Katy Granville-Chapman

Katy first became fascinated with how leadership impacts flourishing in the Army where she witnessed the profound influence leaders had on the happiness, fulfilment and stress of those they lead, especially in more complex and challenging environments. The Army was also where Katy discovered her love of teaching and figuring out how people learn.

This led her to complete an MSc and DPhil (PhD) at Oxford where she now lectures part-time at the Department of Education on an MSc in learning and teaching. Katy is an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Character Project, where she had the joyful task of co-creating a free of charge online course, ‘Leading with Character’ with an incredible global team (some of whom are here today). Katy and Emmie (Bidston) co-chair the ‘Leadership for Flourishing’ group at the Human Flourishing Program Network, Harvard University where they are Network Senior Fellows; this community is a key inspiration for this conference, and for the book Katy is co-editing (with Prof’s Jim Titchie-Dunham and Matt Lee) for the Oxford University Press, ‘Leadership for Flourishing’.

Katy is the co-founder (with Jon Harper) of Global Social Leaders, a movement of young people (from age 7 upwards) in 105 countries who design and lead social action projects that make a meaningful change in their communities, empowering flourishing. Katy is married to Jeremy, and they have two boys and a Golden Retriever who eats anything he can get his paws on (edible or otherwise).

What interests you the most about the potential for Leadership and Flourishing?

There is no question of the intrinsic worth of flourishing, but what is really exciting is that when leaders empower people to flourish you also see significant performance gains. I am most interested in how leaders at all levels create the culture and practices that enable everyone to flourish and also how to have a positive impact on flourishing beyond their organisations

What are you most excited about working on?

At the moment I am particularly interested in the role of love in leadership as this seems to be a key pathway to flourishing

Connect with Katy about …

Leadership and Love

Character Development

Leadership and Flourishing in Education