In this episode of The SAFE Leader Podcast, host Mark McBride-Wright sits down with Callum Thomas, founder and CEO of Thomas Thor, a global leader in workforce solutions for the nuclear industry. Callum shares his journey from discovering a lifelong passion for business to dedicating his career to building a diverse and resilient talent pipeline for one of the world’s most vital sectors. From the transformation of nuclear into a disruptor for climate change to the critical role of psychological safety alongside physical safety, Callum offers a rare insider’s view into the opportunities and challenges shaping the future of energy.
The conversation goes beyond industry insights to explore leadership, inclusion, and values. Callum reflects on privilege, the difficulty of creating lasting change, and why now is the time to double down on efforts that matter. He issues a powerful reminder that for new nuclear ventures and established organisations alike, inclusion is not optional, it is an existential imperative. This episode is a must-listen for leaders committed to safety, innovation, and building workplaces where both people and the planet can thrive.
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:00
Mark, hello. Welcome to the next episode of the safe leader podcast. I’m your host, Mark McBride-Wright, and I’m delighted today to be joined by Callum Thomas, who is the founder and CEO of Thomas Thor, a global leader in Workforce Solutions for the nuclear industry with a vision anchored in achieving net zero by 2050 Callum has dedicated his career to building and sustaining an inclusive and diverse talent pipeline for one of the world’s most vital sectors. Through Thomas Thor and its leadership arm Thor, executive Callum has spearheaded recruitment, executive search and workforce consulting initiatives across regulators, operators, research institutions and engineering firms worldwide. He is also co founder of inclusion and diversity in nuclear IDN and now which is now an independent non profit and currently serves as chair of the World Nuclear Association talent and workforce development working group Callum is widely recognized for his commitment to authentic leadership, practical inclusion and creating cultures for people and the planet both thrive.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:09
Callum, welcome.
Callum Thomas 1:12
Thank you, Mark, thanks for having me.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:15
It’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure. You and I, you and I go way back? Well, not quite, not quite, but we crossed paths a few years ago, didn’t we? We did, yeah, we did. It’s in those early days when you were setting up IDN with with Monica.
Callum Thomas 1:34
Yeah, exactly. And yeah, it feels like a long time ago, pre pandemic.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:41
It was, well, it was Yeah, well, yeah, it was pre pandemic. Wasn’t your Yeah, yeah, it was the year before, wasn’t it? And then I was at some, some nuclear event that was happening in the February, and there was a set of awards that were happening, and there was a question mark on whether I think it was actually the last event that some people went to when, you know, a week later, restrictions were coming in and companies were pulling people back.
Callum Thomas 2:08
Yeah, every now and then at nuclear event, sometimes they’re great, but often it’s a lot of the same information and the same messaging that’s coming out. Every now and then you get someone at one of the events who is truly inspirational. And you were one of those people. I think when I when I saw you speak that first time, I realized the work you were doing was, you know, was different, and we’ve done with such energy, I thought, you know, that’s someone I want to support and work with and and also bring into the nuclear sector, because we’re, it’s quite an insular sector in some ways. And you know, the whole topic of inclusion, diversity, equity is, you know, it spans all the different sectors. And I think any opportunity I see to bring best practice in to nuclear from other sectors, I try and grab it. So, yeah, it was great, great meeting, and I’m happy we’ve been able to collaborate over the years.
Mark McBride-Wright 3:00
Yeah, I mean, there’s still so much to do. You know, we’ve done little bits here and there. It feels like just a drop in the ocean, like you’re, you’re, and I wouldn’t even say scratching the surface. It’s just like, you know, micrometers that you’ve penetrated, that the work that needs to we have, collectively, we have penetrated in terms of the gargantuan work that needs to be done, but it’s a testament that there’s still that commitment, that that’s still ongoing. But anyway, we’ll come on to that. I like, I like going back in time to find out about the leader, the person that’s that’s in front of me, because the whole point of the safe leader podcast is to find out about leadership stories, people to share their difference, their story, the journey that they’ve got on to get to where they’re at now. So if we go back to visit the young Callum, tell us about the young Callum. And are you doing today what you thought you would be doing back then?
Callum Thomas 3:58
Yeah, in a way, yes. All right, okay, I can’t claim to have even known about the nuclear sector or the or the kind of human resources or executive search sector when I was a kid, but I had two brothers, and
Speaker 1 4:17
my dad had his own company. Okay? I think he did a deal with my mum that he could go to the office at the weekend if he took us with him. So a lot of my weekends were spent tearing around my dad’s office, racing on wheel chairs with wheels on or I remember we used to get paid to
Callum Thomas 4:34
to break up all the cardboard boxes from all the computers in the in the in the loading bay. So we spent a lot of time there. And I had, for some reason, I think, when I was seven, I knew I’d start my own business. I just didn’t know what it was going to be in. And somehow I always had, I never knew I had it, because I didn’t know what it was. But I always had, I guess, that entrepreneurial spirit, ever since I was a kid, and I was always setting up little businesses at school. All selling tapes and, you know, and and couldn’t wait to start working so, but I knew from a really, really young age, but I just didn’t know what the business would be that came later. But what
Mark McBride-Wright 5:13
were your early year ventures? Did any of them become a little empire in its own right that you were able to pay or pay off college or university fees or buy your first house or first car?
Callum Thomas 5:29
The short answer is no. Unfortunately, it went as far as I remember. I remember back in the day at school thinking, wouldn’t it be great if you could make a tape with all your favorite songs on. Because back then, you know, I was born in 1977 so when I was at school, it was tapes, and then, you know, or the seven inch records, and then the CDs would just come in, and I got when I went into being a teenager. But, so, okay, great. So we used to actually make tapes with people’s favorite songs on sell them to people at
Mark McBride-Wright 6:01
school, right? Did you, did you legitimately record them? Or did you have, like, it’s off the radio at the beginning, at the end of jingles that you recorded off radio one?
Callum Thomas 6:12
Yeah, I did that as well. Now we tried to legitimately record them, but I would say there might be some copyright infringements here. So to be careful what I’m saying. This was in 1989 though, I think, or 1990 or something, but yeah, and I guess it was when the iPod came out. I was thinking, Yeah, of course, that’s a great idea, but that was one. I had an idea to create. My brother and I built a mini, like a Recondition A mini. My brother did a few actually, and I did one with him, and I wanted to make a dashboard out of wood, like a walnut dashboard, alright? This idea of having but turning that into a business, but it’s a very, very limited market.
Mark McBride-Wright 6:51
Yeah? Dashboards for minis, yeah?
Callum Thomas 6:55
So no, they were, I guess I was still learning there. I didn’t, I didn’t, kind of, I wasn’t really understanding the dynamics of scalability or copyright law or those kind of
Mark McBride-Wright 7:08
things and how So, yeah, and how did you discover recruitment then? Was Thomas Thor like your first venture? If that? Or did you have other like when you were beyond the early years, tinkering around like the first serious thing, or did you have some some businesses that you tried before you landed on Thomas Thor in the world of recruitment and executive search?
Callum Thomas 7:33
Well, I went I didn’t know what I wanted to do exactly I like. I like maths and I like business, so I studied a business and finance degree, and I came out of university and I came out of university still not knowing exactly what I wanted to do, but as is the case of many people, I kind of looked amongst my network of what people were doing, and I had a friend in London who was working at a big recruitment company, and she was doing really well and having a lot of fun and progressing in her career. So I Yeah, so I went for an interview at that company, and I got the job. So that was it. I literally had one interview straight after university, and got the job. And I stayed there for 10 years. And it was a very, it was kind of like learning to be an entrepreneur. It’s a very, it was a big it was a growing company. It went through an IPO. It was very meritocratic. This s things moving, yeah, s3 was the name of the company. So, yeah. So I worked there for 10 years. Worked my way up, but it was always as many recruitment companies. I it was transaction focused. It wasn’t really about long term relationships. And that’s what, that’s what I that was my way of doing business. So after 10 years, I’ve done four startups for them in different countries and and left to do it myself. So that was my kind of 10 year apprenticeship before starting Thomas Thor.
Mark McBride-Wright 8:50
And was nuclear a sector that you’d specialized in within s3 or where? Where did nuclear come into it?
Callum Thomas 8:58
No, no, I, I’ve been working in finance, and it and some pharmaceutical areas, but nothing to do with energy, I think, after having left after 10 years and having a wonderful experience there, I didn’t want to do something similar. I didn’t want to overlap. I wanted to start something from scratch. I wanted to do something that was good for the world. I wanted to do something that was global, something that had a bit more resilience to economic ups and downs. Right? Clean Energy looked like the way to go. I was looking, this is in 2009 I was looking at wind and solar, and they just weren’t those industries just weren’t yet mature, yeah, for for a vibrant kind of recruitment or HR consulting kind of business. And then I looked at other forms of clean energy, and found nuclear. And nuclear is it just, it was just perfect. You know, it’s a it’s a global industry. It’s highly professional, full of people with with very high integrity. It has skill shortages. It has an aging workforce. It has. Diversity challenge. There’s a lot of mobilization around the world. It’s developing clean energy, and it’s on a long term growth trajectory, which to some extent, avoids the big up and downs that industries like it and finance suffer. So to me, it was kind of love at first sight. And just started going to the nuclear conferences and started from scratch. No, no background before, but I’m now 15 years in, walk
Mark McBride-Wright 10:28
us through those early days then, like, how did you build? How did it feel when you did your first placement, issued that first invoice, and received that first paycheck, you know, for for that successful place. My what were the mechanics? Did you land an anchor client with a cluster of roles? Did you have a spattering of clients with a few roles? Did you do it all on your own and bootstrap it? Did you work with people like, how did you build up? How did you give birth to Thomas Thor?
Callum Thomas 10:56
Yeah, it was, it was from scratch. So the first thing I did was I looked on, you know, the international nature of the I mean, I’m British, but I live in Amsterdam, and I was staying in Amsterdam for this business, so it was always going to be an international focus. So the first thing I did was just looked at LinkedIn and looked for people that were working in a country that was not where they were from, okay, called them and ask them how they got there. And I did that every day, many, many times, every day for a while. And then I started going to conferences and just asking people, you know, who, who does this in the nuclear sector, who’s the who’s the go to company, if you need to hire people with rare skills, or if you need new leaders, or if you need to move someone from one country to another. And I just kept hearing the same answer, that there isn’t a go to Company, and that that that’s that became what I developed. But, you know, beginning, you know, I never, ever, ever had one bit of doubt for some reason, maybe, maybe that was a bit overconfident. But having, having kind of done startups for another company, and felt like this was my destiny. It was, it was, you know, I was so driven and so determined that it, I was never the burden of, will it work out or not? Was never, was never a wait for me once the business grows a bit, and then you have all the, you know, the responsibility of people and running costs, etcetera. That’s a different type of maturity, like, or, yeah, maturity and different, different, different type of of feeling. But the beginning, you got nothing to lose, you know, yeah, we’re going to build this company at the beginning, a very low running cost. And you just, it’s just starting from nothing. And I absolutely loved it. I absolutely loved that, that that that period, the first couple of years, just just fighting to exist and building, yeah, building relationships and yeah, getting the first clients and and really just fulfilling this role as the specialized recruitment search and HR consulting firm for nuclear, because there wasn’t one. So we weren’t unseating an incumbent.
Mark McBride-Wright 13:10
And did you find those, those people that you’d help, that had helped, when you had essentially done your desktop research and analysis and interviews with people for advice to help inform your decision. Did they then become some of your first customers? When you went back out to them say, hey, guess what? I’ve actually now created a solution. Would you like to use it?
Callum Thomas 13:31
Yeah, they did. They did. And that’s, that’s the beauty of that kind of real world research, right? I’m beginning talking to the very people that could have been our customers, or at least introduced us to our customers. And it was exactly that, you know, those people, some of those became clients, some of them, we helped, move around to different roles, different countries, and it just grew and grew and grew. And we’ve just carried on in exactly the same way with more people alongside me doing
Mark McBride-Wright 13:59
well, yeah, and so that was my next question, actually. So that was 2000 so I was 2009 the early stages growth. Where are you at now? What’s the size, what’s the scale, what’s the footprint? And actually, I’m interested. You know, nuclear has evolved even a lot in the last few years. We’ve got SMR technology coming through. Fusion is getting looked at more seriously with with bigger projects. So how are you finding diversification within, within nuclear?
Callum Thomas 14:24
Yeah, yeah. So the maybe first on the footprint. So we are, there’s just over 50 of us in the company, in the core business, and then any one time, we have around 200 or 250 people that we employ, and then we embed within our clients around the world. So we are head office in Amsterdam. We’re a Dutch parent company. Then we have offices and people around Europe, so UK, France, Finland, over in North America, in the US and Canada, and then in the Middle East, in the UAE. So we’re kind of spread out around. Uh, yeah. And we we work in the nuclear sector. We do two things. We help people move up and around within nuclear, and we bring people to the nuclear sector. So there’s a huge need to bring people from other complex, regulated safety culture sectors into nuclear. And that’s a huge amount of what what we do. And as you said, there’s all the legacy industry. There’s big nuclear power plants. There’s about 450, of them in the world. There’s a whole load of decommissioning going on. So at the end of the cycle, there’s a whole load of lifetime extension going on. Which are these huge projects to extend the lives? Then you’ve got the whole medical industry, submarine industry. And then, of course, you’ve got all the new technology coming through, all these exciting small modular reactors, and the advanced reactors and these organizations are getting, they’re getting real backing now, and they’re they’re kind of racing to see who can disrupt so nuclear is gone from when I started in 2000 and beginning of 2010 it’s become, it’s gone from being a very slow moving, state sponsored, not really fastly innovating industry, into a into a disruptor to solve climate change.
Mark McBride-Wright 16:17
And probably a bit of inertia was created when Fukushima happened because all these other latter technology are describing are, are more recent years. So was there a period when you were just making the connection now with the journey you were on, and then when, when, you know when some disasters have happened? Did that have a knock on effect to the to your to your to the future of nuclear? Did you find
Callum Thomas 16:40
I, I think it slowed it. It slowed down the progress a bit, right? Because actually, when I started the business in 2010 there was this huge nuclear renaissance going on in 2011 that was very much stopped after the after the tsunami in Fukushima, so, and then it, there was a kind of, like six, seven years where there was a lot of safety upgrades, and and then, then around in around 2018 then it, then the whole discussion around how to address climate change and nuclear being a solution really started to take hold Again, right? And then, and then you’ve got the the other imperative of energy security. Yeah, countries want to make their own energy. Energy is becoming more expensive. Things are becoming electrified. So there was a time, you know, eight years ago, where the International Energy Agency was predicting that we need less electricity in the future because of energy efficiency. So people weren’t really thinking about, how do we get more? And then suddenly those forecasts have reversed, and now we’re needing a lot more electricity, and where’s it going to come from. So if you want to, if you want to develop your own electricity and you want to also do it in a clean way, then nuclear is a solution, and that’s what’s driven all of this investment in the new, new technologies coming through. It’s gone from it’s gone from kind of state sponsored energy to climate change disruption, and that is a whole pace change in the in the sector.
Mark McBride-Wright 18:12
We met at the inclusion and diversity in nuclear inaugural event. I think what was the impetus behind helping incubate, create that organization, and how are you still involved with it? What are the activities there?
Callum Thomas 18:30
Yeah, so I think Monica mohanji is the is the leader of IDN inclusion, diversity and nuclear. Monica and I have mentioned for a long time. I think we both share the same feeling that if you’re going to talk about something, you should do something about it. And I think there was a conversation we had back in must have been 2018 I think. And we said, Well, are we just going to talk about this and wait for someone else to do something, or are we going to do something, and that was the birth of IDN and inclusion diversity in nuclear so I was involved a lot in the beginning. Thomas Thor sponsored resources and people to help get things set up. Once it was set up and running, it became a standalone nonprofit, and Monica has been running it. So all credit to Monica. I mean, I feel like I provided a kind of support in the startup phase, but she has done nearly all the work, fantastic. And I don’t think she gets enough recognition, actually, for the work that she’s done. Thomasor was an industry partner. We took a couple of years off being an industry partner as as we came out of the pandemic, and we’re watching costs in our organization, and then we’re hoping to go back to the industry partner next year. So that’s how we’re how we go on with our with our support. But yeah, I’m really, I was really proud to be part of setting it up, but really that wasn’t. Kind of my main role there, and now Monica is doing, doing all the really good and the really hard work,
Mark McBride-Wright 20:05
and I need to commit. I’ve not spoken to Monica in years. I need to, need to reach back out, actually. So yes, that was where we met. That was where we met and we collaborated together on I was wondering about the time when we we equal engineers, secured some funding to deliver our our engaging the majority training that we rolled out, I think we ended up reaching about like 975 engineers. We ended up having power stations batch delivery to help reach the numbers that was who in the I remember. So it was January 2020, actually, and I remember going from London up to workington to deliver a session at one of the business parks up there. And we had, like, I don’t know, seven people that showed up, seven or eight people that showed up. And I was thinking, the funding that we had was for 1000 you know, that was the number. And I thought, My goodness, how are we ever going to be able to draw down this opportunity? If this is who the rate of attendance, you know, it’s going to be a real hard slog. But the when, the when we went into lockdown, and we all shifted to remote working. And it actually presented an opportunity, because we shifted to virtual delivery. And I think once, once things settled down a bit. I think it was the April to or May to July, we had, like, it’s probably the most intense training period I’ve ever done, even to date, at the scale, and that it was a really good experience to have, but it also, I don’t know, saddens me a little bit that we’ve not gone through a compound upswing and growth and skill factor. And, you know, I feel like that that should have been the initiate or of something very transformative that took, took root and really, really grew. So I guess I’m still kinda figuring out, like, what is the best mechanism for wide uptake of of the message. The message being so our listeners who familiar with with equal engineers and the safe leader. You know this idea of getting people to understand their own diversity story, their own difference, and then get confident, confident in sharing it, especially men, challenging men to be more vulnerable and open and therefore more empathetic leaders, because we have a workforce that aren’t really, haven’t really been trained to lead in that way, don’t think to lead in that way, and are scared in some respects, coupled with high rate of mental ill health and at the extreme end, we say that suicidal ideation and self harm that came out through our masculinity and engineering research. So actually, when we first started working together, we’d only done our first survey iteration that led to me creating that training. We’ve done that survey another two times actually since then, and you know, the the trends haven’t really changed. So that’s, I guess, my offer to the market now is this concept of safe leadership. You know this, I’ve written my book and started this podcast to platform leaders who are doing great work in in this area. So I’m interested to hear from your perspective, as a leader, as a man, how? How do you think in the context that we’re in today, in September 2025 how do we need to be meeting the challenge of creating more inclusive working environments? How has it changed even in the last five years, and where do you see see us going?
Callum Thomas 24:06
Yeah, that’s a very big question, isn’t it? And I share your I share your feeling you thought it felt like we were starting something really big when we didn’t roll out. And actually, then, back then, it was ambitious to reach 1000 leaders. With this, with this learning, then we thought we’d we’ve really thought we’d create some kind of momentum that everyone would want to do. And actually, when you describe what it includes who wouldn’t want to learn that, who wouldn’t want to have that in their in their kind of in their life, professionally and personally. So you know what? I mean? I, for me personally, like going through the journey like I am. I’ve invested a lot in my development around understanding inclusion diversity. I understand my privilege deeply. And you know, I. So I feel that, I feel that I want to support, I feel I have to, and I want to support the effort. And I’ve, I’ve invested heavily in learning, and, you know, helping Monica set up IDN, and lot of the work, other work I’ve done in the nuclear sector to to progress inclusion, diversity. But as you, I think you said, like, it’s a tiny, drop in the ocean is it’s insatiable, the kind of the need, it feels like it’s really hard to make a proper difference. And I think it felt like we’ve we went from just talk to action. And actually, I noticed this in a lot of events around inclusion diversity for the last few years, the theme is very often from words to action or putting plans around the words, or something like that. So we’re in that kind of transitional phase, I mean, and it felt like we’re really getting somewhere. It felt, you know, from my in my day job, I can tell you, I’ve, you know, I’ve seen 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of job descriptions for leaders, team leaders, managers, directors, executive leaders, and they’ve in the last 1520, years, they’ve changed a lot, and it’s a less about experience and it’s more about attributes and and capabilities around things like creating culture, Maintaining a healthy team with a low staff turnover, creating inclusion, building bonds and and collaboration between multicultural stakeholders, that kind of thing. So those are those are now more important. So people are being asked for those things, and they’re being tested against them. So there’s a general positive shift in terms of what you need to become a leader. But it’s just happening. It’s happening really slowly, and so I don’t know what a team I mean, obviously, with the global situation now, we’ve got messages coming from big, powerful countries in the world that that are not helpful for the for the progressing of of the inclusion and diversity objectives that many of us share. But I think it’s a bit like, you know, these things, things go up and down, right? And if you look at the parallel to the nuclear sector, it was, it was really flying along, and Fukushima came, yeah, it took a hit, but then it’s come back even stronger now,
Mark McBride-Wright 27:19
and like, in a hibernation phase or something?
Callum Thomas 27:23
Yeah, maybe we’re just in a slightly more challenged phase, right where, if you’re basically, if you’re, if you’re an executive with the power and the resources, you can get away with now, probably not investing so much in your inclusion diversity program, you can even get away with saying, Well, maybe it’s not in the best interest of what our customers want, or our major stakeholders, because there is that sentiment amongst many people in the world. I personally, I’m just going to blast through that and just carry on. And I see this now as a time to actually double down the effort and start trying to create this, this this momentum. How to do it? I don’t know. I would if I, if I had one person to phone to ask how to actually create momentum, I’d probably call
Mark McBride-Wright 28:08
you. Well, yeah, so you want my view, it’s about private coalition building in the background, such that when that resurgence does come, we’re ready to go, you know, and also I think it’s, I think there’s an element of, haven’t really dug into this too much, because I don’t really want to get too involved in it, because I know it’ll suck energy out and feel like being on a hamster wheel where We’re doing activity, but we’re not actually moving forward is in that transition from words to action, I think, where people and organizations are tripping up right now, it’s we’ve got this lovely maturity matrix. So this is for organizations that are still committed, that have done some investment, and know their baseline. We’ve got this scale that says where we are. It’s the how the stepping stones to shift, you know, through these matrices, or through these scales of capability, in two or three years time, you then come back and do a reassessment, a re baseline, a rebenchmark, on progress that you ought to have made in that defined timeframe window. And I think that the third sector support space is too fragmented and budgets are too slim for the investment that’s needed and that it’s so patchy, it’s piecemeal, it’s, it’s, it’s the scraps. And so the quality of it’s not that the quality of the consulting is not good. That’s unfair to say. It’s just, it’s just too dispersed and not joined up. And so people in leadership roles, or not even just leadership roles, in doing the action roles you. I feel like they’ve done something through architecting a strategy that is simply a series of events, you know, and so when you’ve done an event, it feels good. You’ve delivered something. There’s a learning record for it. But how does it actually join up? How do you shift from one thing to the next one. I mean, it really frustrates me, for example, with International Women in Engineering day. And every year, you get a piece of a four paper, and you put a pledge on it, and you get pictures taken with whatever the inspiring pledge is. That year, social media is littered with the thing. And then, and then, what happens after it? You know, what happens? The noise just dies down. What If, on the 23rd of every month, and if it started in June, we took, we kind of pulled at a certain level, what are the current issues and barriers that you’re facing with regard to gender equality in the workplace? And then, you know, there’ll be a whole array of things that come back, let’s say, meant, lack of a menopause policy is one of them, you know. Okay, let’s hive together a little task and finish group of organizations that want to, in a defined time frame, have a menopause policy, you know. And then we meet monthly we get some speakers on that share an example of their menopause policy and the impact it’s had on the women in the workplace and the taboo that it’s broken down for the men now being able to lean in and talk about it, how it’s affecting them with their relationships. And then you you, you move it through, you know, so at least we’re then making progress line by line on each of those barriers that have been identified, and the organizations are having their hands held through it, through a trusted partner. You know, that is the layer that’s missing per demographic, and that includes the white, straight male. That is the that is the level of granularity we need to be at in terms of our programming and what we’re doing. And, yeah, anyway, it’s a big it’s a big thing to do, but with with how we do it, I don’t know it’s it would really need strong collaboration between sector specific experts, you know, working with Thomas Thor, for example, to diversify executive search recruitment, working with STEM returners to bring more people into the SEC or back to the sector, working with Ste amazing to do really focused nuclear specific outreach, which is happening actually, by the way, on the nuclear front, we are in a partnership with STEM amazing that’s funded by the dne, the defense nuclear enterprise, where we’re doing engagements, you know, 50 schools in Scotland, but that’s like one project. How do we encourage other partners to co invest, scale that up, and then you chunk up the talent pipeline at the different levels? And I think it’s almost like it’s a systems engineering approach to it. But I think we over engineer sometimes what needs to be done, and then it becomes overwhelming and surmountable, too much for one singular organization to do, and then which it just drifts.
Callum Thomas 33:16
It does. Yeah, it does feel like it has the complexity of a of a system doesn’t Yeah, and yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s pockets, like, you know, I there’s validation. Like, the work you do validates, is validated by the fact that the organizations, employers pay you, because they clearly see the benefit of that. Yeah, I think that’s the same with Thomas Thor, when we are, when we’re doing executive search, for example, for our clients, and we’re helping them to ensure they’ve got diversity in their succession planning and in their boardrooms. That’s what people want, because when when I was involved in a national survey in the UK a few years ago, and what people want most is an inclusive working environment. So if they see that, then they’re more likely to join, they’re more likely to stay, and so so companies are willing. You know, that’s the real test. Are you willing to pay for a service that somehow helps you in this area? And I think we validate that somewhat. You validate that somewhat, but joining all that together to to to create more momentum, that’s where the system thinking comes in, yeah. And it’s Yeah, but sometimes, you know, to your point, earlier on, most of the work I’ve been involved in around Dei, it’s people doing it alongside their day jobs. It’s a working group, or it’s a committee, or it’s a project team, and everyone’s kind of using their discretionary effort, yeah, and of course, because of that, there’s no real accountability. There’s no real pressure to get great results. And then, of course, things get busy, or objectives change, and then people move on. So yeah, we somehow got to commercialize it, right? Because just just doing it because it’s the right thing, doesn’t seem to be enough to create. The momentum that we want. So we’ve got to make products and services that are clearly adding value that organizations want to and people want to
Mark McBride-Wright 35:08
pay for. And how do we then tie it into safety or HR on things that already have budget, subscribed to them, ascribed to
Callum Thomas 35:18
them? Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s the, I mean, that’s part of the commercial model, right? It’s a whole lot easier to tap into an existing spending line or P and L line than than to create something new. Yeah. So yeah, for example, in the nuclear sector, obviously safety is, is, is the Paramount foundation of everything. So when people immediately think about physical safety, but also the psychological safety is the same, and that’s becoming realized now. So why not, you know, release this huge budget to ensure the safe operating of a plant because a faulty valve, or a, you know, a depressed human being, yeah, are both risks for a for an operating environment. So there’s a big opportunity there. Oh, that is,
Mark McBride-Wright 36:13
yeah, I spend my entire career saying that my background, I’m a safety engineer by training. So yeah, spent my career helping organizations create physically safe working environments, and so got so excited when I discovered this term psychological safety, and thinking, how can we leverage that for our advantage? How can we avoid all the shallow narratives on exclusionary discussion of them and us, kind of divisive nature of how the general sentiment can go. How can you make that long tenured engineer who’s worked in that facility for a long time, who’s starting to feel ironically excluded by D and I programs like, how do we include their voice? And, you know, I think the mental ill health, the being fully present at work, the way in which men have been taught to show up professionally through match wasm and holding it together and being stoic and not being able to be vulnerable, etc. These are all, and I’m stereotyping and generalizing here. This tends to be a theme that I see within, you know, engineering teams, in terms of, like, the way people are showing up. So I would just, I feel like we’re on the precipice of some sort of big transformation. What? What opportunities do you think exist then, in this nuclear renaissance with new technologies like in small modular reactor or infusion, you know, it’s very rare that you get an opportunity in your career to be the part of the new industry, like the foundation of a new industry. So what should these big projects be doing that’s different to how the previous big projects have been done, and how should we behave? How should we be exerting our influence in our network? Because we are connected to organizations. How should we be exerting our influence to try and make sure things are done differently this time?
Callum Thomas 38:31
Yeah, it’s a big opportunity, because the whole legacy isn’t there and the limiting beliefs are not there, and also there’s a there’s a bit of a frenzy of competition. It’s a bit like, it’s a bit like the tech industry. It’s more like the new generation of nuclear organizations share more in common with tech than they do with energy. Oh, and so, so, so, so to join one, not the other, they are. They’re competing for the for the for the the limited pool of people. Yeah, there. So what do they care about? They care about the working environment, they care about the values of the organization, they care about the purpose. They care about the leaders and the and so it’s we can borrow a lot from the tech industry. If you look at, you know, some of the biggest investors are the likes of, you know, the big tech companies, it’s a very important part of their brand and strategy to be investing a lot from the ground up in their inclusion and diversity and equity strategy. So and that’s that’s the opportunity some of them on that
Mark McBride-Wright 39:35
some of them might be even working together, because I know the SMR technologies potentially fueling Data Center building that the big tech firms are are leading on now,
Callum Thomas 39:45
every week you got a new announcement that in Amazon, meta, Google, Microsoft, are partnering with with the nuclear organizations. So some of them are scaling up quickly, and they’ve got the opportunity to get it right. From the beginning, like when you got 2000 staff, it’s very easy to fall back on the excuse that it’s, it’s, it’s too big to change what’s happened in the past. Whereas they don’t have that. They’re not encumbered with that. But also, these are the types of organizations that they’ll be brought down. One, you know, one scandal around discrimination or oppression or something, they’ll, you know, they’ll lose their partners, and they’ll, you know, they’ll lose their funding, the funders, partners, customers, they they love the new upstarts. They disrupt us. But as as we’ve seen time and time again, you know, if they don’t get it right in terms of their values and their working environment, then they’re gone. So it’s an it’s an existential imperative. Whereas, you know, when some of the big nuclear organizations, they get it wrong again and again and again, they make the headlines. But what can you do? You can’t replace them. There’s no now. There is, you know, and that’s the that with the newcomer companies, then that’s, that’s the opportunity. I think.
Mark McBride-Wright 41:07
Okay, quick fire questions. You ready? I’m ready. What’s one piece of career advice you still follow today?
Callum Thomas 41:17
Yeah, that I did the best training I ever did was perceptual positioning. You take a situation, there are five stakeholders, and you physically move around the room to each chair, and you play each person. I did that when I was 23 it’s still the most powerful thing I ever learned, because it’s obvious that you should look at things from other people’s perspectives, but until you actually do it physically moving around. That that taught me how perception Trumps reality.
Mark McBride-Wright 41:46
One project or initiative you’re especially proud of, I
Callum Thomas 41:51
think it’s helping Monica set up IDM. It’s a standalone nonprofit, and yeah, I’m proud of that
Mark McBride-Wright 41:59
coffee, tea or something stronger.
Callum Thomas 42:03
So green tea in the morning, any kind of herbal tea in the afternoon, and then if I’m out, I’d probably have a tequila. Oh, my nice, a nice sipping tequila.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:15
What’s a book or podcast that shaped how you eat? Yeah, there’s
Callum Thomas 42:19
so many, I think flow, the book by Mihaly. Can you pronounce his surname?
Mark McBride-Wright 42:28
I don’t know. The book
Callum Thomas 42:29
about the state of flow, which is where you are. You’re so into what you’re doing that you forget about time. Yeah, feeling right. And it’s that. So that was very effective on me. And reading one at the moment, called the whole brain child, I have a young son, and there’s a book about the how the different parts of the brain develop and communicate, and it’s as relevant for adults as it is for kids. So those, those are two that have had a big effect on me.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:57
You learn a lot as you become a parent, don’t you, and you’re raising the next generation. What’s your favorite way to recharge or gain new perspective?
Callum Thomas 43:06
Exercise, exercise, exercise, basically my my self therapy.
Mark McBride-Wright 43:13
What’s your exercise go to?
Callum Thomas 43:16
Yeah, I like to triathlons a couple of times a year. So it’s mainly Yeah, gym and then some running, cycling, swimming, right?
Mark McBride-Wright 43:24
What’s one recruitment myth you’d love to
Callum Thomas 43:26
bust? I think people, some people think that we have a database and we sit there and just press a button and send people. It’s a lot harder than it looks. I think a lot of people think other people’s jobs are easy, don’t they? It’s the amount of unpredictability and complexity in our job is is astounding, which is what makes it exciting, but it’s I think some people think it’s easy. It’s not easy.
Mark McBride-Wright 43:53
Someone in the nuclear sector that inspires you.
Callum Thomas 44:00
Do you know how I met last week? Dr, Chris sing, he he set up a company called Holtec. He’s 75 now. He was at a conference last week in London, and he set up a company decades ago making fuel racks or something for the nuclear sector. Now, he owns nuclear power plants. He’s building an SMR. You know, he’s, he’s a and he’s just such a nice guy. That’s kind of where I, you know, and he, you’re obviously someone who retirement has no meaning for him. Yeah, I hope when I’m 75 I’m still doing what I love absolutely in your flow, in your value, in my flow
Mark McBride-Wright 44:39
as a granddad, yeah? What’s something most people misunderstand about diversity in engineering?
Callum Thomas 44:53
Probably that everyone’s perspective is is different.
Mark McBride-Wright 44:59
And finally. Right. All right, keep on. Yeah, no,
Callum Thomas 45:01
I was gonna say, and understanding people’s different perspectives is, it’s, it’s, it’s, takes a lot of time, but it’s really, really, really worth it. It’s like, it’s like, you know, the sun coming out when you see something from someone else’s perspective. Yeah, you
Mark McBride-Wright 45:17
have to have the patience. What advice would you give to a young leader entering the energy sector today?
Callum Thomas 45:27
Probably the only, the main piece of advice would be just to resist all the limiting beliefs. There’s the energy sector is completely being revolutionized, so everything and anything is possible right now.
Mark McBride-Wright 45:40
Then that is a good note to end on there. Callum, thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed our catch up our chat. If people want to find out, get in touch with you, find out about what you do, or see you know, read about Thomas dore services. How do they do
Callum Thomas 45:56
that? Yeah, I probably you can contact me on LinkedIn, or any of my colleagues. Or you can go to our website, which is www, dot Thomas hyphen, Thor, T, H, O, r.com, and then you’ll see about our history and the four service lines that we offer across executive search, recruitment, partnering, staff augmentation and workforce consulting.
Mark McBride-Wright 46:21
Brilliant we’ll put the links in the show notes as well. Thanks, Callum,
Callum Thomas 46:25
thank you, Mark. It’s a pleasure to talk to you and yeah, and yeah, congrats on all the work you’re doing. It’s, it is truly inspirational.
Mark McBride-Wright 46:32
Oh, thank you. Thank you. I will. We’ll catch up soon. Okay, thanks. You.
E038: Building Safety and Inclusion in the Nuclear Industry
Podcast Description
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:00
Mark, hello. Welcome to the next episode of the safe leader podcast. I’m your host, Mark McBride-Wright, and I’m delighted today to be joined by Callum Thomas, who is the founder and CEO of Thomas Thor, a global leader in Workforce Solutions for the nuclear industry with a vision anchored in achieving net zero by 2050 Callum has dedicated his career to building and sustaining an inclusive and diverse talent pipeline for one of the world’s most vital sectors. Through Thomas Thor and its leadership arm Thor, executive Callum has spearheaded recruitment, executive search and workforce consulting initiatives across regulators, operators, research institutions and engineering firms worldwide. He is also co founder of inclusion and diversity in nuclear IDN and now which is now an independent non profit and currently serves as chair of the World Nuclear Association talent and workforce development working group Callum is widely recognized for his commitment to authentic leadership, practical inclusion and creating cultures for people and the planet both thrive.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:09
Callum, welcome.
Callum Thomas 1:12
Thank you, Mark, thanks for having me.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:15
It’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure. You and I, you and I go way back? Well, not quite, not quite, but we crossed paths a few years ago, didn’t we? We did, yeah, we did. It’s in those early days when you were setting up IDN with with Monica.
Callum Thomas 1:34
Yeah, exactly. And yeah, it feels like a long time ago, pre pandemic.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:41
It was, well, it was Yeah, well, yeah, it was pre pandemic. Wasn’t your Yeah, yeah, it was the year before, wasn’t it? And then I was at some, some nuclear event that was happening in the February, and there was a set of awards that were happening, and there was a question mark on whether I think it was actually the last event that some people went to when, you know, a week later, restrictions were coming in and companies were pulling people back.
Callum Thomas 2:08
Yeah, every now and then at nuclear event, sometimes they’re great, but often it’s a lot of the same information and the same messaging that’s coming out. Every now and then you get someone at one of the events who is truly inspirational. And you were one of those people. I think when I when I saw you speak that first time, I realized the work you were doing was, you know, was different, and we’ve done with such energy, I thought, you know, that’s someone I want to support and work with and and also bring into the nuclear sector, because we’re, it’s quite an insular sector in some ways. And you know, the whole topic of inclusion, diversity, equity is, you know, it spans all the different sectors. And I think any opportunity I see to bring best practice in to nuclear from other sectors, I try and grab it. So, yeah, it was great, great meeting, and I’m happy we’ve been able to collaborate over the years.
Mark McBride-Wright 3:00
Yeah, I mean, there’s still so much to do. You know, we’ve done little bits here and there. It feels like just a drop in the ocean, like you’re, you’re, and I wouldn’t even say scratching the surface. It’s just like, you know, micrometers that you’ve penetrated, that the work that needs to we have, collectively, we have penetrated in terms of the gargantuan work that needs to be done, but it’s a testament that there’s still that commitment, that that’s still ongoing. But anyway, we’ll come on to that. I like, I like going back in time to find out about the leader, the person that’s that’s in front of me, because the whole point of the safe leader podcast is to find out about leadership stories, people to share their difference, their story, the journey that they’ve got on to get to where they’re at now. So if we go back to visit the young Callum, tell us about the young Callum. And are you doing today what you thought you would be doing back then?
Callum Thomas 3:58
Yeah, in a way, yes. All right, okay, I can’t claim to have even known about the nuclear sector or the or the kind of human resources or executive search sector when I was a kid, but I had two brothers, and
Speaker 1 4:17
my dad had his own company. Okay? I think he did a deal with my mum that he could go to the office at the weekend if he took us with him. So a lot of my weekends were spent tearing around my dad’s office, racing on wheel chairs with wheels on or I remember we used to get paid to
Callum Thomas 4:34
to break up all the cardboard boxes from all the computers in the in the in the loading bay. So we spent a lot of time there. And I had, for some reason, I think, when I was seven, I knew I’d start my own business. I just didn’t know what it was going to be in. And somehow I always had, I never knew I had it, because I didn’t know what it was. But I always had, I guess, that entrepreneurial spirit, ever since I was a kid, and I was always setting up little businesses at school. All selling tapes and, you know, and and couldn’t wait to start working so, but I knew from a really, really young age, but I just didn’t know what the business would be that came later. But what
Mark McBride-Wright 5:13
were your early year ventures? Did any of them become a little empire in its own right that you were able to pay or pay off college or university fees or buy your first house or first car?
Callum Thomas 5:29
The short answer is no. Unfortunately, it went as far as I remember. I remember back in the day at school thinking, wouldn’t it be great if you could make a tape with all your favorite songs on. Because back then, you know, I was born in 1977 so when I was at school, it was tapes, and then, you know, or the seven inch records, and then the CDs would just come in, and I got when I went into being a teenager. But, so, okay, great. So we used to actually make tapes with people’s favorite songs on sell them to people at
Mark McBride-Wright 6:01
school, right? Did you, did you legitimately record them? Or did you have, like, it’s off the radio at the beginning, at the end of jingles that you recorded off radio one?
Callum Thomas 6:12
Yeah, I did that as well. Now we tried to legitimately record them, but I would say there might be some copyright infringements here. So to be careful what I’m saying. This was in 1989 though, I think, or 1990 or something, but yeah, and I guess it was when the iPod came out. I was thinking, Yeah, of course, that’s a great idea, but that was one. I had an idea to create. My brother and I built a mini, like a Recondition A mini. My brother did a few actually, and I did one with him, and I wanted to make a dashboard out of wood, like a walnut dashboard, alright? This idea of having but turning that into a business, but it’s a very, very limited market.
Mark McBride-Wright 6:51
Yeah? Dashboards for minis, yeah?
Callum Thomas 6:55
So no, they were, I guess I was still learning there. I didn’t, I didn’t, kind of, I wasn’t really understanding the dynamics of scalability or copyright law or those kind of
Mark McBride-Wright 7:08
things and how So, yeah, and how did you discover recruitment then? Was Thomas Thor like your first venture? If that? Or did you have other like when you were beyond the early years, tinkering around like the first serious thing, or did you have some some businesses that you tried before you landed on Thomas Thor in the world of recruitment and executive search?
Callum Thomas 7:33
Well, I went I didn’t know what I wanted to do exactly I like. I like maths and I like business, so I studied a business and finance degree, and I came out of university and I came out of university still not knowing exactly what I wanted to do, but as is the case of many people, I kind of looked amongst my network of what people were doing, and I had a friend in London who was working at a big recruitment company, and she was doing really well and having a lot of fun and progressing in her career. So I Yeah, so I went for an interview at that company, and I got the job. So that was it. I literally had one interview straight after university, and got the job. And I stayed there for 10 years. And it was a very, it was kind of like learning to be an entrepreneur. It’s a very, it was a big it was a growing company. It went through an IPO. It was very meritocratic. This s things moving, yeah, s3 was the name of the company. So, yeah. So I worked there for 10 years. Worked my way up, but it was always as many recruitment companies. I it was transaction focused. It wasn’t really about long term relationships. And that’s what, that’s what I that was my way of doing business. So after 10 years, I’ve done four startups for them in different countries and and left to do it myself. So that was my kind of 10 year apprenticeship before starting Thomas Thor.
Mark McBride-Wright 8:50
And was nuclear a sector that you’d specialized in within s3 or where? Where did nuclear come into it?
Callum Thomas 8:58
No, no, I, I’ve been working in finance, and it and some pharmaceutical areas, but nothing to do with energy, I think, after having left after 10 years and having a wonderful experience there, I didn’t want to do something similar. I didn’t want to overlap. I wanted to start something from scratch. I wanted to do something that was good for the world. I wanted to do something that was global, something that had a bit more resilience to economic ups and downs. Right? Clean Energy looked like the way to go. I was looking, this is in 2009 I was looking at wind and solar, and they just weren’t those industries just weren’t yet mature, yeah, for for a vibrant kind of recruitment or HR consulting kind of business. And then I looked at other forms of clean energy, and found nuclear. And nuclear is it just, it was just perfect. You know, it’s a it’s a global industry. It’s highly professional, full of people with with very high integrity. It has skill shortages. It has an aging workforce. It has. Diversity challenge. There’s a lot of mobilization around the world. It’s developing clean energy, and it’s on a long term growth trajectory, which to some extent, avoids the big up and downs that industries like it and finance suffer. So to me, it was kind of love at first sight. And just started going to the nuclear conferences and started from scratch. No, no background before, but I’m now 15 years in, walk
Mark McBride-Wright 10:28
us through those early days then, like, how did you build? How did it feel when you did your first placement, issued that first invoice, and received that first paycheck, you know, for for that successful place. My what were the mechanics? Did you land an anchor client with a cluster of roles? Did you have a spattering of clients with a few roles? Did you do it all on your own and bootstrap it? Did you work with people like, how did you build up? How did you give birth to Thomas Thor?
Callum Thomas 10:56
Yeah, it was, it was from scratch. So the first thing I did was I looked on, you know, the international nature of the I mean, I’m British, but I live in Amsterdam, and I was staying in Amsterdam for this business, so it was always going to be an international focus. So the first thing I did was just looked at LinkedIn and looked for people that were working in a country that was not where they were from, okay, called them and ask them how they got there. And I did that every day, many, many times, every day for a while. And then I started going to conferences and just asking people, you know, who, who does this in the nuclear sector, who’s the who’s the go to company, if you need to hire people with rare skills, or if you need new leaders, or if you need to move someone from one country to another. And I just kept hearing the same answer, that there isn’t a go to Company, and that that that’s that became what I developed. But, you know, beginning, you know, I never, ever, ever had one bit of doubt for some reason, maybe, maybe that was a bit overconfident. But having, having kind of done startups for another company, and felt like this was my destiny. It was, it was, you know, I was so driven and so determined that it, I was never the burden of, will it work out or not? Was never, was never a wait for me once the business grows a bit, and then you have all the, you know, the responsibility of people and running costs, etcetera. That’s a different type of maturity, like, or, yeah, maturity and different, different, different type of of feeling. But the beginning, you got nothing to lose, you know, yeah, we’re going to build this company at the beginning, a very low running cost. And you just, it’s just starting from nothing. And I absolutely loved it. I absolutely loved that, that that that period, the first couple of years, just just fighting to exist and building, yeah, building relationships and yeah, getting the first clients and and really just fulfilling this role as the specialized recruitment search and HR consulting firm for nuclear, because there wasn’t one. So we weren’t unseating an incumbent.
Mark McBride-Wright 13:10
And did you find those, those people that you’d help, that had helped, when you had essentially done your desktop research and analysis and interviews with people for advice to help inform your decision. Did they then become some of your first customers? When you went back out to them say, hey, guess what? I’ve actually now created a solution. Would you like to use it?
Callum Thomas 13:31
Yeah, they did. They did. And that’s, that’s the beauty of that kind of real world research, right? I’m beginning talking to the very people that could have been our customers, or at least introduced us to our customers. And it was exactly that, you know, those people, some of those became clients, some of them, we helped, move around to different roles, different countries, and it just grew and grew and grew. And we’ve just carried on in exactly the same way with more people alongside me doing
Mark McBride-Wright 13:59
well, yeah, and so that was my next question, actually. So that was 2000 so I was 2009 the early stages growth. Where are you at now? What’s the size, what’s the scale, what’s the footprint? And actually, I’m interested. You know, nuclear has evolved even a lot in the last few years. We’ve got SMR technology coming through. Fusion is getting looked at more seriously with with bigger projects. So how are you finding diversification within, within nuclear?
Callum Thomas 14:24
Yeah, yeah. So the maybe first on the footprint. So we are, there’s just over 50 of us in the company, in the core business, and then any one time, we have around 200 or 250 people that we employ, and then we embed within our clients around the world. So we are head office in Amsterdam. We’re a Dutch parent company. Then we have offices and people around Europe, so UK, France, Finland, over in North America, in the US and Canada, and then in the Middle East, in the UAE. So we’re kind of spread out around. Uh, yeah. And we we work in the nuclear sector. We do two things. We help people move up and around within nuclear, and we bring people to the nuclear sector. So there’s a huge need to bring people from other complex, regulated safety culture sectors into nuclear. And that’s a huge amount of what what we do. And as you said, there’s all the legacy industry. There’s big nuclear power plants. There’s about 450, of them in the world. There’s a whole load of decommissioning going on. So at the end of the cycle, there’s a whole load of lifetime extension going on. Which are these huge projects to extend the lives? Then you’ve got the whole medical industry, submarine industry. And then, of course, you’ve got all the new technology coming through, all these exciting small modular reactors, and the advanced reactors and these organizations are getting, they’re getting real backing now, and they’re they’re kind of racing to see who can disrupt so nuclear is gone from when I started in 2000 and beginning of 2010 it’s become, it’s gone from being a very slow moving, state sponsored, not really fastly innovating industry, into a into a disruptor to solve climate change.
Mark McBride-Wright 16:17
And probably a bit of inertia was created when Fukushima happened because all these other latter technology are describing are, are more recent years. So was there a period when you were just making the connection now with the journey you were on, and then when, when, you know when some disasters have happened? Did that have a knock on effect to the to your to your to the future of nuclear? Did you find
Callum Thomas 16:40
I, I think it slowed it. It slowed down the progress a bit, right? Because actually, when I started the business in 2010 there was this huge nuclear renaissance going on in 2011 that was very much stopped after the after the tsunami in Fukushima, so, and then it, there was a kind of, like six, seven years where there was a lot of safety upgrades, and and then, then around in around 2018 then it, then the whole discussion around how to address climate change and nuclear being a solution really started to take hold Again, right? And then, and then you’ve got the the other imperative of energy security. Yeah, countries want to make their own energy. Energy is becoming more expensive. Things are becoming electrified. So there was a time, you know, eight years ago, where the International Energy Agency was predicting that we need less electricity in the future because of energy efficiency. So people weren’t really thinking about, how do we get more? And then suddenly those forecasts have reversed, and now we’re needing a lot more electricity, and where’s it going to come from. So if you want to, if you want to develop your own electricity and you want to also do it in a clean way, then nuclear is a solution, and that’s what’s driven all of this investment in the new, new technologies coming through. It’s gone from it’s gone from kind of state sponsored energy to climate change disruption, and that is a whole pace change in the in the sector.
Mark McBride-Wright 18:12
We met at the inclusion and diversity in nuclear inaugural event. I think what was the impetus behind helping incubate, create that organization, and how are you still involved with it? What are the activities there?
Callum Thomas 18:30
Yeah, so I think Monica mohanji is the is the leader of IDN inclusion, diversity and nuclear. Monica and I have mentioned for a long time. I think we both share the same feeling that if you’re going to talk about something, you should do something about it. And I think there was a conversation we had back in must have been 2018 I think. And we said, Well, are we just going to talk about this and wait for someone else to do something, or are we going to do something, and that was the birth of IDN and inclusion diversity in nuclear so I was involved a lot in the beginning. Thomas Thor sponsored resources and people to help get things set up. Once it was set up and running, it became a standalone nonprofit, and Monica has been running it. So all credit to Monica. I mean, I feel like I provided a kind of support in the startup phase, but she has done nearly all the work, fantastic. And I don’t think she gets enough recognition, actually, for the work that she’s done. Thomasor was an industry partner. We took a couple of years off being an industry partner as as we came out of the pandemic, and we’re watching costs in our organization, and then we’re hoping to go back to the industry partner next year. So that’s how we’re how we go on with our with our support. But yeah, I’m really, I was really proud to be part of setting it up, but really that wasn’t. Kind of my main role there, and now Monica is doing, doing all the really good and the really hard work,
Mark McBride-Wright 20:05
and I need to commit. I’ve not spoken to Monica in years. I need to, need to reach back out, actually. So yes, that was where we met. That was where we met and we collaborated together on I was wondering about the time when we we equal engineers, secured some funding to deliver our our engaging the majority training that we rolled out, I think we ended up reaching about like 975 engineers. We ended up having power stations batch delivery to help reach the numbers that was who in the I remember. So it was January 2020, actually, and I remember going from London up to workington to deliver a session at one of the business parks up there. And we had, like, I don’t know, seven people that showed up, seven or eight people that showed up. And I was thinking, the funding that we had was for 1000 you know, that was the number. And I thought, My goodness, how are we ever going to be able to draw down this opportunity? If this is who the rate of attendance, you know, it’s going to be a real hard slog. But the when, the when we went into lockdown, and we all shifted to remote working. And it actually presented an opportunity, because we shifted to virtual delivery. And I think once, once things settled down a bit. I think it was the April to or May to July, we had, like, it’s probably the most intense training period I’ve ever done, even to date, at the scale, and that it was a really good experience to have, but it also, I don’t know, saddens me a little bit that we’ve not gone through a compound upswing and growth and skill factor. And, you know, I feel like that that should have been the initiate or of something very transformative that took, took root and really, really grew. So I guess I’m still kinda figuring out, like, what is the best mechanism for wide uptake of of the message. The message being so our listeners who familiar with with equal engineers and the safe leader. You know this idea of getting people to understand their own diversity story, their own difference, and then get confident, confident in sharing it, especially men, challenging men to be more vulnerable and open and therefore more empathetic leaders, because we have a workforce that aren’t really, haven’t really been trained to lead in that way, don’t think to lead in that way, and are scared in some respects, coupled with high rate of mental ill health and at the extreme end, we say that suicidal ideation and self harm that came out through our masculinity and engineering research. So actually, when we first started working together, we’d only done our first survey iteration that led to me creating that training. We’ve done that survey another two times actually since then, and you know, the the trends haven’t really changed. So that’s, I guess, my offer to the market now is this concept of safe leadership. You know this, I’ve written my book and started this podcast to platform leaders who are doing great work in in this area. So I’m interested to hear from your perspective, as a leader, as a man, how? How do you think in the context that we’re in today, in September 2025 how do we need to be meeting the challenge of creating more inclusive working environments? How has it changed even in the last five years, and where do you see see us going?
Callum Thomas 24:06
Yeah, that’s a very big question, isn’t it? And I share your I share your feeling you thought it felt like we were starting something really big when we didn’t roll out. And actually, then, back then, it was ambitious to reach 1000 leaders. With this, with this learning, then we thought we’d we’ve really thought we’d create some kind of momentum that everyone would want to do. And actually, when you describe what it includes who wouldn’t want to learn that, who wouldn’t want to have that in their in their kind of in their life, professionally and personally. So you know what? I mean? I, for me personally, like going through the journey like I am. I’ve invested a lot in my development around understanding inclusion diversity. I understand my privilege deeply. And you know, I. So I feel that, I feel that I want to support, I feel I have to, and I want to support the effort. And I’ve, I’ve invested heavily in learning, and, you know, helping Monica set up IDN, and lot of the work, other work I’ve done in the nuclear sector to to progress inclusion, diversity. But as you, I think you said, like, it’s a tiny, drop in the ocean is it’s insatiable, the kind of the need, it feels like it’s really hard to make a proper difference. And I think it felt like we’ve we went from just talk to action. And actually, I noticed this in a lot of events around inclusion diversity for the last few years, the theme is very often from words to action or putting plans around the words, or something like that. So we’re in that kind of transitional phase, I mean, and it felt like we’re really getting somewhere. It felt, you know, from my in my day job, I can tell you, I’ve, you know, I’ve seen 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of job descriptions for leaders, team leaders, managers, directors, executive leaders, and they’ve in the last 1520, years, they’ve changed a lot, and it’s a less about experience and it’s more about attributes and and capabilities around things like creating culture, Maintaining a healthy team with a low staff turnover, creating inclusion, building bonds and and collaboration between multicultural stakeholders, that kind of thing. So those are those are now more important. So people are being asked for those things, and they’re being tested against them. So there’s a general positive shift in terms of what you need to become a leader. But it’s just happening. It’s happening really slowly, and so I don’t know what a team I mean, obviously, with the global situation now, we’ve got messages coming from big, powerful countries in the world that that are not helpful for the for the progressing of of the inclusion and diversity objectives that many of us share. But I think it’s a bit like, you know, these things, things go up and down, right? And if you look at the parallel to the nuclear sector, it was, it was really flying along, and Fukushima came, yeah, it took a hit, but then it’s come back even stronger now,
Mark McBride-Wright 27:19
and like, in a hibernation phase or something?
Callum Thomas 27:23
Yeah, maybe we’re just in a slightly more challenged phase, right where, if you’re basically, if you’re, if you’re an executive with the power and the resources, you can get away with now, probably not investing so much in your inclusion diversity program, you can even get away with saying, Well, maybe it’s not in the best interest of what our customers want, or our major stakeholders, because there is that sentiment amongst many people in the world. I personally, I’m just going to blast through that and just carry on. And I see this now as a time to actually double down the effort and start trying to create this, this this momentum. How to do it? I don’t know. I would if I, if I had one person to phone to ask how to actually create momentum, I’d probably call
Mark McBride-Wright 28:08
you. Well, yeah, so you want my view, it’s about private coalition building in the background, such that when that resurgence does come, we’re ready to go, you know, and also I think it’s, I think there’s an element of, haven’t really dug into this too much, because I don’t really want to get too involved in it, because I know it’ll suck energy out and feel like being on a hamster wheel where We’re doing activity, but we’re not actually moving forward is in that transition from words to action, I think, where people and organizations are tripping up right now, it’s we’ve got this lovely maturity matrix. So this is for organizations that are still committed, that have done some investment, and know their baseline. We’ve got this scale that says where we are. It’s the how the stepping stones to shift, you know, through these matrices, or through these scales of capability, in two or three years time, you then come back and do a reassessment, a re baseline, a rebenchmark, on progress that you ought to have made in that defined timeframe window. And I think that the third sector support space is too fragmented and budgets are too slim for the investment that’s needed and that it’s so patchy, it’s piecemeal, it’s, it’s, it’s the scraps. And so the quality of it’s not that the quality of the consulting is not good. That’s unfair to say. It’s just, it’s just too dispersed and not joined up. And so people in leadership roles, or not even just leadership roles, in doing the action roles you. I feel like they’ve done something through architecting a strategy that is simply a series of events, you know, and so when you’ve done an event, it feels good. You’ve delivered something. There’s a learning record for it. But how does it actually join up? How do you shift from one thing to the next one. I mean, it really frustrates me, for example, with International Women in Engineering day. And every year, you get a piece of a four paper, and you put a pledge on it, and you get pictures taken with whatever the inspiring pledge is. That year, social media is littered with the thing. And then, and then, what happens after it? You know, what happens? The noise just dies down. What If, on the 23rd of every month, and if it started in June, we took, we kind of pulled at a certain level, what are the current issues and barriers that you’re facing with regard to gender equality in the workplace? And then, you know, there’ll be a whole array of things that come back, let’s say, meant, lack of a menopause policy is one of them, you know. Okay, let’s hive together a little task and finish group of organizations that want to, in a defined time frame, have a menopause policy, you know. And then we meet monthly we get some speakers on that share an example of their menopause policy and the impact it’s had on the women in the workplace and the taboo that it’s broken down for the men now being able to lean in and talk about it, how it’s affecting them with their relationships. And then you you, you move it through, you know, so at least we’re then making progress line by line on each of those barriers that have been identified, and the organizations are having their hands held through it, through a trusted partner. You know, that is the layer that’s missing per demographic, and that includes the white, straight male. That is the that is the level of granularity we need to be at in terms of our programming and what we’re doing. And, yeah, anyway, it’s a big it’s a big thing to do, but with with how we do it, I don’t know it’s it would really need strong collaboration between sector specific experts, you know, working with Thomas Thor, for example, to diversify executive search recruitment, working with STEM returners to bring more people into the SEC or back to the sector, working with Ste amazing to do really focused nuclear specific outreach, which is happening actually, by the way, on the nuclear front, we are in a partnership with STEM amazing that’s funded by the dne, the defense nuclear enterprise, where we’re doing engagements, you know, 50 schools in Scotland, but that’s like one project. How do we encourage other partners to co invest, scale that up, and then you chunk up the talent pipeline at the different levels? And I think it’s almost like it’s a systems engineering approach to it. But I think we over engineer sometimes what needs to be done, and then it becomes overwhelming and surmountable, too much for one singular organization to do, and then which it just drifts.
Callum Thomas 33:16
It does. Yeah, it does feel like it has the complexity of a of a system doesn’t Yeah, and yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s pockets, like, you know, I there’s validation. Like, the work you do validates, is validated by the fact that the organizations, employers pay you, because they clearly see the benefit of that. Yeah, I think that’s the same with Thomas Thor, when we are, when we’re doing executive search, for example, for our clients, and we’re helping them to ensure they’ve got diversity in their succession planning and in their boardrooms. That’s what people want, because when when I was involved in a national survey in the UK a few years ago, and what people want most is an inclusive working environment. So if they see that, then they’re more likely to join, they’re more likely to stay, and so so companies are willing. You know, that’s the real test. Are you willing to pay for a service that somehow helps you in this area? And I think we validate that somewhat. You validate that somewhat, but joining all that together to to to create more momentum, that’s where the system thinking comes in, yeah. And it’s Yeah, but sometimes, you know, to your point, earlier on, most of the work I’ve been involved in around Dei, it’s people doing it alongside their day jobs. It’s a working group, or it’s a committee, or it’s a project team, and everyone’s kind of using their discretionary effort, yeah, and of course, because of that, there’s no real accountability. There’s no real pressure to get great results. And then, of course, things get busy, or objectives change, and then people move on. So yeah, we somehow got to commercialize it, right? Because just just doing it because it’s the right thing, doesn’t seem to be enough to create. The momentum that we want. So we’ve got to make products and services that are clearly adding value that organizations want to and people want to
Mark McBride-Wright 35:08
pay for. And how do we then tie it into safety or HR on things that already have budget, subscribed to them, ascribed to
Callum Thomas 35:18
them? Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s the, I mean, that’s part of the commercial model, right? It’s a whole lot easier to tap into an existing spending line or P and L line than than to create something new. Yeah. So yeah, for example, in the nuclear sector, obviously safety is, is, is the Paramount foundation of everything. So when people immediately think about physical safety, but also the psychological safety is the same, and that’s becoming realized now. So why not, you know, release this huge budget to ensure the safe operating of a plant because a faulty valve, or a, you know, a depressed human being, yeah, are both risks for a for an operating environment. So there’s a big opportunity there. Oh, that is,
Mark McBride-Wright 36:13
yeah, I spend my entire career saying that my background, I’m a safety engineer by training. So yeah, spent my career helping organizations create physically safe working environments, and so got so excited when I discovered this term psychological safety, and thinking, how can we leverage that for our advantage? How can we avoid all the shallow narratives on exclusionary discussion of them and us, kind of divisive nature of how the general sentiment can go. How can you make that long tenured engineer who’s worked in that facility for a long time, who’s starting to feel ironically excluded by D and I programs like, how do we include their voice? And, you know, I think the mental ill health, the being fully present at work, the way in which men have been taught to show up professionally through match wasm and holding it together and being stoic and not being able to be vulnerable, etc. These are all, and I’m stereotyping and generalizing here. This tends to be a theme that I see within, you know, engineering teams, in terms of, like, the way people are showing up. So I would just, I feel like we’re on the precipice of some sort of big transformation. What? What opportunities do you think exist then, in this nuclear renaissance with new technologies like in small modular reactor or infusion, you know, it’s very rare that you get an opportunity in your career to be the part of the new industry, like the foundation of a new industry. So what should these big projects be doing that’s different to how the previous big projects have been done, and how should we behave? How should we be exerting our influence in our network? Because we are connected to organizations. How should we be exerting our influence to try and make sure things are done differently this time?
Callum Thomas 38:31
Yeah, it’s a big opportunity, because the whole legacy isn’t there and the limiting beliefs are not there, and also there’s a there’s a bit of a frenzy of competition. It’s a bit like, it’s a bit like the tech industry. It’s more like the new generation of nuclear organizations share more in common with tech than they do with energy. Oh, and so, so, so, so to join one, not the other, they are. They’re competing for the for the for the the limited pool of people. Yeah, there. So what do they care about? They care about the working environment, they care about the values of the organization, they care about the purpose. They care about the leaders and the and so it’s we can borrow a lot from the tech industry. If you look at, you know, some of the biggest investors are the likes of, you know, the big tech companies, it’s a very important part of their brand and strategy to be investing a lot from the ground up in their inclusion and diversity and equity strategy. So and that’s that’s the opportunity some of them on that
Mark McBride-Wright 39:35
some of them might be even working together, because I know the SMR technologies potentially fueling Data Center building that the big tech firms are are leading on now,
Callum Thomas 39:45
every week you got a new announcement that in Amazon, meta, Google, Microsoft, are partnering with with the nuclear organizations. So some of them are scaling up quickly, and they’ve got the opportunity to get it right. From the beginning, like when you got 2000 staff, it’s very easy to fall back on the excuse that it’s, it’s, it’s too big to change what’s happened in the past. Whereas they don’t have that. They’re not encumbered with that. But also, these are the types of organizations that they’ll be brought down. One, you know, one scandal around discrimination or oppression or something, they’ll, you know, they’ll lose their partners, and they’ll, you know, they’ll lose their funding, the funders, partners, customers, they they love the new upstarts. They disrupt us. But as as we’ve seen time and time again, you know, if they don’t get it right in terms of their values and their working environment, then they’re gone. So it’s an it’s an existential imperative. Whereas, you know, when some of the big nuclear organizations, they get it wrong again and again and again, they make the headlines. But what can you do? You can’t replace them. There’s no now. There is, you know, and that’s the that with the newcomer companies, then that’s, that’s the opportunity. I think.
Mark McBride-Wright 41:07
Okay, quick fire questions. You ready? I’m ready. What’s one piece of career advice you still follow today?
Callum Thomas 41:17
Yeah, that I did the best training I ever did was perceptual positioning. You take a situation, there are five stakeholders, and you physically move around the room to each chair, and you play each person. I did that when I was 23 it’s still the most powerful thing I ever learned, because it’s obvious that you should look at things from other people’s perspectives, but until you actually do it physically moving around. That that taught me how perception Trumps reality.
Mark McBride-Wright 41:46
One project or initiative you’re especially proud of, I
Callum Thomas 41:51
think it’s helping Monica set up IDM. It’s a standalone nonprofit, and yeah, I’m proud of that
Mark McBride-Wright 41:59
coffee, tea or something stronger.
Callum Thomas 42:03
So green tea in the morning, any kind of herbal tea in the afternoon, and then if I’m out, I’d probably have a tequila. Oh, my nice, a nice sipping tequila.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:15
What’s a book or podcast that shaped how you eat? Yeah, there’s
Callum Thomas 42:19
so many, I think flow, the book by Mihaly. Can you pronounce his surname?
Mark McBride-Wright 42:28
I don’t know. The book
Callum Thomas 42:29
about the state of flow, which is where you are. You’re so into what you’re doing that you forget about time. Yeah, feeling right. And it’s that. So that was very effective on me. And reading one at the moment, called the whole brain child, I have a young son, and there’s a book about the how the different parts of the brain develop and communicate, and it’s as relevant for adults as it is for kids. So those, those are two that have had a big effect on me.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:57
You learn a lot as you become a parent, don’t you, and you’re raising the next generation. What’s your favorite way to recharge or gain new perspective?
Callum Thomas 43:06
Exercise, exercise, exercise, basically my my self therapy.
Mark McBride-Wright 43:13
What’s your exercise go to?
Callum Thomas 43:16
Yeah, I like to triathlons a couple of times a year. So it’s mainly Yeah, gym and then some running, cycling, swimming, right?
Mark McBride-Wright 43:24
What’s one recruitment myth you’d love to
Callum Thomas 43:26
bust? I think people, some people think that we have a database and we sit there and just press a button and send people. It’s a lot harder than it looks. I think a lot of people think other people’s jobs are easy, don’t they? It’s the amount of unpredictability and complexity in our job is is astounding, which is what makes it exciting, but it’s I think some people think it’s easy. It’s not easy.
Mark McBride-Wright 43:53
Someone in the nuclear sector that inspires you.
Callum Thomas 44:00
Do you know how I met last week? Dr, Chris sing, he he set up a company called Holtec. He’s 75 now. He was at a conference last week in London, and he set up a company decades ago making fuel racks or something for the nuclear sector. Now, he owns nuclear power plants. He’s building an SMR. You know, he’s, he’s a and he’s just such a nice guy. That’s kind of where I, you know, and he, you’re obviously someone who retirement has no meaning for him. Yeah, I hope when I’m 75 I’m still doing what I love absolutely in your flow, in your value, in my flow
Mark McBride-Wright 44:39
as a granddad, yeah? What’s something most people misunderstand about diversity in engineering?
Callum Thomas 44:53
Probably that everyone’s perspective is is different.
Mark McBride-Wright 44:59
And finally. Right. All right, keep on. Yeah, no,
Callum Thomas 45:01
I was gonna say, and understanding people’s different perspectives is, it’s, it’s, it’s, takes a lot of time, but it’s really, really, really worth it. It’s like, it’s like, you know, the sun coming out when you see something from someone else’s perspective. Yeah, you
Mark McBride-Wright 45:17
have to have the patience. What advice would you give to a young leader entering the energy sector today?
Callum Thomas 45:27
Probably the only, the main piece of advice would be just to resist all the limiting beliefs. There’s the energy sector is completely being revolutionized, so everything and anything is possible right now.
Mark McBride-Wright 45:40
Then that is a good note to end on there. Callum, thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed our catch up our chat. If people want to find out, get in touch with you, find out about what you do, or see you know, read about Thomas dore services. How do they do
Callum Thomas 45:56
that? Yeah, I probably you can contact me on LinkedIn, or any of my colleagues. Or you can go to our website, which is www, dot Thomas hyphen, Thor, T, H, O, r.com, and then you’ll see about our history and the four service lines that we offer across executive search, recruitment, partnering, staff augmentation and workforce consulting.
Mark McBride-Wright 46:21
Brilliant we’ll put the links in the show notes as well. Thanks, Callum,
Callum Thomas 46:25
thank you, Mark. It’s a pleasure to talk to you and yeah, and yeah, congrats on all the work you’re doing. It’s, it is truly inspirational.
Mark McBride-Wright 46:32
Oh, thank you. Thank you. I will. We’ll catch up soon. Okay, thanks. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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