LEAD Launch Event 2024

Last week, we hosted our launch event for LEAD 2024 (Leadership Enterprise Advanced Diploma) in partnership with LSE Generate, the entrepreneurial arm of the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE).

Now in its fourth year, GDST LEAD was launched in September 2021 as an innovative programme designed to enable young women to develop transferable skills necessary to become future leaders and entrepreneurs. All students are encouraged to come up with a business idea which will benefit the planet or humanity, addressing problems connected to sustainability, female empowerment or inequality. Previous GDST LEAD teams have come up with excellent business ideas such as an anti-spiking device, a sign language book and friendship programme, and a cookbook of recipes from local restaurants.

230 GDST Sixth Form students from 23 schools gathered at LSE in London for this year’s exciting launch event. It was a wonderful opportunity for students to get to know each other, develop their business ideas, learn about social enterprise and meet their LSE entrepreneur mentors.

Pitching ideas, confidence and the importance of curiosity

All students assembled in one of LSE’s lecture halls, where there was a welcome from LSE Generate’s Cathy Walker and the GDST Innovation & Learning team’s Karen Kimura who introduced us to Keynote speaker, Portsmouth High School alumna, Fleur Emery-Rice. Known as ‘start-up royalty’ and award-winning founder of REALWORK, Fleur has devoted her career to empowering women to start their own businesses. She passionately believes that women and female founders have the power to change the world.

Fleur’s talk captivated the room full of GDST students, teachers and staff. She imparted several golden nuggets of wisdom to students on pitching ideas, having confidence and the importance of curiosity.

”If you have a business that you really love, tell people about it” — Fleur Emery-Rice

On pitching ideas confidently, she said: ”If you have a business that you really love, tell people about it”, assuring students that pitching an idea is easier when you’re passionate about it. She also stressed that you do not have to go to business school to lead and grow a business, reminding students that ‘You don’t have to wait for permission, you can start now’. Another fantastic point that Fleur made was on the importance of curiosity in entrepreneurship: ”Curiosity in thinking is what success looks like in entrepreneurship. It is the one trait that all successful entrepreneurs have in common”. She also stressed that curiosity is something that we can practise and get better at. After the talk and having met GDST students, Fleur said that she felt ”reassured about the future”.

Exciting interactive workshops

Students then went into two different workshops. The first was with ‘Hoopla!’, the UK’s first ever improvisation theatre and training school. In the interactive session, students worked on listening skills and agile communication to help build and promote ideas. The fun-filled workshop provided students the opportunity to have some fun with communicating and becoming comfortable with sometimes failing or making mistakes. The Hoopla! team expressed their delight afterwards, at the energy of students and how receptive they were to ideas.

The second workshop was hosted by writer, entrepreneur and ‘futureproofer’, Nikita Khandwala. This workshop centred around social enterprises and some very fascinating related concepts such as Design Thinking, shared and lived experiences and systems level versus surface level problems. This workshop really helped students to interrogate their business ideas and ensure that their ideas met the needs they truly care about. Nikita gave some excellent parting advice: ”Use something you’re passionate about to create an idea – use your lived experiences to do something great for the betterment of society”.

LSE mentor meetings

Finally, the students had a chance to meet their mentor to find out how they could help with the students’ LEAD project this year. Mentors were selected from LSE’s mentorpreneurship programme and also GDST alumnae and staff. Some key takeaways from the mentor sessions were the importance of prototyping, that your first idea is never your best, how to grow your business and to remember to always be prepared to be flexible and adaptable.

This year’s LEAD launch event was a tremendous occasion for all but was importantly an excellent opportunity for students to get started on their business ideas. One student who attended said that ”the day helped us to question our business idea and ultimately make it stronger”. Another team said that their LSE mentor had ‘opened their eyes to what was possible’.

The LEAD Programme encourages Sixth Form students to create real change for the future. It provides students with a platform to develop confidence, leadership and entrepreneurial skills. The students will over the coming months, work on their ideas and present them at the LEAD showcase event in March. At the showcase event, there will be winners in categories such as sustainability, best idea and resilience.

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