Professor Judi Marshall book launch: Leadership for Sustainability
Published 13 July 2011
L to R: John Stuart (Greenleaf Publishing), Gill Coleman, Peter Reason & Judi Marshall
Judi is co-editor with two longstanding colleagues, Gill Coleman and Peter Reason, with whom she co-founded in the 1990s a ground-breaking Masters programme at the University of Bath’s School of Management which provides the common link for the new book.
The book launch took place in London, initially at the German Gymnasium, followed by a visit to the King’s Cross Skip Garden in which young people from Global Generation grow bio-diverse food, which they then sell locally. Global Generation is a London-based charity dedicated to helping young people to take a lead in generating positive environmental and social change in urban communities. In one of the book’s chapters, Jane Riddiford, Executive Director of Global Generation, tells the story of this initiative. Five Global Generators (GG’s youth leaders) helped host the event
Book launch attendees at the King's Cross Skip Garden
The book focuses on what it means to take up leadership for sustainability, from a variety of organisational and social positions, and considers the consequences of different strategies and practices for influencing change. The approach the book adopts presents the stories of 29 people who are seeking to make the world more environmentally sustainable and socially just. All of them were either tutors or participants on the original Masters programme. They report their purposes, journeys, impacts, learning and disappointments. Their accounts are diverse and from many different worlds, ranging from fast-moving consumer goods to international forestry and conservation projects.
The book also shows what an action-research based practice of leadership for sustainability looks like, and provides a sense of the personal and professional challenges this involves. It demonstrates how people who are influencing change draw on reflective practice strategically (to create a context in which they can be influential) and also tactically (in moment-to-moment choices about how to act).
