The Centre for Democracy and Peace Building Fellowship (CDPB) is full steam ahead for another year and Fujitsu NI is delighted to be a part of this fantastic initiative once more as it moves into its third year of nurturing local leaders.

The Fellowship Programme is designed for leaders from political parties, business, public and civic society backgrounds working in Northern Ireland. Through a series of curated sessions, participants have the chance to develop their leadership skills by learning from renowned speakers from across academia, public sector, and business.

Fellows recently enjoyed a residential trip to Oxford, learning more about how to tackle complex topics, as well as leadership and diplomacy traits from a wider variety of speakers. Fujitsu hosted a “co-design” session to enable the fellows to identify a social challenge and apply design thinking methodologies to consider solutions and approaches to solve these challenges. This session was very well received by all who took part in the sessions.

The next CDPB Fellowship programme session took place on Thursday 20th October and built on the skills learnt in September residential. This session was led by Dr Janet Smart, Emeritus Reader in Operations Management from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. There was a follow-up session where the design thinking workshops presented their progress against their challenges.

In the afternoon, keynote speaker Angela McGowan, Director at CBI Northern Ireland, presented on current pressures and future opportunities for the Northern Ireland economy and businesses. This was followed by a discussion between Angela, John Healy from Allstate NI and myself on how best to address these pressures and opportunities in the future.

With just three sessions remaining before fellows present their group projects, we are proud of the progress made to date by this year’s fellows. Their dedication to civic society is inspirational and we are proud to be a part of their leadership journeys.

David Clements, Client Director at Fujitsu NI

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