Menopause at Work: Supporting Women & Allies, with Loretta Dignam

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 To get in touch with The Menopause Hub email info@themenopausehub.ie or go to the website themenopausehub.ie  

> In this podcast

Loretta Dignam

CEO & Founder

The Menopause Hub

Cathal Divilly

CEO 
Great Place to Work Ireland

> About Loretta

Loretta Dignam has pioneered menopause in Ireland. She is an award-winning Marketer of the Year, Women's Health CEO of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year runner up in the Image Businesswoman Awards, and HI HI FemTech 2023 Winner. She opened the doors to The Menopause Hub, Ireland's first and only dedicated peri/menopause clinic in January 2019. This was one of only two clinics in the world dedicated to menopause. She has also just launched Ireland' first Menopause App, which is available for free and which also acts as an adjunct to the patient care pathway.

Loretta is a passionate advocate for menopausal women, smashing the taboo and striving to make menopause mainstream. Through the Menopause Hub Academy, she has also developed a CPD accredited programme to support organisations with menopause in the workplace awareness, education, training, and policy development and hosts the Menopause Workplace Excellence Awards in partnership with Great Place to Work. She has just launched a Menopause Workplace Accreditation programme to recognise those who are leading the way in menopause support at work. Loretta is scaling her business internationally to address the global need for menopause supports.

Loretta has also had a lengthy and highly successful career working for many multinational, global businesses including; Mars Inc, Diageo plc, Kerry Group plc Ardagh Group and Jacob Fruitfield, as a senior marketing and communications leader. She was awarded Marketer of the Year in 2011. She is a graduate of UCD and DCU and has lectured in the UCD Smurfit Business School on their executive MBA and MSc Programmes

More resources on this topic:

• Menopause and the Workplace: How to Best Support Your Employees
• How to Empower Women at Work

About Great Place to Work®

Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture. We help organisations quantify their culture and produce better business results by creating a high-trust work experience for all employees. We recognise Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies and the Best Workplaces™ in more than 60 countries. To join the thousands of companies that have committed to building high-trust company cultures that help them attract, contact us today, and click below to find out more about how to get Certified.

>Transcript

Cathal Divilly: Welcome Red Cube listeners to our latest conversation. We are delighted to introduce the CEO and Founder of The Menopause Hub, Loretta Dignam. Loretta, you're very welcome. 

Loretta Dignam: Thank you very much, Cathal. Great to be here. 

Cathal Divilly: Thanks for joining us, Loretta. I know we've seen a lot of each other over the last few weeks, we had a Best Workplaces for Women event and you were a panelist on that. So thank you for that. So Loretta, for our audience, you might take them through your own sort of career history and how that led to the start of The Menopause Hub. 

Loretta Dignam: Yeah, well put it this way - until about five years ago, I never knew anything about menopause and had nothing to do with menopause, so it was just personal experience and how I kind of stumbled upon this that caused me to set up The Menopause Hub. So I had about 25 years in the corporate sector. I worked for great businesses, for Mars Inc, the chocolate and pet food company, for Diageo, for Kerry Group, Jacob’s, Ardagh Group and so on. And I worked in marketing, communications and branding in fairly senior roles. 

I also was on the board of the Abbey Theatre. I chaired their Gender Equality Committee when it was a big issue around gender equality back in 2015/2016. Now it wasn’t something that was only happening at the Abbey, but the Abbey, being the national theatre and the biggest theatre in Ireland, it was an issue and we took a leadership position on that and started to address through policy and guides and so on to address the gender imbalance. I also lectured in Michael Smurfit Business School on their MBA and MSC programmes. 

And then at 49 I had what was to be my last period - I didn't know it was my last period until 12 consecutive months later. Very soon after I got hot flushes and they were the only two things I knew about menopause, and to be honest Cathal, I would have thought I was reasonably intelligent and reasonably well-educated, sort of a woman of the world. And I was completely blindsided by that experience of menopause, and so I suppose - I don't know if you’d say ignorant or uneducated or whatever about it, I had never heard the word perimenopause, and we’re only going back about 6-7 years ago. I had never heard the word perimenopause and so all the symptoms had happened to me in the lead up to the final period meant that I didn't connect those symptoms with being menopausal. For example, I had headaches and my GP sent me for a brain scan which luckily came back clear, and then very soon after that I got focal migraine. I did not realise that that was a symptom of perimenopause. So I was going off getting those individual things checked out.  

Anyway, to cut a long story short, three years after putting up with symptoms that I was aware of, and in total about 8/9 years of symptoms, I sought help in my journey, when I got the medical help I needed through hormone replacement therapy, led me to then feel much better and to feel really good in myself. And then I start questioning and asking other women about their experiences to find out that they weren't really that different. And I decided, well, I was so incensed by it all to be quite honest with you, I decided I was going to down tool, leave the corporate sector and start Ireland's first dedicated menopause clinic, which I did in the beginning of 2019.  

And just to say that when I was setting that up, there was a woman in the UK setting up a clinic and they were the only two dedicated menopause clinics in the world. So that was my journey. So from the corporate world to menopause, and I'd have to say it wasn't something that was in any of my career goals. 

Cathal Divilly: So there was so many years of discovery there and trying to figure out what is going on I guess right? And I know it's a journey, right and slowly but surely, there's more education out there, perhaps, and more conversation, and you're very much leading the charge in terms of that really important conversation in society and from a workplace point of view. Talk to me about what The Menopause Hub does and specifically around how it impacts around the workplace. 

Loretta Dignam: Yeah so I started off with this notion, I suppose, that if I could wave a magic wand, I would want every woman in Ireland to know what menopause is, why it happens, how it impacts them, and that there is treatment options available, and to know the fact from the fiction, because there's an awful lot of myths surrounding it - a lot of myths I believed, which I found out they're not necessarily true. And so that's what I wanted to do from the outset was wave this magic wand. Obviously, there’s no such thing as a magic wand, so I decided the best thing I could do is start practical help.  

So we started with menopause clinics and we're a centre of excellence of menopause in Ireland. We have three clinics, 2 in Dublin, 1 in Cork and we opened the clinics - we have a team of doctors, psychologists, women's health physiotherapists, dietitians and nutritionists, and we provide evidence-based treatment for women experiencing perimenopause and menopause and many other types of menopause.  

But alongside that, I've done a lot of advocacy and spoken to ministers and government and so on, trying to destigmatise menopause and to smash the taboo and to make menopause mainstream. And I think that's where the solution lies is making it a normal conversation. So I’ve done a lot around that.  

And then the third area I've focused on is that, when I did research - I did market research because there was no information available about menopausal women in Ireland at all - so I did my own research and what came up when I looked at women in the workplace -because I had been a woman in the workplace, going through menopause - the statistics were so startling, that it prompted us to develop training to talk to organisations about policy development and to help them become more menopause friendly. So some of the statistics are that, you know, somewhere between 7 and 10% of women leave work because of menopause symptoms. In Ireland that’s about, 30 odd thousand women, in the UK it's about a million women. And then obviously you go more globally and the numbers increase. Just over a third considered giving up work due to their symptoms.  

And menopause often hits at the age when women are going into those stages of their life where they're taking on more responsibility, they're moving into more senior positions, they’re maybe taking a board position and so on. And that coincides with where menopause can happen. So although we're promoting diversity and inclusion in lots of organisations, this can be sort of mitigating. So it was that that prompted me to introduce CPD accredited training for menopause in the workplace and that's the 3 strands of the business, the clinical part, the advocacy and the menopause in the workplace training. 

Cathal Divilly: Thanks Loretta, and I don't know if it's right to say, but if the topic of menopause, is perhaps still a taboo subject in some workplaces, right? If that's the case, in your experience, how do we break down the taboo of the menopause? 

Loretta Dignam: Yeah, I mean to be honest with you, it is taboo still in many workplaces. Some of the research we did, we asked women and last year we had over 3000 participants, menopausal women in our research, so a really robust sample of Irish women actually. But the numbers are pretty much the same when you go globally, because it's not just an Irish issue or an English issue or a British issue, it's a global issue. By 2030 there's going to be 1.1 billion menopausal women on the planet, which is about 12 1/2% of the global population. And every year 47 million newly menopausal women will come into that. So we're talking about half the global population being impacted at some point by menopause, the other half being impacted directly or indirectly because these menopausal women are, you know, not only individuals, but they're wives, partners, mothers, relatives, friends. But they're also colleagues, direct reports, line managers, teammates, peers and so on.  

So I think in the workplace it's still taboo. So when we asked the women in the research, over 90% said that they wanted training for line managers and HR and over 90% wanted a menopause in the workplace policy. And then when we've done this research a year later, it seems there’s about 10 or 11% of organisations actually tackling both those - training for managers and HR, and menopause policies. So any companies out there with that are in the top echelons globally and in the top 10/11% in the world who are addressing this.  

So how do you do it? Well, it's about breaking down stigma and taboo, and it's about education, and it's really about opening up that conversation in the workplace. And I would liken it a bit to mental health, where mental health was about 10-15 years ago, you know, we didn't talk about mental health at work, and now a lot of organisations have policies, have supports in place through their EAP programmes, they have training for staff, they have mental health first aiders ...  

I think menopause is not dissimilar to that and that you can take some of those tools and implement them. So a menopause policy is best practice training for all staff and all colleagues, training for managers or HR, introducing what we call menopause champions, which are like mental health first aiders, and then looking at the impact and tracking that over time. I won't say it's as simple as that, because maybe that's not simple, but it is no more complex than that. 

Cathal Divilly: Focusing in on let's say that 11%, the top 11% globally that are, you know, really proactive in terms of this space, what are you hearing back Loretta in terms of the benefits that they're experiencing from that? 

Loretta Dignam: It's early days in terms of, you know, kind of a tangible measurable impact in terms of saying, you know, do they stop considering leaving work or have they stopped leaving work? It's a bit early for that sort of hard data. But what we are hearing back is, particularly from individuals who are impacted, that they feel more comfortable, more confident, that they feel that their workplace values them, that they feel that if they have an issue, they will be supported, and therefore the sense of dread or whatever isn't as bad. And for those impacted by menopause, it's actually that they can still be supported to do a great job. 

And for employers, it's really about talent retention because they don't want their staff to leave. I mean women in their, you know, mid 40s, 50s and a little bit older, you know, they're a wealth of talent, of personal experience, of life experience as well as work experience. We've invested in these individuals in terms of training and development. And realistically, employers can't really afford for women to be walking out of the workplace, or even considering or stepping back or cutting down their hours, or not going for the promotions. So I think there's benefit for the individuals as well as the employers, but also for colleagues to feel that they know what to do or how to cope, they're not embarrassed, that kind of thing.  

But there's also a legislative benefit. In the UK the Equalities and Human Rights Commission just two weeks ago published guidelines around how to support colleagues going through menopause in the workplace. And the media headlines were about warning employers that there’s legislative risk. And the risk has been seen because women, menopausal women have taken cases and won in employment tribunals on the grounds of gender discrimination, age discrimination and disability. Now, as a woman, I don't want menopause to be considered a disability, but in some instances the symptoms were so chronic that they spilled over into longer health effects, and therefore it was considered a disability.  

But if you take those you know, 2-3 areas, gender discrimination, age discrimination, disability, it means that employers need to be careful about how they handle those situations. And so I think, you know, it will help employers if they're not persuaded by the business case around retention, around performance around duty of care for staff, then they'll definitely be persuaded by the stick approach, which is the legislative risk. So I think there is benefits actually to multiple stakeholders really. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah, there's lots of benefits and ultimately it's the right thing to do, right. So it's about meeting people where their life moments are at, male or female and you know, we talk a lot about we want people to bring their whole selves to work, their full self to work and that's important in terms of performance. So this is important.

I was interested when you were comparing to where mental health was a number of years ago, and one of the things we've seen, Loretta, is that when an organisation say, does a talk on mental health but doesn't necessarily have the structure or the practice to go with it, sometimes it can be almost the wrong thing to do because you've dialed people up on a topic that's important to them and that they're experiencing themselves, and then there's nowhere for them to go in terms of a support or structure or practice.  

I'm thinking about the listeners Loretta, so let's say they're going to now go and do something in terms of the menopause within their workplace. What's that combination of practice they should think about? 

Loretta Dignam: I think depending on the size of the organisation, particularly if you're a bit bigger, I would actually do some focus groups among those who are working in your organisation to get an understanding of what it's like to work there experiencing menopause/perimenopause symptoms. I would also do a baseline survey; it only needs to be 5 or 6 questions to get an understanding from those impacted and those not impacted by menopause directly, about what their learning is and understanding about their level of comfort or confidence - to have a conversation around that, how it impacts the ones that are impacted in work, and that will give data. So you'll have the qualitative stuff, but you'll also have some data around it. And it doesn't need to be a huge complex questionnaire. 5 or 6 questions will give you all that you need to know.  

And what that would do is kind of frame the extent of the issue in your organisation. Obviously the profile of your organisation is important. You know, if you're an all-male organisation with everyone under the age of 35 well, you know, maybe menopause isn't so relevant to you. But if you're an organisation that has mixed gender and mixed age groups, you may then want to do that. So I think getting the information and the data like you would about anything if you wanted to find out a new product with customers - you go out and talk to your customers, you’d get quantitative and qualitative data. It's the same thing for your internal customers, or your employees. And then once you that, you get a sense of, you know, what might be important. Then I would start on the education piece, which is, you know, all colleagues getting an understanding of what menopause is.  

The other thing is that I mean, just as you just said there, it's all very well to talk about that, and as you say, heighten the expectations. But for those individuals impacted, if they then go and speak to their line manager and the line manager goes, “well, I don't know anything about this” or “that's nothing to do with me, go to HR” or “we don't have any policy, sorry I can't help you” - well then, that’s a very imbalanced conversation. So in addition to educating people at the ground level, you need to then obviously bring managers in some education, some awareness and some training about how to have that conversation.  

And then you need to also look at your organisation and say, look, what supports should we put in place, what supports can we put in place? And the solution really lies around what we call reasonable accommodation and reasonable adjustments, like it does in anything. So menopause is not dissimilar to any other kind of health condition, really. And so therefore you go, what are the reasonable things that we can put in place, accommodations, whether their physical environment - so it can be temperature control, access to bathrooms, access to free sanitary products, access to cold water, uniforms – looking at the pieces, looking at the material, the design, that kind of thing. Or it can be other things around flexible working; around additional supports for women who experience brain fog or memory loss, those kind of things. So it’s really around looking at all the things you can do in your organisation.  

And then in order to make it consistent, so that if individual A goes to manager B, they get one answer and then individual X goes to manager Y and they get a completely different answer, well that's not fair to your staff or to your managers. So policy development is really good around bringing consistent supports so that people can respond equally and in the same way to all of that.  

So I would be saying, you know, measure the problem, and get a sense of the baseline and then you can track it and measure it over time actually and measure impact. Very simple few questions, couple of small focus groups. Then you go into education and training for line managers and supervisors, but for all colleagues, for HR. And then as I said, some menopause champions. And all of that will actually help inform your menopause workplace policy. Then you may have as part of your insurance programme or your EAP, access to additional supports. You may have occupational help that can help with additional supports, maybe risk management might be required in some instances. And then you can also, you know, sign up with services like our own, whereby we can actually offer appointments to your staff that are virtual and that you can give them practical support.  

And then I suppose once you've done all that, which is fabulous, you can enter our Menopause Workplace Excellence Awards, which we've launched in conjunction with Great Place to Work. We had the inaugural year of the awards last year and we're bringing out workplace accreditation now that you can be accredited for two years as a Menopause Workplace of Excellence.  

So I think there's multiple things organisations can do, and I think it's about starting on the journey, not trying to reinvent the wheel – you may have done other things in other areas that you can bring on board. So I think that's what I would call the best practice template if you like, and I don't know if that sounds accessible or easy enough, but it doesn't have to cost a fortune. It doesn't have to be giving 10 days menopause leave, which you know companies like Bank of Ireland have done – it doesn't have to go that far. But it does need to have people who feel that they can open up the conversation, that they’ll be listened to in an empathetic and confidential way, but also that there will be supports and a response in place that's consistent across the organisation. I hope I've kind of summarised it well enough there. 

Cathal Divilly: You've given us a great roadmap there, Loretta, you really have. Interested in the idea of allyship, right. Have you seen much evidence when you're out there with workplaces in terms of male allyship when it comes to this topic? 

Loretta Dignam: Would you believe – yes! So I think organisations are saying, right, you know, if you want to be a great leader and a great manager, you need to be capable of having conversations about anything really with your staff. And I think you alluded to it when we're talking about people bringing their best selves to work.  

When COVID happened, I think we ended up getting an insight into people's lives in a way that we never had before, and those lines between work and home and work and personal life got a bit more blurred. You know, we got to see people's dogs, we got to see people's kids, families, homes, etcetera, etcetera. And as a result, then we got to understand more things about individuals and their wellness, individuals and you know, other facets of their lives. And as a result, it's more blurred. Because in my time when I was going through menopause and, you know, even earlier than that, you never discussed anything other than work. You showed up for work, you did a great job and you left. And it was only with very close friends that you may have declared more stuff. But it was really a very delineated work life scenario, whereas now it's much more I think 360 or much more integrated and rounded.  

So we deliver trainings, so whether it's online through e-learning or whether it's virtual live or it's in person live. For example, this morning I was with a company, a Great Place to Work organisation called Unum, and they had been trained this morning, I think it was 50:50 men, women – male managers and leaders, female managers and leaders. And men were engaged in the conversation. We had scenarios about, you know, how a scenario might arise within the workplace and how they might handle it. And they all got stuck in and were discussing it and were very engaged and so on. And people are saying, look, we hear about this much more in the media – we want to know about it, we want to be able to support our partners at home if they have people like that or parents, mother and sisters or they want to be able to support their teams. So we are getting more and more men.  

And I encourage organisations to have male allies, because women have enough issues of their own! And we don't want to sort of put them in the corner going, you know, talk to yourselves there about the solutions ... We want it to be a gender-balanced conversation and we want males to engage. And we also want senior leaders actually to engage in this conversation. So the MD of the business was there and kicking off the session as well and was a male as it happened as well. So that was fantastic.  

But we do need senior leaders to come out and talk about this too, personal experience – if they're brave enough. Because that opens up the conversation so senior men are giving a signal to others in the organisation that this is important and men are encouraged to engage. And then individuals see senior leaders talking about it and go OK, well, then it's maybe safe for me to engage. But we haven't got enough males. That's the issue. We haven't got enough males and we'd like to have many more. So any concepts or ideas to help would be really valuable. 

Cathal Divilly: I always feel it's a good thing to showcase when things are being done well as well and then I think collectively Great Place to Work and yourself Loretta, I think we can come together and start showcasing when we've seen good allyship, right. And perhaps from males as well, showcase that story, tell that, and I think that will probably lead to more involvement as well. And you talked about safety there and I think safety is so important, for males and females to be able to come together in a safe way and talk about these topics and feel safe around language – and if the wrong words are being used once it's coming from a good place, then I think curiosity will be sparked. 

One of the things I've loved hearing back from some of the companies who are doing great storytelling around the menopause is the males are coming up to the company after and saying thank you very much for sharing that, not only did I learn a lot, but I also now have a better understanding of something perhaps that they're experiencing in their own personal life. 

Loretta Dignam: 100%. I was down in Cork last week, we've a clinic down there and I was doing some training. I was checking out of the hotel and I thought this is a great story because the guy at the check out or behind the desk or whatever, said “listen, I hope you have a great day, have you anything interesting planned?” or whatever. And of course never to miss an opportunity to talk about menopause, I said you’ll never guess! And so we started a conversation, and I was absolutely gobsmacked – he said, “oh yeah,” he said, “my wife's going through perimenopause” – bear in mind, six years ago, I didn't know the word – and he said “she asked me to listen to some podcasts, which I've been doing on the drive from Fermoy to Ballincollig” where our clinic is. And he said, “I've learned so much and now I can be more involved, more supportive, more empathetic”, rather than, say, in his father's time where, you know, men didn't go to the birth of their children, men didn't ever get involved in women's issues. So I do think that as people we’re maturing around some of these conversations. 

And even yesterday, in the panel discussion that I was chairing, we had a discussion from Riley, who were talking about, you know, period health at work and menstrual health at work and so on. I never imagined I'd see the day when that would be openly discussed in the workplace and it was just fantastic to have that. And we had male allies on the stage with us, who were, you know, happy to talk about what they were doing in their workplaces to support women going through various life stages. But also men going through various life stages and all colleagues really going through life stages. So this isn't just about women. We have lots of work to do around areas to support men, so therefore it's about being inclusive, and it's as you say about being able to have the best version of our staff employees in the workplace with us. 

Cathal Divilly: And with all of this, we're learning how to be a better teammate, and learn what your teammate needs, and be curious and be there for them. So yeah. At the start there Loretta you said there was no such thing as a magic wand. I wouldn't say that to Harry Potter fans - but perhaps there's not, right, so no magic wands. But you're on this journey, you've been doing great work, you're leading the charge in terms of organisations, now we're really starting to story tell and do great things in this area. Where would you like to see this in two years time - no magic wand - but but how do you see it developing?

Loretta Dignam: Well, I'd like to see that organisations are embracing those steps we've talked about, that sort of road map training, policy development. I'd like to see that we're able to track impact, and obviously by showcasing. I'd like organisations to be accredited, so then that they're signaling to all of their staff, to their future employees, they're enhancing their employer value proposition by signaling to the world that they're menopause supportive.

And I'd love it to be beyond Ireland and the UK. I'd like to see, you know, countries like the States - now you said two years, I'm probably talking five years. But anyway, countries in Europe, contentintal Europe because they haven't started these conversations just yet. So that's what I'd love to see is I'd love to see Ireland and the UK leading the world on this, showcasing best practice and that others would start to engage on this topic. And then I'd be really happy. 

Cathal Divilly: Right. And we're very much leading the charge here in Ireland, which is great because typically people practices come from the US, we think it's cool, we adapt a version of it. The opposite is true, like if you think of the submissions we got this year to the awards; public sector, small organisations, hotels, incredible work being done. 

Loretta Dignam: Yeah, so Ireland is leading the way in this. And I know that the Minister Roderic O'Gorman is out doing research into menstrual health and health in the workplace with a view to bringing in, you know, some guidelines around that. So I know more will be coming in this space.

But I do think that we've had some great entries as you said and what we're doing now is we're doing a "Hear From" webinar series, where organisations can come and listen or get a recording after the event and listen to some of the companies that enter the awards and what they're doing in the space. It covers big companies, small companies, public sector and we had an Garda Síochana, the Irish police force, on last week with yourself and Norah Casey, two of the judges. We're having Kellanova, which was Kellogg's coming on. We're also having the IRFU, the Irish Rugby Football Union, we're having Bank of Ireland, we're having University College Dublin (UCD) and we're having Lidl, and we're just having some of these companies come on and share what they're doing and that will help others understand that maybe it's not as daunting a task, or as huge a task, or as expensive a task as they might imagine. So I think there's a lot to be learned from others who are doing great work in this space.

Cathal Divilly: Loretta, what do you do to relax?

Loretta Dignam: How do I like to relax? Well, I like exercise and one of the things I've been out talking to people about is building muscle, you know, strength or whatever, particularly as you become postmenopausal. So I started doing the old resistance training in the gym and so on, so I do resistance bands and I do some weights. I've been watching the rugby at the weekend. I'll be going for dinner with friends. I'll be hanging out with my family, I do lots of things to relax. I'd like to do more! But I'm on a mission!

Cathal Divilly: I know you're on a mission, Loretta and an area like this needs people to be on a mission around, right, and we've met a few years now and I think the work you're doing for workplaces, for females, females who are at perimenopause/menopause stage but also younger females within the workforce as well, creating that awareness early on and being allies, and also that you're encouraging more male allies in this topic, it's just so important, right. And to get it to where it is now, it takes somebody like you with that sort of, if you don't mind, that warrior sort of focus and mindset and approach and all of that. You're doing fantastic work, you really are Loretta, so well done and congratulations on all of that and thank you very much for joining us today.

Loretta Dignam: Thank you. And it might sound like the Mutual Admiration Society, but what I will say is that it helps when you get people who get it, like yourselves at Great Place to Work who've supported us and bear in mind, you know, we're a small business, only out of the traps a couple of years. But it really means a lot, you know, to work with an organisation like yourselves who already have years of experience in this place and in the space of, you know, great workplaces and in great places for women to work.

So that means a lot to us that somebody of your stature, in terms of business and brand, would partner with us. So I appreciate all the support to be honest, because that makes it a little bit easier. 

Cathal Divilly: We're here to support you, Loretta. We've done some good work together. We've more to do. 

Loretta Dignam: We have more to do. 

Cathal Divilly: But really appreciate the journey so far. Thanks for joining us Loretta.

Loretta Dignam: Thank you.