I did not arrive at this conviction through theory. It came from watching, first-hand, how a single teacher, a single opportunity, or a single door held open can rewrite the trajectory of a family. Education does not erase disadvantage overnight, but it is the one lever available to almost anyone willing to use it.

That belief has shaped every role I’ve taken since — from a university lecture hall to the classrooms of a land-based College. Wherever I’ve worked, the question has been the same: what would it take for this person, in this room, to have a genuinely fair oppportunity to a great life?

It’s a question that resists easy answers, and one I expect to keep asking for the rest of my career. But it is, I think, the only question worth building a leadership philosophy around.