DIVERSITY IN LEADERSHIP
Leading to Inspire - UNIS Hanoi’s Women Bosses
Left to Right: Amie Pollack (Board Chair), Glenda Baker (formerly UNIS Hanoi HS Deputy Principal), Megan Brazil (ES Principal), Emma Silva (Director of Advancement), Jane McGee (Head of School), Misty Shipley (Director of Finance and Operations), TK Ostrom (Director of Enrolment Management and Marketing), Nitasha Crishna (Lower Elementary Deputy Principal)
By Akofa Wallace, Communications Manager awallace@unishanoi.org
The Leadership Team at the United Nations International School of Hanoi (UNIS Hanoi) is calling for schools and industries to follow in their footsteps and ensure equal gender representation on their Leadership Teams.
At UNIS Hanoi, both the Head of School, Jane Mc Gee and the Board Chair, Dr Amie Pollack are women. Jane is part of a leadership team that is over 50 percent women. She serves alongside a Board that sees women occupying seven of the nine available positions. What may be considered groundbreaking to others in the education sector is seen as a natural evolution for a United Nations school long committed to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal number 5 - Gender Equality. The School believes this is a dynamic that better represents the world. Megan Brazil, UNIS Hanoi’s Elementary School Principal said, “Women make up 50 percent of the world’s population, it only stands to reason that we should be well represented in leadership positions.” Megan’s colleague, Emma Silva, Director of Advancement agrees and goes further to state that strong representation of women in leadership roles at the School is ‘essential to every child’s learning’. A former journalist and broadcast executive, Emma explained, “Diversity doesn’t just make for strong decision making with multiple perspectives, it also ensures that our young people grow up with what we model at our School as the ‘norm’. This is essential while they construct their view of the world, of what is possible and imagine their place in it.”
26 EARCOS Triannual Journal
