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LESA 2020 Brings Together A Unique Blend of Captains of Industry, Government Leaders, and Intellectual Powerhouses

Virtual conference attended by 8,000+ participants brings together a rare line-up of leaders from industry, government, and academia discussing how to navigate a post-pandemic world

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov. 26, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- From 16 to 19 November, over 8,000 leaders from Asia and beyond gathered virtually for the Leadership Energy Summit Asia (LESA) 2020, organized by the Asia School of Business (ASB) Iclif Executive Education Center.

The virtual summit, themed "Navigating Uncertainty with Leadership Energy In Action", brought together a prolific and A-list speaker line-up, including 2019 Nobel laureate Esther Duflo, Tan Sri Dr. Jemilah Mahmood, Founder of MERCY Malaysia and Special Advisor to Prime Minister of Malaysia, Aireen Omar, Group President of RedBeat Ventures and AirAsia, and academic powerhouses from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and ASB who shared their ground-breaking research and insight.

From Duflo, who shared her Nobel-winning approach of alleviating global poverty, to Tan Sri Dr. Mahmood, who extracted learnings from her experience in humanitarian crises to advise Malaysia's government on the current pandemic, to John Sterman, Professor of Management at MIT Sloan School of Management, who argued for a multi-solving approach to tackling both COVID-19 and climate change, each speaker brought unique and diverse perspectives on tackling today's challenges.

"Most people try to find one solution that will solve all the problems at once. But it is hard to make progress with a single hammer for all the problems. You make progress by breaking down problems into thousands of much more manageable problems," said Duflo during her keynote.

Said Sterman, "As humans, we are not good at dealing with complex systems with time delays before effects are felt. This makes it hard to drive behavioral changes for things like climate action and COVID-19. Knowledge is the solution. There is hope."

Professor of Applied Economics Roberto Rigobon highlighted one of the key criterions to address today's crisis, drawing on his research of countries that have transformed from poverty to wealth: "Tackling challenges is hard. Leaders need to have a vision that is so compelling that workers and citizens buy into it and are willing to make personal sacrifices for the public good."