Meet The Leader World Economic Forum

SUGI is a unique global organization that brings pocket forests -- ultra-dense, biodiverse forests leveraging the proven Japanese Miyawaki Method -- to cities all over the world. The group has built 200 pocket forests in 42 cities so far, with each providing a key form of "urban acupuncture" that can protect biodiversity, restore ecosystems, and even better reconnect people to nature. Founder and CEO Elise Van Middelem shares more about SUGi and how it got started - and the unique ways these projects are reviving places from England to Cameroon. 
This interview was recorded at the Urban Transformation Summit in Detroit, Michigan in October 2023. 

Photo by Joya Berrow

What workers want - and what keeps them motivated - has changed drastically in recent years. And with big technological and demographic shifts driving labor shortages, knowing how to both retrain and retain your workforce will be more important than ever. Randstad CEO Sander Van't Noordende will share insights from the talent firm's annual Workmonitor survey, giving a one-of-a-kind snapshot on how workers are thinking about everything from ambition, to purpose, to flexibility and pay. He'll also share what new habits leaders will need to adopt (including the value of microfeedback) and how leaders should be approaching everything from how they connect with workers to how they future proof their talent pipelines. 


Recorded at the Annual Meeting in Davos, 2024. 

Transcript here: https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/episodes/how-leaders-must-adapt-randstad-sander-vant-noordende

As a busy mom working in tech, Ritu Narayan understood the chaos school logistics can bring to kids and parents. Her personal experience inspired her to found Zum, a startup providing an end-to-end solution for districts with optimized bus routes, one including bus fleets to match different-sized schools, and an approach that makes school transit transparent and efficient for the first time in a century. The startup was launched originally as an on-demand service and she shares the key questions that helped her pivot the company for scale -- questions that can help any founder make a big shift happen. She also discusses the unexpected impact wrangling family logistics can have on parents' work lives (even nudging some moms out of the workforce altogether) and how tackling that can boost opportunity for parents and kids alike.

This episode was recorded at the World Economic Forum's Urban Transformation Summit in Detroit in October 2023. 

Kat Bruce is an eco-entrepreneur who founded NatureMetrics, one of the world's leading nature technology companies measuring the very tiny traces of DNA that organisms leave in the air, water and soil. She’s also a former jungle explorer who has undertaken expeditions in the Amazon, working in research stations, riding down tributaries on balsa rafts she’s made herself. She shares how such experiences have helped her to be a better leader: to be reflective to find new solutions, to understand different people’s unique roles in a team, and to make tough choices quickly. She also shares the potential environmental DNA provides, and why more leaders than ever are understanding the need to leverage data in new ways to tackle their environmental impacts. 

This episode was recorded at the Sustainable Development Impact Meeting in the World Economic Forum's New York City office during UN Week September 2023. 

Forget snacks and gym memberships: Today's worker wants to know you value their family. 
 
When Reshma Saujani founded Moms First -- a movement to drive paid leave for families --she already had a successful non-profit under her belt in Girls Who Code. But she quickly learned that advocating for moms and parents uncovers a host of structural barriers that hold back both women and families.

In a special conversation recorded at the 2024 Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, she shared how leaders will need to focus on their teams' families to stay competitive and to bridge a host of gaps - including gender pay gaps and labor shortages coming down the line. She also shared how a special AI-powered tool her organization built -- PaidLeave.AI -- is helping thousands better understand leave benefits in New York State and showing how new technologies can expand opportunity in surprising ways. 

Where do you see yourself and your team a year from now? How can you maximize tech - and mitigate its risks? How can you stay focused despite increasing geopolitical tensions? What impacts will small decisions now have in 5 to 10 years? In this special compilation episode of Meet The Leader recorded at the Annual Meeting in Davos, heads of top companies, civil society organizations and non-profits shared what leaders should prioritize this year. They share questions to ask yourself, how to set your objectives, ways to better serve your team, the risks to keep on your radar and ways to build your vision for the long term.
In this episode: 
Sander van 't Noordende, CEO, Randstad
Fidelma Russo, CTO, HPE
Milton Cheng, Global Chair, Baker McKenzie
Daphne Koller, CEO, Insitro
Hilde Merete Aasheim, CEO, Norsk Hydro
Petra Jenner, senior vice president and general manager, Splunk 
Christy Hoffman, General Secretary, UNI Global 
Reshma Saujani, founder, MomsFirst
Olajumoke Adekeye, Founders, Young Business Agency
Catalina Cock Duque, Co-Founder and President, Fundacion Mi Sangre
Rudayna Abdo, founder, Thaki
Jagan Chapagain, Secretary-General, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)