Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future

Guest: Éliane Ubalijoro, Rwandan Presidential Advisor, Consultant, & Professor

Clues about the leadership you’ll need in the near future are coming from unexpected places: Africa and genetics.

Our guest, Dr. Éliane Ubalijoro, shares success stories in leadership development she’s seen in African communities. Nuance, cultural competencies, and persistence stand out as qualities not usually seen in lists of leadership qualities, but they enhanced success – and with growing multiculturalism in our workforces and globally interconnected markets, they are emerging as keys to enhancing leadership everywhere.

Here's what Éliane and Maureen cover:

1. How both societal and technological shifts require new leadership models – and make old-school leaders fall further behind;


2. The ways your genetics (and epigenetics) affect your underlying emotions and influence your decisions; and


3. The emerging Fourth Industrial Revolution, and how Africa may be better positioned to leverage it than traditional industrialized nations.

Recorded in Brussels in association with the International Leadership Association:

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

• A Genocide Survivor’s Path to Leadership: How One Man Turned Trauma into Passion for Peace with Hyppolite Ntigurirwa & Mike Hardy


• Sheba & ShEquity: Empowering Women-Owned Businesses with Pauline Koelbl


• ShEquity: A Refugee’s Path to Empowering Women & Their Businesses with Pauline Koelbl


• Diamonds in the Rough: Sustainability & Corporate Citizenship with DeBeers VP Pat Dambe

For daily wisdom from our guests, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn. We’re onTikTok, Threads, and Twitter, too!

RESOURCES:

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8 . The audiobook version is now available at https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A by Steve Robinson; it’s available in hardback at https://amzn.to/460LnmQ, on Kindle at https://amzn.to/3RVXhZs, and as an audiobook at https://amzn.to/3xPjBgn.


• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Paperback = https://amzn.to/3VEl7cU, Kindle = https://amzn.to/45JGm1L, and audiobook = https://amzn.to/3RPhC2y


• Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback (https://amzn.to/48Doh6j) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/48YCRF4)


• Nerve: Lessons on Leadership from Two Women Who Went First by Martha Piper & Indira Samarasekera. Paperback (https://amzn.to/3tOtzg4) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/41OYdT5)

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

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OUR PODCAST TEAM:

Host & Executive Producer: Maureen Metcalf

Editor & Executive Producer: Dan Mushalko

Video & Graphics Editor: Devon Mushalko

CONNECT WITH US:

YouTube: @InnovatingLeadership

Threads: @innovativeleaders

X/Twitter/Whatever New Name It Has This Week: @IL_Institute

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/ILI-LinkedIn2

TikTok: @innovativeleadership

Website: InnovativeLeadershipInstitute.com

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About Our Guest:

Dr. Éliane Ubalijoro is an adjunct professor of practice for public and private sector partnerships at McGill University’s Institute for the Study of International Development, where her research interests focus on innovation in global health and sustainable development.

She is the project manager and an investigator on a Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health phase 2 project led by Professor Timothy Geary, the director of McGill’s Institute of Parasitology. She is a member of FemStep, a research network highlighting rural girls’ and women’s perspectives for engendering poverty reduction strategies in Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, DR Congo, and Ethiopia using arts-based methodologies. In this context, she has been developing Ashes to Light, a multimedia project to document intergenerational dialogue on resilience as a platform for wisdom sharing and youth leadership training in peacebuilding. Dr. Ubalijoro is an expert consultant for the non-profit group The Innovation Partnership (TIP) as well as the founder and executive director of C.L.E.A.R. International Development Inc., a consulting group harnessing global networks for sustainable systems development. Previously, she was an assistant professor in McGill’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. She is a member of the Presidential Advisory Council for Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Prior to going back to academia, she was a scientific research and development director in a Montreal-based biotechnology company for five years in charge of molecular diagnostic and bioinformatics discovery programs. She is a member of the Advisory Board of Ecosystems Restoration Associates, a Canadian-based pioneer in global forest restoration and conservation-based carbon offset programs. She is a contributor to the book The Transforming Leader: New Approaches to Leadership for the 21st Century by Berrett-Koehler Publishers.