Pioneers go pirate to achieve success

Alexandra ‘Alex’ Barker is my guest on today’s episode of Inside Ideas.

Alex Barker leads Be More Pirate, a global social movement and (anti) consultancy that began life as a book by social entrepreneur Sam Conniff Allende. Since joining Sam she has fostered a network of thousands of individuals and organisations who have turned ‘pirate’ and are actively challenging the status quo in their work and lives. Within the movement she splits her time between writing, research, running workshops and growing the network. 

But it was a long road to piracy. After studying middle east politics, Alex spent time travelling and working in the region, beginning her career in international development, detouring to social care, before becoming communications manager at think tank the RSA (Royal Society of Arts). Having always been fascinated by why systems fail and what it takes to make them succeed, she found in the story of pirates, the answers to some long standing questions. 

Since then she has written a follow up book, How to: Be More Pirate, documenting the insights from their movement – a frontline perspective on the courage and conviction required to rewrite the rules of the 21st century. Alongside building the movement, Alex works with businesses, universities, NGOs and the public sector supporting them to overhaul their culture, take more risks and be more ambitious with how they can support wider system change.  

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