something done, to have relationships, to have results. So we also want to look at the layer of what is the component of relationships as well. So, in a team, those relationships are established, whether it’s a project team and the team is just forming and is going to disband in a few months, or whether it’s a more static team. In contrast, groups come together typically for a fixed amount of time. So the role of the coach is a little different. The role of the coach is more like that hub and spoke. The coach might be the one that’s bringing a group together. So, for example, this morning, I was working with a group in education. Our leaders from a certain district, they’re coming together for a six-month period biweekly. They come from different parts of the organization. And I asked them, at this first call of the year, I said, “What’s really the value of our work together?” and I hear this week after week, it’s like, “You know what, I thought that we would be so different, being from different parts of this organization, but as I listen in to so and so, this is my experience. I no longer feel alone.” And I think certainly post-pandemic, this is a really important piece of the group coaching experience, which is where we’re really looking at are we striving for alignment with an entity that exists for purpose and reason, i.e., a team where we want to really get that alignment happening? Are we harnessing the diversity that exists within a peer group? And that’s more of the group coaching experience. So, yes, every group, there’s probably a group element in every team that exists, but not necessarily a team in every group that exists because especially when we add this diversification that happens with technology, you can have groups from multiple time zones, multiple cultures. This has always been my work for the last 20 years and that’s why I think every day is so new because every group, every team is going to have a different conversation. So it keeps this work really fresh as coaches.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. So thinking about scaling coaching, I mean, I think it’s logical to think that team and group coaching approaches can provide access to coaching to more people. How is getting access to coaching through one of these interventions different than one on one? And are we headed in a good direction by being able to expand access through these approach methodologies or approaches? And does that mean that the ideal is that at some point someone gets one-on-one coaching or, you know, how do you see the expansion and reach of coaching through these methodologies and how do you relate that to one-on-one coaching?

Jennifer: Yeah, I think there are three different modalities and we always want to be looking at what is the purpose from the client perspective of what they want. Do they want to take that deep dive of one on one? Are they part of a team that’s effecting systemic change, which, again, if you’re looking, and this is one of the reasons I continue to be so passionate about my work, what I learned from 15 years of working at the global level in climate change and post-disaster management is a leader alone cannot affect global change, we need to harness the abilities of others. And so whether I’m getting coached as a leader one on one, at some point, I’m going to take that conversation out to the system I’m part of, whether it’s with my group of peers and other leaders in the organization or whether it’s with my own team. And, to me, I don’t think it has to be an either-or, right? I think it’s always an and and I think this has been a very interesting unspoken fallacy in our work. Even up to five years ago, I would get evaluations from coaches saying, “How dare you bastardize one-on-one coaching, talking about group coaching?” Well, why can’t we have it all —

Alex: I can see that.

Jennifer: Why can’t we have it all? So there is a different — I think what we’re talking about now too is there is a really important role in today’s world of change and complexity. We as coaches have to be humble. We have to practice humility like we’re instilling in others. And I think in some ranges, especially one on one, there’s been a lot of power that coaches have started to wield. So I don’t want to go too far down that pathway but I just think we can have an and with one-on-one, group and team, and part of I think the conversation today with clients is what’s going to be the best modality for you? What are you looking for? What are the immediate goals? What are the long-term goals? Because coaching is, in my mind, it’s a capacity development mechanism. It is one of many ways that we can build capacity in organizations. We can change culture in organizations. We can also do that on a national and a global level as well at different speeds. So what is the best way? That is always the question for the coach. And I think one of the savvy areas for coaches, it’s not just about showing up now in coaching, it’s about really having that dialogue, using some design skills to really think about how is this work fitting into other initiatives? How is it being supported? And that’s part of the systemic lens as well, because if we’re just doing a drop, it’s not necessarily going to have as much impact as it could have.

Alex: How are you seeing the team industry, the team coaching industry evolving in terms of the perspective of the buyer? How has that evolved since you wrote your book?

Jennifer: Yeah. So, it’s interesting. I think it’s evolving in very different ways all over the world. Some of it, I look at the world coming out of the UK, they can do things that we could never do in Canada because of budget. There are budget realities in this country that are different than the US. And so I think we want to get really smart again and having these conversations, what’s accessible, what can we build from, what does change look like over time? I think the issues around team coaching are very similar across the world right now, things like teaming, teams that are ever changing, just the complexity of it all, and really conflict, but conflict even has such a cultural layer to that as well. So I really feel that we want to get better at the discussion as coaches if we’re in organizations. What is the sequencing of modalities? Change doesn’t happen typically in a 90-day window so we’re often looking at years or even decades for the change and that’s where I think it’s been interesting in these last few years. There’s been so much attention on team coaching, for example, new competencies, the new advanced credential and team coaching, people have rushed out to get experience. And, yes, there’s an impact now but what about the impact a couple years later? As part of the, you know, I went through the ACTC as a participant myself, even though I write on this, I’ve been a practitioner for many years, and part of the pre-current practice was we had to go out and ask our client groups that we had worked with, our ten teams, what the impact of team coaching had been, and it needed to be written down. So that’s not currently — they’ve made it easier, they’ve just made it simpler, perhaps, but it was really eye opening for me and really validating to hear from these clients that I’ve worked with 2017, 2018. “Jennifer, the work that you did with us prepared us to really pivot in those early days of the pandemic. We’ve done some work with you virtually so we knew we could be doing more with Zoom than everyone was saying we could do.” And it sounds like little things, but it’s these little things that make massive change at an organizational level. Teams struggle and it’s the small micro changes that really, it’s the micro moments that make those shifts. So I think — I hope that new coaches entering in, my best advice always is find partners to do this work with. All throughout my career, and best practice that has evolved in team coaching is co-coaching. There is so much happening in teams, how do we have two sets of eyes, two sets of ears, two different perspectives as coaches, because in any group or team, there is so much more diversity than when we’re sitting down with one person and so we need to have just a wider toolkit, a wider range as well. And that piece around range is where I’ve been taking my work in the last couple of years, looking more at strengths through the lens of superpowers and really looking at what is the mastery level for group coaches and team coaches because there’s a lot that’s being asked of practitioners at the moment.

Alex: You mentioned ACTC. So, for those that may not be aware, please —

Jennifer: Talk a little bit about that?

Alex: — describe that and also put that in context of just the evolution of how team coaching has actually come into the foray of accreditation as well. 

Jennifer: Yeah, great question. So, again, if we went back several years ago, five years ago, ICF started thinking how are we going to start to validate our skills, and many coaches might be aware of that, I think it was 2019, they started doing validation of the initial core coaching competency so one-on-one core coaching competencies. That process took about 18 months. And out of that came many discussions over the years from many corners of the world around, well, what about, in a team context, what happens? Is it the same skill set we’re using? Is it the same competencies? So early March of 2020, ICF embarked on bringing a variety of us together from across the world to really start looking at doing a competency analysis. I won’t get into the details but just by saying really looking at what are the skills that are required by an excellent team coach, and that led to, out of an 18-month process, led to the publication of the team coaching competencies. So, anyone who’s interested can go to the ICF, if you look under their ICF banner of core competencies, you’re going to see core competencies and then you’re going to see team coaching competencies. What’s interesting is they are the same and there is more that a team coach needs to be adding on because of the complexity, the range of the people that we work with. So that was the first part of it and that also led then to the first specialization in the realm of ICF credentialing. So, two years ago, I want to say, early 20 — no, actually, it was just last year, 2023, ICF officially unveiled the ACTC, which is the Advanced Credential in Team Coaching. So just a little background because I know it’s still not very well understood, the ACTC designates that you bring a specialization in team coaching. It sits on top of your ACC, your PCC, your MCC. So it’s an advanced credential recognizing that coaches already bring the skills but now it’s validating that you’ve done additional training so up to up to 60 hours or more of team coaching training. There is a separate examination that tests you on the team coaching competencies and there is validation of experience. We talked earlier about these ten team coaching, not team building, but team coaching engagements, over a minimum of five years. So I think that for coaches who are thinking, “Wow, I wanna do more team coaching,” this is where you want to start now because it is an advanced credential, it’s the first specialization from my understanding and I’m by no means I just plugged right in but I understand that there will be other advanced specializations created in the years to come and it really is sort of that badge where you can say, “I bring this expertise,” because it’s not just do the coursework, this is a professional practice. You need to also work with a supervisor so coaching supervision is also really being brought in through that doorway, because the complexity of our work is challenging and significant at times. So I do think that’s a good description, Alex. Is there anything else you want to add? Because you’ve got your ear to the ground, what do you think people should understand about this?

Alex: No, I mean, I think you covered it and it’s nice to see the evolution of team coaching being considered something that needs to be in the forefront of how we think about competencies and how do you evolve the existing frameworks for one-on-one coaching and add this inclusive framework for other methodologies that can expand on the work that that one-on-one coaching can do. And, to your point earlier, there’s some really great ways of embedding one-on-one coaching within team or group coaching. We’re actually building our team and group coaching software capabilities in our coaching management system and we’ve been working with a lot of our clients mapping out how they want to use it, and it’s — for us as a platform, we just want to make sure we accommodate the way people want to run the team and group coaching engagement so it’s been really fun to see how everyone is going to use it differently and, for us, it’s really just about building that core that works for everyone. But in that process, we’ve been exposed to a lot of different philosophies around how you can do this kind of work, different ways to market and productize the offering. So, yeah, I think it’s an interesting, fascinating field. Which leads me to my next question for you, which is what do you think is in the forefront of innovation or what is coming in the realm of team and group coaching? It is by itself something new at large in the coaching world, so what specifically is happening in this space, you think, over the next five years? How is it evolving?

Jennifer: Ah, great question. I’m always, as one of my executive editor always said, “Jennifer, your eyes are always like five years ahead in the future so what do you think is coming?” And I think we’re seeing just some massive, I always bring this lens of globalization because of my former work. I think there are significant challenges that we’re seeing from climate change and natural disaster management to the whole economic paradigms and shifts that are happening and that’s going to influence our profession like it influences the rest of the world. So how do we remain fluid? I’ve been reflecting a lot on as a younger coach, I went through the ’08, ’09 economic downturn, and in those days, there was this mantra, “You only do one thing.” I actually had people tell me, “You shouldn’t be doing group coaching. You shouldn’t be consulting anymore. Why do you do that? Just do one thing. Just do one-on-one coaching,” and I’m like that’s not me, and most of those people went out of business in ’08, ’09, because they only had one revenue stream. In my work as a coach mentor, supervisor, coach trainer, I really advocate you’ve got to keep an eye on the ups and downs. I used to work in the world of economics. Change takes time. So to innovation, we have so many amazing things going on. I sort of look at this question and think, wow, which angle do we take on this? Do we look at how AI is really revolutionizing not only the way we coach but the way organizations run? Are we looking at hybridization? Toronto, where I’m just north of, people have not gone back to work even if they’ve been ordered back to work. There’s just not a business case for sitting in traffic for four hours a day to get to the office so flexibility rather than remote work is really where we’re sitting and that means a lot of things differently in a lot of different places in the world as well. I think there’s a piece around — my hope, again, maybe because I used to work for the UN, that we can really look at how do we use coaching in conflict situations? One of the areas that I continue to keep an eye on and I always think of Cinnie Noble as sort of the expert in in conflict coaching, but how do we really bring conflict coaching to the forefront? There’s some very interesting, bad things happening even in our backyard here in the Americas that I think could benefit from coaching in the next, I would say the next six to three months, six weeks to three months. And so once we have these conversational skills, what are the relationships, what are the partnerships we’re engaging in? How can we serve others to help them accomplish what they want to accomplish in their work, their families, their organizations? So I might sound still a little Pollyannaish but change is effected through individuals and once we bring individuals together, that’s really where the magic can happen. So my hope is that, if we sat down five years from now or even three years from now, we’re continuing to see the diversification of what coaching means, because it’s only been really, I would say, probably five to seven years that group coaching and team coaching is really getting its place at the table and that’s not a long time. So what will another five to ten years mean, especially now with technology and all of these changes that we can really harness? I think it’s here, it’s now, it is changing our world, and so how do we harness it for the good in a lot of different ways?

Alex: You mentioned supervision and that is something that in the US, we just really don’t really do that much, but in other places like the UK, for example, very well known for having a very robust supervision community and standards. Why do you think the US is the rebel and should that change?

Jennifer: And I want to say the US because I’m Canadian, so the Americas —

Alex: Yeah, I wonder, I don’t know, how is that in Canada? Is this a North America thing or —

Jennifer: Well, I would say the whole Americas, right? I think we also want to look at what’s happening in South America and the Caribbean as well, because there’s really some interesting practices. We look at Brazil. So, again, to the whole layering of culture as well, what’s happening in Asia, what’s happening in Africa? Supervision, I think, one, is getting more well established. There is now a business case, there is now a requirement, at least on a team coaching level, to have a minimum of five hours, depending on your route, it could be ten hours, of coaching supervision. What I see as a coaching supervisor is that people are realizing this is really valuable, this is helping me unlayer, unpack the complexity of the range of things that are happening in the room. So I think it’s not necessarily we haven’t jumped on to it, I just think we haven’t been exposed to it. And having done my training as a coach supervisor out of the UK, it’s sort of like the waves haven’t hit the shore yet. It’s going to take a little bit more time, but I think we’re now seeing, certainly in the last two years because I did work with Peter along with many other initial team coach supervisors a few years ago, we’re now seeing team coaches start to really get why this is so important and so I think give it a bit more time, it’s going to be a very different discourse. My understanding is ICF as part of their competency mapping work, they’re looking at supervision, they’re looking at mentor coaching, because mentor coaching has also evolved. I became a mentor coach in 2007 when I got my PCC. That’s 16 years of mentor coaching, and as I became a trained supervisor, I realized some of what I was doing as a mentor coach was in fact supervision. So we’re having to almost redefine as well what do people need at different stages in their career and evolution as a coach as well. Because 20 years ago, the seasoned coaches were like 10- and 15-year-old coaches. Now, they’re like 35-year-olds, right? I was young, I’m now a 20-year-old seasoned full-time coach. That’s a lot of learning, but there’s still a lot of learning I need to do every day as well. So I think very much with the world we operate within of ongoing change and complexity and disruption and chaos and all the great things that come with that and the opportunities, yeah, why do we each as individual coaches, where do we want to put our continued focus on learning? Because we need to keep learning in something, whether it’s sharpening our skills, adding on a new modality, like, “Oh, I only do one on one and now I wanna do groups or teams,” maybe it’s doubling down on your business so that your business 10Xs. I think there’s just so many opportunities now.

Alex: Absolutely. Cool. Well, keep doing the great work that you’re doing. You’ve been an innovator in many areas of coaching. Your publisher regrets not having published that book in 2017 totally with the pandemic going remote.

Jennifer: Well, it let me set up a media house and it’s, from a — even publishing has changed. Now, I can publish. You still do the work as an author. A lot of people think, “Oh, your publisher’s gonna do it for you.” No way. They’ll just take a bigger check cut so same thing.

Alex: Yeah, coaches are very interested in publication. Well, for next time we’ll have you, we’ll talk about that process, which is really interesting and coaches have the pressure to also become more specialized and writing a book is a good journey of specialization in and of itself but also a good way to differentiate yourself to the market. When we have you next time in the podcast, we’ll talk about it. Jen, thank you so much for joining me today. Appreciate the conversation and I am sure that our audience is going to appreciate hearing all about your knowledge on this very interesting area so thank you for joining me.

Jennifer: My pleasure, Alex. Thanks for hosting this and wishing everyone a great day or evening wherever they are in the world.