Invisible Leadership: What We Learn from Traditional Communities about Impact and Sustainability BRAZIL OPINION. July 30, 2025

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Invisible Leadership: What We Learn from Traditional Communities about Impact and Sustainability BRAZIL OPINION. July 30, 2025

“I thought I was going to die without knowing what it was like to drink a glass of clean water.”

This phrase was spoken by a 101-year-old man in the backlands of Bahia. He was very emotional: “I had time,” he said. Joy overcame him as he quickly drank the liquid. That day, he had received, for the first time in his life, access to drinking water through Aqualuz—the technology I developed as a teenager. What impressed me, however, was not just his emotion. It was the serenity with which he embraced the change. Without fanfare. Without spotlights. Without speeches.

There lay the essence of what I now understand as invisible leadership: the kind that transforms without needing to be noticed. That acts silently, communally, and resiliently. There, I realized how I accomplish missions in silence.

What does true leadership mean?

When we think of leadership, we tend to imagine positions, inspiring speeches, and business strategies. But after almost 12 years working with water access in vulnerable regions, I've come to understand that leadership also involves listening. It's respecting others' time. It's having the humility to arrive in a community and realize they were already leading the process, even without us.

I remember a mother in Pernambuco who, upon receiving Aqualuz, decided to become responsible for ensuring the proper use of technology in her neighborhood. Without anyone asking. She created her routine of visits, identified maintenance issues even before our team did, and became a local reference. She never called herself a leader. But she was the one who ensured the project's success in that region.

Leadership that doesn't show up, but sustains everything

Sustainability, in its deepest sense, isn't achieved with solutions from the outside in. It's achieved when we respect and value the social, cultural, and spiritual structures that already exist in the territories.

In the quilombola and indigenous communities we work with, we've learned that decision-making is collective. The timing of things is different. Listening to an elder can be more valuable than any technical data. And that leading isn't about ordering—it's about caring.

It's impossible to forget Dona Lenira, from the backlands of Alagoas, who once told us: "Here, we don't rush to solve problems. We walk together until we understand."

That phrase has stayed with me. Because in the fast pace of entrepreneurship, social impact, and the ESG agenda, we often forget this. We forget that transforming the world isn't an innovation race. It's a commitment to those who have been resisting for centuries.

I'm not romanticizing poverty or hardship here. The challenges these communities face are real, urgent, and unfair. But we must recognize that there is wisdom where many only see need. There is innovation where most see scarcity. There is leadership where the system refuses to see it.

When SDW arrives in a new community, we know we're not bringing ready-made answers. We are here to add, not replace. And that's why active listening is an essential part of our impact process.

A New Vision of Leadership

I believe that the next decade of sustainability will not be led by CEOs in major international forums, but by anonymous women who protect springs, young people who mobilize their communities, and elders who preserve ancestral stories and solutions.

This leadership will not be in the spotlight, but without it, nothing will stand.

If we want a truly sustainable future, we must learn to see the invisible. We must stop trying to lead from above and, instead, start following those who have been walking for so long with their feet on the ground.

My work with water began with technology. But what taught me most was coexistence. Living in the field. The respectful silence. The tearful eyes of those who thought they would never see that day come.

That's why today, when people ask me what it means to be a good leader, I answer: It's knowing that sometimes the best thing you can do is listen. And then, walk alongside. This is sustainable leadership; the kind that makes the silence scream out the demands and ills of this world and transforms them into a common good.

Anna Luisa Beserra

Agenda: Cold

SDGs: SDG 6, SDG 10, SDG 11, SDG 12