Head of Partnerships, Outreach & Community Building at Learnlife, Emma Buckle’s journey has been shaped by her global experiences and diverse cultural influences.
Born in Durban to South African parents with roots in England, Scotland, and Ireland, Emma went on to live in Pakistan and India before arriving in the UK aged 10, where she spent her subsequent formative childhood years and adolescence. She attended secondary school in the UK, in a village between Chester and Manchester, before pursuing a degree in Spanish & Portuguese with International Relations at the University of Nottingham. Emma’s academic interests reflect her passion for connecting people and cultures, an approach that has informed her professional life.
Emma recently appeared on the Notes on Leadership podcast, hosted by MumAbroad founder Carrie Frais and US leadership coach Kristin Berry, where she shared insights on how her personal experiences have shaped her approach to leadership. In this interview, Emma discusses her unique upbringing, her career journey, and the valuable lessons she has learned along the way.
I have three younger brothers and now I have three sons – I think it was life’s way of preparing me for what was to come. I remember having a lot of fun with my three brothers and spending hours outdoors, only really coming in if either cold, wet or hungry. I was a bit of a tomboy and I would often tie my long hair back to play tag, WWF wrestling simulations, cricket, football or tennis with them. I also took care of my youngest brothers quite a bit and enjoyed playing the “mini mama” because there is an 8 year age gap between me and my two youngest brothers (who are red-haired identical twins!). I have another brother 2 years younger than me and we had a very harmonious, close relationship (although I’m assured by my parents that there were a few close calls of serious accidents — no one got seriously hurt and they make for funny stories later on!). Today it’s not uncommon for us to go back to acting like we’re all kids again the minute we see each other and fits of giggles are a common occurrence.
My very first ever paid job ever at age 14 in the Chinese restaurant of my village as a waitress. I think the free take-away dish I got at the end of my Friday evening shift was worth more than the amount I was paid for 4-5 hours of work once per week. I was given very little responsibility and was basically in charge of taking out sauces and desserts only. But it was extremely character-building and humbling as an experience.
I think there’s a lot to be said for learning humility and integrity, and the grit needed to push through moments that are hard or don’t seem fun or entertaining. I think the combination of moving a lot as a child and the different contexts in which I worked and travelled from a young age (I saved up for a year to live in Valencia for 5 weeks with two friends aged 17…!) has meant that I became quite resilient and very able to adapt easily to different situations, contexts or go with the flow when things change unexpectedly.
I did a series of short-term waitressing jobs, but the job I enjoyed most at age 14 was working as an assistant tennis coach, as I practically lived at the tennis courts. It helped me to learn early on the importance of combining your passion with your profession, or rather that passion is what should your profession and purpose. And it also showed me that this is not linear: purpose and passion evolves through life, as we all do.
The waitressing jobs were fine for earning enough money to fulfil my main goal: to travel and see the world. That’s when I truly experienced and learned about resilience, stepping out of your comfort zone and learning more about myself than I ever had in school. As part of my undergraduate degree, I spent a year abroad in a Spanish speaking and Portuguese speaking country. I immediately chose to travel to South and Central America. For the first 7 months, I was studying in Mexico on a university exchange programme. And in Brazil I taught English in a favela for 6 months, quickly learning how to avoid speaking Portunol if I wanted to maintain any kind of kudos with my class of very spirited and energetic young 8 and 9 year olds!
My partner is French. We are not married but we are “married by life” as I like to say it. We have 3 boys together and we first met in Mexico, 20 years ago, in 2004 when we were both studying abroad there as part of our studies. He was studying at a business school in Bordeaux, France, and subsequently spent 2 years studying in Mexico as part of his Masters. And I spent 7 months on exchange from University of Nottingham to UDLAP (Universidad de las Americas in Puebla).
I first arrived in Barcelona in 2006 after finishing my undergraduate degree. I knew I wanted to live somewhere Spanish speaking and ensure I would actually use my love and knowledge of languages in the day to day. Not just have it on a piece of paper. My first “real job” after graduating university was Editorial Assistant at the Sunday Times and then in Barcelona I worked for a guidebook publication. I wanted to put my recently acquired journalistic skills to the test and this was the perfect opportunity to do this.
My background is in journalism and international relations (with Spanish and Portuguese) and I began working in communication and internal editorial content in the education sector. Initially at IESE Business School in Barcelona, and then with Wall Street English to help train their global and franchise teams on content creation for social media. I then joined Pearson in 2014 to lead their Project Literacy global campaign focused on social impact and raising awareness about illiteracy challenges around the world.
We worked with several high profile voices to shed light on the often hidden problem of illiteracy and related issues it can cause. And ever since, I’ve been working in education and helping to empower young people to find their voice.
I first joined Learnlife in January 2019, when we were a founding team of only 8 members, and the team has since grown to over 50. I also served as the Director to catalyse and launch our primary years hub, Eco Hub, in September 2020. I think that is probably one of my proudest and happiest moments at Learnlife.
I naturally absolutely love kids and playing the fool, finding ways to make any possible interaction with them fun and engaging. Whether that be how they arrive in the morning and managing to sneak a grin out of a tired, Monday morning face, or seeing how they work together and finding ways to tap into their individual superpowers. My mum ran a pre-school when I was a teenager so I spent a lot of time helping out there informally with children aged 0-5 years and I learned a lot of the skills and techniques from seeing how she would interact with the children to keep them engaged (not easy at such young ages – attention spans last a few minutes only and then it’s onto the next activity!) and ensure they all felt seen, heard and cared for deeply.
Currently, I work with furthering Learnlife’s impact both in terms of how we reach and engage learners, but also how we reach and engage educators, who are also looking to bring in a more innovative and less traditional approach to their learning environments.
Learnlife’s mission is to positively impact education worldwide: From standardised teaching to personal learning. We envision brave schools where autonomous learners thrive with the support of their learning guides (our term for teachers). No more seating in rows in front of an instructor and the role of the “omniscient educator” imparting their knowledge.
Learners follow their own path for lifelong and their own personal learning plan focused on helping them develop, grow and put in action real world skills and competencies. And we are making it happen and collaborating with many schools already both in Barcelona and further afield who also want to empower their learners to find their passions and develop autonomy and agency.
So far at Learnlife:
- We’ve built 3 Hubs that host 250 school-aged learners in Barcelona.
- We’ve trained +400 educators to embrace new practices.
- We’ve impacted +40 schools, and 10,000 school-aged learners in 12 countries.
- We’ve been recognised by top voices, like the OECD, UCL, Forbes, Getting Smart and HundrEDWe want to further advance in our mission and build an ecosystem of Learnlife Branded Partner Hubs.
Most recently, I was invited to join the 4Voices Advisory Board which I am thrilled about. It is a personal passion of mine to help give a voice to those who either struggle to find their voice or whose voices are sometimes not heard due to current societal, economical and racial barriers that still exist in our world today.
I’m happiest when I can play the clown essentially and I find it so important to always find the humorous and playful side of life in everything we do. I enjoy creative writing and often write slam poems, songs or short scripts in my spare time. Theatre and acting has always been my true passion so I am constantly trying to find ways to bring that into my life – whether that be through fun role-playing with my kids, or at a school library reading and animating a story in English or Spanish, or playing the “castanyera” for Learnlife Eco Hub during the autumn celebrations. At school my nickname was “Chuckle Buckle” and at university it was “Circus Girl” so you can probably see a theme here. I enjoy performing my slam poems from time to time under a new tag of @emmabucklespeaksup.
I am currently writing a collection of monologues (or motherlogues if you will). They are on the topic of motherhood, identity and how not to completely lose sight of a sense of self when you are raising tiny humans. Watch this space as I hope to bring these monologues to production or to the stage as a production soon.
My Philosophy teacher at school played an influential role in my life. He did not hold the class in a traditional format at all and spoke to us as equals, valued our ideas, and this encouraged me to want to push myself further. I learned to value myself more too through his guidance.
Friends are like family – especially my girl friends and best friends. I think it is soo important to have strong female friends in your life and I honestly don’t know what I would do without them. Especially having 3 brothers and 3 sons now, there’s a lot of male energy in my life and there always has been (and it’s probably rubbed off on me a bit too which might explain why I was a bit of a tomboy as a kid!) so I really value and cherish my female friendships. They help keep me grounded, sane and laughing still through all the madness.
My kids and partner help me grow. I know it’s a bit of a cliche to say “my kids are my greatest teachers” but there is a lot of truth in that as they have taught me a lot of self-awareness and also to slow down and appreciate the small moments. Kids are wonderfully observant and I love the joy with which they experience everything. Especially the younger they are, the more joyful and intense each small interaction is and somehow we subdue this as we grow older, and I think that’s a little sad.
My life motto is “never forget to play”. I used to share this motto with a very close friend of mine who sadly passed away, but she embodied this spirit of playfulness and I love to honour her memory and keep that philosophy alive in my day to day.
Music is everything. Every moment in life, there’s a song in my head to match it. Even when there was no music, I could add a soundtrack in my head to the scene playing out in front of me.
I don’t really have one single life mantra but rather different values that I try to live by. I am often looking for inspiration from books, from people I meet who inspire me, from life in general.
Always keep laughing. My father always taught me to laugh no matter what and see the funny side of something no matter what. And my mother taught me to love no matter what. And my kids have shown me to keep moving forward, keep looking ahead and seeing light in the future, no matter what.
Never forget to play!! – if I had to choose only one, it would be this.
Listen to Emma’s full interview on the “Notes on Leadership” Podcast and find out more about LearnLife here.
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