In this episode, I’ve interviewed Martin Roberts, the Director of eLearning at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). Martin leads CISL’s open, customized, and blended digital learning programmes and is an expert in digital education, sustainability, and business leadership. He’s worked in diverse sectors around the world, including the private and public sectors in several African countries, where he built the capability of leaders to address their natural resource challenges. 

Martin has a track record of creating ambitious and commercially successful digital learning programmes with proven impact and has a set of unique skills and experience that have enabled him to support leaders and their global companies to achieve transformational change. He has a passion for democratizing learning and promoting engaging and accessible educational opportunities for future learners in blended and online formats at the scale needed to accelerate change and address challenges in the 21st century.  Tune in as he shares his incredible back story and wisdom around the power of digital learning, sustainability, addressing global inequality, the future of leadership, and the role of business in solving critical problems in the world.

Key Points Discussed:

• Why he works towards addressing the enormous gaps in inequality that he came across working in sustainability both in Africa and the UK (05:10)

• Working with business and wider sectors to scale his impact quickly and improve the lives of more people (08:29)

• Contributing to the empowerment of individuals and organizations to take leadership so they can tackle critical challenges (10:06)

• How he works as part of the establishment without being part of the problem (13:29)

• Putting purpose at the very heart of leadership (15:51)

• The importance of understanding the interconnectivity of sustainability (19:00)

• Future of leadership: Being more open to listening and collaborating with others and why more female leadership is necessary (21:46)

• Being a leader without necessarily having the formal title of leadership (25:24)

• What CISL is doing to improve access to their digital learning courses for people who can’t afford them or don’t have access to technology (32:38)

• What needs to be done to ensure more diversity in leadership (35:44)

• Being uncomfortable as a leader to keep moving forward and being innovative (39:16)

Connect with Martin:

• Martin on LinkedIn

• Martin on Twitter

Connect with Betsy:

• Betsy on Instagram

• Betsy on Twitter

• Betsy on Linkedin

Rate, Review, Learn, and Share

Thanks for tuning into The Discomfort Practice! If you enjoyed this episode, please drop us a five-star and written review, follow and share how it has benefited you. Don’t forget to tune into our other episodes and share your favorite ones on social media!