Alumni Network
Alumni of the Executive MSc International Strategy and Diplomacy are part of a diverse global network of leaders and professionals as well as the dynamic LSE IDEAS community.
I thought a great and worthwhile session both on content as well to stay in touch with people - thank you for organising.
Toby O’Connor, Managing Director & Class of 2015-16
Once you have graduated from our programme, not only will you join the international LSE Alumni community alongside over 200,000 people in 200 countries, you will also become part of the LSE IDEAS Alumni Network.
The LSE IDEAS Alumni Network is a community of just over 330 Alumni who graduated from the Programme. It is a community of professionals, experts, diplomats and practitioners. The Alumni Network offers opportunities to share, connect, and engage in discussions surrounding international strategy, diplomacy and current affairs.
The exclusive opportunities provided by the LSE IDEAS Alumni Network allow you to enhance your professional network and connect with LSE IDEAS expertise through current affairs discussions, public lecture invitations, and social events.
Alumni Network Events
Private discussion events held at LSE IDEAS exclusively for Executive MSc International Strategy and Diplomacy Alumni with leading practitioners and academics.
In the Meet the Leader series hosted by Visiting Professor in Practice Lutfey Siddiqi, LSE IDEAS hosts fireside chats with leading practitioners of strategy and diplomacy, who have achieved distinction in public and private sectors. This series is part of the LSE IDEAS Alumni Network.
Catch up on previous Meet the Leader sessions below.
Tuesday 13 December 2022In this interactive discussion Richard Walker, the Managing director of the British Iceland supermarket chain, talked to Lutfey Siddiqi, Visiting Professor in Practice at LSE IDEAS. Richard Walker graduated in geography, qualified as a chartered surveyor and developed his own property businesses, Bywater Properties, in Poland and the UK. In 2012 he joined Iceland Foods (the company founded by his parents Malcolm and Rhianydd in 1970). He spent a year as a shelf-stacker and cashier before becoming an Iceland store manager and then moving to head office, where he took up his current role in 2018.
Thursday 30 June 2022David Craig is Co-chair of the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), Co-chair of the India UK Financial Partnership, Executive Fellow at London Business School and member of the City of London Competitiveness advisory board. He was the former CEO of Refinitiv, one of the world’s largest providers of data, analytics and technology to financial markets. David has 30 years of experience in financial markets data and technology and is seen as a world expert in the data and market infrastructure required to drive future sustainability. David was also one of the driving forces behind the buyout from Thomson Reuters with a private equity consortium led by Blackstone to form Refinitiv.
Thursday 31 March 2022Co-hosted with LSE IDEAS' China Foresight project, Michele Wucker speaks with Lutfey Siddiqi as part of the Meet the Leader series. Michele Wucker is a strategic advisor and best-selling author who coined the term "grey rhino" as a call to take a fresh look at obvious, probable, impactful risks that give us a choice to act or not. Her insights help to explain why some people step up to head off danger yet others let themselves and those around them get trampled. Michele introduced the grey rhino at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2013.
Leslie Maasdorp, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the New Development Bank
Monday 11 October 2021Leslie Maasdorp is Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the New Development Bank. In this role he is responsible for the treasury, portfolio management, finance and accounting functions of the Bank.
Dr Ailish Campbell, Canada's Ambassador Designate to the European Union
Wednesday 5 May 2021Dr Ailish Campbell was appointed Canada's Ambassador Designate to the European Union in October 2020. In this role she leads diplomatic representation to the EU and strategic engagement of Canada's second largest trade and investment partner.
Naheed Nenshi, Mayor of Calgary
Thursday 5 November 2020Naheed Nenshi, A’paistootsiipsii, was sworn in as Calgary’s 36th mayor on October 25, 2010 and was re-elected in 2013 and 2017. Prior to being elected, Mayor Nenshi was with McKinsey and Company, later forming his own business to help public, private and non-profit organizations grow. He designed policy for the Government of Alberta, helped create a Canadian strategy for The Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy, and worked with the United Nations to determine how business can help the poorest people on the planet. He then entered academia, where he was Canada’s first tenured professor in the field of non-profit management, at Mount Royal University’s Bissett School of Business. For his work, Mayor Nenshi was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, was awarded the President’s Award from the Canadian Institute of Planners, and received the Humanitarian Award from the Canadian Psychological Association for his contributions to community mental health.
Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia
Wednesday 3 June 2020Internet and technology entrepreneur Jimmy Wales is founder of the online non-profit encyclopaedia Wikipedia and co-founder of the privately owned Wikia, Inc. including its entertainment media brand, Fandom powered by Wikia. Wales serves on the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit charitable organisation he established to operate Wikipedia. In 2019, Jimmy launched WT Social, a news focused social network. In 2006, Jimmy was named in Time magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’ for his role in creating Wikipedia.
Jitesh Gadhia
Thursday 30 January 2020Jitesh Gadhia is an investment banker and businessman and Member of the House of Lords since September 2016. Jitesh was previously Senior Managing Director at Blackstone based in London and has over 25 years’ investment banking experience, having also held senior positions at Barclays Capital, ABN AMRO and Baring Brothers. He has advised on a wide range of high profile M&A transactions across developed and emerging markets. Jitesh is currently a Board Member of UK Government Investments, the centre of excellence for corporate finance and corporate governance for the UK Government, managing major assets including the Royal Bank of Scotland. He also serves on the Boards of BGL Holdings (owner of comparethemarket.com, the UK’s leading digital price comparison website for financial products and household services) and Accord Healthcare (a leading global supplier of generic pharmaceuticals). Jitesh graduated with a degree in Economics from Cambridge University and attended the London Business School, where he was a Sloan Fellow. He has served as a Trustee of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity and of Nesta. He was selected as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
Jules Chappell, OBE
Thursday 14 November 2019Jules Chappell is Managing Director for Business at London & Partners, the official promotional agency for London. In this role, she is responsible for the teams that attract and retain foreign direct investment; that bring major business events to London and capital into regeneration projects; and that support London’s scaling business to expand internationally. Previously, she spent 15 years with the Foreign Office, based in Jordan, Iraq, the US, Ethiopia and Guatemala, where she was UK Ambassador. She supported the National Security Council’s work to strengthen UK relations with countries such as India and China and helped to expand the GREAT Britain Campaign to 250 cities around the world, promoting the UK as a place to study, visit and do business.
Alumni Policy Weekend is the flagship event in the Alumni Network calendar. It is an exclusive all-day event for the LSE IDEAS Alumni community. The Alumni Policy Weekend takes place in the beginning of June every year and gives Alumni an opportunity to re-connect with fellow classmates, Alumni from other cohorts and faculty, and discuss the contemporary global issues and trends. The Alumni Policy Weekend is organised closely with the Alumni Committee.
The June 2025Alumni Policy Weekend will take place on Saturday, 7th June. The theme of this year is Power in Transition: Navigating a multipolar world.
The June 2024 Alumni Policy Weekend was entitled The Return of History: Can we do Better Strategy?
The June 2023Alumni Policy Weekend was entitled China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics in a Changing International Order
The June 2022Alumni Policy Weekend was entitled Trends in Global Digital (Dis)orders
The June 2021Alumni Policy Weekend was entitled The Revival of Liberal Internationalism: Delusion or Reality?
The June 2020Alumni Policy Weekend took place virtually with the following panels:
Is there a new Cold War?
Economics and the International System post COVID-19
Will the World 'Quarantine' China?
Alumni Special Keynote with Dame Karen Pierce
The June 2019Alumni Policy Weekend was entitled Cold War Ends: Liberalism Triumphant? False Dawn?.
The June 2018Alumni Policy Weekend was entitled The Return of Great Power Politics and debated the future of great power relations and global conflict. Speakers included: Barry Buzan, IDEAS Directors Christopher Coker and Michael Cox, Nana De Graaff, Amelia Hadfield, Gideon Rachman, Meera Sabaratnam, Kori Schake, and Maximilian Terhalle.
The first Alumni Policy Weekend event, held in June 2017, was entitled The Rise of Populism and the Crisis of Globalization: Brexit, Trump and Beyond. Speakers included: IDEAS Director Michael Cox, Tim Oliver, Uta Staiger, Brian Klaas, Barry Buzan, Leslie Vinjamuri, Mukulika Banerjee, Yu Jie, and Sir Robert Cooper.
Organised Crime: An Industry that Carries a $4 Trillion Cost
11 May 2017
New analysis by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime suggests that across a selection of six private sector industries the scale and cost of organized crime is between $3.6-$4.8 trillion. The staggering level of private sector victimisation has gone largely unreported and unrecognised.
Speakers:
- Mark Shaw, Director, Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime
- Tuesday Reitano, Deputy Director, Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime
- Robin Cartwright, author of the Global Initiative's forthcoming flagship report Hidden Battalions: Transnational Organised Crime and its Impact on the Private Sector.
Poppies and Poverty: Implications of Afghanistan’s Continuing Search for Security
30 March 2017
After invasion, intervention, and insurgency, Afghanistan’s weak state and economy now pose the greatest current danger to its own citizens, its neighbours, and the West. Horia Mosadiq and David Mansfield discussed the growing threats that joblessness, migration, and the drug trade represent for human rights and regional security.
Speakers:
- David Mansfield is an LSE IDEAS Fellow and consultant advising on operational issues with regard to illicit drugs.
- Horia Mosadiq is Amnesty International’s Afghanistan Researcher. She was awarded the Afghanistan Simurgh Human Rights Award by the Arman Shahr Foundation.
- Chair: Mary Martin is a Senior Research Fellow in LSE IDEAS and the LSE Department of International Relations.
Decline of the West and Crisis of Democracy?
7 February 2017
Populism is on the rise across the West. How far does this reflect a decline in Western economic power? And how much does it threaten liberal democratic institutions? Podcast available below.
Speakers:
- Brian Klaas, Fellow in Comparative Politics, LSE;
- Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Columnist, Financial Times;
- Chair: Leslie Vinjamuri, Director of the Centre on Conflict, Rights and Justice, SOAS.
Beyond Obama: the Four Years Ahead
What impact will President Trump have on foreign policy? Is a 'grand bargain' with Russia and China possible?
Speakers:
- Chair: Luca Tardelli
- Peter Trubowitz, professor of International Relations, Director, LSE US Centre
- Steven Erlanger, London Bureau Chief, The New York Times
- Xenia Wickett, head of the US and the Americas Programme, Chatham House
Thinking the Unthinkable
After a proliferation of ‘unthinkable’ events over the last two years, how can leaders continue to first identify then adapt to the new, fast changing normal?
Speakers:
- Nik Gowing, Visiting Professor at Nanyang University, Singapore
- Chair: Michael Cox, Director, LSE IDEAS
Prospects for the Chinese Economy
What does the future holds for the Chinese economy - is the debt burden too large or is there further growth to come?
Speakers:
- Chair: Jonathan Fenby, Co-Founder Trusted Sources and Director, China Research, LSE IDEAS Associate
- Dr Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University
- Guy de Jonquières, Senior Fellow at European Centre for International political Economy
NATO at the Crossroads
29 June 2016
Confronting Putin? Surviving Trump? Where is NATO – and indeed the whole Transatlantic relationship – likely to be heading in these deeply uncertain times? Podcast available below.
Speakers:
- Jamie Shea, NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges
- Anne Applebaum, former LSE IDEAS Philippe Roman Chair
- Chair: Michael Cox, Director, LSE IDEAS
Brexit - Britain at the Crossroads: European Consequences, Geopolitical Risks?
3 May 2016
This strategic breakfast assessed the international consequences of the forthcoming referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union. Podcast available below.
Speakers:
- Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Columnist, The Financial Times
- Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief, The New York Times
- Yu Jie, China Foresight Project Manager, LSE IDEAS
- Tim Oliver, Dahrendorf Fellow on Europe-North America Relations, LSE IDEAS
- Chair: Michael Cox, Director, LSE IDEAS
Understanding and Confronting ISIS
This breakfast discussion focused on the growing jihadi threat in the Middle East and beyond. Professor Jean-Pierre Filiu, former French ambassador to Syria, advisor to the French Prime Minister and Defence Minister, and author of From Deep State to Islamic State, discussed the prospects of ISIS and of the broader jihadi movement as well as the limits of current Western efforts aimed at curbing it.
Speakers:
- Jean-Pierre Filiu, former French ambassador to Syria
Listen to recorded presentations from past Alumni Breakfasts. Q&A and discussion remains private.
Decline of the West and Crisis of Democracy?
Populism is on the rise across the West. How far does this reflect a decline in Western economic power? And how much does it threaten liberal democratic institutions?
Speakers:
- Brian Klaas, Fellow in Comparative Politics, LSE;
- Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Columnist, Financial Times;
- Chair: Leslie Vinjamuri, Director of the Centre on Conflict, Rights and Justice, SOAS.
NATO at the Crossroads
Confronting Putin? Surviving Trump? Where is NATO – and indeed the whole Transatlantic relationship – likely to be heading in these deeply uncertain times?
Speakers:
- Jamie Shea, NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges
- Anne Applebaum, former LSE IDEAS Philippe Roman Chair
- Chair: Michael Cox, Director, LSE IDEAS
Brexit - Britain at the Crossroads: European Consequences, Geopolitical Risks?
This strategic breakfast assessed the international consequences of the forthcoming referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union.
Speakers:
- Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Columnist, The Financial Times
- Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief, The New York Times
- Yu Jie, China Foresight Project Manager, LSE IDEAS
- Tim Oliver, Dahrendorf Fellow on Europe-North America Relations, LSE IDEAS
- Chair: Michael Cox, Director, LSE IDEAS
For full LSE IDEAS events listings, please click here. You can also sign up to the LSE IDEAS Events Newsletter.
Additionally, for all LSE events, please click here.
LSE Alumni Benefits
Benefits of being an LSE alumnus include library access and e-mail services. View full LSE alumni benefits (pdf).
LinkedIn Group
Executive MSc International Strategy and Diplomacy Alumni are invited to join our private group on LinkedIn for networking and discussion. Request membership here.