SHOWCASING INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP

Agnes Scott College’s third Women’s Global Leadership Conference, Leading Inclusively: Transformative Change Across the Globe, provided students with a global perspective on inclusive leadership.

BY TRAVIS WALTERS AND JENNIFER COLTER

Agnes Scott hosted its third annual Women’s Global Leadership Conference Oct. 13, 2022, boasting more than 400 attendees. The event included globally recognized speakers and discussions with renowned professionals in higher education, the corporate world and public policy.

This year’s theme, Leading Inclusively: Transformative Change Across the Globe, highlighted Agnes Scott’s comprehensive global learning and leadership development program, SUMMIT, by featuring leaders like keynote speaker, Agnes Binagwaho, the former minister of health for Rwanda and vice chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity. She sat down with author and co-founder of TEDWomen Pat Mitchell to share her leadership experience.

“The goal was to decenter and decolonize the whole approach by bringing in a speaker who speaks not only from a different geographical region but also from a different experience — the genocide in Rwanda. And that is very much part of our SUMMIT experience,” says, Gundolf Graml, associate vice president for academic affairs and dean for curriculum and strategic initiatives.

Agnes Scott’s SUMMIT program strives to give its students cultural and worldly perspective and includes a Global Journey’s course which examines globalization, identity and culture, imperialism and the ethics of travel. Dr. Binagwaho’s presentation underscored the need for global learning.

“In her talk, Dr. Binagwaho shed quite a critical light on the United States as a place that is not at the forefront when it comes to equitable access to health care or inclusive leadership. That it’s often a force that slows down these efforts. For our students, it’s interesting to hear that countries they might consider to be part of the developing world or the not developed world might have very progressive healthcare