Inside the World of Elite Close Protection with UMBRA Founder Kate Bright

0:00As I had the role then, there was no service like Umbra that I could go to and dump all of my risk woes. And someone could then help me to work out how to navigate an industry that's become even more complex into 2026. So very accidentally, and then the actual sort of light bulb moment for the setting up of the business was my journey into protective security. So I took the close protection training and have held a bodyguard license since sort of 2013. working for very private, but also very wealthy families, the sort of digital, rise of digital security doesn't just mean your data, it's also how you're perceived and how much information there is about you out there, how your reputation is built.

0:43And I found it really interesting that over that course of the sort of the last 25 years, I think that everyone deserves to be able to celebrate success and live a safe, secure lifestyle, which is what we call it now.

0:53Jeannette Linfoot:Welcome back to Brave Bold Brilliant, and today's episode is with a fascinating business leader, Kate Bright. Now, Kate has been looking after the security of some of the most high-profile people in the world for three decades. She's the CEO and founder of Umbra and actually is a chartered security professional. But so much more than that, what Kate and her business does is actually allow people to live a secure lifestyle, which means that they can bring the best to the world. So whether it is personal security, digital security, financial security or emotional security, what Kate and her team do with Umbra is protect those people that are operating at the highest level.

1:48Jeannette Linfoot:So we had a fascinating conversation. You are going to absolutely love this episode. So let's get into it. Let's get Brave Bold Brilliant with Kate Bright. Well, welcome to Brave Bold Brilliant. Kate, nice to see you. Thank you for having me. You are very welcome. Now, I am fascinated by your journey, the business you've got, all the amazing things you've got going on. But security. Now, when someone looks at you, they wouldn't necessarily think that you're in the business that you're in of security. How did you get into that? us? So, well, firstly, I think there are a lot of women in various different roles.

2:27And part of my whole, hopefully, legacy in the industry is this idea of invisible security. So that's great that you wouldn't associate that with me. But my journey is really very squiggly. But it starts and it's sort of the golden thread has always been working with private clients. And so when I left university with a French degree I landed my first job working in what's now called a single family office and that was the first part of my 15 years of my career I worked for three big families and I took on the role of essentially the head of that that sort of setup and part of my remit was to protect their time their reputation their you know the sort of gatekeeper role that I had extended to their um physical security and at that time early noughties into the sort of uh you know the sort of 2010 11 12 period where digital risk then started to become something that we needed to worry about and i just found there were so many different ways that my clients could be feeling unsafe not just physically um that was the genesis of the umbra journey really because as i had the role then there was no service like umbra that i could go to and dump all of my risk woes and someone could then help me to work out how to navigate an industry that's become even more complex into 2026 yeah so very accidentally and then the the actual sort of light bulb moment for the uh setting up of the business was my journey into protective security so i took the close protection training and have held a bodyguard license since sort of 2013 uh which was a whole baptism of fire into this idea of invisible security, I found there were so many more diverse, not even male, female people working in the sector.

4:17I was just so compelled by the idea that someone like me, not from a military law enforcement agency background, could be so useful as a protector. And so not only protecting time, but also protecting that idea of a physical sort of person it really really struck me that uh the sort of combined experience that i had within the client world and this protective experience as i always say boots on the ground that that i never have lost that sense of you know what protection is all about in its rawest form um that was really the the light bulb moment that i i knew that there was going to be a business i was going to set up i didn't know exactly how and what it was going to look like But I knew that the phone was starting to ring where people were saying, you've got this weird background client experience and exposure.

5:03Now you've got your sort of protective security experience. Well, how about you help us with this and that? And so it's grown very organically over the years. But I always look back to the close protection, which is the term for bodyguarding, as being the start and end of all things security. But as we now know, in today's crazy world, physical security, digital security, there's all sorts of complex layers that have emerged and also an increasingly sort of exposed world that we live in, a volatile world that we live in. It's been a perfect storm to help become a safe pair of hands to clients all around the world.

5:42Jeannette Linfoot:Yeah, so I mean, it's interesting, as you were talking, I was thinking there's all this misconception about the industry and about what's involved. And the image you have of some big burly bloke that's just kind of there to protect you from a, you know, from a bodyguard point of view. But actually, as you say, there's so much more than that involved, isn't there, in today's world? Yeah. And how has that changed? Because you were 15 years in with the family offices and the roles that you had before you started Umbra. But when you first started out to today, what are the big shifts that you've seen in the space?

6:14Jeannette Linfoot:You know, because obviously cyber is now a whole bigger part, I would have thought, data and all these kind of areas. But what are the big trends and shifts in the sector that you've seen over those years, do you think? So I think risk has become multidimensional. So we worried in 2003, 4, 5, 6, 7 about physical risk. And that's what operational risk was all about. and then suddenly a combination of different things one of which working for very private but also very wealthy families the the sort of digital rise of digital security doesn't just mean your data it's also how you're perceived and how much information there is about you out there how your reputation is built and I found it really interesting that over that course of the sort of the last 25 years I think that everyone deserves to be able to celebrate success and live a safe, secure lifestyle, which is what we call it now.

7:06But I noticed that the security word was, still is, it's a really complicated word. But like saying you work in finance, people sort of say, well, which part of security? And I think that for me, the answer to the sort of, the question also starts and ends when the world stopped in 2020. And I think that security for me started to become much more about our clients' health and safety, their sort of existential feeling of safety and to a certain extent the security of the communities that we work with because I'm deeply passionate about how the security industry in the private sector also intersects with public safety and so I think the last six years you've seen that perfect storm of the rise of digital crime the rise of even the use and the misuse some would say of AI all converging and a human that doesn't necessarily feel safe geopolitics the the world sort of you know seemingly spinning on a very sort of uncertain axis um so for me that sort of multiplicity that that sort of the the layers and layers of risk that we're facing now when we fast forward when we rewind back to 20 2003 we were dealing with how to feel safe how to feel strange danger we remember you know back to the sort of very simple yeah risk mantras well now i think we've got to deal with uncertainty complexity the sort of avuca as the acronym says volatility uncertainty complexity and ambiguity and we've forgotten some of the first principles of security which is it starts and ends with people so my interest in uh the world of the security sort of industry is how we cannot forget that it's not all about data it's not all about the online ecosystem it's how we show up in real life it's the intersection between your online life and your physical life that will never will never be sort of there will always be that sort of binary sort of side to risk now which i find quite interesting and actually with the you know with

9:07Jeannette Linfoot:social media as well you know you've got all of that dynamic but i think you're right is sometimes And I think we can focus on data, AI, tech and digital and forget actually behind all of that is people. Yeah, 70 % of all cyber risks come from people. So tired people, stressed people, burnt out people. That's where I say this idea of health and safety. Human beings are very, very good at looking after each other. We're tribal animals. That's why I'm so big on community safety, safety in numbers. And I think some of the sort of wonderful colleagues that I work with all around the world in different disciplines across even reputational security, which I think is a very underplayed discipline of the security output, you know, how you look at what a crisis is in terms of your own success and your own publicity, privacy, that you should be able to live a private life and also have a public life.

10:03and where does that tension occur and it's people like us that bring together specialists to design a secure lifestyle so that you can live both those types of lives or you can live a completely private life it's it's a choice and I think some of our clients forget that there is that agency I think sometimes our industry has potentially told people how to be safe I can't tell you how to be safe I can sit with you and talk to you about what a secure lifestyle looks So I'm really proud of the team as well for developing this concept of proactivity. You know, that shouldn't be a theme, but reactive security costs time, stress.

10:41It's incredibly expensive in raw terms. Proactive security is wonderful. It's elegant. It allows you to design your life and a life that looks and feels like one that you want to live. that's protecting your life, your children's life, the generations that come after you. So we get involved in all sorts of interesting extrapolations of that word security, which is why I'm so passionate about what we do.

11:09Jeannette Linfoot:Yeah. So with Umbra, when you started the business, it was a startup, right? You know, you were literally, you had this pull to do something and you had that great 15 years of sort of, I suppose, learning your trade to a certain degree. and then starting the business. So Umbra, just describe the business for anyone that might not fully get it yet. You do a lot. Yeah. So we are a private security company. So people call us a security private office, confusingly. The word security, a bit like finance. We're like an investment private office. So we own the client relationship. We look at all the different risks they might be facing and we come up with solutions, whether that's advice, whether that's support through different specialists or whether that's project management so we are the sort of we're the generalist gp that manages that client so think of it like a bit like a fractional head of security if you wanted to come and plug and play to understand what your life looked like where the risks were we would work with you in exactly the same way as we would work with any number of our different clients and for some people that might then involved um personal protection in which case you would then be able to provide those services absolutely or it might be well it's probably holistically as you say you know it could be there you know there's a digital element or you know cyber etc so you have got the expertise within the ecosystem of umbra to be able to not only look holistically for the client and say okay here's your risks these are some solutions that we can recommend and actually we can also provide those solutions for you so it's almost like a managed service yeah end-to-end solution yeah presumably those relationships that you have I mean you're you can never talk about any of your clients clearly um but that puts you in in such a position of trust so I want to talk about values a little bit and and how important that has been in building the business given the sensitivity and the profile of probably your clients that they must they have to know don't they that they are in a confidential you know relationship with yourself with umbra and with with the team so how how important has that been in establishing the business from day one to now?

13:22Jeannette Linfoot:And has it shifted at all for you, Kate, would you say? It's about trust because, you know, everything that we do starts and ends with the people, the people, the clients, their teams, the former me in my role. I'm super empathetic to anyone who's working in that role now because it's become so much more complicated, so much more 24-7. So from my perspective, Whenever I'm meeting a new client, it's typically someone that's been referred to us. It's typically word of mouth. Therefore, not only am I leveraging my previous experience of working in-house, but also the years and years and years and over a decade now of solving problems, both fast-paced problems and slower-paced problems.

14:06and trust by association so you know a number of the different sort of advisory partners that we work with whether it's the law firms the trust companies the wealth the investment private offices you know we've all now started to work much more collaboratively with each other and you build a reputation by being able to do what you say you're going to do so i think for me a lot of my life has started and ended with integrity and doing what you say you're going to do and i I think having come from, you know, I started out very much in the sort of very basic part of sort of, you know, personal assistant.

14:41I worked my way all the way from literally sort of if you're going to make a cup of tea and be tasked with making cup of tea, you make the best cup of tea ever. And I just do a version of that today, which is, you know, really look after clients. You know, we we send Christmas cards out thousands of them every year. Why? No one sends Christmas cards. Yeah, because we like to think about our clients at different touch points around the year. And so for us, you know, a lot of the trust that our clients place in us is because we do what we say we're going to do. And some of the things I've tried to build in, I'm quite obsessed with sport.

15:17So I nicked from Saracens, sorry, Saracens, the Umbra way, the Saracens way. So, you know, being personal, being proactive, you will have a response from us within a few hours. And some people argue that in a small business, you know, you're making a rod for your own back and that sort of hyper connectivity. I think I play around with that tension because I've got now an extremely high performing team that understand that risk isn't a nine to five thing. And I think some of the biggest bits of trust I've built is just being on the end of the phone to give someone in sometimes the lowest, most exposing moments of their life.

15:56The death of a family member, going to be featured incorrectly or otherwise on a front page of a newspaper, having your own home broken into, having a sense that there's someone in your ecosystem that you can't trust that's let you down. these are big things for people who are also perhaps successful in other metrics but we've managed to stage that intervention and a lot of times people have just called because their lawyer has said to call us and so we want to make sure that we keep building that idea of availability personal proactive you know but the kind of glass three quarters full the way that you can be humans as well as also solve problems and and never taking our clients for granted um one of the things i used to have to do when i was sitting on the other side of the table was always show value value and value is very closely aligned for me because when i set up the business i was always trying to sort of do things to sort of please the client not necessarily looking out for the commercial interest i think now i'm learning how you can build your values and you have a value to that person at that time and i'm just about getting i think a sense that we've built some really cool equity of trust in the business and uh you know as as you know in any business you hit that tipping point where i'm really excited to see where we go next but it's been a slowly slowly slowly uh you know this is not a sort of compounded sort of you know scaling business in any way shape or form we're we're trying to scale the depth of the relationships that we have and the trust that we built within our client ecosystem and that's that's that's kind

17:37Jeannette Linfoot:how we built our reputation yeah and i 100 % agree with you kate you know i think reputation is everything at the end of the day you know regardless of what sector you're in you know people do business with those that they know like and trust now whether that's in your world whether it's in my world and i really believe that you know the way you the way you do anything is the way you should do everything yes and because that that and it's often when people aren't watching you know i mean the things behind the scenes what you say no to absolutely yeah absolutely all of that and and in your scenario with the different clients you've got what proportion of people come to you when there's been an event there's been something has happened that's kind of scared them or has made them go oh my gosh we need to get our house in order versus the proactive side of things it can vary there's still too many reactive things happening that's one of the things that i am deeply passionate about is i think i say proactive 98 times a day because i still i you know to be in 2026 and to have said that for about 10 or 10 plus years proactive is stressful expensive time consuming what don't we have time money and you know stress is just so unnecessary but i think sometimes things are sort of a bit like hot spaghetti it's just how what temperature you're prepared to eat that at and for some of our clients their tolerance for things going wrong is very low and for others it's very high so i would say firstly define a crisis and secondly for some of our clients what might be a crisis for one person is publicity or is not a crisis yeah so there's a for me part of the role that we have is as we're first in is to kind of listen to what we're being told but also ask the right questions as to where in again a bit like a gp does this person need to be going to A &E is this something that is a crisis is this a crisis to this person right now that's good enough for me um but happily increasingly we are doing a lot more sort of education particularly in our advisory community to sort of say look you are the closest you have the trusted relationship listen out for selling a business listen out for a succession moment where someone's going to take over a family business whether that's quickly or slowly we know there are some known knowns control the things that the unknown unknown at least map them if you know you're going to be taking over something a business or otherwise or a family seat prepare for it you know i've just been talking to one of our um cyber specialists um war game what goes wrong who's the first phone call make it fun make it something or you can't make it sort of death of a family number fun but day zero day one day two what are those things that you are going to want to know about when it's not going wrong or when it's not happened so at least have that crisis plan so we're trying to sort of sit in the middle of some stuff we can't control some stuff we know is going to happen let's start to get ahead of some of the things that we know are going to happen and have those things that you can dust down as and when you need them um so you know i think again we work with with families as well so there's lots of things that i think become a lot more complex and reactive because of dynamics.

20:53And I always talk about the four pillars of secure lifestyle, deliberately, physical, digital, reputational, and emotional. Sometimes I'll say familial security, just because alignment of families on what is a risk, what is a problem, what is a crisis, can be very different one generation to another. So if we're working in a reactive way and we're still trying to define what those things are, you know it can it can just time cost stress so uh i think short answer too much of our work is still reactive happily now you know things that i'm starting to sort of really live and breathe which um it starts and ends with how our clients look after themselves i spoke to a client today actually about um dialing up some of her emotional security support that she's got around her so that she's really able to give me clear instructions as to what in her gut feels like she needs to do from a protective services point of view um and luckily a lot of our work is more invisible so invisible security elegant design you know secure lifestyle was my sort of two words that i slapped together and i said for 10 years suddenly we got it ip'd and and trademarked you know that i can show you the uptick in people ringing us because suddenly oh okay it's this conversation about my secure lifestyle not my security it's like oh my gosh yes i didn't realize this is one of the core tenets of what we talk about no one wants to talk to you about security it's like talking about finance yeah secure lifestyle i'm like oh i'm interested i want one of those that sounds like something that i would like to understand so i'm always saying to clients dial up your own sense we all have our own inner situational awareness it can get clouded but i think the more you invest in your own knowing of what is right and wrong what feels right and wrong if something doesn't feel right it is not right and that applies across physical digital reputational emotional set your own boundaries set your own risk parameters you can make it super simple something goes above that you ring someone like us and you know that is the agency that i think the word security has taken away because it's i'm it's a scary word i don't even know what people mean by it you work in the security industry i'm like sort of but i love my industry but i'm also setting a new a new store so that people can relate to it um and so hopefully people

23:17Jeannette Linfoot:don't wait till it goes wrong and and this is the thing because i i i think back to my years in corporate so i when i was the md of the emerging markets for two you know i think about some of the things that we did back then you know thrown out to moscow well yeah you know in china in india you know, all these parts of the world as a team. And we're a big corporate right at the time of FTSE 100. But when I look back, I think, my gosh, we were very lucky that we didn't have any incidents. But there were regular shootings in Moscow when I was there, you know, all the time. And actually, you know, we're dealing with some really quite high profile investors and clients and stuff.

23:59Jeannette Linfoot:So actually, I think sometimes it's sometimes naivety is good. because you were it is but I would imagine Kate that when someone comes to you there's almost an element of oh my god someone knows they're here on our side to help us figure all this out almost a sense of relief that you can't plan for everything but you've got enough experience and a blueprint that can almost be dusted off tweets according to a particular situation you know you're not rewriting it every single time are you but we're still tailoring it for the specific clients need and back to front you know we've tried proudly to create toolkits and checklists there are literally 10 things you could do today that would make your life immeasurably safer tomorrow what's safe isn't convenient what's convenient isn't safe some people don't want to do the things that we're recommending multi-factor authentication who wants that that's just you know a slow way to get into something however it's putting these things in place should be simple and I would say to and and my colleagues in the world finance would agree we've over complicated things that shouldn't be over complicated and I would say that some of the you know growing up as well in you know the sort of 80s 90s Britain I think that uh we were blissfully unaware of what we didn't know and I think that the world I always slightly disagree with some of the sort of crime trend statistics that we've got now a we map more crime um but also i think we've got more stuff to worry about yeah i would say that some of the travel that we probably were doing at the time that you described we didn't have the words for travel risk management we didn't have the idea of global intelligence around things that might be emerging as problems and one of the things i'll forget when i was um sort of early in the business was do you remember the terrorist attacks in paris yes very well so that was one of the moments for me where i before that there was hostile environment security and travel risk management that was a defining moment for particularly one particular family that were in paris at that time and never again have they let anyone say to them you only need xyz in a hostile environment because you can have a hostile environment in any major European city, in any part of the world, in any benign part of any part of the world can turn into something different in a very short space of time.

26:35And what I think is a silver lining in some of this world we live in now is we have so much more intelligence. So one of my top tips is to sort of, who's providing you intelligent intelligence? And who do you trust, I think, are the two most strategic decisions you can make because we can all wake up and look at our phones and think the world's on fire but how do we verify how do we know what's relevant to us if i'm going to be traveling to france tomorrow i want to know that something hasn't happened in when i land that means i don't want to get on that flight because i just don't want to put myself in that situation and for some of our clients they're they're hugely entrepreneurial they love risk i love working with those sort of clients because they love risk they've built things they've taken huge risks but as i say it's what can you mitigate and what can you prevent and also i want to oversimplify oversimplify our way out of problematic security incidents happening i want to make it so simple for clients to put in really quite simple interventions so

27:39Jeannette Linfoot:that they actually don't have some of these problems but some of the waste i think is particularly when our clients have built stuff, they've had a lot of success, whether that's financial or otherwise, but they're able to invest in some of these things at a lower level, but then they end up having to spend money on things in a reactive way. As you know, very much, you know, philanthropy is essential to leaving something great behind is so important to me. I hate, wait, I'm a daughter of wartime parents, as in Second World War. Why is that money being spent on crisis problems and not on solving the problems of safer societies that that's that's something that really sort of motivates me to try and help our clients to invest in the right type of interventions across those four pillars of a secure lifestyle so that they can go and be amazing philanthropists and social impacts that's what i i love seeing our clients getting into why they're on the planet not worrying about who's you know out to sort of get them and who who's fixated or who's who also doesn't like success and not for now but I think there is a conversation about the fact that uh you know our clients are targets um because of success and I find that deeply problematic and I am very proud to work with some of the world's most incredibly uh successful people through their own endeavors and that of the the family that they that they've they're from and i i think that is something that um uh from a reputational security standpoint really upsets me because i think i see the side of these families doing so much good for the planet and and yet we don't necessarily like success and that success comes under fire particularly from media intrusion which i think is a sort of you know one of the one of the sort of uh tensions that we see with our clients in that in that sort of publicity privacy sort of decision making that they have to make yeah and I think there's a cultural element here as well you know I think sometimes the British culture is is quite different to say American culture you know where to be an entrepreneur for businesses to fail start again you know all of that it's very different if you're in the states the approach to that whereas it's almost like it's sort of you know almost like seeing anyone get on in British culture for someone that hasn't maybe been as successful in their own life or isn't isn't that happy in maybe their life they're almost there looking to knock people down or criticize etc but I agree with you you know to be successful to create profits or whatever it may be or impact allows you to then recycle that back into communities recycle it back into the economy whatever it may be so it's a great shame I think that you know we have this nature sometimes this nature is there isn't it and that drives the media it drives you know i guess people doing quite extreme things to what they see as successful people and and actually you can do a lot for the world if you have been successful because then you've got the means financial knowledge etc to give back and to make the world a better place yeah so making the world a safer place is a collective team sport and it's an all society approach yeah But it requires investment of time and it requires investment of resources.

31:02And it's one of the things that is my biggest challenge to the security industry is how can we not be a private, inward, insular industry? How can we be a much more public, private, partnership, working industry? And we require everyone from the public, from, you know, women and men on the street, all the way through to our clients who are paying for services to keep themselves safe to actually come together. If you think about some of the things that would make society immeasurably safer, going back to the intelligence point, we have an ageing population. My parents know exactly what is happening in their street, in their town, because they're interested and they have the time to spend soaking up.

31:45They're like intelligence analysts in the form of octogenarian. If we could harness both young and an ageing demographic to start to look out for each other, it's little shifts like that where we only need small amounts of investment in an all society approach. the clients that we work with of course they want to live in a safe secure way but 100 % of my clients are interested in ways that they can help to provide law enforcement with extra resource when it's needed but they can help to understand how and where their resources can help others when there's a crisis so yeah I think I think we lose a lot in the nuance of private security has I think still got to improve its perception of not just being a very inward looking industry and that's why with our resources and toolkits and checklists and things like that we've always been very open to sharing like what are the best ways that women or men on the street can take some of the learnings and it's all very simple and I you know I think some sometimes we overcomplicate um we love an acronym in our industry um once you strip all of that back it's actually you know being proactive having a sense of what good looks like what does a crisis look like and then you know controlling your controllables which you know it's it's the human component to that like a gp a gp is only taking what you're saying running diagnostics and then putting you in with the right specialist only that is such an important part the bedside manner of that is what we keep going back to our GP for or not as the case may be so you know for us to be that that that person that's there in that uh you know hopefully pre-crisis way I think is something that changes an industry from being very push push pull to one that is there to be learned from and so I'm really I'm loving seeing more and more of my industry peers talking more about what we do yeah it's not about taking out confidences at all but it's actually starting to really encourage the younger generation to look at a career and people end up working in our industry let's encourage people to work choose to choose there's a much more diverse workforce that can work particularly in cyber security where you you are more hands-off than you are technically hands-on why aren't we talking and role modeling people in our industry to encourage the next generation to come in to protect people don't want to become part of law enforcement anymore people don't want to take up roles where they're protecting community so we've got to start to sort of think about how do we protect society and and if we're not taking this all society approach then we're going to end up with this sort of these the perception that people are paying for over here and not paying for over there which uh i know not to be true and being a woman in business not sort of woman in business but a

34:38Jeannette Linfoot:woman in your industry which is you know probably not so the norm you know so already you're breaking perceptions and kind of really saying no actually this is a profession for men women you know all all different backgrounds etc do you get pushback ever in or do people sort of think oh not quite sure what you know why whether you've got the credentials I mean clearly you have got the credentials you know oozing out of you with your knowledge and experience but do you ever get that sort of oh ed rard what you really is that what you do can you really protect us you know do you ever get that sort of pushback in terms of yeah i mean you being the business owner i think because i have spent so long working with the clients i've got the nautical miles under my belt yeah and because i've had my boots on the ground for so long holding a protective license for over a decade now and flexing it by the way it's not just sitting on a dusty shelf i you know i'm out and about i'm i'm looking at the teams that we're deploying i'm working out you know how we can best tone up particularly the protective services part i find protective services can be delivered in any different number of ways the fact that we've got a code of conduct is specifically because of the way that i will go and mystery shop some of our projects right so i think the fact that i am a woman has perhaps surprised people over the years perhaps because i'm not from military law enforcement or government agency background yeah but as i say to my esteemed amazing friends from those backgrounds who have no experience of private client or whose risk-based experience is in baghdad afghanistan i have a huge respect i have a i have family members serving um for this country however i like a partnership of the people that are protecting my clients so we're all bringing our expertise to the party um and i was one of the first people to become a chartered security professional and imagine there's only 300 of us in the world of which 30 are women and guess what we've got an increasing female wealth client base coming through so there's a few things that have happened where i'm like i will always collaborate with my industry for those that want to collaborate the legitimacy of why a business like umbra should be where it is now is the organic growth the uh integrity that i hope i've sort of woven through the the business the ability to say to clients don't know but i'm going to find out uh to have sat there with clients who are experiencing things for the first time when technology has produced different types of risks ai deep fakes for example everyone was scrabbling around trying to work out how and where and what to signpost and a lot of missed disinformation about the challenges of ai and the opportunity cost of not adopting it so that was yeah two years of my life that i'll never get back you know working out where we were sort of sitting in terms of that i have been so lucky that I have had such a collaborative, supportive community of majority men.

37:53It is a majority male industry. I'm one of only, I think now there's 4.25 % of close protection license holders in 2018 were female, 7.8 % now. So do I like to think by banging on about invisible security and the role of particularly women in protection, I like to think I've made a dent in that. And I think that there's also time under tension when you get your nautical miles, as you well know.

38:20Jeannette Linfoot:Yes. Yeah. And I'm now in three decades. I only want to help advise clients who want to hear our advice. And I think in a complicated landscape with this, I think, 12 ,000 risk security intelligence companies today registered at Companies House, there's a whole load of companies out there. amazing companies that we're proud to know and work with but i think that i'd want to know us if i was our clients i love the umbra business and i love the industry and i'm going to champion it till my last breath and i think the combination of that makes us a very compelling collaborator partner even some of our potential you know i always say i don't think we have competitors I genuinely don't I love working with people in my industry because I like to understand their nuance and again a bit like the world of finance you're not going to have cookie cutter and clients are going to come to a person so that combination I think you know puts us in a really good very interesting position where guess what 10 years ago I was that woman in insecurity and now it's like way more women are coming in and setting up businesses across the whole spectrum amazing and you know 65 70 percent of the world's wealth in the wealth transfer is going to end up in women's hands yeah 65 of our clients were male five years ago 65 are female so the kind of the gender bit is starting to not matter um and actually some of i think our success has been because i'm so different and i've said to my team we're not going to take no for an answer we're gonna we're gonna live and breathe the umbra way we're gonna if when there's no no we're not obstinate but if we're trying to solve a problem on behalf of a client it's not if we can solve it it's how we're going to solve it yeah yeah and that's from my time on the other side of the table you don't have something presented to you and say can't get you that you work out what the next best thing is and so I think uh you have to ask you know um some of our friends in in the industry but um I think the only pushbacks I've ever had have been where I think that there's potentially been a sense of commercial jealousy yeah um but what i would say is i've always managed to then go to that person and say we haven't you know there's again integrity we've not gone out to lure clients to us if clients have come to us for advice i will always act from a position of integrity we've said no to contracts we've said no to clients on the basis of that yeah um and as i always say growing up with brothers you know i was always going to work in protection um if you've got a problem you know you sort of not quite come up and punch me in the face but the sort of i think for me i've always i've always appreciated if someone's got a problem knowing about it so i can do something about it um and as as as you know you know the more you do something and the more you do something well people have opinions and as i say to my clients you'll have people that you don't even know that have an opinion about you fantastic uh you can know only control what you can control and you know advising a client recently on some quite sort of spiky press intrusion it's like well you know there you go well done you've you've obviously uh you know you've made your mark kind of thing so um no i i think i love i love the the world that i operate in and i think this this balance i have to tread this fine line between the sort of thought leadership and the the sort of discretion there was one period of time just after i did my TED talk actually where there was a little murmur of oh you know loves a bit of PR but for me the TED talk has been and will still be always a turning point from a revenue exposure like good stuff happened from that I didn't even really know what I was really I don't know if you watch it but it definitely was a moment where I thought if no one's talking about this and I am and I'm not giving away any client confidences and I really enjoyed it really then I want to do more of this and I'm going to champion this industry so I think the combination of that has been quite interesting yeah and I mean listen there are opportunities everywhere I think to be able to make a seismic shift in an industry that has been perceived in a certain way and has been traditionally led by men and and delivered by men but you're doing it you're doing it you're making an amazing difference to your clients to the world to the perception and it's a bit like you know when I got my first director position i was the only woman in the boardroom with a pit with a profit and loss account in the world of corporate you know thank god it's changed now um but you know someone like easy jet never used to have female pilots the airline industry never very rarely had female pilots handful of female pilots but easy jet as an airline under johan lungen who was the former c group ceo said no no gender shouldn't be an issue this is a career for women and then And it doesn't matter.

43:32Jeannette Linfoot:But they purposely went out. They went into schools. They said to young girls, you too can be a pilot. This is not just for your friends. And now, I mean, I don't know what the latest stats are, but it'd be north of 20%, 25 % of female pilots. But they started with like 1%. And the same with captains of cruise line, you know, big cruise ship, you know, have done fantastic things. But that's what the world is a better place when we're a diverse. Yeah. and we're reflecting the society that you protect that's how i've always positioned it so you know particularly a frontline security you know the people that are literally protecting you in the streets and about if you don't have a protective community that looks like the society and and you know has that lived experience then you're going to miss a trick and you know i think the most interesting part of where as a society we're at now is that there is more agency for young people to see it be it and and to have those role models to be coming into industries that they wouldn't have otherwise thought about and i think it's interesting in the sort of post-technological era that we're in i'm always looking for more and more amazing humans um you know and i think i think that's something that our industry needs to collectively really focus and hone in on how do we attract great diverse minds of whatever shape or form into into our industry and so i'm going to look at I'm going to look at uh what your friend was doing in uh in in aviation because I think we have to be able to bring the human touch to industry in whatever way shape or form that's that's I think going to be something that I'm gonna be spending a lot of time but it starts with the vision doesn't it starts with the vision it starts with the integrity it starts with you know leading with value and all of that good stuff I mean I was on a celebrity cruise um like an inaugural sailing and it was the first cruise line not only to have a female captain but to have an all-female crew on the bridge everything from engineers you name it all female now but that was a conscious you know real push for years and years and years to skill up to pipeline the talent and I think you're in an industry Kate where you've got the potential to lead from the front on this and you're already doing it but imagine fast forward 10 years from now I'm sure the world will look even even more different yeah you know and I think you're doing phenomenal things but i just want to talk a little bit about the philanthropy side of things please because i'm conscious that we could talk for um philanthropy giving back all the great things that you're passionate about outside of umbra but kind of connected i guess just talk about some of the philanthropic ventures that you've got going on kegs i think it's really important so um i always believe and i always challenge anyone in business and leadership that we should all have something outside of the day job that is just bigger than us and so I've always had two things that I do either side of the day job whether it's two trusteeships whatever and the security industry has a livery charitable trust so the liveries are the sort of the ancient kind of trade union bodies but wonderful institutions and have and do a lot of work for good in terms of their charitable trust and I had the honor of being a worshipful company of security professionals charitable trustee for six years that's a bit of a mouthful acronym don't worry we've got an acronym for that and that really was the start of my understanding and my exposure to putting small amounts of really really good quality philanthropy towards young people education it all starts then with education but also community safety initiatives and ways that, as a society, small amounts of money can help not only people from the industry that have fallen on hard times, that's one part of the mandate of the charitable trust, but also charities like Furnishing Futures, where donating protective security equipment for homes that are going to be used for families that are rehoming post-domestic violence, a ring camera on a door for a family that are escaping domestic abuse, that peace of mind in that moment it was honestly one of the most like one of the biggest privileges to sit as a trustee and because of governance you're kicked out after six years but i still maintain very close ties um i'm also a trustee for the janus foundation which is a gender impact focused foundation and i'm known within the trustees to be bringing to them constantly um uh initiatives that have a meaningful impact particularly violence against women and girls reduction um social impact uh social justice reform we support a number of different entities like hope street um which has been set up to try and solve the problem of children going into care where a primary carer goes into the prison system where there was no other option to keep them together so things like that really light my fire um and so having now finished my term on the worshipful company of security professionals charitable trust um i um i'm being announced as the chair of the dame stephanie shirley pioneer fund which is going to bring together my well so autistica have set this up in memory of dame the late dame stephanie shirley who i was absolutely honored to meet several times in my career and who's a massive inspiration and for me i hope within that role that i can bring together this idea of the prevalence of autism in the prison system and also the number of uh the sort of violence against women and girls that's experienced by women and girls with autism so that for me is a really interesting sort of piece of work that i really want to focus on in my tenure as chair so the clients that i work with there's always a conversation about uh something to do with safety community safety and they'll always be something that um for me anyway um as i'm crashed into my security industry i want to make sure that i'm always bridging that gap between the sort of making the world a safer place yes but also being able to learn how we can be better private sector collaborators with public sector it's all very well saying we don't have enough law enforcement to do this, that and the other.

49:54Well, actually, what are we doing to help to fund the cadets that go into then potentially sort of, you know, go into streaming to be in the police force? How can we be part of community-based initiatives that give children and young people something to do as opposed to a life of crime? How can we be funding initiatives that help children not to go into the care system when if a parent or a primary carer goes into the prison system how can we support social justice reform so that we we stop re-offending we encourage young people that there is a life outside of crime crime reduction community safety it's just something that absolutely lights my fire and I'm you know I'm I'm actually really grateful to have landed in a really squiggly as I said at the start you know career where I've weirdly sort of tied tied to sort of um uh you know grow a business but actually what i've done is i found a an absolute purpose and calling and um i'm constantly on the lookout for particularly small to medium-sized charities and initiatives that need money to make a difference um so yeah and i think what i love

51:05Jeannette Linfoot:about sort of your squiggly career and where you are now is that you've managed to find that sweet spot of merging your passion with your profession and that really is then allowing you to have this broader impact yes you're doing amazing things with umbra and the business will continue to go from strength to strength but actually because of all those that interconnected world that you're in you're able to have a bigger a bigger impact it's a bit like dropping a pebble in a pond isn't it you know and the ripple effects and that's how as you were talking that's sort of the image i had in my mind about bringing together all these different elements it feels to me that you're exactly where you're meant to be i know yeah yeah sometimes you have well someone showed me the ikigai framework about six years ago where your passion your mission profession and vocation intersect and it's a Japanese word ikigai and I saw that and it's on my home screen of my my phone to remind me that you know sometimes I'm more in my like you know my sort of I'm going to save the world era and I've got to kind of remind myself I've got a you know day and my team remind me I've got a day job but you know if you're constantly sort of like playing around with those four elements of your life, I think that is, you know, woman's search for meaning, right?

52:14You know, you can find then that in everything you do, you can find the purpose of it. And for me, I didn't want to set up another security company. I wanted to find a way that I could make an impact. And for me, it's, it's, it is the greatest privilege to run this business, but it attracts the sort of clients who want to also be part of something bigger as well and if someone is living in fear they are not living their best secure lifestyle so you're right like it's such a weird sort of like uh you know i can now say you know when i speak to clients i can see and feel where their concerns are it's such it's so amazing seeing them on the other side of something that's you know stopped them from doing the things that they're that they're meant to be but to also be doing and it's just it's amazing to see that uh uh potential then going into not being fearful but actually

53:09Jeannette Linfoot:going into some really good stuff yeah i love it i think you're doing fantastic things it's so exciting for you i really and it's it's a joy to actually understand it you know and i think you've really helped shift the perception 100 for me as well as anyone listening or watching and you know if you think back well first of all one question where can people best find you what's a way for them to connect best with you everywhere everywhere i actually really love i'm in my linkedin era i'm loving linkedin um but weirdly we've got an instagram presence i have an instagram presence uh uh website umbra international.com um but uh yeah we love hearing from people right um so yeah very very available which is fantastic because people might be listening to this or watching this thinking oh actually oh hang on you've triggered a thought in me here it might be about their security or it might be oh that's an interesting philanthropy it's like philanthropic effort that you want to get involved in so i think that's great well as i said the umbra way is that you'll hear from us very quickly so yeah you may be waiting for a response exactly and you know if you look back i'm sure you've had incredible advice over the years kate can you think of a standout piece of advice that's really sort of served you well um control the controllables uh so that actually came from some of the sort of high performance mindset work that i do um And actually CBT, it being very specific, I found it a really, really useful framework for thinking about where and how you spend your time and what you worry about.

54:37Worry buckets and worry time and things like that. For anyone that's not looked at CBT, you don't have to do it, but just look at the principle of it. when you control your controllables particularly during times of high stress as I've seen with some of the world's most successful people it's a really really useful way of cutting out the noise and working out what you actually need to be worried about and for me as my life mantra you know I'm always trying to make sure that I'm really efficient doing what I say I'm going to do but if there are things I can control that's not the same as being a recovering control freak which i am um but being able to do that means that i think that you can live you know again this secure lifestyle for me means you haven't got any unknown unknowns you can handle the unknown unknowns if you're controlling the controllables that makes sense yeah it does and actually that applies to

55:27Jeannette Linfoot:anyone anyone regardless of status or career or where they are you know control the controllables because sometimes we can hear so much noise and we worry about things and actually you know like you say if you can just really get rid of that focus um it makes a massive difference doesn't whether it's a business or life so i love that so this year k if you could describe this year in one word what would it be and why simplification and recalibration explain um because what you can't make simple isn't worth doing i think goes back to the controlling controllables i think people over complicate things um and i think every business needs to recalibrate and i think any business owner if they're doing the same thing in the same way as 2019 i think they're lying um but this idea of simplification and recalibration has been something that i've really been been working on and that's a great reminder actually for anyone that's running a business or is in in their career or their life actually yeah just just just a reminder and that you can simplify recalibrate refocus and then go again yeah totally so i love that again and we've got a spotify playlist okay what song are we going to add to our spotify play easy elton John I'm still standing it makes me feel like a total legend whenever it comes on and it's sort of like a bit of a like you know battle cry as well I can see you dancing around the kitchen to that actually absolutely great and you know the podcast Brave Bold Brilliant is it's it's not only the name of the podcast it's also the proud brand of our business but it's it's an ethos that I really feel quite strongly myself as a person and everything we do we try very hard to kind of live and breathe it but what does it mean to you when you hear brave bold brilliant what springs to mind um well i actually i would go back to the sort of you know uh controlled risk taking you know being able to um be unashamedly yourself and you know take a few calculated uh risks with what that is um uh one of my um uh school uh mantras actually we were called the bold girls um so i think for me bold having grown up in an era where you weren't encouraged to to be bold um brave bold brilliant and bright you know with my my surname i think i like that alliteration um and i think it's i think badass as well to add to that i think the combination of of those three words i think it's it's a fantastic way to uh leave people feeling glass three quarters full um and have that agency to do something about something i love the fact you've added a fourth b in so great actually as well and a fifth bold brilliant bright badass there you go there you are what a what a way to summarize our conversation thank you kate that's fantastic thank you for having me So what a fascinating conversation with Kate Bright.

58:23Jeannette Linfoot:You know, from her experience of actually securing the lives of some of the most high profile people in the world, to building her business as a female entrepreneur, to pushing the boundaries and the perception of the security industry. What Kate is doing with Umbra is truly unique and special, but so much more than that. What this allows is Kate to really make an impact in the world, not only with her clients, but also to really make the world a better place. She is a huge philanthropist and is doing so much for good causes, in particular around domestic violence, really making an impact in the world to make the world a safer place.

59:08Jeannette Linfoot:and it's this idea of invisible security so it's just so elegantly done that actually you don't even know it's there so that is the magic of Umbra so check out Kate Bright check out Umbra International and if you've loved the episode please hit subscribe it helps us share our content with lots more people so we can help more people and of course if this is actually resonating with you or with someone that you think would benefit from hearing the conversation make sure you're you share it with your network, with your colleagues, with your friends. And remember, it is always by being brave and bold that you will unlock your brilliant.