A Word with Deborah Leaver

Cynthia Steele, EMpower President and CEO, recently spoke with Deborah Leaver, EMpower’s Regional Programme Director for East and Southeast Asia and incoming Vice President of Programmes. They discussed her vision for the role, her leadership on our internal climate-focused task force, and what makes EMpower unique.

When considering who to line up for this interview, I thought our audience would be interested to hear from you given that you will soon become VP of Programmes. What makes you look forward to this role? 

I'm really excited too, especially about continuing to work with the great teams and having the opportunity to build more networks and connections across the organisation. I would like to take those learnings from being a regional programme director to strengthen our strategic approach so that we can increase our impact and effectiveness in grantmaking, capacity strengthening, and supporting our partners to build their networks and different kinds of ecosystems and the places where they work. 

EMpower has strong teams in all the regions where we work. I will direct a lot of my energy towards strengthening our framework so that we can apply our learnings in each region and develop a clear global identity and set of reference points that are useful to all the different teams. And then, I'd really like to be able to share those stories and messages with our supporters and different stakeholders.

You've been leading our internal task force on youth and the climate, a hugely important issue for young people’s present and future. As we think about EMpower’s next strategic phase, what are some early thoughts about how we can move the needle on this? 

On this really important issue, we need to have consistent language and understanding across the organisation about climate change and what it means for EMpower’s approach. Without that, it can get confusing and result in mixed messages to different stakeholders. The Task Force has created some resources already to ensure that consistency, which we can share across the organisation. We have clarified climate change concepts relevant to EMpower, because those would be different from what's relevant to, for example, a solar cell technology development company! 

We have put together a set of examples about how climate change affects each of our programmatic areas. This will allow team members across domains to see how climate change needs to be considered when we're talking about economic well-being, inclusive learning, safe and healthy lives, and critically empowering young people's voices. EMpower can move the needle by amplifying young people's voices and understanding how climate change affects and impacts young, marginalised people, their mental health, their education opportunities for their future, and their safety. Doing this means that we can more meaningfully support young people to create a future in which they've got a stronger and more informed voice and are in a better place to take action in the direction that they want to travel. 

I'm excited to start integrating the recommendations of the task force in what we consider and do going forward. Last question: You’ve been with EMpower for not quite a year, but some good months. I'm curious to know what you think is special. 

I think that the energy at EMpower is really special. At our end-of-year summary meeting recently, we talked about words that we would use to describe EMpower, and I put down “dynamic” and “vigorous.” I think it's an organisation that is full to the brim of committed individuals who are always striving to improve. Many in our sector and more broadly are using the term VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) to describe the world today; the EMpower teams demonstrate that they acknowledge and understand these VUCA situations. 

What I really like is that people at EMpower ask questions, challenge assumptions, and have a healthy appetite for adaptation and change so that we can try new things to be best suited to meet our mission and support our partners. 

I am immensely excited to take on the challenges of the role. It's not going to be necessarily easy, nor should it, because this type of role demands thinking, challenging, and reflection, and I'm looking forward to incorporating that into causes that I'm really excited and passionate about. And working with a team of great people whose work I value and enjoy working with as well.  That’s a pretty unique situation to be in.

That's beautiful. I love that.