Trailblazers: Nana Bonsu

As part of our Trailblazers: Leaders in Public Service series, we’re shining a light on people whose leadership is making a meaningful difference across public services. Through the series, we’re celebrating their career journeys, achievements and the impact they’re having in their roles.

In this feature, Nana Bonsu, Director of Children’s Safeguarding and Family Help at the London Borough of Camden, reflects on the importance of relational practice, distributed leadership and reimagining public services. Nana shares the story behind the creation of the Camden Centre for Relational Practice, the influence of her mum’s entrepreneurial journey, and why courage, curiosity and kindness are central to her approach to leadership.

What's your proudest career achievement so far?

The creation of the Camden Centre for Relational Practice. The principle of the Centre is rooted in the idea that public sector services can be reimagined, and infrastructure steeped in relational principles, drawing heavily on systemic practice. Since the launch in October 2024, the Centre has developed an accredited three-day relational practice training programme, mandatory for all colleagues in Children and Learning to ensure fidelity to our relational practice framework. Via the previous DfE SLIP, we supported several local authorities in the country, helping to develop relational cultures that attend to curiosity, social inequity and self-reflexivity. The Centre has led on cultural transformation in Camden’s Housing Directorate, attending to participatory practices, working with residents and housing colleagues to co-design a relational practice framework that has purpose and fit. We will continue to strengthen the Centre’s impact with the newly created DfE CIT programme, drawing upon associates of the Centre that we have cultivated internally and externally.

What's one piece of advice you'd give to aspiring leaders?

Be brave! You have no idea of what you are capable of, and ideas about yourself are steeped in stories that should always evolve. The narratives about who we are, shaped by our personal and professional experiences, will serve a purpose but will soon become outdated as you navigate various experiences. You need to continually re-evaluate the internal dialogue you have about what you can do, critically. Having a coach will support you to have a safe space to test out your thoughts and help you to consider a range of other ideas, which you can then bring back into your practice.

What do you think makes a great leader, and how has your own approach to leadership developed throughout your career?

Understanding what you don’t know, being open about that, and ensuring you use resources around you. You cannot, in my view, and nor should you feel that you must know everything. Being able to cultivate the leadership of others around you, so you work as a collective to tackle issues and dilemmas, is important to me. Distributed leadership is so important, as we exist in a world of great complexities that requires leaders to reach across systems, expertise and create coherence. Kindness and humour have been a core component of my leadership repertoire. I think I’d be a great comedian; I’m not sure my colleagues would pay to see me, though!

What motivates you most about working in public service?

I love being of service to others, whether it's citizens we serve, colleagues I work with, or supporting others much further afield. The challenges that we face locally and globally are ones which require continual reflection, attending to data, evidence and insight. I like being visionary and taking risks, trying new ideas and testing what we can do. In Camden, we are working as a whole Council on a neighbourhood place-based approach to public sector service design and delivery. The opportunities for this are vast, from an ideological positioning, what will be our theory of change, to the infrastructures that will enable us to test and learn. Change is constant in our world, and it motivates me.

Who's someone who's inspired you in your career, and why?

This will be my mum! As a woman, an immigrant from Ghana, she came to London in the 1970s. She worked several jobs, but had a dream to work in beauty, and studied to do so. She was a hairdresser in Lewisham, but she had a bigger dream to own her own business. Her ability to reimagine a different life for herself, she put into action, on her own, with huge courage. She became a businesswoman, owner of her own hairdressing shop in Peckham in the early 1980s. At the time, she was the second Black hairdressing shop there. I worked in the shop; when I say worked, I made tea, read comics and books, and ate sausage rolls! I took quite a lot of tips, so I feel this was a job! What I saw in my mum, though, as a leader, was her ability to connect with women from all walks of life: doctors, lawyers, cleaners and bankers. She made all these women leave her shop feeling seen and heard, as they would share intimate details of their life with her. My mum was the heartbeat of the community and helped other businesses to develop and grow. Her courage and work ethic are gifts she has given me!