Self-leadership is our central root concept at Guide and Lead®.

Self-leadership is the root to lead a purposeful life based on strong values and dedication to others and the community. This concept is supported by three other concepts: Agility, compassionate communication, and transformation. 

We understand agility as a way of thinking that ensures that we accept the challenges we face and find and actively solutions that always keep the needs of all people involved in mind. Compassionate communication is communication that emphasizes awareness of needs within ourselves and others as the tool to connect. For us at Guide and Lead, transformation is a highly intentional process, based on a common goal, shared strong values and directing the energy for sustainable change.

Here in the Guide to Lead Podcast, we would like to follow up on these root concepts and reflect on the practical implications of applying them. We would like to question to what extent systemic change, for example in the education sector, but also in business, in organizations and even in the personal sphere, such as in the family, is possible if we consciously practice self-leadership.

We would be happy to hear from you, about your own experiences, wishes, ideas, projects. You are welcome to contact us via our website or via social media. We look forward to hearing from you.

Your team from Guide and Lead

Doreen Kessy is the Chief Business Officer at Ubongo. At Ubongo, she is instrumental in the growth of the organization, innovating, and finding ways to continually deliver fun learning to over 17 million families in Africa. She has expertise in business development and leadership in the edtech and learning design fields. Doreen has an MBA and BSc in International Business and Economics from Liberty University and has worked at the International Justice Mission in Washington DC, Wells Fargo and Smile for Africa in Zimbabwe. She was named “Entrepreneur of the Year in Education” by Women In Africa, is a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum, and a 2018 Acumen Fellow. Doreen loves to have fun, she acts the English voice of one of Ubongo Kids cartoon characters, Ngedere (a playful monkey).

Doreen, with the Ubongo team, won the Global Education and Skills Forum, Next Billion Edtech Prize in 2019 and, as a result, established The Building Brains Conference on early childhood learning and development.

Dina L G Borzekowski is researching the impact Ubongo is having, which you can read more about here: The Impact of an Educational Media Intervention to Support Children’s Early Learning in Rwanda

Willy Wijnands is the creator and founder of eduScrum and co-founder of the worldwide initiative 'Agile in Education'. Willy taught Chemistry and Science at the Ashram College in Alphen aan de Rijn, Netherlands for forty years and is an Aikido and Tai Chi and Shiatsu teacher. He is the author of the eduScrum guide and co-author of ‘Scrum in Actie’ and contributor to ‘Agile and Lean Concepts for Teaching and Learning.’

Willy’s work was identified by Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum in his TEDx Aix talk and highlighted as a ‘new model of education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in the World Economic Forum report, ‘Schools of the Future’ (2020).

You can also find out more on our Trello board ‘Conversations with Agility’.

You can follow Willy on Twitter (@WillyWijnands and @eduScrum), Facebook, or message him on LinkedIn.

Allison Zmuda is an author, education consultant with 19 years of expertise specializing in curriculum, assessment, and instruction and curator of learningpersonalized.com an online community for teacher-leaders, administrators and students.

She has co-authored 11 books, her most recent being How to Leverage Personalized Learning in the Classroom (Fresh Grade), co-authored with Jill Thompson, The Quest for Learning (Solution Tree), co-authored with Marie Alcock and Michael Fisher and released October 2017, and Students at the Center: Personalized Learning and Habits of Mind (ASCD) co-authored with Bena Kallick, which was released in January 2017. Allison also wrote Learning Personalized: The Evolution of the Contemporary Classroom with Diane Ullman and Greg Curtis.

Allison has also developed a series of online personalized learning courses with Bena Kallick, available on Eduplanet21 and works with ASCD trainer on Understanding by Design.

You can follow Allison on Twitter (@allison_zmuda), Facebook, LinkedIn, or reach her via e-mail at [email protected].

In this episode, Tim Logan discusses a fresh new Regenerative Leadership paradigm with its authors, Giles Hutchins and Laura Storm.

Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the forefront of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016) and Regenerative Leadership (2019). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK.  Previously held corporate roles - Head of Practice for KPMG, and Global Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). You can connect with Leadership Immersions here.

Laura Storm is an international thought leader and expert on sustainability leadership and has spent her entire career advising global leaders on sustainability and building impact- and purpose-driven organizations, and movements, including the Copenhagen Climate Council, the World Business Summit on Climate Change, Project Green Light and Sustainia. Under Laura's leadership, Sustainia became a global mega-brand within sustainability with an outreach to more than 150 million people, a database of 4000 sustainable solutions, multiple state-of-the art publications and a unique partner network. In 2018, she founded Regenerators - a collective focused on teaching leaders from all walks of life about regenerative design, regenerative organizations and leadership and regenerative living. For her work, she has been awarded the title ‘Worldchanger’ by Greenbiz and is selected by the World Economic Forum as a ‘Young Global Leader’. She serves on multiple Boards and on the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network as an expert in sustainable development and climate change. Her academic background is a Master in Political Communication and Leadership from Copenhagen Business School.

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