In 2015, AAI and AI launched the Global AIESEC Leadership Initiative {GALI} as a core component of their work. AIESEC develops leaders; AIESEC Alumni activates leaders.

The key is to create local alumni leadership initiatives to:

• Convene alumni who care about making this a better world
• Renew their passion from AIESEC to make a difference and have an impact
• Infuse leadership into alumni meetings and programs at all levels
• Release local leadership efforts that contribute to peace and fulfillment of humankind’s potential

The leaders of these local efforts are called AIESEC Alumni Leadership Pioneers or Leadership Ambassadors. Their focus is on creating and sharing local efforts as innovation labs {seed beds or entrepreneurial nodes} that are practical approaches to encouraging and guiding individual and group leadership initiatives in the workplace and the community. GALI reflects AAI’s vision of “Unleashing AIESEC’s global alumni potential through structured, global, and cross-generational collaboration so that AIESEC values are delivered for life.”

City Pioneers will manage the process to build local teams, explore issues, and motivate action. Ambassadors will spread the process to other cities and countries. The approach has already begun in Bogota, Bucharest, Kyiv, Mumbai, New York City, San Francisco, and Zagreb. The 2016 target is activity in 100 cities.

The benefits are positive impacts on society, strengthening AIESEC Alumni activities and networks, and building leadership skills in alumni participants. Initiatives will take diverse directions depending on leadership and conditions.

In 2018, AAI with AI will convene the first triennial World Citizens Forum where prominent global leaders, AI youth leaders and AA leaders will address critical global issues. Significant input to the Global Citizens Forum will flow from AIESEC’s Youth Speak, its new research and advocacy program for youth, and from AIESEC Alumni leadership initiatives, as described here.  For more info, please see Andrew Rowe on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4fbnd3L1-s 

If you are interested and have some time to activate your leadership for this, send your contacts details, AIESEC experience, current activity, and why you are interested to Ken Phillips at [email protected]. Ken is Boston-based, former AIESEC-US NCP, consultant for NGOs, and member of AAI’s Board of Advisors.

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

“Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life's challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person.”  R. Buckminster Fuller