Author Oluwasola Adesulu is a member of the Future of GM Diverse Voices Network and volunteered to produce this thoughtful post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn at Oluwasola O’Adesulu. Our thanks for his time and insight – if you’d like to contribute web content or event ideas, get in touch!
Grace Pagani of Arup knew the “Rain Guarden” project could be built. As a civil engineer, she brought the engineering expertise needed to make that possible. However, her colleagues in housing, local government and communications brought different perspectives that helped refine the idea, turning it into something practical and deliverable.
That distinction between having a good idea and transforming it into something that works in practice stayed with me throughout the Future of Greater Manchester Summer Celebration and Alumni Awards.
I attended the celebration at JLL as a member of Future of GM’s Diverse Voices Network, joining leaders and partners from across the city-region to celebrate the people and projects shaping Greater Manchester’s future.
Six awards were given, recognising nine leaders through individual and team achievements. Beyond the celebrations, the award ceremony offered something useful to everyone in the room: practical examples of how leadership shows up when people are striving to improve places and lives.
Let’s explore the award winners through three lessons we can all take away and implement in our various projects and organisations.
Lesson 1: Collaboration can turn expertise into action
The “Rain Guarden” Team won the Cross-Sector Collaboration Award.
Grace Pagani of Arup, Victoria Carr of Homes England, Andrew Leigh of Liverpool City Council and Mel Cook of Manchester City Council combined expertise in engineering, investment, strategy, communications and public-sector delivery. Together, they developed a proposal for retrofitting sustainable drainage systems into existing public spaces across the city-region.
Flood resilience cannot be treated only as an engineering issue. It is connected to public spending, neighbourhood design, biodiversity, community engagement and the ability of places to adapt to a changing climate. By looking at the challenge from different perspectives, the team strengthened the technical solution, secured Greater Manchester Combined Authority support and helped transform the proposal into a pilot scheme.
Their story shows that collaboration is not simply about bringing organisations together. It means allowing different people to probe an idea, translate it for different audiences and improve it through their own expertise.
Stephanie Furness, Strategic Growth & Delivery Lead at GMCA, was also recognised for collaborative leadership.
While the Rain Guarden team demonstrated collaboration through a specific project, Stephanie Furness showed the importance of creating the conditions in which collaboration can happen repeatedly. Through her work convening the Greater Manchester Development Forum, Stephanie has helped create a trusted space where public and private sector leaders can share intelligence, address common challenges and collaborate on the delivery of economic growth and quality housing. The Forum brings together developers, investors, construction leaders and local authorities to discuss development opportunities and delivery challenges across all ten boroughs.
Convening can be underestimated as a leadership skill. However, bringing the right people together and creating enough trust for honest conversations can unlock progress that no organisation can achieve alone. This is something I am quite familiar with through my work in the VCFSE sector. Meaningful progress often depends on relationships across organisational boundaries.
Lesson 2: Leadership should include affected people in decisions
Sharon Weetman (GMCA) won the Inclusive Growth Award. Sherelle Fairweather (Manchester City Council) won the Innovation Award.
As Head of Youth Employment and Apprenticeships at GMCA, Sharon Weetman developed a proposal for young people to help design, commission and deliver the programmes intended to support them.
People should have a meaningful role in shaping the services that affect them. Yet engagement sometimes happens after the most important decisions have been made.
Sharon’s proposal encourages leaders to move beyond consultation towards partnership. It recognises young people not simply as beneficiaries, but as people with knowledge, ideas and agency. For a city-region with ambitious plans for inclusive growth, that distinction matters. Economic success should be measured not only by investment and development, but by whether people from every community can access opportunity and influence the systems around them.
The same principle can be applied to technological development. Sherelle Fairweather of Manchester City Council champions AI readiness, digital inclusion and equitable access to technology. Her work extends the same idea of participation into digital innovation. Through Manchester’s Doing Digital Together strategy and the creation of the People Panel for AI with Manchester Metropolitan University, she has helped communities contribute to the shaping of AI-enabled services.
Sherelle’s work reminds us that innovation is not automatically inclusive. Leaders must make deliberate choices about access, participation and accountability if technological change is to benefit everyone.
Lesson 3: Long-term leadership shapes better places
Karl Astbury of Resilient Cities Network won the Climate & Resilience Award, and Peter Haymes of Stockport Council won the Local Impact Award.
Karl Astbury’s recognition for climate and resilience offered another perspective on leadership. His work connects learning from Greater Manchester communities with international approaches to climate, health and equity.
What I took from Karl’s message was that resilience is not created only during an emergency. It is built over time through decisions about housing, green space, public health, infrastructure and who gets a voice in planning.
That feels especially important now. Leaders often face pressure to prioritise what is immediate, visible and easily measured. Yet many decisions that shape a place have consequences that unfold over decades. Long-term leadership requires us to ask whether the systems we create today will protect people tomorrow, and whether those systems protect every community equally.
Peter Haymes’s work in Stockport offers a practical example of that long-term impact. Through the transformation of Stockport Market Place and Underbanks, he has helped secure investment, restore historic buildings and strengthen the independent business community. His work is a reminder that regeneration is not only about constructing or refurbishing buildings. At its best, it supports identity, enterprise, culture and a sense of belonging.
Future of GM – the bedrock beneath the leadership awards
The value of the Future of Greater Manchester network was visible throughout the evening in the conversations surrounding the awards. I spoke at length with Simon Donohue of SEC Newgate, a Future of GM mentor and a sponsor of the event. We discussed the legal profession, public affairs, strategic communication and community engagement. Our conversation showed me how easily connections can form within a network built around shared values and a commitment to Greater Manchester.
The evening also highlighted the ‘grow your own’ leadership evolution within Future of GM: Dynamo Collette Hayton steps up to Programme Manager and Organisational Development expert, Leaders Plus alum and mentor John Herring joins as Senior Associate, while Susie Cuthill (also an alum) trades her Networks role for more time on her coaching business and joins Future of GM’s brilliant associate group.
Across all the award winners’ stories and projects, it’s clear that progress depends not on one person having all the answers, but on people building partnerships, listening to stakeholders, testing ideas and remaining committed when the route forward is new and sometimes uncertain. To me, these stories reflect a distinct approach: place-based leadership grounded in collaboration, persistence and sustained action. That is the Greater Manchester way.
I left the evening optimistic and excited, not because Greater Manchester’s challenges are small, but because so many people are approaching them with imagination, bravery and genuine commitment to local people. The future of the city-region will not be shaped by one organisation, one profession or one kind of leader. It will be shaped through meaningful connections between them – which is the core of the Future of GM offer.
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