Leny Woolsey

Leny’s interest in leadership and governance originates from her early-career experiences working with corporates in London. Leny worked for nearly 10 years as a marketing and event management consultant to private and commercial clients before emigrating to Aotearoa in 2009. She continued down a similar path in Auckland, working initially on major sporting events, then national and global conferences. In 2010 she commenced her MBA at the University of Auckland and, upon completion in 2012, took a role at the University of Auckland Business School as Business Development Manager in the Graduate School of Management (GSM) and manager of the Fletcher Building Leader’s Edge programme. Her MBA thesis was based on exploring connections between leadership and theatre, a pursuit that led to further research and facilitation collaborations with the New Zealand Leadership Institute. Around this time, Leny presented papers on Arts-based Leadership Development at the Executive MBA Council Global Conference and the International Leadership Association Oceania Conference and became active in the Art of Management and Organisation international scholarly community.

While Leny is still interested in opportunities for creative expression within collaborative and critical/dialogic modes of leadership and leadership development, her research focus has more recently shifted towards the exploration of indigenous perspectives, such as Wayfinding Leadership theory, into leadership development, and the important role of the facilitator in this process. Her work as Executive Director of the Kupe Leadership Scholarship and facilitator of the University of Auckland’s Leadership Mindset program allows her to collaborate with some exceptional scholars in these fields.