My leadership in action project working for Tortoise Media was a rewarding and educational experience, which I would recommend to any younger scholars reading this. I learned invaluable leadership skills, both from the challenges I personally faced and from talking to the many leaders at Tortoise. My time at Tortoise also allowed me to see in practice the topics we had discussed during the leadership workshops at UCL. These real-world examples were very helpful in helping these concepts sink in, which had previously still seemed a little abstract to me despite their value. One of the key examples of this was learning about the importance and nature of vision in leadership, which was strongly embedded in almost everything Tortoise does. At Tortoise, I also realised the crucial value of adaptability to success as a leader – which I saw in the diversity of activities and frequent experimentation that goes on at Tortoise.

My time at Tortoise showed me how essential a vision is to motivating you and your team when chasing a goal that could be years away – or may not even ever be truly “completed”. Tortoise, in their own words, was founded with the vision of tackling two problems: the daily noise and the power gap. The former refers to the overwhelming flow of media and stimuli that we have become increasingly subjected to in recent years – leaving many of us dizzied by headlines and soundbites but no more informed. The latter refers to the sense of widening inequalities in access to key societal institutions such as business, democracy, and the media. In my time at Tortoise, I saw how this overarching vision permeated through the organisation and guided our work. My first project involved reforming the Community Network, the arm of Tortoise which at the time engaged with charity partners and gave free memberships to those who could not afford to pay for our journalism. The guiding vision of the power gap problem helped me come to the conclusion that reforming the community network should focus on including marginalised voices in our editorial process. The steps we initially made while I was at Tortoise eventually turned into us vastly streamlining the network, using our charity partners to reach out to people who would not normally have a voice in the media, and hosting more regular events with our partners to bring them in to the editorial process.

Tortoise also demonstrated the virtue of adaptability in leadership, which was shown by how they dealt with challenges and how they seized opportunities. Talking to the veterans of the organisation and hearing stories from the early days of Tortoise surprised me with how much has changed. At first, Tortoise was initially focused around producing long reads – but by the time I got there they used many different formats to communicate many different types of content and stories. One example of this is Tortoise Audio. Although I did not personally work on the audio team, it was difficult not to hear some of the fantastic content they put out that have become some of the most successful podcasts in the UK. I did get a chance to work closely with the data journalism wing of Tortoise, whose projects covering the food system, FTSE100 companies, and MP Expenses have produced some cutting-edge stories where nobody else was even looking. Not being part of the original plan for Tortoise, this success shows the importance of adaptability in your vision to take advantage of opportunities and innovation.

In short, my time at Tortoise demonstrated to me the value of seeing and taking part in leadership in practice. What I learned will help me immensely in the future and I will be sure to stay close to what is a great organisation with great people doing great things.