Special series: Lessons in Leadership
In this special 6 part series, Justin Russell meets with inspirational leaders from the UK public sector to find out how you thrive and survive at the top. In this fifth episode, Justin meets Jo Dibbs, the headteacher whose school inspired Michelle Obama.
In 2009, just two months after she had become first lady, Michelle Obama paid a visit to Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school – a girls comprehensive in North London. It was to have a profound effect on her. Writing about the visit nearly 10 years later, she reflected on the way the girls she met there had touched her heart and about the sense of purpose that visit had given her – to devote herself to girls education and life chances. “The energy I felt thrumming in that school” she said “had nothing to do with obstacles. It was the power of nine hundred girls striving”.
Jo Dibbs is the head teacher who greeted Michelle Obama that day and whose leadership inspired those nine hundred girls. A head teacher for twenty years and until 2021 the executive head of the Islington Futures Federation, she has been recognised by the Evening Standard as one of London’s most influential people and in 2020 won a Kindness in Leadership award.
Justin Russell is Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation. He’s spent his life working and learning from inspirational leaders who have done all of these things and more. In this special series for Bridges to the Future, he’ll be speaking to just some of those who have survived and thrived at the top to find out how they did it and what they can teach you.
A Tempo & Talker production for the RSA.
ReGeneration Rising S2E7: Patterns of Meaning with Jeremy Lent & Morag Gamble
ReGeneration Rising S2E6: The Systems View of Life with Fritjof Capra
ReGeneration Rising S2E5: Indirect Work with Carol Sanford
ReGeneration Rising S2E4: Architects of Abundance with Lyla June Johnston
ReGeneration Rising S2E3: Combining with Nora Bateson
ReGeneration Rising S2E2: Becoming Earth Pilgrims with Satish Kumar
ReGeneration Rising S2E1: Biomimicry with Janine Benyus & Dayna Baumeister
SPARKS: Johnny Lynch – Unlimited Edition
SPARKS: Malcolm Gladwell – Mini-Sparks
SPARKS: Nadya Tolokonnikova – Life As Art, As Activism
SPARKS: Professor Anil Seth – Dream Machine
SPARKS: Dr Ella Gilbert – Imagining Our Way Out
SPARKS: Professor Dacher Keltner – Awe, The Field Guide
SPARKS: IDEAS UNBOXED – Introducing Sparks with Dr Ella Gilbert
SPARKS: Adrian Hon – A History of the Future
SPARKS: Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock – The Power of a Lunatic’s Dream
Henry Dimbleby on our relationship with food
Who Owns History?
The spy in your pocket
Management consultancy under the spotlight
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