Dame Jacinda – An Empathic Leader

The former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern will lecture and mentor at the University of Sydney after moving to Australia earlier this year. 

Ardern begins this month and her work will focus on empathetic leadership, social cohesion and civic trust. The University of Sydney said Ardern would be based in its school of public health, exploring ways to address global health challenges and focusing on equity, inclusion and wellbeing.

Counter-factual? 

[…] “I’m delighted to be joining the University of Sydney,” Ardern said. “I’ve found myself especially focused on the question of leadership since leaving office – and how we can better support and encourage the kind of leadership needed to tackle our many global challenges.” 

You mean like purposefully creating division and using psychopathic tactics to trick the population into being subservient and not ask questions? 

The University of Sydney vice-chancellor, Mark Scott, said he had long admired the courage and humanity Ardern brought to public life. 

“Dame Jacinda led New Zealand through events of profound consequence and her leadership demonstrated that empathy and resolve do not compete with one another; each can strengthen the other,” he said. 

[…] In an ABC Conversations interview in July, Ardern said she believed people were seeking empathetic leadership despite many world leaders embodying a “dominant style” of leadership. 

“You see people voting for parties [that] are often on the fringes of the mainstream. When you dive into the research, the majority of those who are doing that are often not voting for the ideology – they’re just voting against the status quo because they don’t think it serves them any more. 

“So I think all the signs actually point to people wanting something different than what they’re getting now.” 

Yeah, sure, whatever. All Jacinda proved is the old adage that when someone tells you they are honest, the first thing you should do is check your wallet. 

[…] Ardern has since held fellowships at Harvard University focused on public leadership and technology governance, and published her memoir, A Different Kind of Power, in 2025.

Ardern, her husband, Clarke Gayford, and daughter, Neve, moved to Sydney earlier this year, buying a property in Sydney’s northern beaches for $5.3m. 

I guess to really solve child poverty you have to do it from a multimillion dollar mansion in one of the richest parts of Sydney. 

But, anyway, I’m not going to even try and make sense of this. Graham Norton, Mark Scott and all the rest of you simps can have her. 

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/27/jacinda-ardern-joins-university-of-sydney-as-lecturer-and-mentor