BLI Honorary Fellows

BLI Honorary Fellows are at the heart of how we work. They are practitioners who choose to actively engage with and participate in the work of the BLI because they are committed to our mission and share our values.

Our Honorary Fellows hold or have held leadership roles in their own field and/or have a particular area of expertise, skill or experience that is relevant to the work of the BLI. They are actively involved in the delivery of our leadership education, training and development programming ensuring that reflection-on-practice remains at the centre of our work. They provide practitioner perspectives that help shape and test our research programmes and provide opportunities for research partnerships that demonstrate impact.

BLI Honorary Fellows help us live our values. Coming from many sectors, disciplines and areas of life, our Honorary Fellows bring credible experience and expertise to underpin the value we place on collaborative leadership. Our Honorary Fellows enable us to draw on and sustain input from a wide range of diversities making a reality of our commitment to inclusive leadership. Being active in many sectors and contexts, our Honorary Fellows help to ensure that we are enabling responsible leadership that remains relevant to the needs of the people and places we serve.

Meet our Honorary Fellows

Rebecca (Becci) Bryant

Chief Fire Officer

Becci was appointed Chief Fire Officer/Chief Executive with Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service in April 2016 and was the first woman CFO having progressed through the 'ranks' in the UK, not just England. Becci joined Staffordshire in 2005 after serving with both Cheshire and Bedfordshire and Luton, where she joined in 1992. She worked across a range of partnerships and was heavily involved in the Staffordshire response to the C19 pandemic. She worked across a range of partnerships and was heavily involved in the Staffordshire response to the C19 pandemic.

Since her retirement in 2021 Becci has become the Chair of the Honorary Fellows for the Birmingham Leadership Institute (BLI) and an Associate for the BLI. Becci is also an Associate Professor with Warwick Business School and continues to be involved in strategic leadership development within the Fire Service through the National Fire Chiefs Council.

What leadership means to me...

Quite simply for me leadership is about people, it is about creating circumstances for those people to deliver the best of themselves in the service of others. It is also about those people coming together to make the biggest and most positive difference they can for those around them. Leadership is hard and challenging but it is also the most rewarding of activities especially when people realise they have the most remarkable talent that is welcomed, respected and embraced within their own organisations.

Woman with short hair in a blue coat (Rebecca Bryant) stood in a field, smiling for the camera

Julian Corner

Chief Executive, Lankelly Chase Foundation

For the last 10 years, Julian has been Chief Executive of Lankelly Chase Foundation, an independent grant making charity committed to justice, equity and inclusion. In this role he has promoted systemic approaches to addressing entrenched social problems. Julian is also Chair of Toynbee Hall, the world’s first university settlement, which works to tackle the causes and impacts of poverty in East London. He has had a number of civil service roles, including leading crime and policy strategy in the Home Office, writing the Social Exclusion Unit’s report on ex-prisoners, and leading the first cross government prisoner rehabilitation strategy.

What leadership means to me...

Leadership means offering as much clarity of purpose and value as possible in situations of uncertainty, creating routes through to action for those who are best placed to act, and fostering the conditions for collective action among teams, networks and eco-systems of diverse people. In pursuing justice, equity and inclusion, this often means using positional leadership to disrupt business as usual patterns so that spaces for more generative thinking and action can open up. I believe each of us can offer leadership if we are supported in ways that recognise power structures and our own context and experiences.

Mahasti Dadressan

Mahasti has taken on roles which were not easy and which exposed her to environments, philosophies, cultures and economies very different from what she had experienced growing up or in the early years of her career. She has served as the Senior Adviser to the Chairman of a NFP in Geneva, and led the activities of one of the largest privately held organisation in the MENA region as Group Vice President, but what she is most proud of was having taken on roles which were uncharted and new, facing each day as they came, grounded in her beliefs about life and character.

What leadership means to me...

For me, leadership began a long time ago with observing life and reflecting upon who I wanted to be. Values are everything, and leadership necessitates a reflective individual armed with the knowledge and intellect and courage and language to draw the best out of others, with a purity of intent that stems from a value driven life. I believe in an everyday quiet kind of heroism, the courage to follow the direction of my own thoughts instead of conforming to expectations, the integrity to abide by what I know is right, the resilience to combat life's ebbs and flows, its tantrums and its melodies, and yet to persevere, and the empathy to understand the plight of others and to bridge that gap with kindness, is leadership.

Major-General Gary Deakin

Currently a senior leader of one of the 30-nation NATO Alliance’s most important organisations and one of its most dynamic and successful deliverers of major change programmes. Major Deakin has transformed capability, culture, people, processes, and equipment globally. Rapidly diagnosing the objective of change and the path to achieve it. He develops visions people follow, building strategies accommodating national political agendas and local cultures. His ability to move tens of thousands of people and tons of equipment across the globe is matched by his diplomatic skills.

What leadership means to me...

As a career British Army officer, with experience of leading on operations around the world, leadership is about people. At its heart is the ability to get people to do things, to achieve objectives and deliver outcomes. It involves thought, empathy, passion and understanding. It’s the ability for someone to look you in the eye in the most demanding of circumstances and believe in you and then follow you.

Javed Khan

Chief Executive, Barnado's

Javed Khan is Chief Executive of Barnardo’s – the UK’s largest children’s charity. Barnardo’s has 8,000 employees and 14000 volunteers, with a retail chain of over 700 shops making it the fifth largest charity in the UK. As a British Muslim with Pakistani/Kashmiri heritage, Javed is the first non-white, CEO in Barnardo’s 155-year history.

He is often asked to advise Government, speak on national and international platforms, and regularly appears on national media. His non-executive board roles have included NHS CCG’s, Hospital Trusts, local government improvement, and as a member of the Independent Grenfell Fire Recovery Task Force.

What leadership means to me...

When staring up at Mount Everest from Base Camp 1- imagine what the view will look from the top!

Leadership is the ability, skill and nous to watch, assess and learn from what you find around you, and then translate that ‘view’ into a journey on which you take others along with you. The navigation of the journey requires confidence, resilience, courage, humour, honesty with humility, and the ability to inspire, but also taking feedback and adjusting when needed, as some of the critical ‘tools’ the leader will need to lean on along the way.

Professor Fu-Meng Khaw

National Director of Health Protection and Screening Services, Executive Medical Director, Public Health Wales

Meng is a Public Health doctor with over 20 years of public health experience and board and director-level experience in a range of roles in England and Wales, including as Director of Public Health for North Tyneside and Newcastle and Centre Director for Public Health England East Midlands. He has actively managed key threats from communicable diseases, leading response at a local and national level, including strategic leadership for response to the COVID pandemic. Meng holds an honorary Professorship with Cardiff University, is a member of the Board of the Faculty of Public Health and Chair of the MFPH Examiners.

What leadership means to me...

Leadership is a privilege and despite popular belief, the skills to be an effective leader can be learned and practised by all of us. Leaders need to learn to assess each situation and develop a range of leadership styles to suit, whilst retaining authenticity. This can often be challenging, but is necessary. Effective leaders are constantly aware of self and others, and in tune with their ‘energies’ and values. As such, leaders are ever-vigilant, consciously and unwitting.

Thara Raj

Director of Public Health

Thara is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health. She has 30 years of public health experience and was in the first cohort of the 21^st century public servant leadership programme and has joined the teaching team.

Thara is Director of Public Health for Warrington. She is used to rolling up her sleeves up and getting on with health protection challenges, as her previous work in the South West of England saw her play a key advisory role during the 2018 Salisbury and Amesbury poisonings. She worked on the first UK case of monkeypox, and has also been Public Health England’s London lead for Immunisations.

What leadership means to me...

Being genuine. Being inquisitive. Inspiring diverse communities to engage with ideas to bring about bold change. A 21^st century public servant needs to lead with authority and kindness and be able to listen, learn and develop other people’s leadership potential which is why I am part of the University of Birmingham’s Leadership Institute.

Joyce Redfearn

Director of Redfearn Associates

Joyce has 17 years’ experience as a chief executive, creating a new unitary authority for Monmouthshire, improving services and governance at Gloucestershire County Council and starting the Wigan Council culture shift to working more closely with communities, partners and businesses including being in a shared CE role with Health.

For the last 9 years she has been involved in leadership development; chairing improvement boards; facilitating system change and coaching. She has worked at local and national policy level throughout the UK and in Jordan and Egypt. She enjoys enabling others to deliver their best and keep striving to improve outcomes.

What leadership means to me...

Leadership means producing change and movement by recruiting, influencing and guiding followers. It is about creating human collaboration to achieve particular ends. It happens at all levels in organisations and in life, usually by creating a sense of direction, aligning and empowering people and allowing them the space to achieve in ways which achieve the overall purpose but are meaningful to them. It can feel intoxicatingly straightforward, swift and simple. It can equally be iterative, frustrating and complex. It is about constantly learning and adapting.

Claire Sifah

Global Audience Strategy Director

Claire is currently the Global Audience Strategy Director for JLL, a Fortune 200 company. Having been identified as a ‘leader of tomorrow’ from a young age as part of The Windsor Fellowship program, Claire has spent 10 years creating dynamic digital marketing strategies aimed at growing market share. Having worked in London, Dubai and Chicago, she is well-versed in navigating the complexity of understanding the bigger picture while meeting local needs.

She is also an LGBTQ+ champion within JLL, ensuring an equal and safe work environment that enables everyone to reach their full potential.

What leadership means to me...

To me, leadership isn’t about status or power in the traditional sense of the word. Leadership is about understanding someone at their core. It enables you to influence through your words and actions, creating an environment that allows others to grow and not only succeed, but thrive. Leadership is a set of values that evokes a quiet courage and self-assurance in the impact your abilities can have on the world – whether that be for financial gain, social good or simply living an authentic life you can be proud of.

Michael Adamson

CEO

Michael's career has been driven by a desire to make a difference, most recently as CEO of the British Red Cross, part of the world’s largest humanitarian network. He has also worked as a Director of Commissioning in the NHS and spent five years as Managing Director at a national disability charity.

Michael established and co-led the cross sectoral Voluntary & Community Sector Emergency Partnership. He has also held non-executive roles on national and international social purpose organisations such as Catch 22 and DEC, always trying to focus resources toward those in greatest need. Michael's interest is how we can lead systemically to increase social impact. He wants to build on the learning he has gained in health, national resilience and international humanitarian response to generate new insights into how we can enhance collective impact

What does leadership mean to you

Leadership is about how we bring about change or achieve an objective with others in an aligned way. It can be exercised at different levels – team, organisational or system wide. Much has been written about the practice of leadership at team and organisational levels - much less at systems level. Yet, for many of us working to overarching mission statements and visions for people or the planet, the outcomes we seek can only be achieved in collaboration with others. This requires a complementary set of leadership qualities and practices from multiple leaders simultaneously such as humility, curiosity about collective possibility, presumption of good intentions, patience, insight, resilience, action orientation. We need to invest in these skills systematically.

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