Employee Benefits Live 2024: Breaking boundaries means living your true, vulnerable self and recognising your strengths and weaknesses, said Natalie Jutla, employee benefits and employee financial wellbeing lead, Department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra).
In the closing keynote on Day Two of Employee Benefits Live, Jutla drew on her personal experiences to illustrate how breaking boundaries enables people to achieve their dreams.
Coming from a family of Irish and West Indian heritage, growing up in a small village with mainly White-British residents was challenging in that many children hadn’t seen anyone that looked different to themselves before. Her mother asked the local school head teacher to educate the children about different nationalities, and this was then incorporated into lessons.
Jutla explained that she was raised to speak out on matters that aren’t right: “Teach people, educate them, bring them on the journey with you,” she said.
Jutla went on to say that she considers her parents to be some of her roles models, and that one of the most important lessons they taught her was that if she makes a mistake, learn from it and get back up again.
“That’s how you break boundaries,” she said. “It’s about educating people, getting back up again and finding a different way.”
By embracing our own vulnerabilities, we can understand our limitations and what we can and can’t do, said Jutla. “Use your vulnerability and know your limitations, and then ask for help,” she added. “It’s seen as a weakness to ask for help, but actually that’s how we get things done.”
Jutla continued to say if we want to break boundaries, we have to dare to be different.
“You have to find your dream: what do you love, what is your belief, what do you want to achieve,” she said. “And the belief is what keeps you going.”
