Leadership Wellness: How Do We Lead Without Burning Out?
Social impact leaders are often celebrated for their resilience, yet the systems around them rarely support their long-term wellbeing. Burnout, isolation, and chronic stress are widespread, particularly among founders and frontline leaders navigating complex and often traumatic environments. Despite this, wellbeing is still treated as a personal responsibility rather than a structural issue.
This discussion reframes leadership wellbeing as essential infrastructure for effective and lasting systems change. What would it mean to move beyond individual coping strategies toward organizational cultures, funding models, and leadership approaches that sustain people over time?
Drawing on ideas from healing-centered leadership and inner development, including frameworks like the Inner Development Goals, we will explore how capacities such as self-awareness, emotional regulation, and relational intelligence shape not only individual leaders, but the systems they build. Together, we will examine how to create regenerative models of leadership that do not reproduce the burnout and extraction they seek to change.
Speakers
Abigail Kajumba is CEO of Emerging Public Leaders, advancing youth leadership and governance across Africa.
Kelsi Kriitmaa is Founder of Kriitmaa Coaching & Consulting, advising on strategy, philanthropy, and systems change.
Magdalena Villegas is Founder at MAGMA. Feminine Leadership and systemic change
Vik Mohan is a Leadership Transformation and Wellbeing Consultant, working at the intersection of health, climate, and systems change.
Natasha Salifyanji Kaoma is Chief Executive Officer of Copper Rose Zambia.
Discussion Questions
Why is burnout among social impact leaders still treated as an individual issue rather than a systemic one?
What would it look like to design organizations and funding models that actively support long-term leadership wellbeing?
How do inner capacities, such as self-awareness and relational intelligence, influence the effectiveness and sustainability of systems change?
If we treated wellbeing as core infrastructure, what would we do differently across the social impact ecosystem?
Location & access
Accessibility matters deeply to us, and we do our best to choose spaces that reflect that. That said, some of our Oxford venues are in historic buildings without lifts. This room is unfortunately not accessible for wheelchair users, those with mobility challenges, or anyone needing step-free access.