International Leaders Conference 2026: In conversation with Clare Garey, Founder of Sustainability at School

As Spring gets into full swing, we’re looking forward to our International Leaders Conference next month and hearing from our line-up of incredible speakers. With expertise in every aspect of school leadership from psychology to sustainability, our speakers have been hand-picked to inspire your leadership journey and help you pragmatically solve the problems faced by international schools.

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In this series, we will be sharing exclusive interviews with the International Leaders Conference speakers.

First up…Clare Garey, founder of Sustainability at School, who helps schools solve the problem of how to strengthen their climate action in a way that is realistic and sustainable into the future. We spoke with Clare about her work with school leaders and what she’ll be talking about at the conference.

Tell us about your work as a leader in sustainable education

Sustainability at School is a purpose-driven social enterprise with a twofold purpose: helping schools to reduce their environmental footprint and helping to develop sustainability leadership among students and staff. We do this by helping move organisations from intention to action.

Schools can come from different regions or contexts, but the challenges tend to be incredibly familiar. A school in Bangkok is clearly operating in a very different local context from one in Barcelona, but the core question always comes back to: how do you bring people along on a journey and create a shared sense of ownership and meaning? We help leaders to enable others and ensure there’s the capacity, clarity and confidence to make change happen.

What will you be talking about at the conference?

Our session title is ‘Want to make your school more sustainable but don’t know where to start? Here’s how.’  We’ll be taking our expertise and knowledge from implementing sustainability change processes in schools around the world and sharing what that looks like in a practical way, so that leaders can envision what it would look like their school. We often find that schools care deeply about modelling sustainable practice but translating that into something that’s actually embedded and can be sustained over time is challenging. We’ll share a practical, step by step approach that focuses less on one-off initiatives and more on building the conditions that allow for long-term impact. The aim is to give leaders a practical outline for how to implement sustainability action in their schools.

What is the biggest challenge school leaders face right now when trying to implement change?

It’s making change sustainable – pun intended! In my experience, schools are really complex organisations. There are multiple competing priorities – limited time, lots of different stakeholders and opinions. So even when there are really strong intentions, maintaining that alignment and momentum over time can be tricky.

The key to making change sustainable is making sure it’s not too to-down or too bottom-up. It needs to be a combination of both so that everyone can help drive the change and make it stick.

Why do so many promising initiatives fail in schools?

I think there’s a tendency – and it’s very well-intentioned, fuelled by passion and urgency – to move straight from intention to implementation. Regardless of the context, it’s important to spend enough time understanding what your school is doing well first and then setting up the practical structures to support consistent action and clear ownership. This means you can understand how the changes you’re making align with the school’s wider strategy so that it’s not just something happening separately, it’s genuinely integrated with how the school works on a day-to-day basis. It’s like the difference between having one passionate member of staff running a garden club, versus having a whole-school sustainability action team with representation from students, academic divisions, operations and leadership all focused on increasing the school’s biodiversity.

What does ‘effective leadership’ look like in practice today, not just in theory?

Based on what I’m observing in schools, effective leadership is where there’s a clear overarching direction, but at the same time there’s a culture where others can take ownership. In practice, it comes down to consistency around how decisions are made, how priorities are communicated and how leaders show up on a day-to-day basis. Those are the things that shape culture more than any one initiative.

The other aspect is the recognition that effective change takes time. It’s about balancing ambition with realism. For example, we work with a large school in Asia, helping them to define their sustainability objectives over a three-year period, because it takes that time to align all of the different divisions and ensure that the change is meaningful.

What’s one trend in education leaders shouldn’t ignore right now?

I don’t really see it as a trend, but I do think that there’s now a clear expectation that schools should be preparing students not just academically, but for real world challenges. Education needs to go beyond knowledge and help young people develop the skills that are required in the workplace and life in general – critical thinking, taking action, leadership. The work we’re doing is very relevant to this, because young people are already living with climate change, and sustainability can be a vehicle for teaching them how to lead and act on the things that matter.

What advice would you give to leaders feeling stretched too thin?

First, I think it’s so important to recognise that that is a very real and common feeling, because school leaders are managing an enormous range of complex responsibilities.

In any leadership role – including in my own case, as a founder and running a small business – it’s about stopping and making sure that we have clarity and focus in our strategic vision. Every school will have a strategic vision that they will have spent time, effort and energy developing as a team. Going repeatedly back to that vision – asking where you really want to take the school to and how to make your way there – is what helps overcome the feeling of ‘we need to do everything, everywhere, all at once.’ The most meaningful change and strategic developments come not from adding more, but from stepping back and prioritising.

What’s one idea you hope to challenge in leaders’ thinking?

School leaders generally want to make their schools more sustainable in terms of climate action. But they sometimes feel that it’s a separate addition to their existing priorities, and they’re often unsure of where to start.

I’m hoping that we can challenge that thinking and help leaders to see sustainability as something that actually enables the delivery of their existing strategic priorities. That might be deepening student leadership and agency, creating opportunities for real world learning, or allowing students to explore and share their own ideas. These are all priorities that a whole-school sustainability strategy can contribute to, rather than being separate from.

Hear more from Clare

Interested in what Clare has to say and want to hear more? You can hear from her and others at the International Leaders Conference, which will take place online from 7 – 8 May. Find out who else is speaking and register your place at https://ilc2026.eventify.io/p/#/overview