Interview with Nikki Lavoie, CEO of MindSpark Research International

In honor of Women’s History Month, GreenBook is talking with female leaders from across the insights industry to celebrate their achievements and inspire the next wave of professionals. Join us each week for the CEO Series as we sit down with top female leaders for a conversation on industry trends, overcoming challenges, and developing leadership skills.

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Continuing our CEO series of interviews in honor of Women’s History Month, this week we chat with Nikki Lavoie, CEO of MindSpark Research International. Although Nikki and I had interacted online for years, we had never had a chance to actually chat so this interview was a real treat; she had been on my “bucket list” of interviews for a while! Nikki is an accomplished leader and researcher by any standard, but I was impressed with her energy, her empathy, and her creativity in balancing the demands of building a world-class research organization, new motherhood, and passionate advocacy for a variety of causes and organizations. What a powerhouse! If you are looking for inspiration on how to live a full and multi-faceted life, then Nikki would be a great role model. I think you’ll enjoy the conversation; I know I sure did!

 

The text has been edited for clarity.

Lenny Murphy: Hello Everyone, It’s Lenny Murphy, continuing with our leadership CEO series, and today I am joined by Nikki Lavoie. Nikki, welcome.

Nikki Lavoie: Welcome. Thank you.

Lenny Murphy: So, we were chatting beforehand that somehow, we had never spoken of all these years of paths kind of overlapping and being adjacent and connecting. But this is the first. So, I’m really glad to finally have the opportunity.

Nikki Lavoie: Likewise, yeah, I had a picture in my mind of us like a Venn diagram that’s been slowly, slowly, converging a little bit more until this moment in time. When we finally connect.

Lenny Murphy: does it feel like, you know, the stars have aligned, you know, wooooo.

Nikki Lavoie: It’s like that. It’s almost like, you know, I’ve heard so much about you and I’ve seen obviously, so much of, you know, the impact of the many, many things that you do and so, now it’s sort of like, OK, it feels a bit weird. Actually, I must say, to be being interviewed by you, I started going to be the other way around. But okay.

Lenny Murphy: Oh, no, No, no, no. Yeah, we’re definitely going to be friends as you’ve got the gift of bull**** too. Nikki, so.

It takes a fair amount to be successful in this industry. So, and especially to do all the things that you do because you are definitely a mover and shaker. So, let’s, let’s start there. Why don’t you talk about you’re yourself? What you do with the industry and MindSpark and [ESOMAR] council, all of those things, and then we’ll go from there.

Nikki Lavoie: Sure. Well, man, that’s tough, think it’s always tough when people talk about themselves. Maybe I could start by telling a little bit of my story and how MindSpark was born, and then we can open there?

So, I am originally from the northeast of the United States. I worked for a couple of research consulting agencies that are based out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A couple of them are pretty well known to the IIEX circuit like sentient decision science with Aaron Read my former boss. And yeah, it was working out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire based in Boston. And just happened to go to an ESOMAR event where it just so happened that I sat down next to somebody that was running a French market research agency and said, hey, how would you like to come and work for my team?

And I was thinking like is this the next episode of Taken? Am I about to be kidnapped? I’ve got offered a job by a random person in Paris and I don’t even know. And I was, you know, I have to say it was pretty, I was pretty unsure, like, is this a real person? Is this a real job? Is this a real company? And lo and behold, when I went back from that ESOMAR Congress, the following week, there was an actual job offer in my inbox, along with the offer to sponsor my visa to move to France.

So, I took a shockingly long time to make that decision for somebody young, single, you know, no children had nothing really holding me back. but I was definitely really, you know, conscious of the impact of uprooting what I thought I was already doing for my career, and then making a total shift. And then all of a sudden, one day, I realized that my 16-year-old self would be really irritated if she found out that I was taking so long to say yes to the opportunity to move to Paris.

So, I said, yes, and I went and I worked for a French research agency for a couple of years and learned a lot and met a lot of great people over in the international scene and became a kind of more embedded with an ESOMAR and developed you know, even greater respect or what ESOMAR does also got introduced to the IIEX series of events back when events where things that you could do in person.

Lenny Murphy: The old days.

Nikki Lavoie: Yea, exactly. I mean, truthfully, I think a lot about it. And maybe we’ll talk about this at another stage, but I think a lot about young researchers today because, for me, it was such an impactful part of how I developed my career. And, you know, how I learned was being able to see things on stage at events like ESOMAR Congress, and, you know, the IIEX Events.

And, yeah, so I learned, you know, what I could. And then I thought, OK, well, I’m ready to move on from this role. And as is the case with many places, it’s very difficult to find a job as a foreigner. So, I was stuck, at some point with the Choice, which was either moved back to the United States or, or works as a freelancer until I found something. So, I just decided to pop up this little thing called MindSpark and work as a freelancer until I got myself a job, and I was taking on projects, but also interviewing.

And then the project started getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and the interviews started becoming less and less and less frequent. And then, at some point, I said, Well, geez, I’m making more and having more fun and working on more interesting things by myself than I probably could be doing if I were working, as, I don’t know, you know, a research manager for DNS, or something like that.

So, I just decided to carry on as a freelancer, and then a couple of years later, I hired my first employee that was 2018, and now we are almost a team of 10. You know, I used to be able to say, headquartered in Paris, but in the I can’t say, post-COVID era, in the COVID Era. I don’t know if the word “headquarters” has any meaning anymore, so I’m based in Paris. Most of the rest of my team is based in Europe, not all of them, but, yeah.  So, that’s kind of how MindSpark was born.

And then in terms of all of the other things I do, I don’t know, they’ve all just kind of shot out from there, getting more involved with ESOMAR, getting more involved with IIEX, getting more involved with the AQR, the Association for Qualitative Research.

So just trying to, just trying to help move things forward where I can.

Lenny Murphy: That’s, that’s great actually, our stories parallel in many ways, so.

Nikki Lavoie: Oh, excellent.

Lenny Murphy: Similar path, but except being in a cool place like Paris, I’m in Georgia

Nikki Lavoie: Sure, you know George, it’s a cool place. I hear Georgia some cool things recently, so I mean and Georgia has always done cool things. Got friends there.

Lenny Murphy: It’s home. that’s really great. And thank you for sharing that. And I always love hearing any story of entrepreneurs. And I think people know, there are two types of entrepreneurs. In my mind, there’s a very purposeful driven, this is the plan entrepreneur. And then there’s the, I just got, it just kinda happened. And I’m Very much in that. Well, here’s what we’re doing.

Nikki Lavoie: Yeah, I think there’s a lot more of us in that category than people think. Because a lot of times people say, “Oh, so like at what age did you realize you wanted to run your own company?” And I was like, “at the age that I did it,” you know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t six years old sitting there like one day when I own my own company. That is not a thing that ever crossed my mind. And in fact, even when I started working as a freelancer, I was sort of panicky at first. I thought, there’s no way I’m going to make this. There’s no, I’m going to be able to pay the bills.

And I was just frantically just taking on any work that I could take on and just trying to have some sense of security while I looked for a job. And now, you know, people tell me all the time, “well now you’re un-hirable”, and I’m like, “well, I hope that’s also not true,” but, let’s see.

Lenny Murphy: That is the flip side, that is that’s actually an interesting point.

I, gosh. 10 years ago? Kanter was looking for a global head of innovation. And I was very far down the path in, in that conversation with them, and we both realized, you know what, I’m gonna be a really [bad] employee because I’m way too opinionated, and way too used to calling the shots to do my own thing.

And we decided it wasn’t a good fit that, I was un-hirable because. Because I think that’s the other thing, because of confidence, right. As we go down this path, and we start, you know, building businesses and getting, you know, becoming successful and growing into ourselves, that, confidence, makes it challenging, to be, part of an organization that has a hierarchical structure. Right?

I play well with others without, but I don’t take orders from others very well.

Nikki Lavoie: Yet, there’s a fine line.

Lenny Murphy: There is, I’m not good at taking direction, so, which is one reason for myself.

Nikki Lavoie: Well, good on you for recognizing it.

Lenny Murphy: Well, I think so. Just for on that point that, you know, you’re un-hirable.

No. I would think you were un-hirable, but There is a point then you’ve reached in your career that sounds like you’re at that point where there’s not a ceiling, per se, but there is a place that you reach where you think, “you know, I know what the hell I’m doing now.”

And things get more interesting, and I think that you are an example of this from what I’m hearing, the search materializes or about leveraging those leadership skills in new ways.

Nikki Lavoie: Right.

Lenny Murphy: And that’s where the growth comes from. It’s not about the role, it’s about the opportunities to take what we’ve learned and express it in different ways. Does that make sense?

Nikki Lavoie: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think, you know, people are always asking questions about, “what’s your leadership style” and “what are the most important things to you in terms of being a leader?”

And I think, for me, the most important thing as far as being a leader is being able to always be self-aware. So, being able to reflect on myself, and say, OK, what are my strengths, but also what are my weaknesses? What are the things that I need to work on?

Because I do feel like I have a lot of competence in certain areas, and there are other areas where, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but actually what confidence has given me has given me the ability to just raise my hand and say, “I don’t know what the heck I’m doing.” Whereas the old me used to just say, I don’t want to tell anyone that. I don’t know what I’m doing. So, I’m just going to try and really hard to figure it out and then work myself into the ground or get myself really stressed out.

And so, I think this idea of always learning, and always being, you know, self-reflective are things that I think are really important and can be incredibly valuable as a leader. If you are involved in an organization that’s willing to leverage those things.

Some organizations say, here are your marching orders, tallyho and there are going to be people who are absolutely designed and made for those roles. And there are people like myself who probably need roles, where we’re given a pretty serious amount of autonomy. And if we do have people above us, you know, like executive leadership, you know, person or something like that, that they know that our and path to success isn’t going to be a straight one and that that’s OK.

And so, I think those are the kinds of, you know, things that interest me and challenge me. And so, I think that’s also the reason why I get involved in organizations like ESOMAR and so, like, AQR is because, you know, leadership isn’t just about saying, “I will, I will help get the task done.”

It’s also about being able to look at the big picture and say “OK, what are the opportunities for this and what can I personally bring to the table?”

And I really respect both people that get involved in leadership roles like ESOMAR Council and also the people who don’t, because I think there’s something, you know, really, really impressive and special even about the fact that some people recognize you know what? I’m a doer.

And we have this conversation a lot on my team because I am, I am a thinker, I spit out ideas all day long and I just have to surround myself with doers, who take my ideas and make those things happen.

And being able to create that complimentary you know, set of skills is, is the magic.

And I think that people who, recognize, listen, I am going to vote for the people on ESOMAR counselor for the board on and AQR, based on their, what I think is their ability to bring something to the table. And I’m going to sit here and benefit from that membership and I’m gonna do what I can to help once I know, you know, what the leadership is able. And asking us to do.

I think that’s really, really important and really undervalued role in life, as is the idea that there are people out there who could do want a little bit of direction. They do want to be told a little bit, you know, here’s direction. They the path you can consider going on and they thrive and flourish with a little bit of guidance. And I think that’s great.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely, Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. I call myself a Gleefully, Recovering CEO. And, because I’m not the CEO of anything, right now, right, you have approved for years, I mean, I’m an owner in multiple companies, and obviously a participant in the management team, but what I always like doing, is just creating stuff, right? I don’t like administrative, I don’t like being the administrative components of a business, and I’m not even particularly good at it, honestly.

Nikki Lavoie: There are few who are.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who are, right. Because of the three core businesses GreenBook, Gen2 Advisors, and Veriglif, you know, my partners in each of those.

They’re very effective administrators. So, that’s great, Like, you, you run the business. You know, just let me go and do crazy, weird [stuff], and somehow that works. So, but that was an eye-opening experience for me when I finally owned that, right, because that’s not how I thought of myself, earlier in my career. I thought, “I’m a CEO, doer I get it all done” and had to recognize that may be but I may suck with some of those things. So probably I shouldn’t do them, Right? Let others. Yeah, that’s fantastic.

So, you had a baby earlier.

Nikki Lavoie: I did!

Lenny Murphy: Right in the lockdown. So, you’ve had this wonderful experience of new motherhood in the global pandemic which is probably a whole other topic.

Nikki Lavoie: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. But, you know, but let’s talk about that balance that you’ve had to achieve because that’s probably well, I mean you’re in the lockdown. You’re a new mom, growing business, doing all these other things. So, what’s that been like? How have you balanced all of them out?

Nikkie Lavoie: Um, well, I think it’s been really great, there’s a lot of people who are, who says, to me, on a regular basis, “Oh, must be so hard to have had a baby during Lockdown.”

And I’m not gonna lie the baby hasn’t met anyone in her family, besides her mother and father except one grandparent who was able to come over from England.

So, my daughter’s father is British, and so her grandmother was able to come over for one week in the summer this past summer. So that’s obviously tricky.

I’m an only child. So, I think from both of my parents, it’s been a bit difficult to have their only grandchild be very, very far away. And no opportunity to meet her. So, she’s going to be one in a little over a month. And no one will have met her at all before her first birthday, which is sad.

But selfishly speaking, it’s been great for me because she’s been home and I’ve been forced to stay home. Me as the CEO of MindSpark prior to this, I was taking more than 60 flights a year, and I remember thinking when I was something like I think the last trip I took was in January, and I think it was to London. I remember thinking at the time, like, how am I going to keep up this travel thing when I’ve got a baby? While the universe stepped in and said I’ve got an answer to that. You’re not going to.

So, I’ve been forced to stay home, and she has been forced to stay home, she’s actually only just started crash a couple of weeks ago. but yeah, before that, we were both home. And then on top of that, I’ve been really, really lucky because my partner is a musician. So, I say lucky he says very unlucky. Because, you know, as you know, we, there’s not a whole lot of work for musicians right now. So, he’s actually been really fortunate because he’s not only a musician. He also works as an audio engineer, so he has been picking up work, doing podcast editing.

Fortunately, podcasts have been really taking off and as an audio engineer. You know, he’s got a really great year and a lot of scope for that. So that’s been great.

But that’s just stuff you can do whenever you know he can just do it, you know when she goes to bed. But it basically means that we have this sort of you know reversal of the stereotypical gender roles. So, I am the working, you know, breadwinning CEO, And I’ve got to stay at home Dad Partner. And who’s been looking after the baby?

And I have to say that when she started to crash a couple of weeks ago, I had this realization that, wow, I didn’t understand how much it was, how, what a positive impact it was having on me to be able to take a break during my day whenever I needed to.

So, first of all, she’s also, you know, I feed her. So, I was every couple of hours making sure that she was fed. But, in addition to that, if I had too many Zoom calls in a row, or if I, you know, had a particularly stressful meeting, or, you know, was working on a report needed to break, I could just walk out and see my baby. Which a lot of people don’t have that ability. A lot of women, you know, who do end up going back to the workforce, especially when they are, you know, either their kid, is in childcare. Because they don’t have a partner to be able to help out with childcare duties, or because they work in a situation where they have to physically go into work.

Like, I think of nurses, for example, you know, you can’t see your baby whenever you had a tough moment. You can’t just say, well, I just got, I don’t know, shove it up by a doctor and I could really use a pick me up, I’m gonna go hug my baby. I have been able to do that for the last 11 months and I think that that’s just been really special and unique and something that I’m, you know, it’s shaped my view of the pandemic completely differently than a lot of other people who obviously have had really, really tough times for a myriad of reasons.

And it hasn’t been easy for me either, you know, MindSpark. You know, had its ups and downs, its way down, at some point in 2020. And rebounded. Fortunately, yeah.

But I also have this thing about being a mom, which is that, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got to stay at home dad partner and I can see my baby pretty frequently, even now she’s a crush. She’s only like three days a week. So, you know, a lot of flexibility there with spending time with her, and I think had this pandemic not happened. I Wouldn’t have experienced new motherhood in this particular way. It would have been completely different. So, I’m quite fortunate.

 Lenny Murphy: That’s a great perspective, you know. We’re But joking beforehand, with the kids feel at home and I did want to be homeschoolers.

But the reality is that you know, even during this period last year, right, when they But, they were at home digital learning, which we had never experienced before.

That was probably one of the best times for our family.

 Nikkie Lavoie: Right?

 Lenny Murphy: That we had ever had. I worked from home. I’ve always worked from home the I don’t travel for a variety of reasons. So, we have those complications but to have that opportunity to actually be with our family, all the time.

Nikkie Lavoie: Yeah.

 

Lenny Murphy: Good, bad, and indifferent, Right.

Nikkie Lavoie: Exactly.

Lenny Murphy: Different kids. Actually, it was a blessing. Certainly, I could see in your scenario where absolutely how wonderful that would be just to have that experience. We basically, it’s a year of parental leave to an extent, right?

Nikkie Lavoie: Precisely. Yeah, and I have to say that, you know, all of my friends, and people that know me very well, we’re always making jokes like Nicky’s going to have a baby and then just like, you know, back to work on day one. I’m not going to lie on the day she was born, I was sending e-mails because. as I said before we started recording, she was born on the second day of lockdown in France so I was scrambling to try to salvage what I could about what was going on with the company.

And so yeah, I was working but I was able to actually be that CEO that was still working a fair amount but also still be with my family, which I think is where the sort of thing that seemed impossible before this. And I think there’s a lot of us, and I just had this conversation recently with Jamin Brazil, He was also saying to me, you know, I’ve, I didn’t realize before this, you know, how great it is to spend all this time with my kids, and I don’t have to travel as much as I was traveling before. And I think a lot of us are having this conversation, like, yes, we miss travel, not, the airplane stuff, but I love, you know.

Lenny Murphy: Seeing people 

Nikkie Lavoie: Right. interacting with people, and just being, going to a new place. But, you know, two things for me as one place. But hope to do that with my kid. You know, so for the next couple of years before she’s in school, hopefully, when travel happens again. I’m just going to take it with me, because why not?

And second of all, I don’t have to travel as much as I was, and I can be a lot more choosy about where I traveled for, whom, for, which reasons and for, how long? Whereas before I was, like, oh, gotta go here, for 45 minutes, OK, you know. Whereas now, it’s like, you know, do I really need to physically be there? I’m not sure that I do. So, I think it’s been a, it’s been a really, an eye-opening thing.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, I agree, and Eros and I know I’ve worked from home for 20 years, right, I’ve always built virtual businesses. It’s not uncommon for me to have teams that I had never physically met or. Many years or so I’ve often wondered, why is this such a big deal about this is also when we got who produces events, right?

But then, again, I only attended the only event that I attended physically for many years has been IIEX with America. So, I did attend any of my other events, So, Eric Point is The Thinking about the Future, Now that we’ve crossed this digital divide, so to speak, right, That, we’re forced to go down this path, it will be interesting to see. How if companies snap back to thinking that business is location-specific, or if it is person-specific.

Hope that that most businesses find some balance. But overall, business is not location-specific.

Nikkie Lavoie: It is. Not just for us too.

Lenny Murphy: Be face-to-face in person, for specific things, it is obvious. That, but, for the most case, business to business, you know, daily interactions, you know, we can decouple from location relevant.

Nikkie Lavoie: I can’t remember who shared an article about this recently, but I just saw an article yesterday about, I think it with Salesforce.

That’s actually just announced that it’s offering a mixed way of working when going back to work, is a thing, because certain personalities really struggle work, and I really feel isolated, they don’t focus as well. Other personalities are the exact reverse. And so, I think one interesting thing is that a lot of us are thinking about, like, oh, should be going back to the normal, but what may have been considered normal for many of us was torture, for quite a lot of people. You know?

Commuting was very difficult for a lot of people, sitting in an office. I’m not going to use the word introvert because I think it’s more than that and I think it’s not just you know, introversion. It’s, it could be, you know, different levels of accessibility, or health issues, or mental health issues, or things like that. Or just, the ability where you know the capacity to work.

Your brain gets turned on at 6 PM, And that’s when you’re at your most creative, or that’s when you’re at your most efficient and obviously, there are certain things, as you said, where when you’re collaborating and you’re part of a team and you’re doing certain tasks, then you may need to, you know, have some kind of ways to work together that is.

You know, cohesive as possible for everyone involved. But you need to be thinking of the lowest common denominator.

And I’m not sure that us having giant fancy offices and skyscrapers all over the world was ever for the lowest common denominator. So, I think it’s kinda forced people, to evaluate.

Sounds like Salesforce is one of those where they’re allowing people to either, you know, work, fully remote work fully in the office, or kind of do a hybrid approach according to their role and their specific needs, which I think is really admirable and great. I think we’re smaller companies, it’s going to be a little bit more challenging.

So, for MindSpark, for example, once the pandemic it, everybody besides myself moved out of Paris. So, I’m now the only person in the city.

So, if somebody were to say to me, and I have had this conversation with somebody on my team, if somebody were to say to me, maybe I really don’t do well working at home, I miss people, I need interaction, I need energy, I need buzz I need stimuli at the moment. The only thing I can do is say, well, when co-working spaces get back up and running, again, let’s get you a subscription to a co-working space because the team has now disbursed to a degree that there there’s no longer an option for, for an office.

But I think the bigger companies that employ millions of people really do have an opportunity to, to make work life better for, for a lot of people. And I hope they do.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, us too. We’ve So, maintained the GreenBook-side. We maintain co-working spaces for Seattle, which through the bulk of the team is the marketing and events team.

That very reason for you. So, you can go when you want to, if you have that need to be able to engage them, you know, go do that because they’re also, they’re younger And I think that’s a piece of it as well. They thrive around that social interaction component of business life. Of all stuff that’ll be, if there is a saving grace for the impact on, uh, on retail space that has been so decimated certainly here in the US, that will be adopting those spaces to become more flexible kind of co-working locations or micro hubs for different businesses.

You know, I think there’s a path where they, morph and shifted into something different than that. That will be focused on that flexibility.

I hope that we do take that out of all of this. That flexibility and adaptation to people’s personal style and So, and needs is more important than a rigid kind of industrialized model that we have always employed in the past because it’s just how things were done as soon as the right way.

Nikkie Lavoie: 100%. And I think that there’s no coincidence about the fact that this is happening in parallel with as you say, the digital divide being crossed.

And so, you know, we’re, we’re now having to think differently about the flexibility of how people work. But that’s happening in conjunction with the fact that so many things are happening online. And we now also have to think about people’s accessibility in ways.  

I mean, some companies have been really leading the charge in terms of accessibility, like Microsoft as it is a great example. You know, making sure that their surveys are, you know, friendly for all different types of users and things like that.  

And so, I think that those two things are really related is that we’ve been forced to think and look at and evaluate how people live their lives. Instead of just pretending we all do the same thing.

We can all take a plane; we can all go into an office. And now we can no longer just pretend that what is cool for the CEO works best for everyone else too, because it’s simply not the case and that has trickle-down, effects all the way down through research and you know, where we are, now.

Loads of conversations happening about accessibility as well. And how can we make sure that our qualitative discussions are more accessible to people from more backgrounds will? Now, they are because people don’t have to worry about coming into a city, to go to a centralized location to go to a facility focus group or two hours. Now, they can join from the comfort of their own home, and they can take a bio break if they need to or they can take their medication and not have to worry about driving, or whatever the case may be, and these were extreme limitations to research before, So, you know, I think that, obviously, these things are happening in parallel and they are some of the more positive things that we’re seeing as a result of all of this, you know, scary health stuff.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I feel you and I could probably go on for quite some time about Things. actually, now that we finally broke the ice and, and did finally chat, I hope that we do it again. Because I really enjoyed this.

Nikkie Lavoie: Likewise. It was great.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. So, congratulations on actually, everything on motherhood, right? With huge accomplishment in the pandemic. You know, MindSpark, ESOMAR, AQR, you know, all of those things.

I certainly now know why everybody has always talked about, “you gotta talk to Nikki” because you kinda kick ass.

Nikkie Lavoie: Oh, thank you. Likewise, now seriously all the buzz around you is merited.

Lenny Murphy: I had a chance to finally chat. I’m sure that we’ll do it again. in fact, I know that we’re doing some stuff with AQR right now if they talked about the partnering opportunities that QR.

Nikkie Lavoie: Yes, and we’re talking about me helping out with IIEX In Europe.

Lenny Murphy: We’re still thinking, what? What does that look like? It’s really, really interesting, where the, uh, so we see far greater attendance (for virtual events), in some ways, greater engagement as well.

But we’re also kind of adapting to this Netflix world, right? Always on on-demand. So, it’s, it’s interesting innovation challenge, which I appreciate it as well.

And kind of this new world of events, it’s not Going to be the same as it was, where there’s a hybrid event look like. Anyway, sorry, now I went off on.

Nikkie Lavoie: It, don’t be I’m really fascinated about this topic. And could easily chat with you for hours and hours about this very, very topic, because I think it is important.

And on the topic of accessibility, I think hybrid events have to be considered in the future, because even if we do go back to full-scale in-person events where we’re ignoring a whole bunch of people who, who can’t be there and want to be. So, I think it merits further consideration for sure.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Well, I know I have to stop traveling. Because of my neurological disease seizures and airplanes are really [terrible] combination as I unfortunately discovered. And the so, I would never, we always thought about we just needed to make it living proof. But it wasn’t worth it from a travel standpoint, right?

Nikki, this has been great. Thank you so much. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you for the opportunity to talk today, and for the opportunities that we’ll have, again, in the future, and I hope that you’ll be well.

Nikki Lavoie: Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for having me, and it was a great chat. Appreciate it.

Lenny Murphy: All right, thanks.