Leader

May 1991 marked the beginning of the LEADER Project. Scott Helloffs and Paul Fitzgerald, two graduating MBA students at the Western Business School (now the Richard Ivey School of Business) recognized that the new market economy emerging under Gorbachev’s Perestroika in the former USSR would require fresh managerial skill. These two graduates responded by organizing a group of 27 volunteers from the MBA program, creating Project USSR. These volunteer instructors, paying their own way, taught the basic skills of finance, accounting, marketing, and general management to selected Soviet officials and hopeful entrepreneurs at various institutions in Moscow and Leningrad.

A year later much had changed. The Soviet Union had dissolved, and Project USSR (renamed the LEADER Project: Leading Education in Eastern Europe) sent 51 Western MBAs to teach business in former Soviet republics. The Canadian Department of External Affairs provided two full years of funding that allowed the Project to grow rapidly. By 1993, there were 61 Canadian participants, including instructors and case writers, and the number of students being taught exceeded 600. The scope of the Project had expanded to include cities in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia. An extension of the Project took several LEADER instructors to Mongolia to deliver a similar course with support from the World Bank.

When a change in government policy eliminated full funding in 1994, the LEADER Project returned to a more modest size of 44 participants, while maintaining a number of the partnerships established in the previous year. In subsequent years, the Project has maintained a similar size and scope, each year sending teaching teams to approximately eight to ten partner sites. In 1998, LEADER officially changed its name to ‘Leading Education and Development in Emerging Regions’ and developed a working draft of its Constitution. In 1999, the first LEADER Constitution was officially ratified.

In 2000, the LEADER Project celebrated its 10th Anniversary. A dinner was held in the Lithuanian Community Hall in Bloor West Village in Toronto. This dinner brought LEADER alumni from the past ten years together with the current participants. Memories and stories were recounted and all had a good time. Mr. Mykhail Lyssenko, Minister Councillor of the Russian Embassy in Ottawa, was the keynote speaker. In his speech, Mr. Lyssenko commented on the state of Canadian-Russian business relations, and commended LEADER on the impact it has had in its first 10 years of existence. He urged past and present LEADER participants to build on the ties established by the Project in order to further Canada-Russia business relations.

The beginning of the new millennium brought a broadening of LEADER’s scope in content and geography. In 2002, LEADER left Eastern Europe for the first time since our visit to Mongolia. Cuba was the new destination, with pilot projects run in Las Tunas, Holguin and Bayamo. In 2003, LEADER began the Entrepreneurial course, as a seven day intensive course in the Ukraine at the Agro-Soyuz development farm in co-operation with the International Finance Corporation. On an exciting note, CIDA rejoined the LEADER project as a partner in 2003, beginning a three year commitment to help fund operations. These many new initiatives have kept the LEADER Project invigorated for the past several years, aided by the establishment in 2003 of a LEADER Advisory Board. The Advisory Board consists of members of the broader LEADER community, including past participants and people with strong experience in the visited regions.

In 2006, with the shift to a one year MBA program at the Richard Ivey School of Business, the LEADER Project involved HBA students with a permanent intention for the first time. During this time, the Advisory Board took an active strategic role in ensuring that the Project would continue to thrive. The LEADER Project also shifted its curriculum focus to a two week entrepreneurship model at that time, which it has maintained through 2008.  This shift in focus has been characterized by the establishment of a key partnership with the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship at Ivey. While the Project continues to teach the basic fundamentals of business in a case-based atmosphere, the newly developed curriculum module fully integrates the instrumental tools of entrepreneurship. This has enabled LEADER to better meet the current needs of the developing economies in which we teach. It has also included the introduction of local, young entrepreneurs to the classroom in addition to our traditional university student model.

Most recently, the LEADER Project completed its shift to the one year MBA program in 2008. In a year that was earmarked for transition the Project accomplished many key milestones instead. The Project expanded to Skopje, Macedonia to create its first site to hosts entirely local entrepreneurs. LEADER also expanded to officially include PhD students into the Project and broadened the scope of the annual LEADER Alumni event to include all Ivey Alumni members. Finally, the LEADER Project marked the end of its 17th year of existence by the creation of the LEADER Endowment fund with a beginning balance of $50,000 to cap a very successful year for the Project and an open the door to an even brighter future. Now in 2009, LEADER boasts an Ivey alumni base in excess of 700 “LEADERites” and a collective student alumnus that exceeds 7,000.