88: Doing Social Mobility Better: Tokunbo Ajasa Oluwa, CEO of Career Ready

Shownotes:According to a report from last year by a leading consulting firm - compared with the other developed countries, the most disadvantaged in the UK are less likely to climb the income ladder and economically advantaged tend to stay at the top. No surprise there…It is no secret that, the on going impact of the pandemic, cost of living crisis, economic recession and global uncertainty has pushed more households and therefore young people into poverty. For young people from underprivileged backgrounds this is going to deeply impact their ability to bridge the attainment gap between them and their better off peers. Young people without access to resources, mentoring and networks required to progress will struggle to reach their full potential. In 2023, instead of disappearing, the barriers to achieving upward social mobility are getting more and more entrenched in our society…..No surprise there either…… To understand more about social mobility, imperatives and impact I spoke with Tokunbo Ajasa Oluwa, CEO of Career Ready, a passionate advocate for young people and social mobility. We spoke about the findings of the last State of National Report by the Social Mobility Commission and discussed why as a developed country we have been unable to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty? 👉🏾 We spoke about the role of education and access to higher education in enabling transformation👉🏾 The need for a collaborative approach between governments and the private sector👉🏾 The Sutton Trust research on the impact of accents on social mobility finds pervasive accent bias. The research highlights the clear link between accents, socioeconomic background and social mobility👉🏾 We also discussed the fact that social mobility has not been on any recent party election manifesto, the effectiveness of the APPG on social mobility. And the possibility of change without political will👉🏾 Measuring progress - via long term impact 👉🏾 The people who inspired him - his mother and Dame Anita Roddick And if you would like to know about the super power he would choose, head to the podcast 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾Memorable Passages from the podcast👉🏾 Pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invitation. 👉🏾 So my name's Tokunbo Ajasa-Oluwa. I'm Chief Executive of Career Ready, a social mobility charity that works across the UK. My background, I suppose I've worked in the third sector and the private sector, kind of jumped from one to the other over the years. Well, what's been the golden thread throughout my career is working with young people, particularly in the focus of youth empowerment and helping young people to realise their potential.👉🏾 But before doing any of that type of work, I trained as a journalist and I worked in the media industry for about a decade or so, before making that shift into leadership working in the third sector and young people. 👉🏾 So Career ready, essentially, we're a charity that believes talent doesn't have a particular postcode. So for us, we consciously focus on working in areas of the UK that have a higher level of deprivation. And what we do is we work in partnerships with schools and colleges in that region, to identify young people that are in need of our support to help them realise their potential when it comes to career choices.👉🏾 So how we do that practically is through three things. We...