Economic and Leadership Forum 2014

"I aspire to inspire before I expire," delivered Hanley Chew, CEO of Khazanah's Hospitality division to a crowd of roughly 200 students in his opening keynote. LSE SU Malaysia Club presented the inaugural Economic and Leadership Forum (ELF 2014) on August 9th, with the objective to highlight the importance of Economics to students who have spent most of their lives being told that the Science stream was the only way to succeed.

The first of its kind to combine both a forum session and a case study competition, ELF began as a brainchild of a few Malaysian students in London, who felt that the importance of Economics wasn't felt nor emphasized in the curriculum back home. The idea then grew into a full fledged forum, hosted by the committee members of LSESU MC, all of whom are first year students in a variety of courses ranging from Accounting & Finance to Economics, and involving professionals from E&Y, Deloitte, and Accenture.

The forum was divided into two: the first, a panel speakers series, and the second, a case study competition. The closing keynote was delivered by none other than Jason Lo, the CEO of Tune Talk, popularly known for his stint as a DJ on Hitz.FM and his show (Latte at 8) on 8TV, who had the crowd in stitches with his anecdotes from having moved from the music industry into the corporate world.

This was then followed by lunch, where students had the chance to mingle with Jason face-to-face and snap a few selfies as well.

Case study competitions are popular at university level, and ELF was a good opportunity for the participants to gain some experience before entering tertiary education. The case studies had to be drafted by the organizers themselves for the participants and depicted fictional problems based on real-world examples, which the teams had to solve in the best way. They were judged on their teamwork, presentation and ultimately, effectiveness of the overall solution. The judges were professionals from companies such as Shell, E&Y, Deloitte, Accenture, and Petronas. The event finished off with a networking session hosted outside the event venue, where the participants took the opportunity to mingle with panel speakers, case study judges, LSE alumni, and amongst themselves.