Oxford student Greta Evans on West Point's McDonald Conference for Leaders of Character

At the start of the 2023-2024 academic year, Oxford University student Greta Evans, Modern Languages and Linguistics at Jesus College, was one of the two students selected to attend the prestigious West Point Academy's McDonald Conference for Leaders of Character. 

The two available invitations to the Conference were done by University nomination following an application and selection process open to undergraduates graduating in 2025 and 2026, who could demonstrate excellent academic standing and outstanding leadership skills.

The conference took place in West Point, United States, from 14-17 March 2024, and aimed to provide attendees with the opportunity to explore individual and organisational innovation that harnesses leadership strengths and core values.

Here is what Greta took away from her experience.

It was an absolute pleasure being chosen to represent the University of Oxford at the McDonald Conference for Leaders of Character in New York this year.

This annual conference connects undergraduate student leaders from around the world with accomplished global leaders across a variety of different fields. These included Holly Ridings, the first woman to be chief flight director at NASA, Seema Hingorani, the founder of Girls Who Invest, Jay Sidhu, CEO of Customers Bank, David Shula, an American football coach, and many more inspirational figures whose insights and contributions were invaluable.

The theme of the conference this year was 'leading innovation with character', which we explored through a variety of panel discussions, keynote speaker talks and breakout sessions. I especially enjoyed the Harvard Business School professor’s talk on how certain kinds of failures are essential to innovation. In this talk, she explained how she found the description of evolution as ‘survival of the fittest‘ inadequate; presenting instead the idea of ‘survival of the most adaptable‘, which is reliant on trial and failure in new territory. Intelligent failures, which are controlled and experimental, are to be celebrated as they provide information on how (not) to adapt and also allow for successful innovation moving forwards. Being able to categorise different kinds of failures is essential for this, and I found her systematic method of classifying failures really thought-provoking. With the variety of experience and expertise that the Senior Fellows brought to the conference, the panel talks provided us with the opportunity to compare many diverse perspectives and ideas on the topics of innovation and leadership.

I've always considered that the best leadership is the ability to utilise the strengths of the team, and represent the team's interest in aiming towards a common goal, as opposed to an individualistic approach. It was both reassuring and exciting to learn that these key ideas, of representation and being team-cantered, were shared widely in the conference and were considered essential for modern leadership by many of the Senior Fellows. We also discussed this in my group’s breakout room, in which we were mentored by Contextual Intelligence Founder and Johannesburg Business School Founding Director, Lyal White. In this group, we agreed that the most effective leadership harnesses the skills of each team member, and that most successful way to do this is through both trust and gratitude, which builds respect. I was not expecting to share so many of my ideas on leadership with other student leaders from around the world due to differences in culture, and so I was pleasantly surprised to learn that we found and focused on the key principles we have in common which transcended our cultural differences: principles of collaboration, respect and trust.

I would like to thank Bob and Diane McDonald for their vision and generous contributions to this conference which was a truly thought-provoking and enriching experience. Bob McDonald shared that in his experience, ‘the really difficult problems can’t be solved by any one individual in the country, but need to be solved by groups of leaders working together across boundaries of organizations and countries.’ The friendships, memories and key ideas from this conference will undoubtedly stay with me and I am very thankful to have been given this rewarding opportunity.