Flexperts

It has been an amazing honour and a privilege to be a part of the YGL community. My first interaction as a YGL was at the leadership and public policy education module that YGLs attend at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. It was a two-week course of incredible teaching, and was a really energizing and stimulating environment. It was an important intervention for me personally, because I attended that course while on maternity leave and sabbatical, when I was considering the next step in my career. What I took away from the course – the mentoring, the ideas, the collaboration in career planning from YGLs – helped me to plan my next career step, which ultimately resulted in my current role. It has definitely helped me become a better person and pursue what I am passionate about. 

My first YGL Annual Summit was in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in 2012, which I attended with my 2-year-old son and 6-month-old baby! The meeting was great and I particularly enjoyed the group workshops on subjects I care deeply about. The issue I’m really passionate about is how all people – regardless of their background – can reach their full potential. To that end, I have been part of the gender gap dialogue, working to discover how to work as a community to close the gender gap in all the various companies and countries we YGLs come from. 

In the YGL community, I’ve done work on how we can build more flexibility into the workforce – to create “flexperts” as a way to improve the economy and create more jobs. My fellow YGL Lisa Witter and I have run a couple of workshops at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting on how to build flexibility in workplaces and countries, and in Myanmar on next-generation workforces and how work can be done differently. What was interesting about these workshops is that over half the participants were men. Thinking about how we work differently is clearly something both men and women are interested in.

It is an enormous responsibility as well as a privilege to be a part of this unique global community to help make the world a better place, one that helps me in real ways to keep contributing back to the best of my ability. One example is my work as the Founding Curator of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community in Sydney, where I work with a community of high-potential leaders under the age of 30, mentoring and collaborating with them and being inspired by their energy and new ideas.