Simon P Walker
creating meaning
Biography
Child of the 70's.... Simon Patrick, second child of Michael and Denise Walker is born on July 9th 1971. Michael a biologist, taught at Felsted School in Essex, where Simon grew up with elder sister Lucy.
A childhood of sport and friends on spacious campus of boarding school. Always a fast runner and promising artist; achieved the notable success of scoring a try at the wrong end of the pitch on first ever rugby match.
Throughout childhood, would sleep walk most nights; mostly to amusing effect other than the night when Simon jumped out of his first floor bedroom window. Put paid to boarding school, so went as a day pupil to Felsted, with art scolarship, where he was taught by his dad for 3 years.
Became a committed Christian at the age of 13. A life changing event. Continued to do well at academics, sport and art; led the Christian Union in final year as Head Boy.
Entrance to Oxford in 1990- Christ Church to read Biology. Exhibition awarded a year later. Deeply signficant spiritual experience led him to explore vocation as ordained priest.
Competed for GB U20,21, students in Long Jump. Set Oxbridge Long Jump record with leap of 7.62m. First solo art exhibition.
Left Oxford in 1993 with 2.1 in Biological Sciences to do a year as a Pastoral Assistant in St Anne's, Limehouse- inner city London. Challenged deeply by broader persepctive on life. Accepted to train for ordained ministry in the Anglican church that year and met Jo- fell instantly and irredeemably in love.
Returned to Oxford in 1994 to study Theology for ordination at Wycliffe Hall. Married Jo on 29th July 1995, who moved to Oxford and got a job teaching at Dry Sandford Primary School. Three years of intense study allowed a signficant shifting of theological and intellectual foundations. Spiritually influenced by Charismatic stream of church. Ordained in Oxford Cathedral in 1997
Appointed as Curate to Christ Church, Abingdon in 1997, and Barnaby born in October of that year. Later that year, took over leadership of the church of 500 for 10 months when Vicar left. Began part time MTh research degree at Regents Park College, Oxford in 1998. Struggled to cope with pressure of early fatherhood, church leadership and medical problems with second child, Jonah (born May 1999).
Dark years of 1998-2000, saw Simon battling clinical depression. Pressure on young family took its toll. Leave of absence from work allowed beginning of recovery, along with support from good counsel and prayer. Series of large abstract expressionist paintings opened the way toward fruitful work on psychological origins of his depression.
Simon and Jo decide to step out from Parish ministry. Sensing a contribution they could make wider society, they leave Abingdon and move to Middlewich. Simon works as an artist, Jo returns to work to fund them. They wait to see how their vision might clarify.
Related sites Leadership Community Human Ecology
The Undefended Life Simon Walker's blog
Simon continued to recover from depression away from the parish and completes MTh. In his thesis he articulates for the first time, a mature version of Personal Ecology, the ground-breaking theory of human beaviour that will dominant the next decades of his life. Thesis is recommended for DPHil but pressing financial needs means this has to go on ice.
Simon sets up Human Ecology at the end of 2000, with support from a small band of investors. Human Ecology succeeds in bringin Personal Ecology to market over the next 3 years, funding developments through consulting work and government awards fro innovation.
Jo joins the company in 2002 and unites education with psychology. A fertile period of intellectual innovation sees Human Ecology extended into further models of learning, teaching, classroom behaviours, organisational and team structure, coaching and society. At the same time, they are invited to run a leadership course back at Wycliffe Hall.
Human Ecology goes from strength to strength by 2003, when unexpectedly, two major client partnership collapses derail growth. Review and reflection leave Jo with no choice but to go back to education to help support financially. With their third child, Olivia, just six months old (December 2003), the growing family has new pressures to cope with. Simon continues tentatively to develop the Leadership Formation course at Wycliffe, and with wider groups. He founds The Leadership Community in 2005 but his most proud achievement is resisting depression in the face of the disappoinment.
Persuaded by the four hundred members of The Leadership Community, , Simon writes and self publishes Subversive Leadership in 2005. The book strikes a chord with an agent and publisher. A trilogy of books under the series title, The Undefended Leader, is proposed. Leading out of Who You Are is published in 2007; Leading with Nothing to Lose later in the same year, and Leading with Everything to Give in February 2009. The collapse of the global economy in September 2008 is presciently depicted in this book, subtitled Lessons from the Success anfd Failure of Western Capitalism.
Whilst the economy unravels, a growing interest is taken by the world in a voice which offers analysis and diagnosis of many of society's ills.
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