#119 Claire Scapinello, CEO of ECH Inc. on a journey of resilience from personal trials to leading aged care innovation

Ready for something truly inspiring to kick off your weekend? We’ve got something special for your ears this weekend with our latest episode of the #CreatingSynergyPodcast featuring the incredible Claire Scapinello, CEO of ECH Inc.  

Claire’s story is the kind of listen that’ll have you hooked from start to finish. Her journey is packed with lessons on resilience, innovation, and what it means to lead with vision and heart. 

Here's why:

• Discover Claire's journey of incredible resilience, from overcoming a life-changing injury to leading one of the largest aged care providers.
• Get an insider's look into the innovative strategies propelling the aged care industry forward.
• Gain actionable insights on leading with empathy, navigating change, and embracing technology

We dive deep into how she's transforming aged care, blending technology with a touch of humanity, and making real changes that matter.

It’s not just about the challenges; it’s about seeing opportunities where others see obstacles. Make your day a bit more meaningful, fuel your motivation and spark new ideas and give this episode a listen!


TIMESTAMP:

[05:17] - Introduction to Claire's background and influences

[25:02] - Claire discusses a life-changing injury in 2009 and its impact

[35:25] - The moment Claire was told she might never walk again

[38:11] - Exploration of stoicism and its role in Claire's recovery process

[44:01] - Claire shares her experience of regaining movement and her determination

[58:34] - Transitioning into Claire's career and her role as CEO of a major aged care provider

[1:04:14] - The importance of customer focus and digital understanding for CEOs

[1:13:12] - Discussion on change management and transforming the aged care industry

[1:27:15] - The growing impact and challenges within the aged care sector

[1:39:49] - Claire's appreciation for stoicism and the best advice she has received

Where to find Claire Scapinello

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Books discussed in the episode:

• Emotional Intelligence Why It Can Matter More Than IQ By: Daniel Goleman
• Talking to Strangers What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know By: Malcolm Gladwell

Join the conversation on Synergy IQ on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram (@synergyiq).

Access SynergyIQ Website to get to know more about us. 

Say hello to our host Daniel Franco on LinkedIn.

Transcript

00:00:00:12 - 00:00:22:08
Daniel Franco
Welcome back to the Creating Synergy Podcast. Today we have the wonderful Claire Scapinello CEO of one of the largest aged care providers here in South Australia. ECH. Welcome to the show.

00:00:22:10 - 00:00:24:24
Claire Scapinello
Well, thank you for having me.

00:00:24:27 - 00:00:48:04
Daniel Franco
Really, really excited about this one. You and I have caught up a couple of times and had some remarkable chats and we're really excited to share your story to everyone on the show. And then we like to kick off learning a little bit about who is Claire. So what do we need to know about your earliest context to understand that the person that's sitting in front of me today?

00:00:48:07 - 00:01:15:04
Claire Scapinello
It's funny, I was thinking about childhood and growing up and influences and preempting this question around what were those elements that probably have led you to where I am today and also my outlook on life, how I approach what I do. I think early, so I grew up in Adelaide, spent 22 years here, then moved over to Sydney.

00:01:15:07 - 00:01:28:27
Claire Scapinello
So I have returned right, which is great. And I think for me one of the things that my mum always said to me when I was young is you always asked why your constant question was, but why Mummy? But why?

00:01:28:29 - 00:01:30:03
Daniel Franco
That would have driven her insane.

00:01:30:03 - 00:01:58:03
Claire Scapinello
It drove her insane. But now I think about, you know, the five whys and, and, you know what keeps that. Why. Yeah. The question as, as a leader. I think there was something in that from a really early age is into my curiosity as to why were things the way they were. Yeah. And I think, you know, I had a great role model for my mum, both from, I think a female independence.

00:01:58:06 - 00:02:15:11
Claire Scapinello
You know, my mum, my mum worked with me. For me that was unusual in comparison to a lot of my friends growing up that she went to work every day. She juggled home life, family, an enormous amount of sport activity, which I still can't fathom how either of my parents drove us around to all of that.

00:02:15:13 - 00:02:16:18
Daniel Franco
So how many siblings with that?

00:02:16:18 - 00:02:22:08
Claire Scapinello
So myself and my sister. Yeah. And. And two years apart. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:02:22:10 - 00:02:24:27
Daniel Franco
And it's your mum Italian also.

00:02:24:29 - 00:02:33:06
Claire Scapinello
So my father Italian. My mum is Scottish. Both fiery, passionate, very different.

00:02:33:09 - 00:02:41:21
Daniel Franco
So because the Italian because I'm Italian, the Italian tradition is that well especially when we grew up was the, the mum was at home. Right. Right. And Yeah.

00:02:41:22 - 00:03:03:15
Claire Scapinello
Right. And it was really interesting I think also that was that wasn't necessarily my dad's expectation. Yeah. And I think that would be an influence from his, his mum and I dare say that grew up in, you know, really challenging World War two times northern Italy. You know, probably different influences around the roles in a family context as well.

00:03:03:16 - 00:03:15:21
Claire Scapinello
And I think my grandfather got sick quite young, so my grandmother really stepped in to the provider. And that's been interesting on both sides of the family. So even if my mum who worked.

00:03:15:24 - 00:03:17:07
Daniel Franco
So she ran her own business.

00:03:17:10 - 00:03:49:06
Claire Scapinello
Well, I know my grandmother, actually. Okay. So it's it's multi-generational. Yeah. My grandmother was actually the business owner and she had a shop and that was during the sort of 6070s what's up shop? So she she actually had a fish shop, poultry shop in a very wealthy part of Scotland. Yeah. Beautiful village, which I was lucky enough last year to go back with my mum and we, you know, went and explored her sort of her life growing up in Greenwich, which was fabulous.

00:03:49:08 - 00:04:20:11
Claire Scapinello
So, you know, I had two really strong role models in in the sense that independent for a female perspective, both financially but also from a career perspective, that that could still be part of that mix. And I think from an early age, you know, it subtly gives you the influence that you can do really whatever you want and that going to work and having a career and enjoying it is a fulfilling part of life.

00:04:20:11 - 00:04:23:10
Claire Scapinello
And I think that probably started early on.

00:04:23:12 - 00:04:45:29
Daniel Franco
It's just going back to your why question. I mean, curiosity is what every child is born with. And for some reason, as parents can, you know, we can squash that a little bit by saying, be quiet, shut up, sit down, don't touch that. You know, all these different things. Curiosity was obviously harnessed in. Is that what you were saying as well?

00:04:46:00 - 00:05:06:17
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. And I think we were always involved in adult conversations. So I think what was different, most of our family, friends, they didn't have kids the same age. My parents were both older as well, so my mum was 35 when I was born. My dad was 44, which was really old and you know, 45 plus years ago. Yeah.

00:05:06:19 - 00:05:36:13
Claire Scapinello
And that was also unusual. So they had been together 12 years before they got married. They traveled the world. They had their own life in Independence also before having children. So I think there was that level of worldliness as well. So the why questions and being able to answer and explore those was something that certainly my mum encouraged, albeit I think it was probably quite annoying, but certainly encouraged and I was a really busy child so I would never sit still.

00:05:36:16 - 00:05:57:20
Claire Scapinello
I was hyperactive, which also probably was quite challenging for my mum and I was into everything. I wanted to learn as much as I could about anything and everything. And I think, you know, I think there's a level of curiosity. Then you take it to the extreme. And for me it was always, you know, practical learning. I wanted to be hands on.

00:05:57:20 - 00:06:18:01
Claire Scapinello
I wanted to experience as much as possible. And I think that for me was that real starting point of this love of learning, this thirst for learning and constantly absorbing lots of information. I was always a very good sleeper as well, which as we now know today is important, is extremely important and.

00:06:18:01 - 00:06:19:05
Daniel Franco
Something I'm horrible.

00:06:19:05 - 00:06:45:16
Claire Scapinello
At. Yeah, it's I would like to say it's a skill. I think you're naturally born to be a good sleep to some people. But as I've grown and now sitting at this age and as an adult, the importance of sleep around doing roles like this and actually how it really sticks information and it becomes, you know, that deep sleep that really is nourishing for both the cognitive restorative.

00:06:45:16 - 00:06:53:08
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, it is restorative. And I think that's something that's been, you know, important and I've valued actually that ability to sleep. Really.

00:06:53:17 - 00:06:56:23
Daniel Franco
it's a it's a real topic for me at the moment. I've recently bought a work.

00:06:56:29 - 00:06:57:08
Claire Scapinello
Yeah.

00:06:57:13 - 00:07:20:06
Daniel Franco
Which tracks everything in the data. I actually thought, you know, how hard is it to sleep where you lie down and by as you know, as a CEO, there's a thousand things going on through your head. And I am absolutely trying. Like last night I thought, I'll go to bed nine on 30, wake up at 630. So it's a good 9 hours, I thought, Beautiful.

00:07:20:09 - 00:07:31:07
Daniel Franco
I was awake for two and a half hours last night. My brain just pinged on at 3:00. I could not go back to sleep. It was just I just don't know how to I. What's your trick? Is there anything that you.

00:07:31:09 - 00:07:54:15
Claire Scapinello
Get to that? Yeah. I woke up this morning at 4 a.m. because the dog wanted to go out. Okay. It was quite annoying and I also was having a terrible dream that I hate heights. Yeah. And in my dream I was on the top of a building and I didn't want to go near the window. And this is a weird one where I've no idea why I'm afraid of heights.

00:07:54:18 - 00:07:55:26
Daniel Franco
I am too. I don't like them.

00:07:55:26 - 00:08:27:17
Claire Scapinello
I don't like them. I've worked in a 65 storey building right up the top and never bothered me because there was no windows, there was no way out. Yeah, it anywhere where I'm up high and there's a window, I just it is this terrible fear of falling. Yeah. Or being inquisitive around what's down there. Yeah. So getting back to those sort of those early, early years and I think some of the formative things that happened that has driven me where I am today, I'm being busy.

00:08:27:18 - 00:08:54:03
Claire Scapinello
Shout, I love sport. I played everything in anything. Yeah, I swam, I played touch football, netball, tennis, I athletics. So, you know, all of this energy that I had was probably channeled into sport for a really long time, and I think that was the inquisitive nature I found school for most of it actually quite boring. I would get.

00:08:54:06 - 00:09:21:08
Claire Scapinello
I remember my mum told me I got told off because I'd ask too many questions and you know, we encourage children to be curious, but then on the other hand, we stifle the curiosity in the traditional sense. Yeah. Which luckily is moving towards a more practical, more open, inclusive learning style. But I think, you know, you go back 35 years, it really wasn't it was a very structured approach to learning and that just didn't work.

00:09:21:13 - 00:09:23:23
Daniel Franco
Yeah, don't ask questions outside what's in this textbook.

00:09:23:24 - 00:09:27:03
Claire Scapinello
Question And I wanted to know everything that wasn't in the. Yeah.

00:09:27:03 - 00:09:29:21
Daniel Franco
And you would challenge it and I was just, I would challenge it.

00:09:29:21 - 00:09:52:09
Claire Scapinello
And, you know, we were fortunate enough as kids to travel around the world with my parents. We spent months away, you know, through Asia, all through a year of learning history and art and culture. And that also was sort of frowned upon because it wasn't the norm around children going and exploring like that and coming back with this worldliness, yeah, at such a young age.

00:09:52:09 - 00:10:05:22
Claire Scapinello
So that was that was interesting. And I think for me it gave me a perspective of where one little place in a very large and interesting and historical world Yeah he's love Adelaide. Yeah right.

00:10:05:24 - 00:10:08:29
Daniel Franco
Not to mention the pale blue dot in amongst the galaxy.

00:10:09:02 - 00:10:36:05
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. Let's not even go there. The Why are we here? Question Because that's another right? Yeah. But I think, you know, through those schooling years I went to an all girls school. I think the opportunity there to just bring out what it was that you wanted to do there was nothing holding you back. I think there was this real sense of empowerment that I personally found through that process that, you know, there's no distraction from boys.

00:10:36:08 - 00:10:56:08
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, And to be honest, I wasn't that distracted. I loved playing sport. Sport probably. And I had lots of family friends who were males as well. So, yeah, it's just normal having guys around your room mates. That was it. Yeah. I did a lot at school as well, you know, Magazine club. So I wrote the school year and involved everything.

00:10:56:11 - 00:10:59:11
Claire Scapinello
I was involved with. Eric Debating Magazine Club. Do you think.

00:10:59:11 - 00:11:21:25
Daniel Franco
That all your co-curricular activities, you know, debating and all the sport has really set you up? I'm a firm believer that and particularly team sport will hold anyone in good stead for the remainder of their life. And this is why I've really sort of, you know, pushed my girls into basketball. They love or they play quite high divisions.

00:11:21:25 - 00:11:51:11
Daniel Franco
But the the point that I grew up playing a lot of team sport and the learnings that you have from mixing with different people from all walks of life or different socioeconomic levels, different neighborhoods with different perspectives, different upbringings, and trying to blend them all together in order to win the premiership or something like that, and build strategy and train and set goals like all these things have, I believe set me up for life.

00:11:51:13 - 00:12:20:29
Claire Scapinello
I will 100%, I think, you know, I was reflecting on there are individuals who play to win. That's their only focus. Yeah, there are people who play because they love the team. Collaborative and achievement that you get from a being in a team. I think I, you know, if I look at the team sport versus the individual, you know, the individual being swimming and running, there is something meditative about both and there's something around.

00:12:20:29 - 00:12:53:10
Claire Scapinello
How far can I individually push myself to achieve that personal goal? Can I do a second faster? You know, I think for me, part of it was, yes, it's great that you got first, but also around being able to continue to push yourself. Yeah. And that is a different sense of personal achievement. I think the team sport for me gave me a sense of winning and losing, and I think that I loved the game, I loved to play, I loved to be a part of it.

00:12:53:12 - 00:13:00:27
Claire Scapinello
Naturally. You know, I am partly competitive. You don't really do this role unless there is a slight competitive streak. Yeah, it's.

00:13:00:27 - 00:13:02:26
Daniel Franco
Going to be some sort of animal inside. Yeah.

00:13:02:26 - 00:13:25:12
Claire Scapinello
And I think it's also the drive to just keep going and going and going and going. So I think that certainly influenced a lot of some, you know, my personal drive. Yeah. And also the that being really collaborative. I think the other part with it was during that because I loved sport so much. I also led our sports teams.

00:13:25:12 - 00:13:48:12
Claire Scapinello
I was captain for sport, I was swimming captain of our school. That also from a really young age and that was both junior school and senior school. You start to develop leadership capabilities around. You're responsible for another 200 girls in a big team who have to come together, share a vision, get the spirit. You know, we had the Spirit cup as well.

00:13:48:13 - 00:14:11:26
Claire Scapinello
So, you know, how good do we cheer yet? But you have to then figure out who's going in which right. You need to put them in races. You need to organize all of these people into every athletics activity. And all of a sudden you having to start actually managing large groups of people. You're having to think about how you're going to manage the time and actually look at what's going to give you the best result.

00:14:11:27 - 00:14:40:06
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, and it's something as simple as that. Then you start thinking about, okay, well be doing that and learning that when you're 16 and younger, I think starts that process around thinking about larger cohorts of people. How are you going to get people to have a shared vision, to follow you to inspire them? More importantly? And you know, that's so much today of being a CEO are all of those attributes.

00:14:40:06 - 00:15:11:21
Claire Scapinello
And I think through that it gave me, you know, a sense of what it meant and how to go about it. Yeah, you necessarily always got it right. But I think the practice of that from such an early age certainly helped. I think also younger years for me. So I was a chronic asthmatic, so I spent a lot of time in hospital as a child and you know, it would be up to maybe four weeks a year, you know, at the Women's and Children's.

00:15:11:21 - 00:15:15:11
Claire Scapinello
So I think I'd been in every ward in the women's set ICU.

00:15:15:18 - 00:15:15:26
Daniel Franco
Yeah.

00:15:15:27 - 00:15:47:00
Claire Scapinello
Well, so I'd seen some things that, you know, are really confronting as a young child when you're in those environments with, you know, people who have had 80% of their bodies burnt, have had people who have had craniofacial and surgery, which, you know, I think also gave me this different sense of how lucky I was. And also that being quite accepting of of all different types of people in all different situations.

00:15:47:00 - 00:16:13:14
Claire Scapinello
And I think, you know, there is an enormous amount of resilience also that is built as a child because you have to keep getting through, you know, being sick and quite sick. Yeah. And I think that also started to build those levels of resilience at a younger age and also being quite selfish and sort of self-reflective because you had a lot of time by yourself.

00:16:13:18 - 00:16:20:15
Claire Scapinello
You know, my mum went to work, she came to the hospital the morning she went to work, then she came back. You know, she juggled all of that at the same time as well.

00:16:20:15 - 00:16:21:28
Daniel Franco
It wasn't all iPads and mobile phones.

00:16:21:28 - 00:16:37:04
Claire Scapinello
There was no iPads. There was no mobile phone. So you went and played or you were in your room and your bed the entire day. So you do also therefore have a lot of self-reflection time in those moments as well.

00:16:37:04 - 00:16:39:26
Daniel Franco
And so how old were you at that time?

00:16:39:28 - 00:17:09:26
Claire Scapinello
From two years old until probably about 16. Seven. Yeah. Wow. So I think I only spent one week in the RAA here in Adelaide and one week at actually Happy and in Sydney. And then God bless medication changes and people inventing great new medicines and medicine changed and touchwood. I haven't actually been working and never had a chronic attack like that again.

00:17:09:28 - 00:17:23:10
Daniel Franco
Well done. So it sounds like, you know, your parents obviously had a massive influence on your life and recently your father has passed away. Yeah. Three, 3 to 4 weeks ago.

00:17:23:10 - 00:17:24:15
Claire Scapinello
Four weeks ago.

00:17:24:17 - 00:17:25:17
Daniel Franco
How are you going?

00:17:25:19 - 00:17:53:01
Claire Scapinello
You know, I'm okay. I have my moments. But I think for anyone who has a loved one who has dementia and he's going through that process, for some people, it's a fairly quick process. For us, it was a really long process, almost nine years from when he was diagnosed to passing away. And so I think for the last two years, the person that we knew, we really knew had was gone.

00:17:53:02 - 00:18:10:13
Claire Scapinello
And that that's also is difficult to watch. He had a great life story, like he was almost 90 when he passed away. His brother died the next day, which was a Yeah. So this poetic sense of best friend's brothers who died a die apart.

00:18:10:13 - 00:18:13:13
Daniel Franco
Brothers died when that was was your uncle.

00:18:13:15 - 00:18:48:29
Claire Scapinello
He was unwell as well. Yeah. So and that was a more rapid decline for him. He was 94, so they both had great loss and I think my uncle retired at 49, so he had this idea for his story for you. I mean, I was like, if only today. So they had a great relationship. And I think, you know, there's a there's a sense of poetry in that they both went together and, you know, whatever we believe in happens in the afterlife.

00:18:49:01 - 00:18:53:08
Claire Scapinello
There is a sense I do get that there was something cosmic about.

00:18:53:10 - 00:18:55:03
Daniel Franco
Their they're their playing card somewhere.

00:18:55:04 - 00:19:16:21
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. Yeah. Well, my uncle loved playing cards. He was a regular at the Italian club. My dad was a musician, so I can play that. He would have been entertaining them all. So. But look, fabulous. You know, grief is something that he's challenging. It's something we experience also from a work perspective all the time, given what we do.

00:19:16:24 - 00:19:40:07
Claire Scapinello
I think what was lovely about, you know, you're saying goodbye and there's a finality to it. I think the other part was we made it a celebration and I think that's something we need to do more of. Yeah, because people lead wonderful lives and they leave, you know, things behind that we should celebrate, not commiserate a lot of the time.

00:19:40:07 - 00:20:02:28
Claire Scapinello
And we had a house sing along in dad's funeral, Frank Sinatra, him singing it my way because he always used to sing my way, but used to sing in the middle for a joke. We did it sideways. Yeah, exactly. So we had to. We had to finish, you know, his life and story on that, which was actually really fun.

00:20:03:01 - 00:20:03:17
Claire Scapinello
So.

00:20:03:21 - 00:20:17:29
Daniel Franco
That's so good. Yeah. Well, condolences to you and the family. But now it sounds like he was a remarkable human and he lived a great life. So I'm going to skip a few years now. Back to 2009.

00:20:18:00 - 00:20:18:26
Claire Scapinello
Yes.

00:20:18:28 - 00:20:26:21
Daniel Franco
When you suffered from an injury. Yeah. That changed your life forever. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

00:20:26:21 - 00:20:46:21
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. And so I you know, I moved to Sydney sort of to keep advancing and career and I think, you know, when I, when I left as I always wanted to be, was always wanted to be a CEO, I don't know why but always wanted to be running and leading my either my own company or another company. And then.

00:20:46:22 - 00:20:48:20
Daniel Franco
Was that ever since you went to uni then.

00:20:48:20 - 00:20:54:18
Claire Scapinello
Or. Yeah, I would say it was from, you know, 21, 22. You know, I had this aim of.

00:20:54:20 - 00:20:55:28
Daniel Franco
When you got into the corporate.

00:20:55:28 - 00:21:34:16
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, yeah. There was, there was a part of me that always was looking for that and you know, at 29 just turning 30 and took on my first exec role for, for a global company here in Australia and going which was so and it was safilo which is the sunglass and optical manufacturers and I was starting a retail operation in Australia and was part of that team and you know, doing a lot of travel busy and then was out surfing on the northern beaches with a friend of mine.

00:21:34:18 - 00:21:54:27
Claire Scapinello
Let's just say I was being very lazy. I was teaching her to surf and I wasn't a fantastic surface by any stretch of the imagination. I was no flame beat Beachley even remotely flights, and I was being a bit lazy and lying on my surfboard for and with my back arched for about an hour, an hour and a half.

00:21:54:27 - 00:22:15:16
Claire Scapinello
And then I went to get out because I thought, okay, now we should actually do some surfing, got up and went stand up and felt this kind of twinge in my back. And I thought, that's a bit weird. You know, maybe I've, you know, pinched nerve or just pulled a muscle, got back down and it just the the this I can only describe it as nerve.

00:22:15:16 - 00:22:29:05
Claire Scapinello
I just didn't go away stretching on the beach. So I'm sort of the friend who I was with look out for a we go like there's something not quite right feel sure And anyway we get in the car like it was. It was sort of getting worse.

00:22:29:05 - 00:22:36:08
Daniel Franco
And I'm getting like I cringe like I can feel like, you know, when your bum tenses.

00:22:36:10 - 00:22:38:21
Claire Scapinello
I know you don't like this time. Trust me. I know.

00:22:38:21 - 00:22:42:00
Daniel Franco
I know this story like I don't like this sort of stuff, but.

00:22:42:04 - 00:22:42:15
Claire Scapinello
I.

00:22:42:15 - 00:22:43:15
Daniel Franco
Know I.

00:22:43:15 - 00:23:00:21
Claire Scapinello
Am We got we got probably five KS down the road to Newport, but petrol in the car. And I literally thought I was like an 80 year old woman crunched over just all of a sudden this pain and it was and my walking stops gave me a hard luck. It was really stiff and I thought, This is a bit odd.

00:23:00:24 - 00:23:29:21
Claire Scapinello
And I said, Can you drive? And then as we kept driving, I'm like, There's something really not right. And we rang a friend of mine just right. The closest place medical centers Chatswood, go there, see if you can get sane and and figure out what's going on. So by the time we got there, which is about a 40 minute drive, I got out of the car and and was really struggling to walk and made it up into the Chatswood Medical Center.

00:23:29:21 - 00:23:48:10
Claire Scapinello
And they're like, how, you know, why are you here? And I said, Ah, something wrong? He was surfing and having trouble walking. And the next near the I right, you're not even sitting down, you're going straight into the triage bay and was seen by a doctor. And there, you know, there's something nervous system related, sciatica or something else.

00:23:48:12 - 00:24:02:21
Claire Scapinello
But if you're having this much difficulty walking right now, you need to go to Royal North Shore Hospital and get checked out. So we get back in the car just they're like, do you want us to call an ambulance? So is that the point of do we call an ambulance here at Chatswood? Make it? Because I'm like, No, I'll be fine.

00:24:02:24 - 00:24:28:04
Claire Scapinello
She's yeah, get back into the car. Kind of hobbling, just staying upright. And then between Chatswood Medical Center and Royal North Shore Hospital is only about three K's away. And in that time we got to the hospital and they they pulled a wheelchair over. And I actually then couldn't move my legs to get out of the car. And that was when I think there was a sense of, ooh, somebody's really not right.

00:24:28:04 - 00:24:28:16
Daniel Franco
This is not.

00:24:28:16 - 00:24:55:01
Claire Scapinello
Good. This is not good. But I think the interesting part is because you always you connect a lot of the time by having some sort of injury or there was when you played alongside it. Yes. An accident that all of a sudden is kind of weird because I'm really done anything. So they drive the car around and I'm in the ambulance bay of Royal North Shore Hospital being patched, lives out of my own car and I was like, Wow, okay, this is quiet.

00:24:55:02 - 00:25:14:01
Claire Scapinello
This is getting a bit swollen. I'm dragged into Trauma one, which is the first day when you come into the hospital where it's the full emergency and there's just people everywhere trying to figure out what's going on. And then they're like, right, okay, you don't appear to have broken your neck or any of those things, which is kind of the first things they're checking.

00:25:14:03 - 00:25:40:11
Claire Scapinello
And I could just move my legs a little bit still. And then I went straight to a two. So the first acute by and they gave me a whole load of Indo and thinking again, well you haven't actually injured so there's been no trauma. So let's get you in for an MRI and see the neuro team come down when the neurosurgical team come down and have a look.

00:25:40:14 - 00:26:03:15
Claire Scapinello
So I think around 7 hours or so later someone came down there like there's something not right here, like the movement in my legs. It still started to go, so I really couldn't move my legs by then. And then they're like, Right, you're booked in for MRI first thing in the morning. When I opened. And so I was like, okay, you know, this isn't great.

00:26:03:15 - 00:26:18:09
Claire Scapinello
And I didn't want to ring my mum and alarm at that point like that. So, you know, there's been so many other things that I've that I've done. And when you go from a hospital that I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to wait to see what happens.

00:26:18:09 - 00:26:20:25
Daniel Franco
How how were you like we panicking?

00:26:20:25 - 00:26:47:12
Claire Scapinello
We look, I don't think I was panicking because, you know, growing up, having had different things that have happened between glandular fever, salmonella, food poisoning, all ended up in hospital, all ended up in a. And I thought, you know what, let's just not moving your legs. Yeah, that's a big to be gone. But you see the things that you know severe nerve trapping like trapping nerves, things like that can actually cause issues to that extent.

00:26:47:14 - 00:27:17:16
Claire Scapinello
Probably not as far as where I wouldn't know. But you don't know, you know. So and also the pain for me was in sort of my lower abdomen. So when I went for my MRI, that's what they were looking for. That's where they were looking. But the next morning when I woke up and, you know, you've you've kind of got lots of endorphin, you know, everything going on and they're trying to sort of figure out what's going on.

00:27:17:19 - 00:27:31:22
Claire Scapinello
I rang my mom at about 630 in the morning and said, Look, mama, I'm in hospital. Laugh. I laugh because I think I probably I'll either cry or laugh and had to have had decided, look, ma'am, I mean, hospital Taiwan, but I can't move my life.

00:27:31:23 - 00:27:34:23
Daniel Franco
On thinking her about her on the.

00:27:34:23 - 00:27:45:10
Claire Scapinello
Phone. And the other thing I think God And I'm like I think you need to come out here and said, I don't know how long.

00:27:45:10 - 00:27:46:08
Daniel Franco
So she's in Adelaide.

00:27:46:08 - 00:28:06:03
Claire Scapinello
She's in Adelaide. So once I'd rung her I said, Mum, can you ring the office? Can you bring my boss and tell him what's going on? Because I don't know when I'll be taken away. And you know, that was for the MRI first thing in the morning and I said, look, get on a plane. So she packs a little bag thinking she might be for a week.

00:28:06:04 - 00:28:31:16
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, she's here for three months. Yeah, almost four. And yet basically she was on the next flight and up to to Sydney and they couldn't find anything wrong when they did the first MRI. Still, legs don't move. They're like, okay, what's going on? So they're like, okay, let's actually have a look. More broadly, you know, they'd been mates in our family.

00:28:31:16 - 00:28:33:25
Claire Scapinello
So was this, you know.

00:28:33:27 - 00:28:35:21
Daniel Franco
Essentially this doesn't come on like that.

00:28:35:25 - 00:29:02:02
Claire Scapinello
It doesn't come up. Well, there's a whole I mean, you don't know. Yeah. So they wanted to check for that. So then they did MRI of my upper spine thoracic sort of cervical and CT as well. And they found what was what they call a traumatic spinal infarction from t 7 to 1011 three. You sit at middle of your thoracic.

00:29:02:02 - 00:29:29:23
Claire Scapinello
So basically an infarction is is a blockage or a stroke. So when you have a yes, an infarction is used is something that's actually stopped blood flow to an area and mine was in a traumatic spinal infarction, which is very rare. Normally you'd say something that was a traumatic, there's been a blockage or there's been an accident or there's been a severing or partial severing of the spinal cord.

00:29:29:25 - 00:29:31:22
Claire Scapinello
I was just outright came out of nowhere.

00:29:31:26 - 00:29:38:02
Daniel Franco
So when you say rare, I think you told me you it was only sort of ten cases of.

00:29:38:08 - 00:30:15:05
Claire Scapinello
There's there's a handful in Australia. Yeah. Mine went and there'd been a number in the US, Japan that had been reported a later found that out. Sort of doing my own investigative journalism. Yeah. But the prognosis our men became sort of three days later and I was in, it was probably about 7:00 at night in the hospital room mum there, and a few of my girlfriends and the neurosurgeon came in and terrible bedside manner, just terrible bedside manner.

00:30:15:05 - 00:30:26:05
Claire Scapinello
They need to teach more bedside manner when they're, they're actually teaching doctors around and very complex of or life changing. Yeah. Sort of communication. Yeah.

00:30:26:07 - 00:30:28:00
Daniel Franco
So you're dealing with a dickhead doctor as well.

00:30:28:00 - 00:30:59:21
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. And, and unfortunately he probably because they didn't know your life as the person didn't probably shift the conversation and to be more empathetic. So basically the discussion came in and said, look, we've done more tests, this is what we've found. And we're not sure that you'll ever walk again. So that's what we know right now and the prognosis and we haven't had any movement.

00:30:59:21 - 00:31:20:15
Claire Scapinello
So my legs by that said, I had no movement at all from the waist down and I'd lost sensation from the waist down on the outer layers of my legs. So the dermal is so hot, cold and and if you if I still get pinched the back of my leg now, I can't feel you be as hot as you like.

00:31:20:18 - 00:31:21:28
Claire Scapinello
Won't feel it.

00:31:22:00 - 00:31:32:05
Daniel Franco
So. So, yeah. So what's going through your head when those words come out of his mouth? Like, what's the do you remember.

00:31:32:07 - 00:31:45:09
Claire Scapinello
They were there was and initially a lot of tears. There was a there was the moment of, my God, what is happening here? And I think he was the reaction. Hang on a minute. Wait, wait a minute. I didn't have an accident. Look.

00:31:45:11 - 00:31:46:20
Daniel Franco
How come this can't go back?

00:31:46:23 - 00:32:07:06
Claire Scapinello
How can how can this be the case with this kind of injury? And I've had no accident like nothing happened in my head. Nothing had happened. And that was something that for a long time you sort of keep processing over and over the first kind of couple of days you just coming to grips with, Hang on a minute.

00:32:07:06 - 00:32:39:22
Claire Scapinello
This just this can't be happening. This is bizarre. You still having lots of tests to figure out what's going on. And I think for me, there was this moment of hang on a minute, you don't know how it happened, so you're not sure what's going to happen next. Yeah. And I think once I got that into my head was probably a saving grace around how you keep yourself in a place of moving forward.

00:32:39:25 - 00:32:58:06
Claire Scapinello
You know, lots of people in these situations and I saw a lot in the spinal unit, you know, severe depression. Yeah, there's grace, There's a whole range of emotions of what you've lost because of what's happened. And for me it was like, Right, You can't tell me why it happened, so you can't tell me what's going to happen next.

00:32:58:06 - 00:33:09:15
Claire Scapinello
So I'm. Yep, I'm going to walk again in my head. That was and for me, sort of where I wanted to at least to get some movement back. Do you.

00:33:09:15 - 00:33:11:28
Daniel Franco
Think it could have gone the other way if you fell into a state of.

00:33:11:28 - 00:33:13:29
Claire Scapinello
Depression? Easy. Yeah. So?

00:33:14:01 - 00:33:29:26
Daniel Franco
So. So this element of stoicism that you've brought into it is held you in good stead, right? Like this is something that maybe might be within my control. Yes. Therefore, I'm going to do my utmost to make sure I can walk again.

00:33:29:27 - 00:33:51:06
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. And it is because, you know, you talk about when you talk about what you can control, can't you can't control, you know, that like control when you sit in those circles. I think part of that is I can control how I look. The outlook I have on this, where I let the emotions or I go down this path or this path.

00:33:51:09 - 00:34:19:09
Claire Scapinello
I think for me it was, okay, what are we going to do next? And as I've grown as a person, I've learned more. Why I had that particular view of the world was, okay, we're here right now. What do we have to do to get here? So I'm never going to walk again. What can I do? And I think the moving forward part is something I'm constantly moving forward and I'm constantly looking.

00:34:19:12 - 00:34:23:26
Claire Scapinello
And you know, down the road of what's coming next. And I remember they said.

00:34:23:29 - 00:34:28:11
Daniel Franco
As you've gotten older, you've learned why you think that way. What have you learned about yourself?

00:34:28:11 - 00:34:59:13
Claire Scapinello
And that's why I think it's interesting you so many different tests around who you are as a person for leadership. And more recently, I've been looking at, you know, your strengths and and the futuristic part where you spend very little time dwelling on the present. You're looking ahead. And I think in in roles like this, when you're in any leadership role where you're determining strategy for there's always forward motion and there's always looking ahead at what's coming towards you and how you're going to have to deal with that.

00:34:59:15 - 00:35:23:03
Claire Scapinello
And you start playing the scenarios out around, well, what if this happens? What if this happens? And I think that helped me work through. Okay, well, if I'm going to have to come home, I'm going to give and I said this to Mum, I want to give this three months and let's see where we are before the decision to have to relocate back to Adelaide because the options were limited.

00:35:23:03 - 00:35:57:25
Claire Scapinello
It's come back to Adelaide, you end up in Julia, I come back to Adelaide and you might be maybe Hampstead Rehab for example, and you know, or going home, which in that case you didn't thinking through, my gosh, the home modifications you need to do. We live in a two storey, my parents lived in a two storey house so thinking about all of these things, the biggest part I think for me was, you know, I needed to take control of where I was, how I was, what I was doing, how I was approaching, or how I was seeing myself in this situation.

00:35:58:01 - 00:36:20:22
Claire Scapinello
And there was moments of tears. There was there was grief primarily, I think when no one was around because I was really lucky. And I have to say the support network I had for people like I would have friends, had visitors schedules. So every day would have a series of different people coming in to see me. My room looked like a flower shop.

00:36:20:22 - 00:36:42:23
Claire Scapinello
You could smell it when you came to the start of the ward. It was that strong. And for some nurses, I mean, this is was a particular who actually couldn't work in the ward. I could smell strong, but, you know, I had an amazing team of supporters from a from friends perspective. But even the team at the hospital, it wasn't sure.

00:36:42:23 - 00:37:14:18
Claire Scapinello
You know, the average stay in a spinal unit is about three months. You are with a group of people who are all going through traumatic life changing events. That is their own doing or not like my case. And you have a lot of time for self-reflection and I think good and bad in that situation because, you know, you can go down a path where I'm just going to retreat.

00:37:14:18 - 00:37:33:11
Claire Scapinello
This is happened to me, you know, feeling sorry for myself in that situation. But I think I've always been, you know, what do I need to do next? Okay, let's let's try and see what can we get working? Is there anything Because the one thing that they gave me was a slight chance of, okay, we don't know what's going to happen.

00:37:34:02 - 00:38:02:06
Claire Scapinello
And I remember the neurologist who came in saw me and he said Your body is like a computer. There are many ways to open a file you don't just have to go file open, you know, there's different, you know, there's file Explorer, there's these different pathways that you can use your body is no different. So what you need to think about is how do you get those pathways happening in other ways?

00:38:02:08 - 00:38:13:13
Claire Scapinello
And that was really good advice, I think, for me too, to kind of think about, well, our body is an amazing, complex structure. So is our brain. You know, there must be things that I can do to.

00:38:13:13 - 00:38:14:21
Daniel Franco
Find a bypass for this thing.

00:38:14:23 - 00:38:37:03
Claire Scapinello
Kind of. And I remember the day, the first day my I got my toe knifed and it was about four weeks into her being in hospital. And I've had so many different drugs to try and, you know, release the swelling or maybe change. You know, you go through heparin, steroids, all these things. And I remember it flickered and I saw it stick.

00:38:37:04 - 00:38:57:00
Claire Scapinello
I was sitting there. And then I remember the next day I said to the doctor, might I moved like I got it to move. And they like, can you can you do it for us? And I couldn't do it. And I was devastated. I went, Now this couldn't have been it wasn't just a spasm. It actually. And then they came back the next day and I could move my tie.

00:38:57:02 - 00:38:58:19
Daniel Franco
And.

00:38:58:22 - 00:39:01:00
Claire Scapinello
I was like, I can move. It's all right.

00:39:01:00 - 00:39:23:26
Daniel Franco
So, you know, like as you talked earlier about your future focus, but which is, you know, possibly one of the greatest strengths of a CEO, but also one of the biggest kryptonite, right? Because you're not focusing on the present and both as a human being and at work being so present in that moment when your time moved, what did that feel like?

00:39:23:29 - 00:39:33:18
Claire Scapinello
I was like, this can't be. This is and I remember I'm like, okay, now, now you just got to get to move again and again and again and again and again. And all I did was keep looking.

00:39:33:18 - 00:39:35:04
Daniel Franco
At was it just the same food every time?

00:39:35:04 - 00:40:00:00
Claire Scapinello
Couldn't get it started on my right to my right big time and all the the only thing I then was facing is get that right side of moving. So I wanted to prove the doctors were wrong. Yeah. And I proved them wrong. And then I managed to move a little bit more of the next toes and then the other toe on the other foot and then little by little, and it was literally like getting your feet to move.

00:40:00:01 - 00:40:32:23
Claire Scapinello
So each day there was a tiny little bit more movement, and then by about four weeks, I could lift I could lift the bottom of my legs up from my knees just and that was like, okay, this is awesome. Game on. Exactly. And being competitive, it's that right now. What next? Yeah, and bit by bit. But you know you get more movement back but it takes an enormous amount of energy.

00:40:32:24 - 00:40:54:07
Claire Scapinello
So what most people don't realize, you know when you're recovering and it's this neurological injury, I remember the first time I got to stand up and walk and I had splints sort of on my legs to make sure that I didn't break. Literally. I didn't catch my foot and break my leg or anything like that. I walked five meters and I had to sleep for 2 hours.

00:40:54:10 - 00:40:54:19
Claire Scapinello
Yeah.

00:40:54:19 - 00:40:56:00
Daniel Franco
Wow.

00:40:56:03 - 00:41:21:28
Claire Scapinello
The amount of retraining your body. Yeah. And the amount of energy it took was enormous. And that, you know, being back to your point about being present, you are in that moment. You are nowhere else but that moment because you don't have anywhere else to go. And I think when you are present and you have those levels of self-reflection around how am I how am I dealing with this?

00:41:21:28 - 00:41:56:21
Claire Scapinello
How am I doing? You know, you get to learn a lot about you as a person. You also learn an enormous amount about your body. You know how we made up. You pay so much closer attention to what's going on and that that's interesting as well. Just from a how do you feel? What's your body doing? And at this point, you know, you can't you know, you're not being able to go to the toilet on yourself.

00:41:56:21 - 00:42:05:07
Claire Scapinello
You know, there's a whole range of other things that are going not just the walking, but, you know, having an injury like that. You can't get up and just go to the bathroom. No, no, I.

00:42:05:10 - 00:42:29:22
Daniel Franco
I, I'm marveling over how you remained calm. Will you come the way how? I think because I put myself in your shoes. And although I think I have a really positive and growth mindset, I'm one to get emotional right Like and I get panicked. So it seems like I don't I don't have control over this, although I potentially do.

00:42:29:24 - 00:42:50:22
Daniel Franco
There's an element of fighting. Do I have control? Do I not do don't even know what's going on like this. That's where the panic can come in. And I think that's actually something that comes into a lot of ladies as well in the work force, which is this things that are happening that without that aren't in my control before I start to panic, Do you think?

00:42:50:24 - 00:42:54:19
Daniel Franco
Yeah, I'm just interested in your mindset at around the end. Do you think it's held you in good stead?

00:42:54:26 - 00:42:55:15
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, it's.

00:42:55:15 - 00:42:57:00
Daniel Franco
True. Now to you, Absolutely.

00:42:57:00 - 00:43:29:10
Claire Scapinello
And I think because when I was younger, those years spent as a child in hospital, the idea of being in hospital to me was something I was fine with the experience. Some people the experience itself is really traumatic, just being in that environment. Excuse me, but for me I was used to it. So that's something that I think I was able to deal with is the first part to get rid of that and put it in the box.

00:43:29:12 - 00:43:50:28
Claire Scapinello
I think there were parts where I compartmentalize these different things that were happening when I said, This is what I need to be focused on. I'm just going to be focused on these. Okay, When people aren't around, then let me the emotion out at that point because it's me by myself. Yeah. Then around being very pragmatic about what was going on.

00:43:50:28 - 00:44:16:02
Claire Scapinello
And I remember sitting down having these conversations with Mum going, Mum, if she's out, you get a walk, you know, walking to my if I don't, we need to be having a conversation about what this means. Next. We like I'm high. Will I stay here. What will that look like. And I think you know, there is a sense of I couldn't solve it all and I could only be in control of what was sitting.

00:44:16:02 - 00:44:36:14
Claire Scapinello
And I think that became something that I got quite focused on what I could and could control, because the other stuff around was just going to happen irrespective. And there was nothing that I could do to change the situation. And I think it took me a lot to understand that. This wasn't something I necessarily did. It's just something that happened.

00:44:36:17 - 00:45:02:24
Claire Scapinello
And I think I remember my girlfriend who who I was teaching to surf that day. I think she took a huge ambition. I learned that it was her fault that this happened to, you know, one of her best friends and it wasn't her fault and it just happened. And that was something I think you really keep going over in your head was there's no reason for it.

00:45:02:27 - 00:45:39:20
Claire Scapinello
It just happened. And some things just happen in life. And, you know, you can't control everything. And I think that you can control exactly to your point, how you respond to it. And I think that has had a huge impact. Now, when I'm looking at how I view the world in my role, but even as I was moving through other roles up to this point was you do let go of all these little emotional energy that people get carried away and yeah, hang on to what for really what for?

00:45:39:27 - 00:46:16:24
Claire Scapinello
And I think that was the big shift for me personally. I think I was lucky. I was in hospital three months, then I went to rehab and this part of the story probably connects a lot more to what I do today and why I do it. And I think part of my personal purpose so that I went to rehab and and weirdly, because you're young, you've had a stroke technically in your spinal cord and you can't walk, but you're not really still in the spinal unit view because, you know, paralyzed completely.

00:46:16:24 - 00:46:57:20
Claire Scapinello
So still an incomplete paraplegic. And, you know, there are many people like myself, and sometimes it's not sane, sometimes it is with walking issues, walking aids. You have a lot of residual challenges that come with that. So, you know, you do anything that traumatic to your body. There are other implications around, you know, physiological. So you know, your stomach, bladder, all those things get thrown on their is as well which is awesome but they are small price to pay for being able to walk.

00:46:57:22 - 00:47:28:03
Claire Scapinello
I went to a rehab that was for people who had had strokes and also knee and hip replacements. Now when you're going to a rehab like that, the average age is not 30, the average age is about 65. And so fundamentally the unit I was put in was really an aged care unit for recovering from those types of either surgery and or injury incidents.

00:47:28:03 - 00:48:06:02
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. And that was eye opening. And, you know, I had to tell you, I was 30, 30 on 30 at the time and I'm sitting there doing hydrotherapy rehab with a whole bunch of 70 year old men, which I think they just they loved the concept of having a younger woman there and they were quite funny that, you know, you're in this environment which very strategic institutionalized you don't really have any other activity except for every day you're doing physio or the it is with you, it is so regimented.

00:48:06:04 - 00:48:11:15
Claire Scapinello
730 breakfast 12 lunch dinner every day.

00:48:11:15 - 00:48:12:09
Daniel Franco
Becomes robotic.

00:48:12:13 - 00:48:23:12
Claire Scapinello
It does become robotic. And that was again I think was more challenging mentally than being in hospital for three months.

00:48:23:12 - 00:48:40:01
Daniel Franco
Yeah, you would think that that regiment would be well that structure would be make it easier on you because you would know what to expect. Right. You don't have to think about anything else because you rehabs your highest priority. So this plan, but you're saying that in actual fact it was worse.

00:48:40:04 - 00:49:02:15
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, it is worse. There's there's no individual anymore. You're just you're doing the same thing every day and the monotony of those types of activities. So I would do 4 hours of physio a day. And that in itself is tiring and you literally you get up eight, exercise eight, exercise eight, sleep every day.

00:49:02:18 - 00:49:06:28
Daniel Franco
So you lose what it's like being a human in that.

00:49:06:28 - 00:49:42:28
Claire Scapinello
Space a little bit. The other thing I think during that experience was one, you know, there were eight people in I Big Brain who were all older and I was just like, this is awful. Like I there wasn't any fun engagement. Everyone was either in their beds. And that gave me insight into sort of aged care and the experience that people go through in particular when you're talking about rehabilitation, but also in residential aged care as well, because that was fundamentally what the environment was like.

00:49:43:00 - 00:50:07:10
Claire Scapinello
And that gave me a really different perspective on aging. Also on, I think living with a disability or being, you know, I had to disabled parking permit when I when I left hospital, I gave that up because I'm like, there's actually worse people than me who need those car spaces. So I was get very annoyed when I say people using them that shouldn't be.

00:50:07:13 - 00:50:07:24
Daniel Franco
Creates.

00:50:07:25 - 00:50:17:13
Claire Scapinello
For me. Yeah I, I left rehab after four weeks and was lucky enough to go home.

00:50:17:15 - 00:50:18:27
Daniel Franco
And walked out.

00:50:19:05 - 00:50:23:03
Claire Scapinello
I walked out with a walking stick, but I walked out.

00:50:23:05 - 00:50:26:07
Daniel Franco
And so where are you? Where were you at today then?

00:50:26:13 - 00:50:41:01
Claire Scapinello
So I'm, you know, 15 years later, I don't use any I haven't used any walking aid since not long after I left rehab. I do a whole range of things. I ski, I ride bikes, a.

00:50:41:02 - 00:50:41:12
Daniel Franco
Full.

00:50:41:12 - 00:51:08:22
Claire Scapinello
Mobility night, night and and this is the bit which is always interesting because at last I can walk and I can do those activities. I can't run, I can't jump. I catch my feet a lot if I'm tired and I'll fall and I And that's the challenges of having a neurological injury that is also unseen, that impacts so that mobility.

00:51:08:24 - 00:51:30:00
Claire Scapinello
So for me, it's it's hidden a lot of the time from the outside world because it's not obvious it's there, but it's not obvious. But I remember four months out of rehab I thought, you know what? What's the worst? It's going to happen to me. I've already been told I can't walk again. I've got these injuries. I'm going to go skiing.

00:51:30:11 - 00:51:30:21
Daniel Franco
jeez.

00:51:30:24 - 00:51:51:25
Claire Scapinello
So got on first. I go back on my snowboard and went, this is a lot harder balance wise. So, okay, let's pick up this gaze and start skiing again. And so I did. And strangely, could do it. Not necessarily well to start with, but now I can pretty much ski anything as.

00:51:51:25 - 00:51:54:12
Daniel Franco
In proper snow skiing. Yes.

00:51:54:14 - 00:51:59:10
Claire Scapinello
Now I pretty much snow skiing.

00:51:59:10 - 00:52:01:21
Daniel Franco
And what I can do is to plow and I still fall.

00:52:01:21 - 00:52:04:09
Claire Scapinello
I don't like to plow. Well, actually doesn't work for me.

00:52:04:14 - 00:52:05:25
Daniel Franco
It's not good. yeah.

00:52:05:28 - 00:52:10:06
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. So I still like the side. Side. Stopping is probably my preference.

00:52:10:06 - 00:52:12:07
Daniel Franco
Yeah, but you've got practice in doing that, right?

00:52:12:13 - 00:52:15:00
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. And that.

00:52:15:01 - 00:52:16:03
Daniel Franco
And the black runs everything.

00:52:16:04 - 00:52:41:13
Claire Scapinello
That crowns. Yep. Here. Europe, everywhere. Well done. And that's been something to keep challenging myself again, the how I think this is the competitive part of my nature and the the sporting part that what could I do and found things that I could do. Yeah brilliant the grief on that though, the thing that I grieved the most was the inability to do those things.

00:52:41:15 - 00:52:53:03
Claire Scapinello
So I can't run across the road like a normal person. And so I have to think about where's the car, How far away? Yes, I'm really conscious of the.

00:52:53:06 - 00:52:54:18
Daniel Franco
Whole bunch of calculations that you're.

00:52:54:18 - 00:53:05:12
Claire Scapinello
Doing. And even the calculations. Okay, Where's the closest bass? Right. Because, you know, part of the injuries that it impacts your bladder hypersensitivity.

00:53:05:14 - 00:53:07:20
Daniel Franco
We said that as we came in today, right?

00:53:07:20 - 00:53:34:01
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, I'm. I'm always. Yeah, it's a really funny one, too. Yeah. Get over the modesty of that and just go. Okay, this is just part of it. And, you know, you're always looking for these things because, you know, they impact how you see yourself personally and your confidence as well. So I mentioned interesting learnings through the whole journey.

00:53:34:04 - 00:54:13:23
Daniel Franco
Well done. And that's an amazing story. Thank you for sharing with us that that insight. I think your ability to to think about what could be and stay calm and present in the moment is something that shows tremendous leadership and strength. So great, great work on that one. I do want to jump now into your career, which has been full of growth and transformation and resilience with, you know, 20 years of senior leadership roles and really heavily focus in areas like marketing and brand communications.

00:54:13:23 - 00:54:41:16
Daniel Franco
And you know, your last role you said at our SO was the digital chief digital officer, which is a slightly different path to CEO. I like you typically see the CFO, the CEO or whatever it might be moving into a CEO role. And in 2022 you stepped into the role of the CCH, which, you know, you first see a big significant role.

00:54:41:16 - 00:54:49:26
Daniel Franco
One of the biggest aged care providers in South Australia. Has it been jumping into the fire pit.

00:54:49:28 - 00:55:19:05
Claire Scapinello
Do you know? I'm it's been great actually coming back to South Australia in Adelaide after a long time away, you know, is an adjustment in itself. I actually moved back here before I got the role and I was commuting to Sydney during COVID, which was, which is interesting and working in aged care during COVID. So I think the role that I was in before, you know, really big, much bigger organization than ACA age was complex and challenging.

00:55:19:05 - 00:55:42:02
Claire Scapinello
And that entire time I think was preparing me for this role and I was part of the CEO success. And this was a conversation that I was having at the time with my CEO and what did I need to do. And one of the big things for me was around. I needed to be able to drive and have revenue lines, different operational elements within my framing.

00:55:42:02 - 00:56:13:22
Claire Scapinello
And that was part of the focus in that last row so that I could move operationally across different areas to prepare me fundamentally. So now this role, I think it's always interesting in it and you mentioned the start around my background and the path it is the path that isn't frequently chosen as the CEO. I think it's interesting, I was I worked for Pacific Brands Bunbury and so more, but in that time I had two.

00:56:13:22 - 00:56:44:18
Claire Scapinello
There were two female heads of great general managers at both the businesses. So Morphett went on to be CEO of Pacific Brands and her background was schoolteacher, marketing and then into CEO of an enormous, I think at the time that employed about 10,000 people. So it was possible. I'd seen it possible, but it wasn't that it wasn't that frequent.

00:56:44:24 - 00:56:45:27
Daniel Franco
It was the road less traveled.

00:56:45:27 - 00:57:08:25
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. Looking for the word? Yeah, definitely a road less traveled. And I think for me, you know, I've always been so focused on the customer as a marketer, and if you are a true marketer, you are immersed in the strategy of the business. You are looking to the future. What is happening next? How are you informing the business about this?

00:57:08:25 - 00:57:35:21
Claire Scapinello
Through insights, through research, through looking at trends that's such a big part of a market is role. And then if you have the commercial nous that goes with it, you can start seeing really clearly how the to drive an organization. And, and for me that was very much the path I took. I think the other thing that has helped my journey is my mum worked for computer company so she worked for Olivetti for 15 years.

00:57:35:21 - 00:58:17:25
Claire Scapinello
So I grew up around computers, around technology, around digital and that was a key part of this transformation for me into this role was digital has always been at the heart of everything I've done as well and, you know, when we look at today's landscape, that transition into a digital landscape, understanding it, how platforms, what do you need to do, how do you connect all of this together is essential and, you know, is one of the areas today, if you kind of read Harvard Business Review or even I think company directors did an article around today, what are the attributes of the skills that CEOs of today and tomorrow need?

00:58:17:28 - 00:58:50:18
Claire Scapinello
You need to understand digital. You need to understand customer and customer strategy and how that influences culture, how it influences how the external landscape you as an organization. And also then how does it drive your business decision making? And I think for me, those were the elements that, you know, the board were looking for at HRH and the importance of customer today in particular, not just this sector, but many sectors.

00:58:50:18 - 00:59:12:01
Claire Scapinello
And I think if you look at I think it's Woodside Petroleum, the CEO came up through a similar stream. You look at some of our larger organizations in Australia today, both listed and listed, the famous who are also moving into those roles primarily have a very different profile and background. Yeah, you know, in any organization, which.

00:59:12:01 - 00:59:13:16
Daniel Franco
Is, which is great, it's.

00:59:13:18 - 00:59:14:07
Claire Scapinello
Amazing.

00:59:14:07 - 00:59:33:12
Daniel Franco
I think we had the CEO of Mitsubishi, Shaun Westcott, and he's got a similar he started in China and went into marketing and then went into and now he's by far one of the most amazing CEOs I've seen. So I think, yeah, I think it's I think it's it should be more of it, to be honest.

00:59:33:12 - 00:59:57:29
Claire Scapinello
Well, when you look at today the importance of customer and the importance of employee. So to that point are people in culture lens. It's so important to get those parts right. And I think for me then having, you know, breadth of operational exposure during all of my role because in marketing you need to know every part of the organization how it fits together, how it works.

00:59:58:01 - 00:59:59:02
Claire Scapinello
You drive.

00:59:59:04 - 01:00:04:02
Daniel Franco
Not only not only how the organization works, but how the external world works as well.

01:00:04:05 - 01:00:40:08
Claire Scapinello
And what are the customers want. Yeah, because you help influence the products that are actually put to market, the services that are delivered, what's the pricing of them? How would they work in comparison to everything else? So it does give you a really good breadth of experience and insight into how an organization works. I think, you know, we're seeing less of the traditional operate and or finance roles moving in and now a blend of skills and experience to to make you a relevant CEO today.

01:00:40:10 - 01:01:04:01
Claire Scapinello
And I think part of it is also when you think about where do you spend the most money from an internal you know, if you look at the money, most organizations spend on digital today, it's huge. They're transforming their organization either for the customer or they're moving from existing legacy platforms and systems into new technology. And for some organizations, that's a really big expense.

01:01:04:04 - 01:01:08:20
Claire Scapinello
And if you have no understanding of it, yeah, you're not asking the right questions either.

01:01:08:22 - 01:01:11:24
Daniel Franco
It's not only a big expense, but it's a big change for.

01:01:11:24 - 01:01:12:11
Claire Scapinello
A huge.

01:01:12:11 - 01:01:15:22
Daniel Franco
Change for the people who are going through it. Right.

01:01:15:23 - 01:01:16:20
Claire Scapinello
Huge change.

01:01:16:27 - 01:01:33:28
Daniel Franco
And so in your roles in the executive world, going through those changes, how have you seen the importance of change management like especially with the complex stuff, how much emphasis do you place on change management?

01:01:34:00 - 01:02:07:28
Claire Scapinello
I place a lot on change management and it can be delivered in different ways. I've seen it delivered more subtly bottom up and it's a slow burn around. What's happening with a long lead time until you're getting to the change. And I think that's the priming, the taking people on the journey. Yeah, I have, you know, last couple of roles, big transformational change in an organization where you've gone from paper manila folders to using Workday for 4000 staff.

01:02:07:28 - 01:02:43:19
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, yeah. That's a huge and in the space of a year. Yeah. So you know you need change management professionals to come in and help with that process because it's so important to understand what the different groups need and actually how to communicate that in the best ways. And the, you know, I think for me, knowing when to use those different change roles in an organization, if I was to say now my view of importance of change and I think almost every people and culture team today should have a change role in their bodies.

01:02:43:22 - 01:02:57:06
Claire Scapinello
Constantly looking at the evolution. And that's something we're looking at internally around transitioning some of our change capabilities and training capabilities that have been working on projects, but into now ongoing ongoing activity.

01:02:57:09 - 01:03:02:02
Daniel Franco
Because it's not only about digital, right? When people think of change management, they think of digital as this is about restructuring.

01:03:02:02 - 01:03:04:00
Claire Scapinello
The enabling of digital.

01:03:04:00 - 01:03:13:20
Daniel Franco
Was an enabler. Yes, but it's there's so many other forms of change as organizational changes, restructures, mergers, acquisitions, there's so many different types of changes which impact the human.

01:03:13:23 - 01:03:38:13
Claire Scapinello
Within and to your point, the human and I think it's, you know, I always have to manage the human versus the the business. And that's one that probably is one of my greatest challenges around getting things done because I am someone who likes to achieve. I'm always moving forward. I'd like to see, you know, I'm action orientated, so it's everyone, Come on, let's get moving.

01:03:38:13 - 01:03:57:00
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, I have to remember that not everyone changes at my pace and I change quickly. Yeah, and I'm ready. I already have the answer, you know, and six steps ahead. And that's something I have to continually check because not everyone is there with me. And so, yeah, that's a big part of change.

01:03:57:00 - 01:04:32:16
Daniel Franco
I fall into the same category. I work for a company, I lead a company that manages change and I am that that same persona is you in that space. It's something that you always need to check yourself with. And I guess there was one thing that you said is there's a slow burn to change, right? Which is how do we and the way I hear that is there is a real emphasis needed up front in making sure that we are dotting the I's and crossing the T's and we are setting this project or this program or whatever it might be up for success.

01:04:32:16 - 01:04:47:26
Daniel Franco
There's a whole bunch of work that needs to be done is too often we go from this, right? We're going to design and this is what we're going to do. This is the change that we're going to make. This fits in with our strategy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're all going forward and then we jump in, right? Let's execute.

01:04:47:29 - 01:05:12:23
Daniel Franco
And there's this business gap, which is what we call the enable phase. This is gap. You know, we haven't done the research. We haven't figured out what is actually in scope, banana scope, what what actually how does this actually what's the context behind this? How does this connect to our strategy? The client, the customer, the community, you name it down to how does this interact with everyone around?

01:05:12:23 - 01:05:33:09
Daniel Franco
You know, if I pull a lever here, what happens down down there, followed by the perspectives of everyone's. If you follow that sort of framework front, you can really set your project up for success. And that's where I think change management falls down. And there's this rush and push and speed that we keep skipping that part every single time.

01:05:33:11 - 01:05:57:15
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, And I think the other bit where I've seen any change fail and to your point, change can be so many different areas in an organization. Any time you're taking one person from doing one thing to doing something else, there's an element of change involved. I think what's really interesting when you actually are leading an organization is the right that people can absorb change.

01:05:57:18 - 01:06:23:22
Claire Scapinello
But also how are you hiring people for change? We talk about adaptive capacity and how do we actually employ people into the future that that has have have those skills and have the agility. And, you know, today that's becoming so much more important because of the fact everything is moving so quickly. Current. It was like yesterday I was watching.

01:06:23:24 - 01:06:48:28
Claire Scapinello
It was actually it wasn't. It was this morning. And one of the original board members from chat taped and she's an Australian born in Melbourne she's in her 30. Amazing what blows my mind actually. And she was talking about the rate of change as well and this environment around AI and how it's being used and we've gone from now I with chat JPT to you can actually create a video telling what it is I want a car doing this on here anymore.

01:06:48:29 - 01:07:18:10
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. Create the video for you that propensity in the speed of change that is happening from a technology perspective impacts all of us. And that's no different in the workplace. And sometimes I think we separate the two around people's ability to change and people can change. And that's something that, you know, as a leader, you're constantly grappling with the balance of how much change is enough and.

01:07:18:10 - 01:07:42:12
Claire Scapinello
Also, why do we call it change? And this is an interesting one because if you would know, as I do, having led so many of these big projects and the words transformation and change can be used as dirty word, correct. And and so I try and avoid using them these days and not because I 100% believe in both and they are so important.

01:07:42:15 - 01:08:09:06
Claire Scapinello
But it's people's perception when you say it. And that is, you know, we're doing transformation, transformation. It's actually now we're just modernizing what we did before. Yeah, we are on a constant evolution. It's continuous improvement, continuous improvement, and using that language around, you know, we're just doing something different each day and doing it incrementally. I mean, transformation fundamentally is incremental change that leads to an outcome of you've transformed from one to the other.

01:08:09:10 - 01:08:12:27
Claire Scapinello
Great. So that's something that I think is is critically important.

01:08:13:00 - 01:08:29:00
Daniel Franco
It's funny that you say that transformation because we have the exact same view, although we call ourselves the change management company, right? Because and transformation company because that's just what the norm is. Right. And to explain in any other way will be, you know, from a marketing point of view, it's too difficult.

01:08:29:03 - 01:08:29:24
Claire Scapinello
What you're told.

01:08:29:27 - 01:08:40:01
Daniel Franco
Exactly. So but but what? Because everyone says the same thing changes and transformation is essentially a dirty word. It's like the word pivot, right? Like.

01:08:40:04 - 01:08:42:10
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, right. Yeah. Favorite brand. Correct.

01:08:42:10 - 01:08:58:12
Daniel Franco
Let's let's not use that word. But what's interesting about that for me is that change has been done so poorly that it becomes a dirty word, right? Isn't that just too clear, shining a light on the fact that we do not know how to manage it properly?

01:08:58:15 - 01:09:27:04
Claire Scapinello
I think and this is, again, my experience, my personal perspective, I think why gets used in that way is because it's an easy finger point. Yeah. And, you know, when you go through really complex projects is so much finger pointing when things aren't going right, the ownership. Yeah. And therefore, let's buy the change. Wait a minute. You're responsible for making people come on this journey.

01:09:27:04 - 01:09:37:24
Claire Scapinello
Well, if you build the wrong product because you didn't listen to the people to start with or listen to what needed to happen, Correct. It doesn't matter how good your changes, it may be amazing you're going to have.

01:09:37:24 - 01:09:40:17
Daniel Franco
Problems, correct? Not to mention if leadership amp on board.

01:09:40:22 - 01:10:28:03
Claire Scapinello
So that was my thing. Yeah, that is my second point. You have to if you are doing organization change that is going to set you up for success into the future. If the leader, the CEO of the organization is not committed, understands and is championing change, forget it. Yeah, I have came over. I have been in organizations and big listed businesses where we have been driving consumers strategy change and the implementation of it through the middle of the organization down and trying to influence above and the executive having no concept of what you're actually trying to do and or did not see the importance of listening to the customer or customer strategy or transformation.

01:10:28:06 - 01:11:01:09
Claire Scapinello
And you sit back and you go, Okay, but this is happening in your business. Why aren't you paying attention to it and why aren't you leading it and owning it? So I think for me, the where I've seen the greatest successes is by far that there is right from the board and the CEO that commitment to what you're trying to achieve the unity at an executive team of why you're doing it and that we're all part of leading change and it's about evolving an organization for the future.

01:11:01:11 - 01:11:21:10
Claire Scapinello
It's not it's not about just sitting still. So I think the part for me where I've seen it so and then what happens is you get executives finger pointing at why it didn't work. I will blame, you know, the transformation team. Yeah, because they're easy to blame, because they're complex and they're subjective.

01:11:21:12 - 01:11:57:22
Daniel Franco
Here here, you know, package that went up Gabs And for that one out there on a marketing run. So I think you know what I'm about to ask you might be a little bit controversial might piss a few people off but why are they still CEOs? I can't fathom this. Why are they still CEOs or leaders out in the world in this at the moment who just haven't got this in their head like they they how do they how do you reach a position where you're leading an organization where the world is constantly changing and updating and moving from one way of doing things to another?

01:11:57:25 - 01:12:07:09
Daniel Franco
Like consistently like change is the new norm, right? But yet they still put their head in the ground like an ostrich. Right? Like, why? Why is that?

01:12:07:11 - 01:12:35:23
Claire Scapinello
Look, I think I think it's exposure to environments which engender change or engender these type of activities. I think, you know, more traditional industries have very set ways of doing things for very particular reasons. So the importance or the experience that is gained around saying how different organized operate or different industries I think hampers that. I don't think it's intentional for many.

01:12:35:23 - 01:13:12:18
Claire Scapinello
I think it is just purely a outcome of the experience or the exposure you've had to different industries and organizations and different approaches to sort of if I was to say innovation or and I'm going to use the word change in that respect, but you know, a different approaches in how organizations would run. And I think probably one of the I mean, I certainly was very inspired in the sense of what they were trying to do with your organization was Michael Cameron, who was the CEO when I was at JPT.

01:13:12:20 - 01:13:34:04
Claire Scapinello
And, you know, I remember in I think the 2014 strategy was about taking the organization through transformation and this transformational change of the organization. And it was so clearly mapped out. And, you know, you look at that vision back then when most big property and institution was we're not even thinking about the customer, and we were part of a whole customer strategy arm of the business.

01:13:34:04 - 01:14:00:27
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, you know, that was forward thinking in what it was a traditional industry and you know, there are pockets of it, but I guess it's having the experience and also the desire to learn what's going on in other organizations that are so different to yourself that may actually be beneficial. I think scale is a challenge as well. Where, you know, for some organizations the scale is just too big to do some of these activities.

01:14:00:27 - 01:14:24:02
Claire Scapinello
So it's like, Well, let's just stick with the hard core fundamentals that we know that drive it. I think in leading into the future the power employees have and the employee expectations will have to shift that and boards themselves because remember, boards appoints the CEO is not just appointed by the other executive, rather it's appointed by a board.

01:14:24:04 - 01:14:29:10
Claire Scapinello
So it also begs the question around how are boards educating themselves in these areas.

01:14:29:10 - 01:14:30:09
Daniel Franco
In their capability.

01:14:30:09 - 01:14:53:29
Claire Scapinello
As well? Yeah, And and I have to say, you know, I'm really fortunate that neither would have a really diverse mix of skills and that had a very different influence on the outcomes. And I think again, you got to always ask the question, yeah, who, who's who you employing for and what lens do the board take on the type of person they want leading their.

01:14:53:29 - 01:14:57:21
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. And the, the custodian of that organization.

01:14:57:26 - 01:15:23:26
Daniel Franco
Yeah. 100%. There was a leadership study done recently with I interviewed over a thousand board members and said who had just recently fired a CEO and and 31%. So the number one leading cause for why CEOs were fired 31% was because of mismanagement of change. That was it. So so it seems, though, boards are starting to move in the right direction.

01:15:23:26 - 01:15:32:07
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Which is great. But yeah, I think I'm going to the days where we can put our hand head in the sand and not know about the change that's going on in the organization.

01:15:32:07 - 01:15:52:06
Claire Scapinello
And I think it's interesting and I've been having different conversations with people. If you just go back 20 years and go and look at what were the skills or the remit of a CEO in comparison to where it is today, it's changed dramatically. You had the very traditional I have my corner office, I had my secretary out the front.

01:15:52:08 - 01:16:03:21
Claire Scapinello
You know, you didn't see the CEO or you didn't have engagement with the CEO. They were, you know, almost in their ivory tower and untouchable. And they led from above. And there was.

01:16:03:21 - 01:16:04:24
Daniel Franco
This Jack Welch type.

01:16:04:25 - 01:16:52:29
Claire Scapinello
God like God like And I remember even when I started and you know, that that view, I think what we saw with changing workplace culture, we've seen that role transition into something different today. And that's not all organizations. I think the expectation from employees and boards is that your CEO is more visible. They're engaged with the business, they understand what's going on with their employees, that they are 100% invested in the feedback that's happening from the ground up that they need to be across a lot more information and and a lot more of what's happening in the business, not just working on the business, but and there's the balance of the both of those, but

01:16:53:03 - 01:17:29:25
Claire Scapinello
that, you know, they're part of the organization I think, you know when I was coming into this role, looking at where do you take inspiration? And I listen to lots of different podcasts and blinkist and, you know, sort of thinking about what am I bringing to the role? How am I showing up? And, you know, having spent years in retail on the floor, that you were you actually out on the floor working with the team as an executive, the executive, the CEO of Best Buys, when you started in the role, spent all this time on the floor getting to know the business.

01:17:29:28 - 01:17:50:27
Claire Scapinello
And so that was one of the first things I did when I took on the role today. I went and worked in our day to day program. You know, I go to my uniform like every other staff member, and I experience what it was like for our clients who visit a dementia day program. What did they do? You know, I had some amazing experiences around our music therapy.

01:17:51:00 - 01:18:14:01
Claire Scapinello
You know, we were all singing along to Know In the Jungle, which I don't think I've done since I was at school. But you're looking around a group of people and saying the joy, the engagement, that's what we do as an organization. And I think for me it was actually really being amongst the work we do and understanding it and.

01:18:14:03 - 01:18:24:26
Claire Scapinello
I think, you know, there are the expectations today that CEOs, you know, need to immerse themselves in the organizations they're leading and understanding from the ground up what's going on.

01:18:25:03 - 01:18:32:21
Daniel Franco
I like that using the retail methodology, I think we had Martin Hastie on the show who, you know, built youth works.

01:18:32:21 - 01:18:34:00
Claire Scapinello
And many years ago.

01:18:34:02 - 01:18:35:28
Daniel Franco
It was wave.

01:18:36:12 - 01:18:37:20
Claire Scapinello
yeah, you know something?

01:18:37:23 - 01:19:01:06
Daniel Franco
And so Martin's strength was that he, you know, as CEO, he put himself as an employee under the store manager at a different store every single weekend just so he could be part of it and be connected. And he and then, you know, Fridays he would give himself a thinking space and to be added what he could then do to improve and continue the quality.

01:19:01:06 - 01:19:27:06
Daniel Franco
So there's a lot to be said for being in amongst and but I am conscious of your time right now, and I just want to ask a few quick questions, obviously around the aged care industry before jump into sort of our quickfire questions at the end. The aged care is one of the biggest growing industries, Australia by far and one of the biggest growth sectors, I should say.

01:19:27:08 - 01:19:53:05
Daniel Franco
And what what do you think in your eyes is the biggest opportunity yet? Because you said that to your point earlier around it, it felt robotic. And what is that industry looking at doing to be more inclusive, be more, you know, bring more life back to it because it is an industry that is going to touch every single one of us at some point in our lives.

01:19:53:05 - 01:19:55:19
Daniel Franco
So, yeah, just interesting your thoughts on that.

01:19:55:23 - 01:20:22:26
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, it's I mean, there's lots of talk at the moment as well around the sector. So, you know, this week Mark Butler with the Honorable Mark Butler was here talking to a lot of providers around how, for example, retirement living can play a part in that aging journey care. So shared care, if I look at the industry, you know, one in 20 workers will work in this sector in the next ten.

01:20:22:28 - 01:20:45:16
Claire Scapinello
The growth in just the people needing care. I think we go from somewhere around about 2.1 to 3.4 million in Australia which is huge, grows the baby boomer generation moving through is going to mean that care is going to have to look different than how it is today because. We are going to have challenges with workforce and it's a compounding issue.

01:20:45:17 - 01:21:09:00
Claire Scapinello
We don't have enough houses for people to come and move to, you know, somewhere like Adelaide. Then you've got international workers who people, you know, migrating to Australia for a better life, who have skills that, you know, whether it's nursing care, that is also a key part of being able to provide housing for them, for them as well.

01:21:09:00 - 01:21:37:01
Claire Scapinello
Again, when we look at residential aged care in its traditional format, of which I actually don't have any more, that were very forward thinking in their approach to selling that in 2014 and focused on keeping people at home and home care and retirement living. So yeah, I think if I'm looking to the future, I see digital technology playing a huge role in care.

01:21:37:04 - 01:22:01:23
Claire Scapinello
More from I mean you talked about you've got you on your arm. Yeah we're also looking at well what what are those devices look like for people, older adults, especially if you start thinking about there's to be more people living with dementia, cognitive decline. You've also got people who don't have family. You know, we have a lot of people who, for example, my parents, until I moved back, were here by themselves.

01:22:01:25 - 01:22:28:23
Claire Scapinello
One child in London, one child in Sydney. They're not going to have the people around them to necessarily care for them. So how do you stop support networks around people who don't have them? And this is where that reconnection with community is essential. Also, I think that people do want to stay in their own homes. Yeah, that familiarity, their community, the location, that is something that I think is becoming more important.

01:22:28:24 - 01:22:52:06
Claire Scapinello
And residential aged care there is the absolute place for and having had my father spend the last four years in residential aged care, the challenges that they they need to evolve to be more home like, yeah, but there is a huge amount of money that's needed to be invested to that and that's also a challenge. Yeah.

01:22:52:08 - 01:23:13:04
Daniel Franco
You use the word digital being playing a huge part. Do you think it's do you think there's risk? And then you said about nursing and workforce shortages, do you think there's a risk that digital will become so overwhelming that it takes away the human element of what aged care should provide? I mean, because that's.

01:23:13:11 - 01:23:35:16
Claire Scapinello
I think it's an enabler of some of the activities that are that are delivered today that could be delivered through a digital interface. So I'll use the example. So we said today, normally if there's medication that needs to be dispensed, for example, you need to send a lot time someone out to ensure they're taking the medication and therefore you're making medication.

01:23:35:16 - 01:23:53:26
Claire Scapinello
Standby. You know, we will say there's is already in the market automatic pill dispensers that you can engage and say, yeah, yeah, I've taken my medication. If you need to have a quick checkup or how you going today, let's look at your blood pressure or your glucose. If you've got diabetes, which is the most common disease for older adults.

01:23:53:27 - 01:24:28:07
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, you can do that through a virtual teleconference. Yeah. So there are different ways to have the right oversight. And I think there's a difference between using digital as a social engagement tool or using it as sitting in the background doing monitoring some level of actually engagement with where you're doing a specific task orientated. Yeah, but also around understanding the person, how they're moving around their apartment, what are they doing, Are they going to the bathroom more frequently?

01:24:28:07 - 01:24:43:28
Claire Scapinello
Therefore that could be a trigger for a UTI. Is the temperature gone up? How they sleeping? Are they getting up and moving around in the middle of the night for leaving their home at 1:00? Yeah. And wondering, you know, that's how I see digital coming into it.

01:24:44:01 - 01:25:11:21
Daniel Franco
I agree. I think it's a massive benefit. I think if you move to a world where they go back to a world where there wasn't digital, there was a nurse going to the room every hour or whatever it might be. Right. And if, you know, Joe Bloggs is, you know, 85 year old male in his own room, he's wearing a loop and potentially and all these health metrics are saying, yep, is good, then no one's going there the whole day potentially.

01:25:11:21 - 01:25:12:27
Daniel Franco
And is that.

01:25:12:29 - 01:25:13:13
Claire Scapinello
That's not.

01:25:13:13 - 01:25:14:19
Daniel Franco
Good. That's not good.

01:25:14:19 - 01:25:42:12
Claire Scapinello
So if I was to say where you want to spend that energy, it's not spending it on the mate. The tasks that could be done through digital automation to free actually people up to actually have the engagement sight and social interaction. So we know the isolation is going to be a big issue. It only going to be exacerbated with the with this sort of volume of people moving into.

01:25:42:12 - 01:25:43:17
Daniel Franco
And workforce shortages.

01:25:43:22 - 01:26:11:12
Claire Scapinello
And workforce shortages. So one of the other things is how do you create community? So we're focused on we have a community engagement team will continue to grow that. That's part of our social. How do you actually then fund or have other support mechanisms? I mean, we look at people who live in retirement villages of which we have 109, the community aspect there, or just actually having someone next door that in case something happens, there is someone next door that they know.

01:26:11:12 - 01:26:37:14
Claire Scapinello
Yeah, that plays a huge role in building those smaller communities. I mean, I remember growing up, we knew all of the neighbors that lived around us. There was a relationship with that name for the carpet to lived next door, three legged cat squeezy, right. You know, that isn't there today. You've seen this community erode, which used to look after the older lady next door and keep her keep an eye out on it.

01:26:37:16 - 01:26:40:24
Claire Scapinello
You're not getting that. And we need to bring that back.

01:26:40:26 - 01:26:48:21
Daniel Franco
Residential living where someone's using their own home. How do you create that sense of community that way?

01:26:48:23 - 01:27:20:16
Claire Scapinello
So when we talk without sort of care coordinators and the people who are working with our clients, one is around understanding their social needs and is part of that, engaging them in social activities. So we have actual dedicated social workers as part of our team and they deal with the most complex cases. Yeah, and some of those are, you know, really isolated individuals with complex care or mental health as well to ensure that they're actually reengaging in society a kick when it is.

01:27:20:16 - 01:28:00:15
Claire Scapinello
Also we do social support. So we'll take people out for lunch, will take them shopping, or they can come to our community group. So we do bus groups, We have art, we have day programs. So our day programs, we've got four sites around Adelaide and that's the day respite for carers when you sort of have a partner potentially or a loved one that has maybe cognitive decline or would would like more engagement with people, you can actually go and engage in those activities and it's activities, lunch, eating, afternoon tea, they'll do whole range of different activities like music therapy.

01:28:00:15 - 01:28:08:03
Claire Scapinello
So We actually have horticultural music therapy or we have other community programs that we run at different sites.

01:28:08:06 - 01:28:11:17
Daniel Franco
So there's a tremendous amount being done, which is great.

01:28:11:20 - 01:28:12:02
Claire Scapinello
Yeah.

01:28:12:03 - 01:28:23:29
Daniel Franco
What's before I jump into these quickfire questions, last question before I do, what's the biggest myth that the aged care industry has done that's quite widely viewed out there?

01:28:24:01 - 01:28:53:16
Claire Scapinello
I think the greatest misses. I just when I need help, I'll get it. And then it's hard to access when you actually embark on the journey. My personal and say this start your journey early. Understand what you need to do. Register with my aged care. Make sure you're in the system and you're on that journey. Because a lot of the time there is the myth that I care when I need help.

01:28:53:16 - 01:29:34:06
Claire Scapinello
It would just be there and it's not. And that is primarily because of, you know, wait times. I need to get assessed, get assessed early, get a my aged care number. I understand what you're either entitled to or not, or if you do want some extra support, it is actually available outside of funding. So I mean, even in our area with home care, people have the view that you can only access it with a home care package, whereas you know, I could be paying for it for my mum, which is what we see more of today, that the our generation are actually more financially secure and have actually have the disposable income to pay sometimes

01:29:34:06 - 01:29:56:08
Claire Scapinello
for that care. So would I want to pay it back to my mum or dad that has looked after me folk me fed me for I don't know how many people spent half a million dollars, $2 million on me over those years. Yeah. Reinvesting back in out older adults is something we need to do more of. And the myth that you can access services even if you don't use Commonwealth funding.

01:29:56:11 - 01:30:22:02
Claire Scapinello
I think the second one I'm going to take two myths and this one is also that people think they need to pay huge amounts of money to get into residential aged care. There are always options and there are always different ways depending on your circumstance. It's about asking because, you know, a lot of people say to me, and this is in particular when I was working in residential aged care is we need half a million dollars and you do get it back.

01:30:22:02 - 01:30:32:03
Claire Scapinello
It's a bond, but you don't that's not the only option you have actually go and talk to people. There's this myth sitting in there and that's.

01:30:32:03 - 01:30:33:02
Daniel Franco
What I thought.

01:30:33:04 - 01:30:53:25
Claire Scapinello
So there are different options that go to what was called a residential care deposit, which is a rad which, you know, you put in a bond or there's a DAC, which you pay a daily accommodation contribution on top of your daily care fee, which is that variance. So there are different options. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So ask the question if.

01:30:53:25 - 01:30:57:17
Daniel Franco
You're, if you're saying get on that aged care plan.

01:30:57:19 - 01:30:58:07
Claire Scapinello
My.

01:30:58:09 - 01:31:01:00
Daniel Franco
Is how would I like. Is there any age.

01:31:01:06 - 01:31:03:26
Claire Scapinello
Well ideally you need to be over 65.

01:31:03:26 - 01:31:05:17
Daniel Franco
Okay so, so.

01:31:05:19 - 01:31:08:05
Claire Scapinello
Yeah different funding streams but.

01:31:08:07 - 01:31:10:29
Daniel Franco
So if you're fit and healthy at 65, don't really worry about it too much.

01:31:11:00 - 01:31:50:01
Claire Scapinello
I wouldn't say don't worry about I'd say keep fit and healthy. So yeah, strength moving. Keep yourself active, keep yourself engaged. Whether it's going to join a new group, I think there is a huge I mean, we know there's a correlation between if you staying physically active, your life expectancy, but also your general well-being, both your emotional and physical benefits and things like, you know, I mean, we run a whole range of strength, Pilates mat classes, exercise classes, which also keep people engaged because they're saying you're socializing, but they're also getting fit at the same time.

01:31:50:03 - 01:31:59:18
Daniel Franco
Beautiful. Excellent. Right. Quickfire questions. We're going to round this up. what are you reading right now?

01:31:59:21 - 01:32:24:18
Claire Scapinello
I, I laughed when I saw these because I'm not, I'm not rating anything at the moment. The last thing I read was the 2023 best articles in the book. When I when I go on holiday, I take off switch off and I will read a whole book of something. I've got a whole list of books from lessons in chemistry paper plane sitting next to my bed.

01:32:24:20 - 01:32:34:00
Claire Scapinello
They've all got about 20 pages in. I tend to read sounds. I said, I'd like to have a group.

01:32:34:02 - 01:32:35:09
Daniel Franco
I got one on my desk.

01:32:35:09 - 01:32:36:24
Claire Scapinello
I really enjoy it. Yeah.

01:32:36:27 - 01:32:37:27
Daniel Franco
There's some good articles.

01:32:37:27 - 01:32:40:15
Claire Scapinello
And I've always enjoyed reading those types of.

01:32:40:22 - 01:32:41:10
Daniel Franco
I'm the same.

01:32:41:10 - 01:32:41:17
Claire Scapinello
Yeah.

01:32:41:18 - 01:32:52:24
Daniel Franco
So beautiful. What's so on that? So then what's one self-development book that you believe stand out or you or that maybe you've gifted more than anything else?

01:32:52:26 - 01:33:16:09
Claire Scapinello
I think for me it was this. There's two that have always stood out for me. Ali was Daniel Goldman's emotional intelligence. So I think in my first job when I moved, we did that actually the mapping. Yeah, all of the people who worked in the organization and it was fascinating around just, you know, the Metis skills that make up our emotional intelligence.

01:33:16:11 - 01:33:35:13
Claire Scapinello
You know, as I've transitioned as a leader, you know, these other aspects around mindfulness, you can't actually have emotional intelligence until you really start with the mindfulness. So that's one. The other one is Malcolm Gladwell. Anything that he wrote, anything that he writes, I think, you know, talking to strangers. Fabulous, Fabulous.

01:33:35:13 - 01:33:37:00
Daniel Franco
Did you listen to the audio book?

01:33:37:02 - 01:33:37:20
Claire Scapinello
I did, yeah.

01:33:37:20 - 01:33:38:13
Daniel Franco
I reckon that.

01:33:38:15 - 01:33:46:08
Claire Scapinello
I liked the audio book. I do have the actual book. But then Outliers Outliers is, you know.

01:33:46:10 - 01:33:47:11
Daniel Franco
Is that was.

01:33:47:11 - 01:33:49:20
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. The tipping point. I mean, where do you go. Yeah.

01:33:49:20 - 01:33:52:09
Daniel Franco
He's insinuating he's I love his brain.

01:33:52:15 - 01:33:54:05
Claire Scapinello
Yeah. And how he thinks.

01:33:54:05 - 01:33:58:19
Daniel Franco
Yeah. It's fabulous. What's one lesson that's taking the longest to learn?

01:33:58:22 - 01:33:59:21
Claire Scapinello
Patience.

01:33:59:23 - 01:34:08:04
Daniel Franco
Yeah, I think hands on that one. I think if you could have coffee with one current or historical figure, who would it be?

01:34:08:06 - 01:34:36:19
Claire Scapinello
So it's really funny. It's very true. Okay. Say, Winston Churchill fascinates me, okay? Because he was a master, really? Around, you know, creating this different sense. You know, it was like I'm trying and thinking about how I can explain it. And it's mastery of propaganda amongst he wasn't the only one at that time who was good at that, but I think that would have been interesting.

01:34:36:21 - 01:34:49:09
Claire Scapinello
And the other one was Marcus Aurelius. He taught stoicism. Yeah. You know, Marcus Aurelius is meditations and you just want self reflection in a way. The outlook on life.

01:34:49:11 - 01:34:53:23
Daniel Franco
I think the thing I love the most about meditations is that no one was supposed to read that.

01:34:54:00 - 01:35:01:07
Claire Scapinello
Correct. And, you know, this was his private practice, which you kind of question Did you know, did you think, Yeah.

01:35:01:07 - 01:35:02:03
Daniel Franco
Did you just leave it.

01:35:02:03 - 01:35:15:22
Claire Scapinello
There for me? Yeah, just casually. So I think that and the view of stoicism, I think also during COVID and out of COVID around how we see the world. So yeah, that's the other one.

01:35:15:25 - 01:35:17:24
Daniel Franco
Aurelius I love that. Yeah, it's one of them.

01:35:17:27 - 01:35:19:27
Claire Scapinello
So many reasons. Not just that.

01:35:20:00 - 01:35:38:08
Daniel Franco
No, it's just his, the outlook of, of stoicism and, you know, Seneca's books are just as good if you if you want to jump onto them as well. What is some of the best advice you've ever received?

01:35:39:11 - 01:36:00:21
Claire Scapinello
I remember. And to his two eyes. One mouth. Yeah, you've been said before, but I think the other one for me is slow down. If you keep moving too fast, you'll actually miss it. So that one for me around, just making sure I slow down.

01:36:00:24 - 01:36:06:13
Daniel Franco
Yeah, I think I agree with you. And what's one habit that holds you back the most?

01:36:06:16 - 01:36:22:12
Claire Scapinello
I think it can be the same. Yeah, probably. I think. I think I think there's. I think the for me is the switching off being able to switch off which is hot. Yeah. Really hard.

01:36:22:15 - 01:36:24:22
Daniel Franco
What's one thing that pisses you off the most.

01:36:24:25 - 01:36:25:13
Claire Scapinello


01:36:25:15 - 01:36:26:21
Daniel Franco
Disabled parking spots.

01:36:26:24 - 01:36:50:06
Claire Scapinello
No I that I think I would have to say when people just in this is probably this kind of got your professional pet peeves. Yeah. Personal I think for me when people sort of don't put their hand up and go, Yeah, I did that. Okay, this is, this is how we're going to solve it. Ownership and ownership is a big one.

01:36:50:09 - 01:37:04:11
Claire Scapinello
And I don't like surprises. No, you know, love. yeah. He's from London. Yeah. No, I'd rather know if something's not going well, I'd rather only see the trends. Yeah. Yeah.

01:37:04:14 - 01:37:07:07
Daniel Franco
What's one word that you absolutely hate?

01:37:07:09 - 01:37:17:01
Claire Scapinello
Can't. Okay. Yeah. You can't do that. And I really watch me. Yeah. you just can't do it. And I'm like, Yes, you can. You just got to think of a different way.

01:37:17:03 - 01:37:38:22
Daniel Franco
I had an argument with a supplier of this software that they use during the week where they said, you have you can't you can't pay us that way. And I just went, So you're not accepting my money? Is that what you like? I come at the exact same thing. The word came and one thing that my parents drummed into me from when I was young is there's no such word as God.

01:37:38:24 - 01:37:41:06
Daniel Franco
So I don't actually believe that it's true.

01:37:41:09 - 01:37:45:14
Claire Scapinello
I mean, you know there are some things you actually just can't do. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

01:37:45:17 - 01:37:49:06
Daniel Franco
I'm never going to be Tiger Woods, right? Like, I'm not about to hit the ball as good as he is.

01:37:49:06 - 01:37:55:12
Claire Scapinello
But we accept that that's not our correct Right.

01:37:55:15 - 01:38:04:09
Daniel Franco
But before we get to the joy, because I know you got to find out this, what's the first thing you would do if you became invisible?

01:38:04:12 - 01:38:19:23
Claire Scapinello
I did. I was thinking about this and I thought, you know, the typical answer, they just walk around. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you've heard that one before. And I'm like, That's just too obvious. I reckon I'd stowaway on a plane and just sort of take over first class and go anywhere I want. And I would know and I could just get through customs.

01:38:19:23 - 01:38:24:12
Claire Scapinello
I could do anything I want. Beautiful. Yeah. Travel the world. Travel the world. And no one would know.

01:38:24:19 - 01:38:26:04
Daniel Franco
Walk into the Sistine Chapel.

01:38:26:05 - 01:38:34:19
Claire Scapinello
But this is it when no one's there, you know? Yeah, there's much to explore around places you can't go today. And I'm like, Woo, woo! That would be good. No, no, it was.

01:38:34:19 - 01:38:42:23
Daniel Franco
There would be great, right? My favorite joke, my favorite question is, All right, what's your best that shit joke?

01:38:42:26 - 01:39:03:18
Claire Scapinello
So, okay, so this is the funny part of walking in here. I am terrible, absolutely terrible at jokes. I don't know how many times people tell me a joke. I cannot remember them. I can remember so much information and numbers and everything else that my team actually just sit there and it scares them how good my memories, but I cannot remember.

01:39:03:20 - 01:39:19:17
Claire Scapinello
So the funny part is, is I have jokes in my phone constantly on notes in case I to pull out a joke. And this I can't even claim this joke is mine is actually my fiance's. And so what type of cheese does it take to hide a horse?

01:39:19:19 - 01:39:23:01
Daniel Franco
What type of cheese is it takes out a horse.

01:39:23:03 - 01:39:31:12
Claire Scapinello
I don't know, mascarpone. And I've got one more on the same thing. Well, this is. I told you I was.

01:39:31:15 - 01:39:35:16
Daniel Franco
Never going to look at the cheese. Must componentes cheese again the time.

01:39:35:19 - 01:39:40:09
Claire Scapinello
What did the cheese say when looked into the mirror?

01:39:40:12 - 01:39:41:13
Daniel Franco
What does she say?

01:39:41:15 - 01:39:46:06
Claire Scapinello
Halloumi? I told you they were bad.

01:39:46:11 - 01:39:56:24
Daniel Franco
The halloumi is the. The the squeaky cheese, Isn't it a squeaky cheese? Yeah, I do like halloumi, but that's brilliant. And that's the worst joke I've ever heard as well. At the same.

01:39:56:24 - 01:40:01:22
Claire Scapinello
Time saying you can't be good at everything.

01:40:01:24 - 01:40:25:27
Daniel Franco
I just want to thank you so much, Claire, for your time today. Your story is inspiring. Your journey has been one of grit and resilience and kudos to everything that you've done. Thank you. I guess on behalf of the community as well, for all the great work that you're doing in the space of the aged care world and really looking forward to seeing everything that you guys are going to moving forward and your journey also moving forward.

01:40:25:27 - 01:40:31:17
Daniel Franco
I'm going to be watching from the bleachers. So thank you again for coming on today.

01:40:31:23 - 01:40:35:28
Claire Scapinello
Pleasure. Thank you for having me and humbled to be part of this. So thank you.

01:40:36:00 - 01:40:38:22
Daniel Franco
Really appreciate it. Thank you, everyone. We'll catch you next time.