Sandi Middleton

The one thing I love most about CSL is that it is truly collaborative, inclusive and transformational

What are you about?

Big question! I am about many things, but if I were to keep it to 3 it would be:

1. Helping individuals to achieve their highest potential by engaging with their passions and living their visions.
2. Connecting people back to nature and all that provides on a spiritual, mental and physical level
3. Through doing this work of serving others, enabling myself to do the same.

What have you been up to since CSL?

Since finishing my Fellowship in 2010 I was so inspired by the course that I asked CSL for a job and for the past 3 years have been the Sydney Fellowship Program Manager. During this time I have had the opportunity to program manage and assist in facilitating two 7 month Fellowship Programs as well as coordinate two Alumni Programs. It has been an amazing 3 years, the first job I have had where I truly felt my values, passion and spiritual endeavours aligned, where there was a tangible sense of really making a difference in so many diverse yet equally important ways.

My style of leadership is that of a catalyst and so I naturally flourish in this role of helping other leaders to grow their capacity and find their path in creating a sustainable world. I have caught myself on many an occasion standing back, like a proud mother hen with tears in my eyes, watching our students bare their hearts or try something completely out of their comfort zone, fail and try again.

The one thing I love most about CSL is that it is truly collaborative, inclusive and transformational. You can’t be committed to the sustainability space and do this work without sometimes standing on the fringes, going against the flow and speaking up for things that you believe in. The magic of CSL is that it provides that safe space to test out new styles, learn the many languages of sustainability and work with people of completely opposite value sets towards a common goal.

Working in this field, my own growth and transformation has not stopped and I have finally achieved one of my biggest goals since I did the Fellowship – to be living and working close to nature up in the Northern Rivers area. I am loving being more connected to the land, with a deep sense of community yet still working as a catalyst for change.

What’s next for you?

The most exciting thing about this dream coming true is that I still get to work with my awesome CSL team by rolling out the new 3-month Rural Environmental Leaders Program (RELP) in the Northern Rivers. It is an exciting step for CSL to run a course out of the usual urban patch of Sydney and Melbourne. We are focusing more on the indigenous and nature inspired aspects of leadership during this course. Using our eLearning platform, Leadership Rewired, we are able to take this program to places where opportunities for training are traditionally limited. The response has been overwhelming with over 100 applicants already, even with a while to go until applications close!

While this is a pilot for CSL I can already see it taking off in many rural areas around Australia and beyond. CSL has the skills and ability to form meaningful connections with both city and country leaders through idea and network exchanges and collaborative projects with big impacts.

What’s your longer term vision?

It is a world where every single person knows and lives his or her highest potential so that every thought, word and action is aligned to that. There exists a celebrated sense of diversity; meaningful and fruitful collaborations, and a sense of achievement and fulfillment. There is a deep and continuous awareness of who we are collectively, what is really important to us, what truly makes us happy, and that is explicitly lived and acted upon. It is a place where fear, greed and ignorance do not exist, where your neighbours greet you warmly with open doors and the lack of tension is noticeable. This consideration encompasses all beings, not just our own race.

It is a beautiful world where compassion, empathy, connection, joy and kindness are the key drivers behind decisions. When instead of thinking what will I get out of it, we think what can our community gain from it, and those communities in 100 years time. And within it leaders for sustainability are inherently, yet not obviously, present because it is who we are as well as what we do. Nature is not separate to us, nor we to it. A gentle and loving equanimity has been restored.

To be a part of the Regional Environmental Leaders Program with Sandi at the helm, visit the link below.

Rural Environmental Leaders Program