Guest Blog – Leadership and governance; roles made for women by Katie Bradshaw, RSACC Chair

This month’s blog is from the Chair of our Trustees, Katie Bradshaw. Katie’s blog coincides with her one year in the role and next week’s Trustees Week, which is 7th-11th November.

As a child, I was labelled as ‘bossy’. As a teenager and young woman, I was called “opinionated” and sometimes “aggressive”. As an adult, I recognise and own this as “passion”, passion for leading change, leading others, and leading fairness. This passion has shaped not only my career but also my interests and aspirations, the forefront of which has always been feminism. 

What is a leader then? According to the dictionary, a leader is “the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country.” As definitions go, that one is pretty dry, and I don’t personally believe that it properly characterises the truest sense of leadership. To me, leadership is about motivating people, inspiring passion, empowering others to reach their full potential; it’s recognising individual differences and utilising strengths, whilst also admitting your own weaknesses. 

During my time at University, I volunteered as the Women’s Representative and focussed my time on bringing women together to talk about their lives, issues, dreams, and realities. I went on to become a volunteer manager, working in organisations including education settings, charities. Throughout my career to date, I have developed a strong interest in ensuring fair and representative decision making and have sought roles that focus on developing people to take on new challenges and become leaders themselves. Within this, I acquired a strong interest in good governance, which spoke to my passions for both leading change and ensuring fairness. 

Three years ago, I identified a gap in my life. I was missing something, an opportunity to utilise the skills and knowledge I have whilst also satisfying my appreciation of good governance. To fill this gap, I decided to seek a position as a trustee within a charity. Trustees take overall responsibility of an organisation, its assets, finances, and legal obligations and they take on a leadership role within an organisation and support its development. They take a backseat when it comes to the operational day to day running of business and instead focus on the “bigger picture” and the strategic direction of the organisation. 

Whilst seeking my new trustee role, it was important to me that I worked with a charity whose focus was something I believed in and could really get behind, so when I saw the advert for trustee roles at RSACC, I jumped at the chance to be involved. To me, this was the perfect opportunity to offer and develop my skills in an organisation that aligned with my own personal, feminist values. Three years on from that initial enquiry, I have had the chance to do both of those things. But I have also gained so much more than that. Firstly, I was incredibly privileged to be elected as chair of the board a year ago, a fantastic leadership opportunity which has allowed me to gain even more insight into RSACC as an organisation but also into the VAWG landscape in general, making me a better trustee. Secondly, I have had the opportunity to be involved in steering an organisation through an extremely difficult period in our history, the pandemic. This has shown me how truly resilient women are and I have been repeatedly impressed by the dedication and strength shown by both staff and survivors alike. And finally, I gained something that I didn’t even consider when I started this; an opportunity to be with likeminded, passionate, and brilliant women, who inspire and motivate me to continue my personal leadership journey. That has been by far the most powerful outcome of my time so far with RSACC and it has cemented my strong believe that we are made for positions of leadership and governance, and I will continue to empower women and girls to take the lead. 

“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made…it shouldn’t be that women are the exception.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg