In this Fridays from the Frontline, Ify Osakwe, London Business School MBA ’26, digs into her role as co-chair of the Women in Business Club’s EQUALL Conference this year. Ify earned her master’s in chemical engineering at Imperial College and worked in financial strategy at General Electric, first in their Oil and Gas and then their wider Energy business across their European headquarters. She then moved into commercial finance operations at Baker Hughes covering the Sub-Saharan African region. Just before joining the LBS MBA program, she was focused on real estate development and management at Littlefield Investments in Nigeria.
At LBS, Ify discovered that leadership is shaped as much outside the classroom as within it—particularly through her experience co-chairing EQUALL, Europe’s largest student-led gender equity conference. In her account below, she shares how building and leading a high-impact, cross-cultural event challenged her assumptions, sharpened her leadership style, and redefined what it means to create meaningful community. Read on for her insights.
Rewriting the Rules: What Co-Chairing Europe’s Largest Student-Led Gender Equity Conference Taught Me About Leadership
By: Ify Osakwe, LBS MBA ’26
My decision to attend London Business School (LBS) came down to four priorities: location, class diversity, curriculum, and community. After years moving between London, Paris, Florence, and Lagos for work, I had developed a visceral appreciation for what it means to operate across cultures and time zones. London felt like the natural base from which to deepen that, and LBS, with its cohort of over 60 nationalities and near gender parity, felt like the right room to be in.
But the classroom was only part of it. The community I found through LBS’s Women in Business (WiB) Club turned out to be equally formative.
Finding the Right Room
I joined WiB’s community in my first year, drawn by the quality of its network and the candour of its members. What struck me most at early events wasn’t the career advice or the alumni connections. It was how openly women shared not just their ambitions but the obstacles they’d encountered along the way. That combination of honesty and mutual support felt rare, and I wanted to be part of sustaining it.
So when I was asked to co-chair the 26th iteration of EQUALL alongside my classmate Kylie Navarro, with Nishtha Gera as Chief of Staff, I said yes without hesitation.
Building the Conference
EQUALL is Europe’s largest student-led gender equity conference. This year’s theme, ‘Rewriting the Rules: Women Shaping Power in a Changing World’, set the ambition high. Over the six months of planning, the three of us divided ownership clearly, each supported by a dedicated Exco team: Kylie led on speakers and the agenda, Nishtha owned the pre-event and kept the team aligned across workstreams, the WiB sponsorship team secured grants, and I owned the logistics pillar end-to-end, covering budgeting and ticketing, the website and app, partnerships and communications, merchandise and sales, through to on-day execution, with the WiB marketing team driving outreach and visibility internally and externally.
What I didn’t fully anticipate was how naturally that work would draw on instincts from earlier in my career, specifically the discipline of holding a complex operation together under real pressure, something I’d first encountered coordinating across GE’s European energy divisions and later at Baker Hughes across Sub-Saharan Africa.
The scope was significant. The event spanned three days, opening on the LBS campus the evening before the flagship conference with a networking session and fireside chat. On the day itself, we welcomed 400 guests from over 50 nationalities and 20 universities across Europe. I owned and designed a pricing model that balanced accessibility for students and prospective attendees with the event’s real value. To extend the conference’s reach, we built out a dedicated event app that allowed virtual attendees to participate in live Q&A sessions alongside those in the room, a feature that meaningfully changed the texture of the day.
The Day Itself
Our opening keynote came from Afua Kyei, CFO of the Bank of England, who grounded the day in a sharp argument: cognitive diversity isn’t just a moral good, it’s a structural defence against groupthink. That framing set the tone for everything that followed.
One workshop that stayed with me was led by Ayesha Ofori, founder of Propelle.io. She spoke directly about the gap between career success and financial security, and about how differently men and women are often socialised to think about wealth. It was a practical, candid session that felt like it belonged in an MBA curriculum.
The afternoon keynote on risk and trust from Anna Bateson, CEO of the Guardian Media Group, was the most personally resonant moment of the day for me. Her point that careers are marathons, not sprints, and that mistakes are simply a feature you will learn from, were messages I found myself returning to in the days that followed.
The final panel on venture capital and women-led businesses brought the day’s themes into sharp relief. The numbers are still striking: women founders generate roughly 30% more return on investment than their male counterparts, yet receive less than 2% of global venture capital.
What It Taught Me
Organising EQUALL was one of the most demanding and rewarding things I’ve done at LBS. The work itself, managing timelines, holding the operational infrastructure together, handling the unexpected on the day, was familiar territory in some ways. What surprised me was the degree to which the experience clarified something about the kind of leader I want to be.
I came into this role with a background in engineering and finance, industries where execution is everything and process is currency. What EQUALL reminded me is that the most durable professional communities aren’t built on execution alone. They’re built on the willingness to be honest about difficulty and generous with what you know.
The Women in Business Club, and EQUALL in particular, embody that. The gap is real and well-documented: Women hold just 29% of senior management roles globally, according to Grant Thornton’s 2024 report, a figure that has barely shifted in a decade. Forums like EQUALL aren’t peripheral to the business world. They’re doing some of its most important work.
I’m glad I was in the room. I’m even more glad I helped build it.
