Collection: The Good Leaders Podcast
Georgina Wilson, BUD Leaders founder: ‘The best leaders create leaders’
In this episode of the Good Leaders podcast, the SE100 award-winning social entrepreneur talks to Tim West about her journey, what drives her and how good leadership can multiply its impact by helping other leaders reach their full potential.
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For the past decade, Georgina Wilson has been on a mission to support business leaders from under-represented backgrounds and correct power imbalances at a systemic level. Through conversations gathered while she was running a community café in London, she noticed many brilliant ideas from marginalised entrepreneurs were held back by a lack of access to resources and representation.
An obsession with enabling those ideas to take off and create an impact on their communities led her to launch BUD Leaders. The social enterprise supports diverse business leaders, in particular women of colour, to face and overcome the systemic barriers they are facing – from lack of investment to imposter syndrome. Alongside this, BUD Leaders works with big companies, trusts and government bodies to increase the diversity in their supply chains, investment and within their business.
If we're not invited to the table, we just need to create our own
In her approach, leadership is about enabling others to thrive. “The best leaders create leaders, and that's what I think a very good leader is,” she says. “It's less about the individual and it's more about those around you and what you see in them, and how much you are willing to serve and support them so that they can become their best versions of themselves.”
Working with several trusts and foundations, BUD Leaders delivers programmes that include capacity building and social investment, enabling diverse founders to take control of their own futures and shape the system. “If we're not invited to the table, we just need to create our own.”
Georgina explains how her personal journey – in particular having to look after her family at 16 when her mother had a stroke – shaped the leader she has become. “All of that responsibility – paying bills, looking after things – has formed part of who I am today.”
Georgina was named Pioneering Leader of the year at the SE100 Impact Pioneers awards on 13 May 2026. Find out more about the winners here.
Listen to the podcast to hear Georgina and Tim discuss:
- The challenges faced by social entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds, and how she helps them tackle them
- How supporting others can have a multiplying effect and lead to systems change
- Her leadership style – from an obsession with acronyms to the importance of learning with laughter
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