In this edition of PurposePhil Pulse: Female Leaders in Education & Philanthropy, I had the privilege of sitting down with Camila Pereira, the newly appointed CEO of Global School Leaders . Camila’s journey into education has been anything but linear, starting as a political journalist, growing through 14 years at the Lemann Foundation in Brazil, and just recently having stepped into a role that places her at the heart of a movement to strengthen school leadership across the Global South.
At GSL, she’s guiding a bold new strategy that goes beyond training to address the broader ecosystem school leaders operate within: how they’re selected, supported, and empowered to drive change. For Camila, school leaders aren’t just important, they’re the essential bridge between policy and practice. And her leadership style, shaped by personal experience, deep reflection, and a growing belief in what she calls “rested leadership,” is already bringing a fresh and values-driven approach to leaders driving global education reform.
We spoke about the influence of her family, how journalism sharpened her love of learning, and why representation, trust, and care are foundational to long-term systems change. What emerged was a rich and personal portrait of a leader redefining what power looks and feels like in the education space, and what it might take to build healthier, more human systems for the future.
To start us off, can you tell me about your current role and how you first entered the education space? Was there a pivotal moment or personal influence that led you here and made you stay?
Absolutely. I’ve just recently stepped into the role of CEO at Global School Leaders. We’re working across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, with the core belief that excellent schools begin with excellent leaders. That really is the mantra that guides everything we do.
School leaders play such a critical role in education systems, they're the ones bridging the gap between policy design and daily classroom practice. They navigate challenges, translate reforms, support teachers, and ultimately shape the school environment where learning happens. And yet, they are so often overlooked. That’s the lever we’re trying to elevate and strengthen at GSL.
This new role is very energizing for me, especially because it also represents a shift. I come from 14 years at the Lemann Foundation in Brazil, where I worked to strengthen public education at scale. So, joining GSL meant stepping into a more global education perspective, while still staying deeply rooted in the work I care most about—leadership, systems change, and equity. It’s been both a continuation and a new chapter.
In our first few months, we went through a full strategic planning process with our board, our team, and our partners. I’m excited that we’re embracing a more systemic approach now. In GSL’s early years, the focus was very much on high-quality training opportunities for school leaders, which is absolutely essential and will remain core. But now we’re going beyond that to ask: What kind of system needs to be in place for school leaders to actually thrive?
That includes policy: how school leaders are recruited, how their work is recognized, how their voices are heard in the design and implementation of reforms. So we’re beginning to operate more systemically, not just co-creating great programs with our partners, but also shaping the environment that enables school leaders to do their best work.
As for how I entered education, honestly, it wasn’t a rational decision at first. My mom and my grandmother were school leaders. So even though I didn’t consciously think, “I’m going into education,” I grew up immersed in that world. I have early memories of being taken to school with my mom, not because preschool was widespread in Brazil 40 years ago, but because she needed to bring me along. And in that sense, school became a place I felt emotionally connected to from the beginning.
Professionally, I started out as a journalist, writing mostly about politics. Over time, I began covering education more and more. I was speaking with teachers, students, school leaders, policymakers, visiting schools and listening to what people had to say. And I found the conversations and the energy in that space to be so much more meaningful than what I was experiencing in the newsroom. I felt like I didn’t just want to write about these issues anymore. I wanted to work on them.
That’s when I made the leap from journalism into institutional communications for a foundation. I joined the Lemann Foundation as communications coordinator, and over 14 years, grew into the role of Chief Impact Officer. But even at the beginning, the things that drew me into journalism, curiosity and a love of learning, are the same things that have sustained me in the education field. And there’s a strong thread of social justice that’s always been there for me, too. Growing up as a privileged person in an unequal country like Brazil gave me a real sense of responsibility to work for equity. At first, journalism felt like one way to pursue that idealism. But education has always felt like a more enduring, more meaningful place to do that work.
I love that journey, from the child accompanying her mother to school to someone leading systems change globally. Let’s talk about your own leadership. How has your leadership evolved, particularly now as the first CEO after GSL’s founding team? And how do you see yourself as a woman leading in this space?
That’s such a big question, and a very personal one.
For a long time, I genuinely didn’t see myself as a leader. I had internalized a very narrow idea of what leadership looked like. It was extroverted, charismatic, assertive, commanding a room, always “on.” And that just wasn’t me.
I’m a quiet person. I’m highly sensitive. I tend to listen more than I speak. I used to be terrified of public speaking, just standing on a stage would give me intense anxiety. And all of that made me feel like I wasn’t really cut out for leadership, at least not in the traditional sense.
That changed gradually. As I began to grow in my roles, especially at Lemann, women on my team started saying things like, “I’m so glad to see someone like you leading. It helps me see that I could lead, too.” That kind of feedback had a huge impact on me. It helped me realize that leadership doesn't have to look one way, and that embracing who I actually am could be part of what makes me a good leader.
Today, I try to lead from a place of deep listening and psychological safety. I do set a high bar and I am very impact-driven, but I try not to lead through pressure or rigid systems. I try to lead through encouragement, clarity, and support. I want people to feel seen, capable, and empowered to do their best work.
The transition at GSL also helped. Azad and Sameer, the founders, were incredibly generous. They had an abundance mindset and very small egos when it came to the handover. That created the space for me to step in, and it made a real difference. Not every founder transition is smooth, especially across gender lines. Their openness made it possible.
And there’s another concept that’s been very present for me lately: rested leadership. I spent many years hustling, working long hours, always proving myself. There’s even a kind of glamour in burnout in cities like São Paulo. But this doesn’t make sense to me anymore.
Now I believe that in order to solve complex problems, build healthier organizational cultures, and create sustainable social change, we need to lead from a place of rest. When I’m rested, I listen better. I show up more fully. I make better decisions. It’s not about slowing down the mission, it’s about being well enough to do the work well.
This is still very much a journey for me. I’m not saying I’ve figured it out – far from that! But it’s something I’ve been speaking openly about at GSL, even with our board. There’s so much taboo around rest in the social impact space, like it’s in conflict with results. But I think rest is actually conducive to results. I’m curious, and I’m committed to exploring that path.
Thank you for sharing this convincing leadership concept. You’ve touched on gender already, but I’d love to go a bit deeper. How has being a woman shaped your leadership experience? And how is GSL thinking about the representation of female school leaders in your work globally?
I’ve been lucky to work in spaces where I didn’t experience discrimination. But the structural component of gender inequity has been present my entire life. The role models I saw growing up were mostly male. The leadership traits that are most valued in our work culture are more traditionally masculine. And even though no one ever told me I had to act a certain way, all these implicit signals pointed in that direction.
As I said earlier, I had to adapt a lot. In many aspects, I created a “work self” that was different from how I showed up in other areas of my life. And I think many women do that, performing a version of leadership that feels acceptable in the male-dominated work context. That takes a toll.
On top of that, in Latin America and elsewhere, the imbalance of domestic responsibilities remains significant. Even though I’m fortunate to have a partner who shares the load, I know that’s not the norm. So when you add the mask-wearing, the emotional labor, and the home workload, it’s exhausting. That’s why the idea of “rested leadership” especially resonates with women. It speaks to that cumulative exhaustion and the need for something different.
The gender disparity is true for school leaders too. At GSL, we recently published a review that showed only 26% of school leaders in the Global South are women, despite women making up the vast majority of the teaching workforce. It’s a big imbalance, and it matters.
Representation is important, for girls, for boys, and for the school communities as a whole. Female school leaders bring different perspectives, and the evidence shows they often create safer and more inclusive environments. We’re now working with partners to help address this gap, through recruitment, support, and policy. It’s a real priority for us.
You mentioned earlier that GSL is taking a more systemic approach in its new strategy. How do you define system change in the education space, and where do you see the biggest barriers today?
There’s a phrase we use in Portuguese that translates to “drying ice”. We use it to refer to efforts that are kind of endless, because the ice will always keep melting while you dry it. Something like mopping the floor while the tap is still running. And for me, systemic change in education is about preventing the ice from melting in the first place. It’s about contributions that you don’t have to keep repeating over and over again. Something that becomes a foundation for further progress.
That said, I want to be clear, I believe there’s a lot of value in the “drying ice” work too. Because we’re talking about real children, real classrooms. Students who are in the system today, and who can’t wait ten years for the system to catch up. So, I deeply respect the work of organizations that are focused on immediate, student-level outcomes, even if they are not focused on building capacity or new processes within the system. We need both. We need to respond to the urgency, while also building long-term solutions.
Personally, though, I’ve always been passionate about systemic work. Maybe it comes from being from Brazil, a huge, complex country where nothing really scales unless it works systemically. And certainly, my time at the Lemann Foundation reinforced that lens. We always approached problems with a focus on scale and systems.
At GSL, we’re starting to work more intentionally on this systemic approach as well. As I said, that includes recruitment and support systems for school leaders, clear competency frameworks, performance evaluation models, and professional development that actually reaches scale. We want to be in that space.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that we often equate systems change with policy change, but that’s not enough. There’s a huge gap between policy and practice. One of the metaphors I love comes from Larry Cuban, a professor at Stanford. He describes policy as a hurricane at the surface of the ocean, lots of noise, lots of movement. But if you dive down to the bottom, everything is still. That’s the classroom. That’s where real change needs to happen. And often, it’s untouched by all the policy talk.
I experienced this firsthand working on Brazil’s National Learning Standards. It took five years for the country to approve the policy. And the day it passed, I remember thinking: Now the real work begins. The standards on paper meant nothing unless we could translate them into concrete classroom practice. That’s the challenge we face with any systemic reform.
And the more I reflect on it, the more I see school leaders as the essential bridge. Every policy change, every curriculum reform, every student-focused initiative, it all has to go through a school leader to become real. So, if you’re serious about systems change, you have to take school leadership seriously. It’s not a side issue. It’s the lever.
I’d love to ask you about the tension between depth and breadth of impact. How do you think about scaling your work while ensuring you still have meaningful, measurable outcomes in each context?
It’s a very real tension. But I actually think that tension is more true in the short term than it is in the long term.
What I mean is this: of course, if you’re working with thousands of school leaders instead of dozens, your immediate impact per person might be smaller. But if you’re embedding strong design and continuous improvement mechanisms into your programs, the impact can grow over time.
For me, scale has always been the starting point. I find it hard to think about impact without thinking about how it reaches more people. And honestly, I’ve seen too many pilot programs with beautiful, powerful results that couldn’t scale. The “voltage drop,” as some people call it, is real, once you try to take something small and perfect and apply it at scale, it often loses its strength.
That’s why I believe in starting at scale, even if the impact is more modest at first. Because then you can iterate, improve, and grow your effectiveness while already reaching many. It’s easier to improve something that’s already embedded in the system than it is to take something exceptional and figure out how to make it fit in a much larger, messier context.
That makes so much sense, and it really aligns with the systems thinking you’ve described. Let’s talk about partnerships. GSL has always been a partnership-driven organization. What have you learned about what makes partnerships truly effective in the education sector?
Partnerships have been central to all the work I’ve done, whether at Lemann or now at GSL. And here’s the truth: it’s hard work. It takes time, patience, and intention. But it’s also the only way to create real, lasting impact.
What I’ve learned is that effective partnerships require trust, trust, trust. And that trust doesn’t come from formal agreements, it comes from real human connection. From showing up in person. From having the difficult conversations. From knowing each other well enough that when conflicts arise—and they will—you can move through them with empathy and shared purpose.
Another key is alignment on a long-term vision. You don’t all have to work the same way or move at the same pace. But you need to agree on where you’re going and why it matters. That North Star is what keeps the partnership grounded.
At GSL, we’ve really embraced the idea of catalyzing the field, by creating spaces where our local partners can learn from each other, and where we can add value without imposing a single model. I love how Teach For All talks about being “globally informed, locally led.” That captures our philosophy too. We bring technical support, global insights, and a space for exchange. But the leadership, the wisdom, and the implementation, it comes from the local context.
And practically speaking, I’ve found that partnerships work best when you’re aligned on purpose but flexible on execution. Full integration of operations can be very difficult across organizations with different structures and incentives. But if you each stay rooted in your strengths and share information transparently, you can move together toward the same goal. That’s the kind of partnership that lasts.
To close, what is your hope for education and leadership over the next 10 years? What’s the vision you’re working toward?
I joined GSL because I truly believe in the critical role of school leaders in transforming education systems. They are key to make schools really work for children. They hold the emotional, pedagogical, and operational weight of our most important public institution.
So my hope is that ten years from now, we’ll live in a world where school leaders are recognized, supported, and valued for the pivotal role they play. Where we select them carefully, develop them meaningfully, and create systems around them that allow them to thrive.
Because if we want a better future, I’m convinced that it starts with schools. And strong, empowered school leaders are essential to making that future possible.