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With Speaker Kanglei Meng; Special Guests: Onyedikachi Ekwerike and Oliver Seale; and Moderator Gang Li
Cost: Free everyone. This webinar is sponsored by ILA’s Committee for the Advancement of Leadership Programs
- 29 September 2026 | 9:00–10:15 AM EDT (UTC -4) / 9:00 PM - 10:15 PM CST ( Beijing)
As the pace of global business accelerates, leadership educators face a widening gap: how do we connect abstract theory to the live, high-stakes problems our students could be solving right now? Lectures alone no longer close that distance. The field is constantly told it must adapt, but we rarely get to watch someone do it.
Join ILA’s Committee for the Advancement of Leadership Programs (CALP) for a session that shifts from telling to showing. Dr. Kanglei Meng of Beijing Normal University takes us inside a learning pipeline where leadership students work as applied consultants on real challenges for Chinese tech giant Meituan — developing genuine competencies and, in some cases, graduating into roles at the very firms they advised.
Dr. Onyedikachi Ekwerike then puts the ILA General Principles for Leadership Programs (2nd Ed., 2026) to work, analyzing Dr. Meng’s model against them in real time. Dr. Oliver Seale joins him, bringing an African vantage point to an Asian case study. How does the design hold up on Context and Conceptual Framework? Which learning strategies carry the weight? Can hiring rates and employer feedback genuinely serve as assessment?
The session is a live masterclass in adapting a global framework to a local, high-stakes environment.
Whether you teach in New York, London, Singapore, or Nairobi, the pressures rhyme: employers want demonstrable competence, students want relevance, institutions want evidence of impact. A full 15 minutes of the session belongs to you so bring your hardest program-design questions!
By attending, participants will:
- Discover innovative pedagogy — see how BNU builds applied corporate consulting into leadership education to develop critical competencies
- Bridge theory and practice — watch the General Principles used as a live working tool, not a static checklist
- Rethink success metrics — weigh what employer feedback and hiring outcomes can, and can’t, tell you about program quality
- Engage in global dialogue — explore with panelists and peers how these strategies translate to your own regional context
Gang Li, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Leadership at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, Canada, where he educates next-generation leaders. His research reimagines leadership education for a changing world, with forthcoming publications on peace leadership, digital leadership, and systems thinking. He actively bridges theory and practice, informed by his concurrent service as Board Chair of the charitable organization Global Scholars Canada and his role in university academic governance. Dr. Li brings to the committee a passionate commitment to designing leadership programs that are both ethically grounded and globally relevant.
