Fellowship

‘Courage with Compassion: Leading in Today’s NHS’ with Sonji Clarke (Class of 1982)

In this blog post, Louisa Searle, Chair of the Rank Fellowship and a Fellow (Class of 2003), reflects on our recent Learning Through Leadership talk, ‘Courage with Compassion: Leading in Today’s NHS’, delivered by Sonji Clarke (Class of 1982). The event took place on 27th November 2024 at The Rank Foundation’s offices in Shoreditch, London.

About the guest speaker:

Sonji Clarke is a consultant obstetrician and deputy head of the London School of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and an honorary senior lecturer at King’s College London. She has been a consultant for more than 10 years with special interests in perinatal mental health, substance misuse, and women who are pregnant with other complex social factors.

She also has a special interest in Postgraduate and Undergraduate education, as well as an interest in multi-professional diverse leadership development. In 2018, she was honoured as one of the Top 70 NHS Women Leaders in London during the NHS 70 year celebrations by the London Women’s Leadership Network.

The Learning Through Leadership Talks are a bi-annual event where members of the Fellowship are invited to deliver a talk on their leadership journey and reflect on what leadership has looked like and felt like to them in their careers and beyond.

For 2024’s second Learning Through Leadership Talk, we were honoured to be joined by the dynamic and inspiring energy of Dr Sonji Clarke, Class of 1982 at Garden Walk on 27th November.

Sonji’s talk was entitled ‘Compassionate Leadership’, but covered so much more ground than that. She shared personal stories from her childhood and youth and described how that has shaped the person and leader she has become today. It was particularly clear that the impact of her teachers – and of the Rank Leadership Award – had been immense and had truly changed her life. She reflected, often, on how privileged she felt to receive the Award in a way that was deeply moving.

Sonji’s candour and openness allowed us as the audience to see how her challenges and even her ‘failures’ had been part of her journey, and she encouraged us all to view such set-backs in a similar way. She also shared the framework she uses to form her ‘compassionate leadership’, and explored how integrity, authenticity, humility and empathy have guided her through challenging moments in her career. As is true for all of us, those challenges are sometimes posed from the work we do, from those around us and even sometimes from within ourselves. Sonji explained how she navigated all of them – from delivering babies in distress or accusations from colleagues, to racism and imposter syndrome – while always remaining true to herself and her values.

It was fascinating to hear how leadership looks and feels for a leader who has followed a vocation like medicine, particularly in the NHS and in women’s health. In the questions from the audience that followed the speech (and we had many!) Sonji shared with us the advice she would have given her younger self: ‘don’t limit yourself – never hold yourself back’.

Huge thanks to Sonji for the generosity she showed us by sharing so much of herself and her journey with the audience – we will be thinking about it for a long time to come.

About the author:

Louisa Searle, a Fellow (Class of 2003), serves as Chair of the Rank Fellowship. She began her career as a secondary school teacher in North London through the Teach First programme. In 2014, she left the classroom to co-found and lead First Give, a charity that empowers secondary school students to engage with and support their local communities through social action, while developing essential soft skills. Louisa joined The English-Speaking Union in June 2024 as Director of Education.