In Tanzania, surrounded by women from around the world whom I had never met before, I saw how care can take many forms: listening, holding space, sharing stories… The quiet strength of being there for others created an unexpected sense of safety that reshaped my understanding of what it means to lead.
In that space, I realized something that has stayed with me ever since: if caring is not just one thing, neither can be leading.
They are not singular. They are shared, relational, and deeply human. Neither is a fixed role or a single way of acting, but something that shifts and takes shape through our relationships with others.
Before the Homeward Bound Leadership Summit, I understood leadership as something defined by responsibility, expertise, and decision-making. That understanding began to shift when I found myself in a group of 65 women from 17 countries.
Different disciplines, cultures, and life paths came together in one shared space, carrying stories shaped by resilience, ambition, doubt, and purpose. What could have been distance or fragmentation instead became connection.
I witnessed how collective leadership is not about uniformity or agreement, but about creating the conditions where difference can coexist, be heard, and become strength. Leadership was not held by one person, but distributed: emerging through trust, care, and mutual recognition.
Some forms of leadership are visible and vocal. Some are quiet and steady. Both are valid. What matters is not how leadership looks, but whether it can be sustained in a way that is true to ourselves.
Each person needs to find their own way of leading: one that is authentic, sustainable, and aligned with who she is. There is no single expression of what it should look like, but it is in finding our own voice that we contribute to a shared purpose.
This way of understanding leadership felt strikingly familiar when I turned to the natural systems around us.
In nature, survival is rarely an individual achievement. It is sustained through interdependence: through relationships where knowledge is shared, roles are distributed, and care is embedded in the system itself. Ecosystems do not thrive because of isolated strength, but because of connection.
This is where it all comes together for me.
Leadership, care, and science are not separate conversations. They are different expressions of the same responsibility: to understand the systems we are part of, and to act accordingly.
Since returning from the Summit, I find myself thinking more intentionally about how I communicate science: as a way of creating connection. Caring, for me, now means making knowledge accessible, translating complexity into understanding, and building connections between people and the systems they depend on.
Because we do not care for what we do not feel connected to, and we do not act on what we do not understand.
And perhaps this is where leadership, in all its forms, truly begins: in connection.
Women in STEMM have a unique role in shaping this kind of leadership, bringing with us experiences of resilience, adaptability, and persistence that help redefine leadership as more inclusive, connected, and sustainable.
We have cared for a long time. And what has caring always been, if not a form of leadership, even when it was not named as such.
Elena Ceballos
