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Leadership Live: Voices of Leaders

, by Tomaso Eridani
During the course of the year the MBA students of SDA Bocconi will meet top managers, including the CEOs of Vodafone, Gucci, Bayer and Valentino, to understand what makes a manager a true leader

Christine Novakovic, Head of Investment Bank Switzerland at UBS and Bocconi alumna, today will kick-off the new Leadership Series reserved to students of the full-time MBA at SDA Bocconi school of management. The series offers students the chance to interact with top managers and take the measure of their skills and experience. This year will see meetings with, among others, the CEOs of Vodafone, Gucci, Bayer and Valentino, and the Vice President of the European Investment Bank.

The series is devised to integrate the core part of the MBA curriculum with the soft skills and values necessary to develop leadership ability, intangibles which can be best learned from the experience of these managers.

During the year there will follow meetings in class with Giovanni Castellucci, CEO of Atlantia and Autostrade per l'Italia and 2009 Bocconi Alumnus of the Year, Brian Heyworth, Global Head of Client Strategy at HSBC Global Asset Management, Dario Scannapieco, Vice President of the European Investment Bank, Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer, Vittorio Colao, CEO of Vodafone and 2004 Bocconi Alumnus of the Year, Stefano Sassi, CEO of Valentino and 2016 Bocconi Alumnus of the Year, Luca Mignini, President Global Biscuits and Snacks at Campbell's, Michael Hinssen, Head of HR at Munich Re, Peter Loescher, Chairman of the Board at Sulzer, and Marco Bizzarri, CEO of Gucci.

"The leadership series is a very distinctive point of our program," explains Stefano Gatti, director of the MBA. "It is not easy to find top managers who, in a completely informal way, meet students in a very honest and transparent face-to-face on the meaning of leadership. Being able to talk to these market leaders and to ask them about the keys, if there are any, to a successful career is not an opportunity that occurs often."

"The leadership series represented a fundamental part of my learning experience during the MBA," tells Elias Bachir, who graduated at the MBA last year. "The chance to meet and interact with top leaders from all sectors and corners of the world enabled me not only to admire their successes but also to learn from their mistakes and their ability to rise up again. The humility advocated by those leaders is certainly something that I will carry with me moving forward with my life and career."

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