2023 UCL Leaders' Conference
Photo courtesy of the UCL Leaders’ Conference
The seventh edition of the UCL Leaders’ Conference took place last weekend, on the 20th and the 21st of January, at UCL. Numerous guest speakers were present, such as Simon Smith, former British Ambassador to South Korea, Piotr Wilczek, the former Polish ambassador to the United Kingdom, and Stevie Spring, Chairman of the British Council and Mind Charity.
The conference, which has been taking place every year since its foundation in 2016, aims at addressing issues faced by international leaders and facilitates debate among participants on those specific topics. Usually organised by UCL's Polish Society, the conference focuses primarily on questions facing policymakers, industry leaders, and researchers throughout Poland and Europe.
As part of the first day of the event, participants took part in a series of workshops that explained how to “boost [a] personal brand with confidence”, “learn how to filter information effectively”, and what “Experience Design Thinking” and “PE deal processes and LBO modelling” are. These workshops were hosted by coaches, artists, and industry leaders such as Julia Mikołajczyk – President of Julia Art Foundation, Actress, Art Director, and Public Speaking Coach – and media experts from CNN, Gazeta, POLcast, and Polsat News.
The actual conference was hosted on the second day, January 21, and involved four different discussion panels on topics such as technology and science, art, business, and politics. These forums discussed challenges and matters faced by international leaders today, including the place of art as a diplomatic tool, the criticality of mental health at work, and the importance of emerging technologies in recent conflicts and wars.
While the technology and science panel investigated the increasing importance and usefulness of artificial intelligence in the private sector, the art panel focused on the role of art and culture in foreign diplomacy. International renowned artists such as Korean singer and dancer Coco Yeonsoo Do and pianist Marek Bracha were present.
The business panel explored the challenges faced by young people when entering the work sphere and discussed issues relevant to work pressure, mental health, success, and corporate life.
Finally, the politics panel, which included among others Theodora Ogden, Security Analyst at RAND, and William Stewart, Doctoral Researcher at UCL, focused on the topic of increasing tensions between the US and the People’s Republic of China as well as on the relevance of new technologies in modern warfare.