Mary Godfrey and Robert Widing will join the GRLI as board members from June 2017 in the important role of Partners’ Representatives.
The two board members-elect will represent the GRLI’s partners — which consist of more than 50 companies, learning organisations and global organisations — on the movement’s board. They will also work closely with the Council of Partners’ Guardian Group, which operates independently from the GRLI’s board and is the guardian of the movement’s ethos and goals.
“As a global movement that is focused on embedding responsibility in leadership and practice on a global scale, the GRLI functions under the guidance of two distinct groups of wise leaders, ” explains John North, managing director of the GRLI.
“On the one hand, the Board of Trustees guides and guards the movement’s legal and fiduciary duties and ensures that it adheres to the highest standards of corporate governance and responsible leadership. The GRLI is formally registered as a foundation under Belgian law. On the other, a group of carefully selected Guardians actively ensures that the GRLI remains true to its founding principles and is constantly challenged to pursue its goals in the most effective way.”
The Guardians are selected from partner organisations, while the Board of Trustees may include any leader selected from the GRLI’s global network of supporters and fellow leaders. In this instance, Mary Godfrey joins the board after working tirelessly as a Guardian, while Robert Widing is the leader at one of the GRLI partner universities and a driving force in the Aim2Flourish initiative, which was incubated through the GRLI.
Mary Godfrey
Mary is the chair of the Collaborative CEO of Bettys and Taylors, a UK based company renowned equally for its quality tea, coffee, baked goods and its unique leadership structure and approach to sustainable growth.
Apart from her role in the five-person distributive leadership team that forms the Collaborative CEO of Bettys and Taylors, Mary is the director of change and performance at the organisation, where she focusses on fostering leadership that is good for business, for people and the planet.
Mary has served the GRLI as a Guardian since the organisation’s inception in 2008. She holds as her personal learning objective the goal of further developing her awareness of new and emerging approaches which will inform the design of programmes and frameworks for the future.
Robert Widing
Robert is the Dean of the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, a Professor of Management and Dean and Professor of Design and Innovation.
Under his leadership, Case Western and the Weatherhead School of Management was instrumental in founding and growing the successful Aim2Flourish initiative with the GRLI. Aim2Flourish serves as a global learning platform that collects and shares stories of real-life business innovation, courageous leadership and inspiring innovations that create a better world. The lead collaborators on this project are David L. Cooperrider, Ron Fry, Chris Laszlo and Roberta Baskin of the Weatherhead School of Management’s Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit.
Robert holds the highest marketing research honour in Australasia — the Distinguished Marketing Research Award from the Australia-New Zealand Marketing Academy. He is an awarded researcher with over 100 publications and was recently identified as a Top 25 Sales Scholar by the Global Sales Science Institute, amongst many other recognitions and awards.
Although both Mary and Robert will only formally take up their positions in June 2017, they will actively participate in the many collaboratories, meetings and the All Gathering Momentum (AGM) event and the simultaneous Council of Partners Meeting at the Kemmy Business School in Limerick, Ireland from 16 to 21 October.
The new board members elect were formally welcomed by Dennis Hanno, Chairman of the GRLI Board and President of Wheaton College.
