Wendy Pring, an Enterprise Fellow at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, hopes to head off to Antarctica next year as part of the Homeward Bound initiative.
Founded in 2016, The Homeward Bound programme was a dream of Australian leadership expert Fabian Dattner, who believed the world needed an initiative to unlock the leadership potential of outstanding women in STEMM, to upskill and support them to lead, influence and contribute to decision-making about the future of our planet.
Homeward Bound 6 (HB6) collective is a team of 100 women in STEMM - Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine - from across the globe, selected because of their passion and vision to recognise the importance of adding female leadership to the mix to enable positive change in our planetary management.
Each graduating cohort of participants becomes part of a global network of like-minded women committed to demonstrating a model of leadership that will influence outcomes for men and women towards a healthier planet - and a sustainable future for all.
The programme includes online learning to increase leadership capacity, strategic capability, visibility and collaboration and culminates in a meeting of all 100 participants of HB6 in Ushuaia, Argentina before embarking on a life-changing voyage to one of the most ecologically sensitive and inspiring areas on Earth, Antarctica. The voyage for HB6 is scheduled for March 2022.
Wendy is currently racking up the miles to replicate the distance between the UK and Antarctica - 1600 km - in order to raise funds and awareness. Wendy, a chartered civil engineer by training and the Founder & Circular Architect of The Way Forward 2045, says the group is keen to raise awareness of the project and its objectives of tackling the global dearth of women leaders, creating better leadership and better outcomes for our planet across their individual networks.
Wendy, who completed the Growth Advantage Programme in 2018 and has just completed two modules in Innovation at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, said, “Over-population and over-consumption have created the perfect storm - to understand how this impacts us is, I believe, down to innovation in how we learn, how we recognise and balance personal development. Believing and supporting change, reinventing approaches, and supporting people and planet in a way that allows us to live relatively wonderful lives requires huge swathes of entrepreneurial thinking – innovative thinking will hopefully solve the environmental problems we have created for our world.”
Wendy is not the only Strathclyder taking part in this project – Maria Weikum, researcher development concordat officer, and Stephanie Ordonez, a Chancellor’s Fellow in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, are also part of the 100-strong collective.
Wendy said, “There are 8 of us from the UK, 5 of these have a Scottish connection - and three of those work in Strathclyde University! The other Scottish rep - Sharon Pfleger - is the programme lead for the rollout of the Covid 19 vaccination in Scotland. Collectively we have a wide range of skills and networks and April 22 was the launch day of our journey to get to Antartica.
“We plan to create a number of different ways to raise awareness of the challenges, all as part of the wider vision and mission of Homeward Bound and the collective alumni. We’d love to see some green pharma/ green energy/green living innovative entrepreneurial opportunities that could have global impacts to our new paradigms come out of this.”
Check out Wendy’s Strathclyde Business School blog to find out more: https://www.sbs.strath.ac.uk/blogs/SBS/post.aspx?id=1445