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Becoming a leader for one day
Nikolas Rønholt, a 19 years old young man from Denmark took part in the ‘Leaders for a Day’ initiative, together with 35 other young people from 14 European countries, recipients of the Entrepreneurial Skills Pass, a certification of entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and attitude from JA Europe. They got offered the opportunity to step in the shoes of business and policy leaders for one day. Nikolas visited Euractiv and spent the day with their editor-in-chief, Daniela Vincenti.
I participated successfully in JA Europe's warm up session, and after a really good first day in Brussels together with young, intelligent and creative entrepreneurs from all over Europe, I felt prepared to meet with my leader, Daniela Vincenti, editor-in-chief of EurActiv.
First of all I would like to thank Ms. Vincenti for sharing her work day with me. I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to shadow such an inspirational person for one day. She really made me feel the busy life of a leader going from one meeting to another.
Even though it was a really busy day Ms. Vincenti made me feel comfortable.
I started the day by listening to the panel discussion on TTIP that she was moderating. I learned about the difficulty on reaching an agreement on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
Immediately after the event, we went straight to another meeting with the polish ambassador discussing the topic immigration ahead of the EU summit.
This unique insight in a leader’s day gave me a lot of different impressions and I am sure that this will help me in the future when I will have to decide what to do in my life concerning for example education.
It has always been my plan to work outside of Denmark, and this experience surely convinced me to spend some of my working life abroad.
Finally, a big thank you to JA Europe for making this day possible and enriching my life.
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First impressions after my experience at Euronext
The Leaders for a Day initiative provided me with the opportunity to shadow a senior executive inside his enterprise’s structure. I had the chance to follow Mr. Van Dessel, CEO& Chairman of Euronext in Brussels. Formerly the meeting had to take place on Wednesday 14th, however due to his busy agenda, it was asked to move the shadowing experience a week earlier.
The office is situated in the city centre, I met Ms. Tosheva so she could distribute some materials and explain the programme previously prepared. I started my experience with a committee meeting at 9 o’clock. Various subjects were discussed, Euronext being a pan-European financing centre, this particular group responsible for regulated markets in Belgium. Since 2014 is Euronext quoted on the stock exchange, thus, numbers of stakeholders’ interests have to be taken into account. Around 11 o’clock, after this meeting, I could introduce myself and present to my interlocutor my experience within the JA Programmes. Then, he explained several relevant principles related to Euronext as a financing place, before reaching the major subject, leadership.
Mr. Van Dessel is a passionate and comprehensive leader, the people working around him are forming a tight-knit structure. I appreciate the fact that they took the necessary time to reveal their motivation and I had the opportunity to get an overview of the requirements for these workplaces. Finally, I hope every student participating in Leaders for a Day on Wednesday 14th would learn from their leader as I learned from Mr. Van Dessel and his team.
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Hi everybody, my name is Davide Puleo, I’m an Italian student and I live in Palermo.
In the lines below, I’ll share with you how I feel at the moment and what are my thoughts and my expectations before going to Brussels next Thursday, joining the activity “Leaders for a day”(L4D).
But first of all, let’s talk about me and my interests.
I’m presently attending the last year of the High School in Maths and Science section. I like learning foreign languages, in fact I’ve studied French, German and I went twice to England to improve my English.
I love Music and going to the theatre, I’ve been playing the piano for four years, and when I’m tired or thoughtful, the first thing I do is turning on my Mp3 player and relax, letting my mind go away on the notes of the melodies.
By the way, I still can’t believe I am among the 40 selected students that will leave for Brussels. This opportunity could be determinant and decisive for my future, just for three simple reasons:
- I’m going to spend an entire day in close contact with some of the most important figures in Marketing and Management in Europe
- I’m going to meet peers from almost all Europe, who have my same ambitions and same inspirations and objectives too
- I’m going to face with a completely new experience, speaking another language, with unknown people
The opportunity of being involved in a work day simulation, shadowed by a European leader, is not for everyone. Certainly, I hope I’ll learn from my leader’s experience as much as possible, maybe how to move in the labour market and, above all, in which direction. This means that after this experience, I think I will have learnt how to build necessary skills for success in the marketplace, I will have expanded my knowledge and my network in this area and I will have improved my entrepreneurship and my economic/financial abilities.
Furthermore, I hope I will be more informed before making my career, and before choosing the best course of study to reach my dream of being an international manager.
Meeting new people who share the same interest is an excellent chance to establish relationships and partnerships for the future. Even though I’ll meet teenagers from countries far from Italy, such as Portugal, Estonia, Denmark or Belgium, the remoteness could evolve into a stimulus to help each other, compare our creative ideas and business projects, identify weaknesses and strengths, basing our opinions and decisions on a different point of view and rating method, just because we have different origins.
It should not be underestimated that I will have the possibility to visit an outstanding city like Brussels, being accommodated in an important hotel of the town, during the school year, while all my classmates are doing their homework without any break. I’m not very honest against them, but I actually think we sometimes need to take the train of the opportunities which runs rarely in front of us. My parents taught me that “we must be always ready”, and fortunately my readiness got me this beautiful occasion.
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Approximately a year ago, our student company started thanks to JA Company. At that time, all I had was knowledge. I didn’t know what to expect. I was just trying to participate as much as possible so that I could get at least some experience. We created a name and set our goals, then we had a first school meeting where we introduced our company and basically we went step by step and experienced every important moment in our company as a team. We became more creative, cooperative, representative. I saw that on my classmates, we really did better and better everyday and so my opinion about business completely changed.
I realized that even if there was not always a successful day, even if we made a mistake it pushed us forward, never backwards.
Thanks to all the experience in company and other interesting JA events I realized that there is not such a thing as failure. There’s a thing named feedback, which will tell you if you do something wrong. This kind of feedback is motivation for me to fix the weaknesses and to improve myself everyday. For many people it may mean failure, but not for me anymore.
After we completed all the experience with student company, reviewed our abilities and got the ESP certificates, other awesome opportunity appeared. Leaders for a day. And I said to myself „When Opportunity Knocks on your door, take it and cherish it“.
However, I must admit that at the beginning, I couldn’t imagine that there was a real possibility for me to get the opportunity. However, I tried and did everything to be as good as possible. I knew that there was a big chance that I wouldn‘t be successful and therefore I was so excited when I got the email with the subject: „Welcome to Leaders-for-a-Day in Brussels!“ At first, I couldn’t believe that. Then I realized that I’m going to be a part of really special event and I believe that it will be the next awesome experience thanks to JA Company.
Now, when I have the chance to meet a leader of big and successful company I have many expectations. I’m very curious about many things that I’m going to experience on that day. One of them is definitely that I’m going to experience the normal working day of successful leader. I’m very excited and on the other hand I don’t know what to expect. The only thing that I’m sure about is that it will be very valuable experience for me. I will see all the necessary things that leader is been going through every day in world of business. I believe that I will have opportunity to see every important decision he must make everyday and every activity which is important in business. The next thing I’m curious about is what is he like in contact with people. How he motivates his employees and how he manages to lead the whole company. Other aspect that I’m curious about is time-management, how is he able to lead and to do all the important things realated to leadership. In my opinion, the most valuable thing I could get would be his advice, which would help me in my future steps.
What else do I expect from this opportunity? I will meet new successful people from abroad as well. This event could give me the chance to see business in a different way. I will learn more about entrepreneurs and leaders, about team-work because there are also other activities for us and since I cooperated with JA before I know that it is going to be amazing. It will certainly further my knowledge about marketing, which is also my priority at school, as well as in future and I believe that working together with a successful leader for one day will be unforgettable experience.
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At the moment I am a student at the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra. My field of study is International business with agrarian commodities, but I still remember the year when we started working in our students company as if it was yesterday...
We heard about it so many good thing and we were all very excited about it. We participated in Hyundai Skills for the Future competition. At first we didn't have a clue what our main product would be. In the last minute we had a great idea. There was no such thing that would help mothers with their children when they are driving. There are many car accidents because the children demand the mothers attention during driving so they needs to turn around. We wanted to create an application through which the mother could see her children in the back seat and the children could see their mother and it would calm them down. It was really hard to think through all the details. We later found a talented young man who created the application for us. All there was left was to promote our product. We got in touch with the local Hyundai car seller and he provided a car for us to shoot a commercial. We had the best time and we really learned how to work as a team.
We were really excited when we went to the trade fair in Bratislava. We were full of expectations. We won the firs place in the category Hyundai Skills for the Future and five members of our team got the chance to go to the International trade fair in Frankfurt. I wasn't amongst the lucky students but we were all so happy when we found out that they won the first place.
We gained many useful skills during this year, and of course some of us got the ESP certificate. I was very happy when I heard from JA Europe about the opportunity to go to Brussels. I didn't hesitate even for a moment and immediately applied for Leaders for a Day. I believe that this is a great chance for me to see how an ordinary day as a leader looks like. It will help me to discover which of my skills need improvement in order to become a leader myself.
I started working as a financial consultant this summer. As I started studying at a university I have more free time so I can gain some practical skills. This experience will certainly help me improve myself in this area as well. Many students can´t find a job after they graduate, I want to avoid this by working in my free time. I don´t want to be lost in the World after school but know exactly what I am going to do and where I am going.
My hobbies are sports and wildlife photography. I go swimming two days a week and ride my bicycle other days. I had a knee injury and I have to do sports every day so it won't hurt. This changed the way I think in many ways. I was a bad swimmer at the beginning, but I couldn't give up, I had to push myself further and further to get to my goal, which was to live every day without any pain.