Good morning, good afternoon, or a good evening, wherever you're signing in from. This is Kumar Dattatreyan again with Agile Meridian. I am so pleased to introduce my guest today, Maureen Desmond, from MDesmond Coaching. She is an amazing, really amazing person. I met her through my networking group, and we have a shared past, but let me tell you a little about her.
Maureen navigates and supports people going through significant change and loss as smoothly and humanly as possible. She does this important work because she's experienced several tragic losses in her immediate family that wracked her, as well as surviving her own cancer journey. Maureen understands how grief shows up in different ways at different times, and she knows how to compassionately move through it, with support being so key to progress. She works one-on-one with individuals and private groups and in businesses as a change and loss coach and consultant. She's certified by the Grief Recovery Institute in the Grief Recovery Method, an evidence-based program that offers proven tools, inspiration, and actionable steps to help grievers move through their emotional pain and loss.
So, if you need help with getting through loss or grief, or if there's a significant change in your job or your job situation, then I believe Maureen is the person to talk to. Without further ado, I will invite Maureen to the stage here, and we'll get started.
Maureen, I hope I did that justice. You have an amazing background, and I thought we could start with our shared past, even though we didn't know each other when we worked in the same company. You could speak a little bit about that.
Maureen: I love that. Thank you. Yes, it was so amazing when we first met and did our first one-to-one together, and I realized we both worked at the same company for ten years and didn't meet. I mean, maybe we met in the cafeteria when we passed by in the hallway, right? But, yeah, my long-standing career was in sales and sales management at Gannett USA Today. I pretty much cut my teeth in that business and worked there until about 2014. It was an amazing journey and an amazing experience. The media business and the newspaper industry - there were a lot of changes as I got closer and closer to the time that I left USA Today, but the majority was just such a great group of people and great management. It's one of the reasons why I kind of think of them as a backdrop when I'm doing my work in businesses because there are businesses that do things well when there are significant changes and businesses that are not doing things so well. So that's one of the things that I really focus on.
Kumar: That's great. I was at Gannett USA Today from 1999 to 2009, I believe. So we definitely had an overlap, and I'm sure, like you said, I'm sure we saw each other in the hallways and maybe the cafeteria or the gym or wherever it was.
That seems like a really formative experience for me, Gannett. It was a great company to work for in a very trying time, a very changing environment with newspapers being disrupted by the internet. I got out of the company, not for that reason. It was just time for me to move on. I had been there for 10 years. But it certainly was disruptive, the environment around the newspaper business. But they still found a way to survive, and they're still around. They're still a viable company, maybe not with the revenues that they had at one point, but they're still a viable company.
Maybe we can pivot to how you moved from advertising sales and what you did there to what you do now.
Maureen: Great question. Everyone asks me that because when they look at LinkedIn or my history, they're like, "Wait a minute. How did you get from that to grief and change support?" Good question.
So early on in my life, unfortunately, I did have a lot of family losses. I lost my sister when she was 18. I was 20, a junior year in college, and that came out of the blue. She died, and it just wrecked our whole family - my parents, my other siblings. That timeline for me was so significant. Anytime you have a loss, it doesn't really matter what age or what you're doing, but being in college, no one could really understand that. It's been a long time ago now, back in the mid-80s when that happened, and so there weren't a lot of support systems. If you did seek a support system like a therapist, it had a different feeling to it. People didn't want anybody to know, you know? And so it was just a really hard time for all of us.
So through that process, and then losing my dad not too long after - he died young in his early 50s - all of those deaths in my 20s were really such a significant time because your 20s are supposed to be when you're learning about life. And it's like, gosh, mine really kind of sucked, I'll be honest, until my daughter was born. So I can't say all of my 20s, but those things were so significant.
It always kind of wove this thread that all of my life, I had this empathy and this awareness around the importance of helping people through grief. It was never really something I thought I would do. It was something I would naturally do because I understood. So whenever there was someone that had a loss, I knew I'm going to their funeral, I'm going to go up to them and talk to them and approach them and do all these things, which a lot of people don't do. It's like, "I don't know what to say, so I'm going to avoid them."
So through that, I just sort of became, you know, maybe this is something I want to do later in life. While I was at USA Today, I had a lot of people report to me, and many of them had their own significant losses. I was a very empathetic manager, and I could go to HR and say, "We need to do something a little special for this person or that person." HR was so wonderful, and they were always so supportive.
Knowing that, and as I was starting to think about what I want to do next in my life, I got certified through the ICF and a wonderful program through iPEC to get my certification. Then I started helping people through transitions, which is really significant change. What I found was a lot of the people that I worked with had some type of loss. So it always kind of turned into a grief conversation. I ended up getting some certifications in grief recovery as well.
In 2019, I thought, I think I'm going to try something on my own. And that's how I created MDesmond Coaching and Consulting, which is kind of like the DBA is navigating change and loss.
Kumar: That's a really beautiful story and one of consistent, over the years, discovery, rediscovery, and then actually implementing something that you do naturally. If I'm understanding how you got to where you are today, it's just who you are. You're an empathetic person shaped by your past and some of the experiences you had in your 20s. Because of those experiences, it helped form how you empathize with other people's grief and pain and are able to hear them in a way that maybe others are not able to. That's really quite a story.
So how did your personal experience with loss shape your approach to the coaching business and your business of coaching leaders and employees on dealing with change or loss?
Maureen: Yeah. So, I mean, you think about there's so much change going on all the time, right? And so in moving into the business side of it, I have the corporate background. I kind of played a role in being that person between the employee and HR and saying, "Okay, we have to do better than 3 days off for bereavement leave. That's not enough. We've got to make the changes." It wasn't like HR was making these changes. They were just saying, "Wow, we haven't had that situation before. Of course, you can offer them this."
Everyone has something different. There's no real grief process that is the same. Everyone grieves differently. Everyone has different needs when they have a loss. So I took that and thought about companies, communities, schools, families - all the time, all over the world, are dealing with something. And so, what is our support system? What does our support system look like?
What I found through my journey that started when my sister died 40 years ago is we really have not come into a society that is open to discussing grief and being open to allowing it in the space, especially in businesses. And I get it. I am not saying that everyone needs to have all the skills to know what to say to people when they have a loss. I get that. That's why there are other people like me, and there are many people like me that want to help companies get through this kind of thing.
So when I started my business, I was really just doing individual coaching and group coaching for the first year and a half because it was during COVID, and it was hard to even imagine what businesses were already going through, right? How am I going to go in and say, "Hey, do you need my help with this?"
So I did the individual coaching, and every person that I had as a client during that time worked for a company or worked for an association or worked for a nonprofit. So they would go back to their company and say, "I've been working with this wonderful grief coach or consultant, and we need her now like never before." Especially during the whole change of COVID, I think that really opened the eyes of everyone to, you know, we were in collective grief. Everyone's normalcy and safety and normal ways of life changed overnight, and that's a lot of what I do - help people through that and need some support systems through that.
So I got some of my first corporate clients from my individual clients. That's when I realized, wow, there's an opening here and a need. And so I've been putting my focus more on the corporate side now.
Kumar: That's a really great way to build your business. Obviously, it's through referrals and that kind of thing. And that's fantastic that you're able to do that. It speaks to the quality of the relationships that you have with your clients and how they value you and the help that you're able to provide them.
You know, COVID is still with us. I mean, we don't hear about it as much anymore, but it was really a defining moment for a lot of companies or everyone really around the world. It caused so much disruption, right? And in my line of work, where I do change coaching, organizational change coaching, but not in the sense that you do - you're helping the humans in that company deal with change, loss, grief - there was so much of that during the COVID era.
So in normal times, right? Normal being when changes aren't as disruptive as COVID is. What sort of programs should leaders embrace in terms of humanizing change, especially in terms of personal loss or grief moments?
Maureen: Yeah, love that question. So I would say, first of all, I always talk about this in as simplified a way as I can. I kind of think about fire drills, right? We've all been trained in what to do when that alarm sounds, you're in a building, and you've been trained since probably elementary school. How do you get out of the building? Where's your people? Find the person with the orange jacket and go down the steps and go out to your place away from the building.
So the framework that I use is similar to that in which it's like, if you are a manager and you get that phone call from an employee who lost their parent over the weekend suddenly, and they leave a message or they talk to the manager and they say, "I, you know, obviously, my dad died. I don't know what to do. I don't know when I'm going to be back to work. There's a lot going on. My parents are not local." All these things are just stirring up from that person that's going through it. And as a manager, it's like, what do you do? Especially if you're not prepared and maybe you're a very empathetic person or maybe you're not so good around those skill sets, and that's okay. We're not all made the same way.
So I would say to people within a company or management, listen, have a plan. It's just like a fire drill. You know what will you do when that employee calls and says that. And a lot of what happens is, you go into chaos and panic mode. "My gosh, we are client-focused. We have a big presentation in a week from now. And now what are we going to do?"
So preparing for this kind of thing, which sounds crazy, but it's going to happen to all of us at some point where we get that phone call. If you have a plan in place, it becomes much easier. So you know, okay, the first thing you want to say to that person is, "We've got your back. You do what you need to do. We're going to take care of things. I might have to reach out to you about a couple client situations, but we want you to do what you need to do." Just start there, right?
And then when you hang up the phone, you're going to go to your boss or HR, and you're just going to share. This is happening. You're going to want to share it with the team, and then you're going to want to start talking about, "Okay, here are the clients that she has, and we are going to need to somehow manage those. We don't know how long she's going to be out or working through that."
And so all of those things, it's a checklist. It's a guide that kind of helps compassionately helping everyone. Not everyone knows how to respond, and that's okay. That plan can have scripts in it, which, that's part of what I do - write a script. If you have to make a large announcement to the company or a large to the team, how do you say that in an empathetic way? And how do you speak to the person in an empathetic way? And when they come back, how are you going to acknowledge them and treat them?
So it's all of those things that are packaged up and that can make the biggest difference, not only in the person that's coming back from that experience, but everyone. And then everyone will feel like, "Wow, if this happened to me one day, look at how my company, my team, my management is treating me." That alone can really change the level of care and support that that person feels.
Kumar: Absolutely. I remember my dad passed away in 2006, and I was still at Gannett. I still remember how my manager, my boss, and everyone around me, the level of care they took and how they responded to that event in my life, right? It was amazing, the things they said, the things they did, and really not so much what they said, but also what they didn't say. It seemed like they all had a script, and I don't know if that was your influence. I don't think so then.
But they seemed to all have the script, and they said the right things or didn't say anything when it was appropriate not to say anything. I really appreciated that from them. And, you know, I don't always know what to say.
There's someone that I don't work with personally right now, but I know of someone that is going through a difficult time in his life. He had a transplant, and he's recovering. So what do people say? He's at work. He goes to work every day, but he's much thinner, much frailer. What do you do in a situation like that? Because everyone is, of course, thinking about this person's well-being and maybe thinking, is he going to survive this transplant? They're hoping that he is, but not knowing what to say, right? And that can be difficult because it's not that someone passing away is a situation. It's a very sad, very traumatic situation. A person comes back. And what I experienced was very supportive, and I hope what others experienced at other companies is supportive. But for someone that has to come back and they are carrying that with them, right? So that could be a different situation.
So how do you coach employees and leaders to deal with situations like that?
Maureen: Yes. So it is sort of just knowing that I always say put yourself maybe in their situation. And not everybody wants the same thing. Like, I can say everybody should be reaching out, but maybe that person really doesn't want anybody to reach out to them, right? So we can't always know those things, but I think a really good place to start - and in this situation with the gentleman that had the transplant, was ill - what I've experienced eight times out of 10, let's just say, is that people want to be acknowledged and almost validated because that person is kind of carrying this around with them, and they're wondering, "Okay, do people know that this happened to me or not? And I don't want to make them uncomfortable." And then the other person is doing the same thing. "Well, I don't know if I should acknowledge this because it might make him uncomfortable," and so on and so forth.
So what I find is just saying something gently like, "Wow, it's so great to see you again in the hallways," or "I haven't seen you in the cafeteria in a while. I wasn't sure why, and I'm so glad to see you again." Just kind of acknowledging their presence, you know? And then that allows them to either open up or say, "Yeah, I've been out for a little while, but I'm glad to be back." Or maybe they'll say, "Yeah," and then share their story. And that's the beautiful gift of it.
I always find that people can be uncomfortable and so they don't say anything. And that makes people feel isolated, and you already have a lot of isolation when you're going through a cancer diagnosis or transplant or any kind of thing that's changed. You already feel that way. So I always say people should acknowledge, at least acknowledge, "Hey, nice to see you again." You don't have to say anything about anything.
When I was working at USA Today and I had cancer, I came back to work. I was bald, and it was very, very difficult for me because, you know, you have a certain persona. And then you come back and a lot of people, that's a big company. A lot of people didn't even know. My team did and some of those layers, but I would walk down the hall and people would look at me kind of like, "I feel like I recognize you, but..." It was so funny, their reaction. Some people would come up to me and be like, "My gosh, we're so glad you're back," and "You look great," blah blah blah. And I was like, "No, I don't. But okay."
But I think about that all the time, and I put myself in that situation. So I'm always that person that goes to people and acknowledges. And most of the time, they appreciate it. Many people say the same thing. They're like, "I didn't want to acknowledge it, but I did, and they opened up to me, and it gave them this opportunity, and we both cried together." And hey, isn't that human?
So I think what I'm getting from this is just be yourself, be authentic. Acknowledge the person, you know, if they're suffering through an illness or recovering from one. Acknowledge them. Show your humanity, be vulnerable - all the things that, it's not funny, it's just interesting that a lot of the things that you would be coaching people on in terms of dealing with loss, grief, with the humans that they work with are also the things that I coach people on - leaders, employees, and stuff in terms of dealing with the more mundane types of change that isn't as disruptive to your life and your lifestyle and things like that. I coach leaders on how to try to be more authentic and be more vulnerable and really listen to the people that they're leading, that they're in charge of, if you will. And the same things seem to apply. Would you agree? I mean, it's the same sort of things, but maybe there's more at stake to being vulnerable in situations like this. How do you feel about that?
Maureen: Yes. I think that it really does match or mirror, right? It's really about the humanness, humankind. The most common human experience is loss. And so there's so many different types.
So I think even within businesses, I think about job loss and when there are big layoffs. That is touching your business in a lot of ways, I'm sure. Like, how are you helping those leaders through that? And then it's about the people that are still there afterwards, and they're going through this, like, "Is this going to happen again? Should I start looking for another job?" And then you have the folks that left, that were laid off, and they're going through a completely different thing where they might be going, "My gosh, this is just such a disruptor. I don't know what I'm going to do. I was there at this company for a long time." And so there's all of that is a layer of grief, whether you're in the company still or you've left.
And so there are things to do around that. And obviously, like I said, you have that authentic leadership ability to help them through it. And then there's other layers for the ones that have been laid off. Sometimes they just need some coaching through, "Okay, let's get you back on track. Let's get your energy levels back up. Let's talk about what your future looks like and get you to a career coach," and things like that's kind of some of the stuff I do in the background.
So, again, it's there's so many types of loss that grief has this - I think a lot of people think of grief as just death, dark, right? And grief is really just a normal and natural emotional response to any loss and change of any kind. Emotional response. That's why we can't shove it aside and bury it, because it's very normal and real. And so, I offer that up too. It's very normal and real.
Kumar: That's really good. I like the way you put that as well. That grief isn't something that's dark and as a result of someone dying or someone deceased or whatever. It could be anything. It could be losing a bundle of money on the stock market, right?
Maureen: Exactly. Financial.
Kumar: Financial loss, right? It could be, of course, loss of a job or being laid off or things like that. For a company, it could be loss of a client, a major client. And so that would definitely affect the psyche of the company, the collective, if you will, the collective intelligence of company, the leaders, the people that work there, all will feel it in some ways. Like, if 50% of the revenue suddenly disappears, then it's going to impact every single person that knows about it. And even someone that's in a role, like, I remember when the CEO of USA Today announced he was leaving.
Maureen: Yeah.
Kumar: And I just felt sick to my stomach because I knew his leadership was just so amazing, and that's part of the culture was because of this man, and now he was gone. He was going to leave and go somewhere else. And I still remember writing a note on my calendar saying, "This isn't good." Like, "Start looking," because I realized over time, the culture did change for a lot of different reasons. We had the downfall in 2008, the financials, right? And then so much was changing, but I still remember that, and that was a huge loss for a lot of people.
Maureen: Yeah. Even though, you know, he didn't die. He's leaving us though.
Kumar: The anchor, the compass.
Maureen: That's right. Yeah.
Kumar: Grief is complex. I mean, like, any emotion. It's very complex. How people process it is individual, right? It's individual based on that person's experiences and things like that. So how do you balance sharing your own experience with loss while keeping the focus on the client, either individually or the group that you're coaching?
Maureen: Yeah. So oftentimes I don't get right into my story, you know, of most people will say, "Why do you do this work? And isn't it hard? I don't know. Why do you do this?" And then I'll share what happened to me. And a lot of times in life, we take the things that were hard and that's kind of what changes us. You know, that kind of puts us in a certain direction.
And so what happened to me, I don't put that on others. I can't say, "Hey, I lost my dad too, Kumar, and I'm sure we grieved the exact same way." We didn't, right? Like, we - so I don't put that. That's not a burden that I can put on people, and it's not right.
So I try to just talk about it. And then when people know that that is something that's happened, it's relatable. They're like, "Okay, well, she knows she's been through it or through this." And so, for me, it's just doing a lot of the coaching skills. It's a lot of listening. It's a lot of listening for their needs, pointing those out.
A lot of times, I'll have - whether it's within a company and I'm working with a team or a management team or an individual, I'm listening for certain things. And sometimes it's really hard in the beginning, and they do a lot of - they're very emotional, and I allow that. It's validating, and it's needed. And then I start hearing them talking about the future. And I start hearing them say, "I was supposed to go on a cruise 2 years ago. I haven't been on that cruise yet since my husband died, and now I really want to go with a group of friends." And I'll say, "That's - we can put a little action around that. Like, start planning it, pull out the brochure and blow that off and get, you know."
So it's those kinds of things that happen. And you can see it within a team within a company how things shift. You can see it individually. You can see it within a management team. And a lot of times, people are just looking for ways that they can help their folks through tough times. You know, they're really just looking for a couple of things to say. And oftentimes it's really the basic stuff that we all need and just be reminded of.
And so I think that it's not that complicated, and I try to offer that up to people especially within the business realm because it's sort of like, "I don't know if we want to talk about this," or "I don't know." Right? It's a little sometimes, and I'd say, "I'm not coming in to create the sadness. I'm coming in to support you so that you and your culture and your productivity and all of those things that you care about as a company and your people can get through this as I take the sensitive stuff on, and I'll help you get through that as you do all the other stuff that is, you know, front and center as well."
Kumar: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. It sounds like what you do with the companies must have - is my assumption - must have a lasting effect, at least the people that you work with, because you're teaching them really important skills, leadership skills, coping skills, how to cope with grief, how to communicate better with others on a more human level. Do you find this to be true and or is it fleeting? Is it something that sort of we got to get Maureen to come back and help us? You know, we have another situation on hand.
Maureen: Yeah. It's happened a little bit both ways. I've had - I've worked with a company that brought me in for one situation. And we were kind of thinking this is going to be a 3 to 6 month type of thing, and that was 2 years ago, and they do reach back out to me for certain things. And one was a layoff situation. And they kind of put two and two together like, "Wait, this is loss. Uh-oh," you know?
Kumar: Yeah.
Maureen: And so that client has been with me for 2 years when, you know, we thought it was supposed to be the short thing. And then there's companies that, yeah, they'll bring me in for a situational type of loss and really, you know, what I do, there's a lot of just listening to what their needs are and then creating that for them. So sometimes they just say, "Look, we need a grief coach that we know. And instead of using our EAP program because we know you, we want to use you." So I do private coaching sessions for some of their employees. And most of the time, these are smaller companies, 30 to 300 people. And then they'll have like a bucket of coaching calls with me. And then as we get close to them all being used up, I'll reach out and I'll say, "Listen, your staff has been using me as their coach. You're coming to the end of - there's 3 more left. Do you want to add more?" And then they can. So there's been situations like that where that's how I'm used in the company. And then sometimes they'll - a team like our sales team. Our sales team was like a family when I worked at Gannett.
Kumar: Yeah.
Maureen: So we wanted to do everything together. So I do support groups as well. So team support through some of the losses and things like that.
Kumar: That's awesome. So, I think we've covered a lot. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you'd like to share with me and the audience, of course?
Maureen: One thing I want to say is, well, thank you. I think this - you've asked great questions and they - it's really opened me to be able to share and hopefully give folks some definitions around grief and understanding it and to not be afraid of it. And to be human.
And one thing is that I, you know, when you think about grief and how the communal connection has changed over the years. It used to be rituals and communal, and we were really - when something happened to someone, they were showing it. You know? I mean, some cultures you wore black for a year, and I'm not saying that needs to happen again, but we were open to it. And then you could see what was happening, and you could - people were communal. They were going over and saying things to people and helping them and bringing food and doing all these things. The communal and ritual side of it really is starting to peak out again. And I'm reading and hearing more about that.
And so I'm going to be layering in some of that in what I do. And I'm not sure exactly what that's going to look like and when it's going to be ready, but it's important. It really is. And I think that, again, after - when we have tragedies, there's a lot going on in our world. And then COVID really opened our eyes to, you know, we are all in this together. There's a collective grief that is happening. And if we can just really kind of come up and show up for that and be open, I think that's really going to change a lot in a good way.
Kumar: I'm really glad you brought that up because the work has changed so much in the last 20 years, especially since COVID and the nature of work, the remote work and all that it entails is like there's less connection now than ever, right, in the workplace. And I guess I do have another question. Your last comment spurred this on.
So, you know, I see it in the work that I do in the change coaching that I do, the agile coaching, the organizational change coaching, the big loss now is something that a lot of people never have entered the workforce never going into an office, right? My younger son, I think he did go into an office, but my niece who just joined the workforce, she works from home. Right? And I guess you can appreciate what you don't know because you've never experienced it. But I feel that's a loss. It's a loss. There's a lack of fidelity in the communication between people when you're remote, as you and I are right now. And you may not even know the person suffering from loss or grieving a loss of whatever kind of loss it might be. And so what should managers, leaders do to be more connected with the people that are on the other end of a Zoom call or a Teams call or things like that?
Maureen: That is a good question. I'm glad that led to this question. Yay! I agree. I feel like for so much of our lives, we were in an office and around a lot of people, right? And you saw, you got to have a lot of different relationships. And so I've read a lot of articles recently that, especially the Gen X, Y, Z, they really - they want to work from home, but they still want the company to offer ways for them to collaborate more and do more. And I read a lot about that. And so I think companies are starting to see that.
And so I don't know what that looks like. I think some of them are doing a twice monthly gathering on, you know, Thursday nights, and it's a way for everybody to get together and talk and laugh and maybe do karaoke like we used to at Gannett. But so some of that is happening and that helps. But yes, there is a real - I think loneliness to working from home. Some people, let's just say 25% of people, just want to be alone working, right? And then there's the other 25% that want to be around people all the time, and then there's the 50% in the middle. So I think that it depends on the personalities of people, whether I love being at home or not. And I think it is part of that loneliness epidemic that we keep seeing and reading about. I think that's something. And we have to be aware of that. And that is a level of loss, like you said. And it's important that it's not ignored.
And one of the things that I'm working on is a workshop or a webinar called "Seeing the Invisible". And it's exactly for that. It's you know, we're on Zoom calls and let's say, you show up, you know, you always show up with good energy, Kumar. But all of a sudden, you're sitting way back like this, and you're not really showing up the same way that you used to. And those are things that we have to get better at as humans that we start seeing those things and acknowledging those things. And if I was your manager and this was happening, I'd want to reach out to you and say, "Hey, I noticed that you haven't been as forthright. You used to always come with ideas, and it's not - is everything okay with you?" And acknowledging those things. And that's - we all are going to have to do a better job of that too and start looking for things like that and being open about it.
Kumar: Seeing the invisible. That's a beautiful - I hope you send me a link to that. I want to attend that webinar.
Maureen: Yeah.
Kumar: And I think that it points to the need for leaders, managers, employees just to be more aware of each other, right, especially actually working in a remote environment as we all do now, all over the world. Even though there are companies that are forcing people back into the office, I think that remote work is here to stay in some form or the other. And so it's really incumbent on all of us to figure out how to stay connected as humans first because, to your point, businesses, they're in business to make money, to be profitable. And the companies that tap into their most precious resource, the humans that makeup their company, and treat them well, treat them humanly, humanely, and acknowledge that each of them is an individual and has needs and moments that they need more than others, I think these companies will do well. And I'm glad to have you on the show because people like you can help these companies find their more human side and do better in the future.
Maureen: Thank you. Thank you, Kumar. This was such a pleasure, and thank you for having me. This was really good. Great questions. Really interesting.
Kumar: It's great to have you on. And I could talk more. I mean, I have more questions swirling in my head, but I don't think people will watch a 3-hour podcast. And I'm sure you have other things to do as well. So we'll cut it off here and maybe we'll have you come back on again.
Maureen: Yeah. I'd be happy to. That'd be great.
Kumar: Alright. Thanks a lot. Thanks for watching everyone and listening if you're on the podcast side, and we'll see you next time. Bye bye.
Maureen: Thanks.
