Green Gown Awards 2014 - Leadership Award - Professor Daniella Tilbury - Finalist

Dean of Sustainability, University of Gloucestershire

The leadership excellence shown by Professor Daniella Tilbury is easy to see: under her direction, the University of Gloucestershire has maintained an excellent performance profile and has been recognised as a sector leader over many years.

Daniella’s international and policy work in this area is well known and contributed significantly to the progression of sustainability as a key agenda for the future of HE and to the development of Education for Sustainability in particular. Daniella was one of the first to develop research on HE and sustainability, and then became one of the first to put the ambition into practice, in attempting to make ‘whole-institution’ sustainability a reality.

Daniella works with personal and passionate dedication in various advisory roles, through mentoring and professional support, developing partnerships and alliances across professions, sectors and cultures, to help guide others in their sustainability quests. Daniella’s results speak for themselves and she deserves to be recognised for her outstanding contribution.

Top 3 learnings

1 The need to challenge expectations and perceptions that University stakeholders have about sustainability, against the realities of actual performance and progress
2 The importance of brokering sustainability leadership responses with the widest range of constituencies and colleagues, to ensure legacy and support embedding
3 The need to develop both personal and institutional resilience.