HLP Voices Series#8: What Does Leadership Mean Today?

 

We are proud to welcome Paula Bisiau as our guest for the seventh edition of our HLP Voices series.

Our paths crossed in Bangkok, where we both became mothers. It was my second child, her first, and what brought us even closer was our shared passion for building community, giving back to society, and empowering women.

Paula is a global leader in sustainable urban mobility, gender equality, and public safety. With over a decade of experience as a policy maker in Buenos Aires and international leadership roles across Paris and Singapore, she has led transformative initiatives. From reducing road fatalities by 30 percent to championing gender-sensitive transport solutions, her work has made a lasting impact.

A natural connector and systems thinker, Paula now focuses on leadership, resilience, and community well-being. She is also a mother, an expat, and an advocate for creating more human-centered cities and workplaces.

Her piece below is a powerful reminder that leadership doesn't always come with a title. Sometimes, it reveals itself in moments of fear, clarity, and quiet courage.

What does leadership mean today?

✍️ By Paula Bisiau – Leadership Coach and Founder of Expatmomsnetwork

When I started working as a leadership coach, I was promoting my services to help people enhance their leadership skills but I quickly realized that many people don’t see themselves as leaders and therefore assumed the coaching wasn’t for them. It’s true that it is a word that may feel intimidating. This helped me understand I needed to talk more about what being a leader really means, not only to reach more people but also to encourage them to see themselves in that role.

And to be honest, after having held leadership roles in the past, I personally don’t always feel like a leader these days. Today I describe myself as an expat mom. Is being a mom a form of leadership? Absolutely — though it’s often unseen and undervalued. But that’s a topic for another article. What I would like to share today is my story of how I went from freezing to action after experiencing my first earthquake ever on 28th of March in Bangkok and how it helped me reconnect with my inner sense of leadership.

Bangkok is not known for seismic activity, the last significant earthquake occurred 95 years ago. No one was expecting or prepared for this, so the feeling of uncertainty was very real. I personally felt lost, scared, and far from home even if I understood me and my family were not in real danger, the physical sensation of the building shaking, the confusion in public spaces, and the lack of immediate, accessible information in a language I could not fully understand made the experience even more disorienting.

I felt deeply vulnerable. After waiting outside for hours with my 16-month-old baby girl before being allowed back into our building, my first reaction was to freeze. For two days, I stayed quiet, unable to act. I waited for the government or one of the many international organizations based here to release information: What just happened? What should we expect? How can we prepare next time? But nothing came, or at least, nothing I was aware of.

So I decided to act.

As a former Undersecretary of Sustainable and Safe Mobility in the City of Buenos Aires, I spent over a decade building systems for public safety and resilience. I helped design response protocols on road safety, coordinated with international partners, and advocated for human-centered urban policies. My work was grounded in values like trust, responsibility, and collective well-being. So once I calmed down, I asked myself: how can I be of service today, with the time, knowledge, resources, and networks I already have?

And I did what I knew how to do. I gathered resources from countries with more experience in earthquakes — Japan, Mexico, Peru, the United States. I spoke to friends in government agencies and began organizing the information in a way that was clear and accessible. At first, it was just for me and my family. But quickly, it became something more. I realized I wasn’t only collecting information to feel safe, I was doing it for others too. The drive to be useful, to have even a small impact in my new community, became a powerful force.

I designed a brief and non-alarming document with specific information for families with babies or kids so they can learn and also talk to their caregivers if needed and explain how to be prepared for this kind of emergency in the future. I uploaded and shared it on social media for anyone to be able to have access to it. It’s not huge, but it’s something and if it helps even one person feel safer, then it was worth doing.

My take away from this crazy week is that leadership doesn’t always look the way we expect. It’s not always a title or a formal role. It can be more quiet. It can be born in a moment of fear. Sometimes, leadership is simply the decision to take one small action, especially when no one else has.

In a world crowded with loud, visible, and often self-proclaimed leaders, it’s easy to lose sight of what leadership truly means. Real leadership isn’t a performance, nor is it about doing whatever serves your own interests without regard for the impact on others. Bending the rules for personal gain might attract attention at first — but for how long? And how long before the consequences of that chaos catch up with you?

For me, leadership is about presence. It’s about noticing what is needed in a given moment and showing up for it and it is deeply relational. It’s not about having all the answers — it’s about asking the right questions and being willing to hold space for uncertainty.

I’ve worked with many people who project themselves as leaders: confident, strategic, visionary. In times of crisis, we certainly need strong direction. But we also need quieter qualities that matter just as much: empathy, clarity, calm, and the ability to stay grounded while others are in panic.

I also believe that leadership is an ongoing process of self-awareness, humility, and courage. It often begins not in moments of certainty, but in moments of doubt. When everything feels unclear and you move forward anyway.

And hey, do we all need to be leaders? Maybe not in the traditional sense. But I do believe we all benefit from learning how to lead ourselves and how to be of service to others when the moment calls for it. And that’s probably the kind of leadership we need more of today: less show. More substance. Less certainty. More presence.

Maybe this small act of leadership, born in a moment of uncertainty, can inspire others to do the same, to trust their own instinct to act in service of their community.

Can you recognize the leader within yourself?

When you care for your community, when you act with intention, you are already leading. Whether your impact reaches one person or one million, it matters. And it makes a difference.

Connect with Paula from below social media accounts:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulabisiau/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/expatmomsnetwork/