For the first time, the CEMS North American Summit made its home in New York City, and it is hard to imagine a more fitting setting. This is a city where cultures constantly collide, where ideas from every corner of the world share the same sidewalk, and where the energy of global exchange is simply part of the air.
Over two days, CEMS students, alumni, and corporate partners came together to learn, connect, and reflect on what it actually means to lead in a world that keeps changing faster than anyone expected. The agenda touched on sustainability, innovation, social responsibility, and diplomacy, but what tied everything together was something harder to put on a schedule: the opportunity to see how all of those things take shape in practice.
From innovation to diplomacy: leadership in action
The company visits made that tangible in different ways.
At Mastercard’s Experience Center, the conversation around artificial intelligence, payment technologies, and data-driven decision-making offered a compelling look at how global organisations are navigating rapid transformation. Yet what resonated most was something more fundamental. Speaking with young professionals working across AI and cybersecurity, it became clear that what drives careers in fast-moving environments is not expertise alone, but curiosity, flexibility, and a genuine commitment to collaboration.
What stood out was how Mastercard has continuously evolved its business model while staying focused on one core purpose: contributing to the future of the customer experience and their security. Rather than competing with emerging technologies, the company has chosen to build on them, finding ways to reinforce and integrate new developments rather than resist them.
Innovation is the key to a better future. Be creative, look for new ideas, collaborate with other companies that also want a better and more sustainable future, build trust, and keep the people's experience at the center of everything. I was truly inspired.
BNP Paribas offered a different perspective. The international mobility panel provided a clear view of what it takes to build a global career within a large financial institution, while the trading floor tour made the scale and complexity of international finance feel both immediate and deeply human.
As Justin Delaunois from Louvain School of Management reflected, the panel was an inspiring reminder of the courage needed to build a career across borders, and of the power of networking - highlighting the value of the global community that defines the CEMS experience.
The visit to Westfield World Trade Center rounded out the picture. Operating a space as layered as the Oculus requires continuous coordination across retail, tourism, infrastructure, and public transportation, alongside sustained relationships with city institutions, transport networks, and the surrounding community. It was a valuable reminder that behind every thriving urban environment lies an extraordinary amount of ongoing collaboration.
The diplomatic visits brought a dimension rarely seen in everyday business.
At the Permanent Mission of Portugal to the United Nations, participants gained an honest look at what multilateral diplomacy involves on a day-to-day basis, and how much of international cooperation is built on informal relationships and trust rather than formal processes alone.
The visit to the Permanent Mission of Portugal helped me gain interesting insights on building careers at the UN, as well as very personal and transparent perspectives on the topics they work on on a daily basis.
At the Consulate General of Belgium, the conversation explored how diplomatic institutions strengthen partnerships across governments, universities, and the private sector, and how essential those networks become when global challenges demand fast, coordinated responses.
The people encountered along the way made a lasting impression. As Nina Bauer from Nova SBE reflected:
“The visit to the Consulate General of Belgium showed how diverse and exciting a career in diplomacy can be, especially through the people you meet along the way.”
Facing complexity: climate, geopolitics and responsibility
The Climate Fresk seminar, led by CMA CGM, was among the most impactful experiences of the summit. Engaging with the causal connections between human activity, climate change, and its social and economic consequences in a hands-on, collaborative format made the subject land with a weight that a conventional lecture rarely achieves.
It felt less like a lesson and more like a responsibility being named.
The seminar with CMA CGM left me with a sharper, more uncomfortable awareness of the mechanisms driving environmental degradation, and a conviction that understanding these systems is the first step to challenging them.
The informal exchanges with senior CMA CGM professionals that followed extended that conversation further, exploring how geopolitical uncertainty, climate pressures, and technological change are reshaping global logistics and redefining what effective leadership looks like in international organisations.
The discussions also opened up space to think about the opportunities ahead for the next generation of professionals entering these fields.
Gabriel Liebessohn from Ivey Business School at Western University summed up one of the deeper takeaways:
“I learned the importance of connecting not only with established professionals, but also with like-minded individuals who share similar interests. Those connections can grow into future partnerships and collaborations in ways you don't always anticipate.”
A community that makes global leadership tangible
If there was one moment that brought everything into focus, it was the alumni panel. Ten CEMS graduates, living and working in New York across real estate, finance, consulting, technology, consumer goods, academia, and fashion, spoke openly about their journeys.
They spoke about the challenge of building a career in a new country. About the resilience it takes to adapt and keep moving forward when circumstances do not go as planned. And about how the global mindset cultivated through CEMS does not simply stay behind with the programme - it continues to shape how you approach problems, how you work with others, and how you grow.
Many participants left that conversation with a renewed sense of direction and possibility.
As Julia Sartoretto from Ivey Business School at Western University expressed it simply:
“What will stay with me most is the sense of global community among my fellow CEMSies and alumni, and our shared commitment to creating global impact.”
Beyond the formal agenda, what made this summit truly memorable was what happened in between. The conversations over dinner, the friendships formed between people meeting for the first time, the energy in the room at the closing gathering.
The CEMS community carries something that is difficult to replicate: a shared way of engaging with the world that makes genuine connection feel natural across vastly different backgrounds and experiences.
Looking ahead
The North American Summit 2026 served as a meaningful reminder of what this community stands for.
Global leadership is not simply a skillset. It is a disposition - the ability to work across differences, to remain grounded in uncertainty, and to take responsibility seriously, even when it is uncomfortable.
The decisions that will shape industries, communities, and societies across borders will increasingly fall to this generation. That is not a distant prospect. It is already underway.
And if this summit reinforced anything, it is that curiosity, openness, and the human connections built along the way are not peripheral to that work - they are at the very heart of it.
New York reminded us of that. And so did each other.
