Our starter programme for growing nature-based leadership in the world.
This short programme provides a foundation in Bio-Leadership principles and approaches to support you making shifts in your life and work. We connect you to others around the world and support you as a community of practice. This is a short starter programme designed as an entryway to take a stand for life.
Bio-Leadership supports many organisations, including Aviva Investors, Patagonia and World Benchmarking Alliance. We’ve also set up and run a Fellowship Programme—a 9-month leadership programme entering its fifth year. We pour all that experience into this starter programme.
This is for you if…
You’re curious about systems change, action-reflection cycles and working in a different way towards a regenerative future.
You would benefit from an international perspective and diverse community of practice.
You’re curious about how to root your work and project in nature and you’re curious about Bio-Leadership’s work and approach.
Guiding Questions
How do I take a stand?
How can I work with courage and fear?
How could we learn from nature and work with nature's principles?
Skills we work with under the surface: Action & Reflection practice, active listening, learning how to refine the question, design thinking & systems mapping approaches. & peer coaching/mentoring.
Programme Dates & Times
The sessions will be held 9AM - MIDDAY UK Time on Thursdays, with a good third of that time reserved for a different way of working, expect time offline, supported reflection and with groups collaborating.
You will need a strong internet connection and access to Zoom.
THURSDAY 27 MAR - CONNECTION
Our first session we’ll land in the process of these workshops and work with the idea of connection - to self as nature, to each other, to the program and to a place in nature. Working with uncertainty and disconnection from nature. Developing a new nature based approach. Joined by Andres Roberts.
THURSDAY 3 APR - NAVIGATION
We’ll be looking outwards at different ways of working : with complexity, working with inquiry and deep listening. We’ll be joined by special guests from the Bio-Leadership mycelium.
THURSDAY 10 APR - WORKING DEEPLY
Working with whats under the surface - your courage, fear and stories.. This will be the moment in the workshop series where we really workshop our own beliefs and support ecah other as a community of practice to help each other shift our work.
THURSDAY 17 APR - COMMITMENT & COMMUNITY
We’ll look at the idea of commitment and how we can work with manifesting the shifts we want to make, working with nature and in community. We’ll sew the seeds of accountability for leaving the workshop series. This session is hosted by Sharmishtha Dattagupta.
INTEGRATION CALL - THURSDAY 1 MAY (9AM - 11AM)
A 2 hour call, two-weeks after the end of the programme to help integrate the learnings and reflections of the course, again working in community to support your own and each others shifts.
Practicalities & Time Commitment
This programme is a mixture of self and group practice and online sessions.
The online sessions will be 3 hours each for the 4 weeks and 2 hours for the Integration, totalling 14 hours of contact time over 6 weeks. In-between those sessions we’ll be providing practice tools, recordings and homework to support your shift and inquiry - this is about you schedulling moments outside of the calls to reflect and experiement with the content we work with, to fold back into sessions. We suggest the same amount of time, 14 hours outside of sessions for this self-led time.
The group size will be maximum of 25.
Hosts
Ella Wiles is a host and development lead for Bio-Leadership. She is dedicated to urgent action knowing we need to develop life-centred practices and awareness to lead differently. She has worked in a series of sectors from human rights, research to materials reuse, managing social enterprises and mobile tech start-ups - all with ambitions to help people and the planet. At the core of all these sectors she has learnt the importance of our relationship with nature and each other, overcoming the fallacy of separation is at the core of her work. That sense of purpose has led Ella to work closely with the Bio-Leadership project over the last few years.
Jamie Pikes’ passion is in helping good things grow. He loves helping game changing ideas become reality, especially when the purpose behind them is in service to life in some way. The greatest gift that he offers is creating and holding spaces that nurture personal and collective transformation. Over the years he has co-founded a number of food and community based businesses and actively supports the growth of a number of organisations working in health, nature leadership and system change. His special interests include: nature connection, regenerative systems, entrepreneurship, mentoring, local food systems, experience design, movement and drama therapy, VR, and Psychedelic group work. He also loves to grow food, cook, sing, dance, laugh and cry.
Sharmishtha Duttagupta grew up in India, received her PhD in Biology from the US, and has previously been an assistant professor in Germany. Her research on deep-sea and cave ecosystems took her to some of the most fascinating and least-explored places on the planet. Following Sharmishtha’s calling to empower changemakers, in 2014, she transitioned from academia to become a freelance leadership coach and facilitator. Being a practitioner of yoga and meditation for over a decade she integrated awareness of the mind, body, and breath into her work to empower clients to go beyond their stopping points to take authentic and courageous action.She supports people to understand their true nature within, while connecting deeply to nature outside as a source of inspiration and wisdom.
Sharmishtha is also a social and environmental entrepreneur. While volunteering with indigenous Santal tribal communities in West Bengal, India, she discovered the incredible potential of the community for regeneration. Simultaneously she witnessed their economic poverty and the imminent extinction of their indigenous knowledge. This inspired Sharmishtha to establish Dularia, an organization that supports regenerative livelihood in Santal tribal communities through nature-based practices such as permaculture, natural farming, natural building, forest medicine, and nature-based arts and crafts.
Costs and Registration
This programme is run by the Bio-Leadership Not for Profit. We aim to keep prices as low as possible, whilst keeping the programme and community quality as high as it can be. This is a balancing act.
We believe that a strong community is a diverse one, so we’ve created the following 5 categories to support access to the programme and create vibrant conversations.
Please find the category that accurately matches your position.
Larger Business: £750
Individuals from ‘for profit’ business with a comfortable income and able to contribute to the programme and community.
Emerging Business: £600
Individuals from small businesses, social enterprises, NGOs and small start-ups able to contribute to the programme and community.
Standard Western: £500
Standard rate for individuals paying for themselves, on a stable - low income, including self, employed, those from the charity & NGO sector based in ‘the Global North’.
International Access: £350
International Access Rate places extend accessibility across sectors and global regions, for folks who wouldn’t be able to do this programme without access support, perhaps having never done a programme like this before.
These places are less than cost price to run the programme so are subsidised by other places.
Scholarship: £200
We want to make the Fellowship accessible to folks with limited proportional income from ‘the Global South’, those who are working hard to bring about change and urgently need support of this programme and community.
We operate by trust. To register please click the button below and selecting the category that most accurately matches your position. If you have any questions about which category you might fal into please drop us an email at connect@bio-leadership.org
Please take some time to read our terms and conditions before registering.