Lessons in Purpose-Driven Leadership During Crisis: The War in Ukraine
In September 2024, an online discussion took place on the topic, “Lessons in Purpose-Driven Leadership During Crisis: The War in Ukraine.” With the 1,000th day of the full-scale invasion approaching, the event provided an opportunity to share key insights and strategies that have guided decision-making across academia, business, and the military through some of the toughest challenges. For those not immersed in this context daily, it offered a valuable glimpse into the essence of Ukrainian leadership from within.
The discussion featured:
Sophia Opatska – Vice-Rector for Strategic Development at the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU)
Andrew Rozhdestvensky – CEO of the Center for Leadership of UCU
Andy Hunder – President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine
Kovaliv Yuliya – Ambassador of Ukraine to Canada
Approximately one hundred attendees followed Gerard Seijts’ conversation with these prominent Ukrainian leaders.
We extend our gratitude to The Ivey Academy at Ivey Business School, particularly to Gerard Seijts, for introducing these critical topics into the academic discourse in Canada. This event has provided us with an opportunity to examine Ukrainian Leadership through the lens of its core values and purposeful direction, even in times of crisis.
In an online stream hosted by The Ivey Academy, speakers emphasized that leadership at all levels today means having the awareness to ensure you are doing the right things.
We invite you to listen to the discussion via the provided link and extend our sincere gratitude to The Ivey Academy for this vital initiative— sharing the experience of Ukrainian leadership during wartime.
As a nation we are fighting for freedom, but me and my husband, we are fighting for the future of our children in Ukraine. I don’t want my children to have to leave Ukraine. I want them to have a choice and it means that we have to create and defend and then to create Ukraine where they would like to live
Sophia Opatska
My professional purpose is investing my time into a long-term thing of growing young people and giving them hope, giving them possibility to grow even in such uncertain times, giving them normality in some way
Sophia Opatska
War is not a usual case study, part of an MBA program. But I think what we’ve seen at the American Chamber of Commerce over the last 930 days is the true resilience and seeing what is it. How do you run a business during a full-scale war? And we’ve seen that the businesses continue to operate, so 85% of our members are operational
Andy Hunder
You can’t be prepared for the war of such scale. You in general cannot be prepared to the war. But if we all look what happened to Ukraine and to our society, to our business, to our leaders, it’s all about the leadership, trust and cooperation with each other
Kovaliv Yuliya
Non-competent people, this is a huge problem. But without the character, during such a hard, stressful times, you will not get a lot of positive outcomes of your action, if it’s not based on your character
Andrew Rozhdestvensky
