I’d like to introduce you to to some hypothetical friends of mine

• Olly
• Jade
• Ali
• Verity
• Dwayne

Now I’ll tell a brief snippet about each

• One has been a single parent since the age of 21
• One is a management consultant who lives in Surrey
• One has a criminal record
• One works in PR and lives in London
• One is a medical doctor possibly at severe risk of being radicalised

I was recently on a panel about leadership at the Times Festival of Education 2015 and the inevitable (for any panel not entirely consisting of white males) question about diversity in school leadership came up. Annoyingly, I don’t think I answered entirely in the way which was expected. My response was to muse aloud with a rhetorical  question to the audience about what governing bodies and recruitment panels thought a leader looked like. In retrospect, I’ll also add, sounds like, laughs like, moves like.

Which of my hypothetical names did your gut automatically assign each of the brief statements?

Why?