Responsible leadership and bridge-building: Highlights from Alumni Day 2019
Below we have gathered highlights and key messages from Alumni Day 2019 (photos: Mikael Schlosser).
Mark your calendar for 14 May 2020, where the next Alumni Day will take place.
“Great information on really relevant topics. I enjoyed the opportunity to network and also meet new people. CBS is offering great seminars that are focusing on relevant and engaging content. I'm proud to say I'm a CBS Alumni.” – alumna Colleen M. Schelde, Alumni Day 2019 participant
The new CBS President, Nikolaj Malchow-Møller, who participated in his first Alumni Day, emphasized the importance of alumni as ‘bridge-building associates’ – people who connect CBS to the business world. The message of his speech was clear: CBS needs alumni and together we can achieve many things for our society. So CBS’ President was therefore happy that so many alumni maintain a relation to CBS and ‘cross the bridge’ at an event such as Alumni Day, give back as mentors to our students, or in other ways are great ambassadors in the business world.
As has now become a tradition, the annual Distinguished Alumni award was officially presented at Alumni Day. This year, the award was presented to Anders Dons, who has no less than three academic degrees from CBS and whom today is partner and Nordic CEO for the global auditing and advisory group Deloitte. This year’s Distinguished Alum works actively to promote diversity in management and is a key person in Deloitte’s commitment to initiatives aimed at reaching the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Under the headline “Responsible leadership of the future – leading with purpose,” the Distinguished Alum Anders Dons pondered what responsible leadership means to him and why leaders must change their mindset and conduct purpose-led management. To him, leadership is all about a clear articulation of purpose combined with a lot of caring and building a team with common purpose, values, and trust. In addition, he emphasized that he is both proud and grateful for receiving the Distinguished Alumni award 2019.
Sara Louise Muhr, professor at the Department of Organization, Academic Director of the BiS platform Diversity and Difference, and not least CBS alumna, held a presentation on ‘Gender in Management: How the stereotypes of men and women are shaping their careers.’ She pinpointed that there is substantial inequality between men and women in Denmark. Both when it comes to representation of women in management and boards and inequality in pay, but also in regards to a number of other aspects that stem from conscious and subconscious prejudice and stereotypes. Sara Louise Muhr presented a number of specific pitfalls and her suggestions for how to block them.
See Sara Louise Muhr's presentation
Writer and management consultant Christian Ørsted, who himself is a CBS alumnus, spoke on ‘Lethal Leadership – the myths of modern management.’ The topic of lethal leadership is also the focal point of his latest publication. In short, it focuses on how modern leadership concentrates on increasing efficiency but instead can do more harm than good to the individual employee who ends up jeopardizing his own health and moral. His conclusive message was that we should become better at taking care of our most valuable resource: Each other.
The participants in Alumni Day also contributed to the programme. Following the speeches, the topic of the day was also discussed at the tables and the participants gathered their best questions for the speakers.
The academic part of the event reached a peak in a panel debate between the President and the speakers. Journalist and TV host Miriam Zesler moderated the debate. The panel debate took its starting point in the questions from the participants and made way for supplementary comments and reflections on the speeches.
The last part of the event consisted of networking and a vegetarian buffet. The vegetarian buffet was, among other initiatives, a way of making the event more sustainable.
See more photos from Alumni Day 2019
Mark your calendar for 14 May, 2020, where the next Alumni Day will take place.