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How will leadership transform in an AI-driven future? Roopa Kudva, whose remarkable journey spans from the hills of Northeast India to the boardrooms of global corporations, offers profound insights into this question and much more.

From her formative years in Meghalaya's matrilineal society, where she observed women in positions of power, to navigating career setbacks that taught her resilience, Roopa's story reveals how leadership fundamentally rests on balancing diverse responsibilities while making thoughtful trade-offs. She draws an essential distinction between mentors and sponsors, highlighting how career advancement often depends more on those willing to give you opportunities than those offering advice.

Delving into board effectiveness, Roopa articulates how great governance requires navigating tensions: supporting management while challenging appropriately, balancing shareholder interests with broader stakeholder responsibilities, and carving out time for long-term strategy amid regulatory demands. Her insights on women in leadership are particularly compelling, identifying how likability bias, self-advocacy challenges, and lack of sponsorship create barriers that persist despite progress.

Looking toward the future, Roopa paints a vision of AI-transformed organizations where leadership evolves dramatically. Tomorrow's leaders will be "AI strategists, ethical guardians, and wider influencers" as technology reshapes companies and entire societies. She emphasizes that leadership has shifted from command-and-control to collaborative-and-co-create, requiring collective wisdom to navigate uncharted territory.

Her perspectives on impact investing reveal a sophisticated approach focused on sector development through innovation, infrastructure, and policy, measuring success through scale, depth of transformation, or catalytic sector change. Most encouraging is her observation that today's entrepreneurs increasingly come from smaller towns with firsthand experience of the problems they're solving.

Connect with Roopa's wisdom and prepare for leadership in rapidly changing times. She advises, "Jump into every new experience with both feet and a sense of adventure. Life will have its ups and downs, but don't let the downs hold you back."

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