This article is part of our coverage of the 2025 Warwick Economics Summit.
By Elise de Mallmann.
The 24th edition of the Warwick Economics Summit (WES) once again featured inspiring top-tier speakers in their fields and remarkable debate. Delegates from international universities had the opportunity to attend insightful conferences and panels about pressing economic issues and global leadership, along with access to exclusive “Meet The Speaker” sessions.
On Saturday, January 25, Simonetta Sommaruga, former President of Switzerland, took the stage to commend the University of Warwick’s achievements in terms of sustainability. This issue has global implications and is increasingly central in international relations. With enormous transformations having long-term consequences on civilisations worldwide, climate change implies both winners – enjoying better living standards due to massive scale energy consumption – and losers, suffering from natural disasters, inadequate investments in public infrastructure and lack of solidarity. This borderless issue demands urgent attention, discussion and action on an international scale to better address populations’ needs. This translates into an inevitable involvement of political leaders. This is where her speech at the Warwick Economics Summit fully resonates in the eyes of the audience and gains a powerful impact.
As former President of a nation at the centre of global diplomacy yet known for maintaining its rather disconcerting neutrality, Simonetta Sommaruga seizes this summit’s opportunity to deliver a thought-provoking address about leadership. Speaking to young adults poised to take the reins of world decision-making, she put an emphasis on empowerment and the value of quality interpersonal skills in professional relationships. According to her point of view, the question of trust is of utmost importance. Earned through credibility, honesty and transparency, it credits a leader with the necessary legitimacy to guide a group, thus being able to guide it in the most effective way possible. However, one must keep in mind that this is only a prerequisite for the future. She cautioned that policymaking often encounters strong resistance capable of intensifying over time.
Sommaruga warns delegates about this typical phenomenon that one must learn to evaluate to better counter. Five different phases can be distinguished: denial of the problem, distraction from it, attempts at division of society, creation of confusion and fighting against the solution. She encountered this exact sequence when advocating for the reduction of gender-based discrimination and equal pay in her home country: Switzerland, despite it being a pioneer in democratic governance.
She illustrated, as part of her first lesson “one step forward”, how leaders can never satisfy everyone. They have to navigate criticism from both those who demand more change because the measures taken are not sufficient and those who resist it because they may exceed the spectre of what they find acceptable. Her second lesson revolves around resilience to empower leaders, which echo with Nelson Mandela’s quote, “I never lose. I either win or learn”. Sommaruga encourages future leaders to “only briefly grieve defeats and then focus on learning from them”. Among students, post-speech discussions highlighted this key takeaway, emphasising the power of constructive criticism as a tool for growth and strength.
Finally, Simonetta Sommaruga ended on a hopeful note, stressing the importance of collective action in an increasingly polarised world where leadership styles foster division, violence and turning the wheel back on sustainability efforts. She called on her audience to become unifying and inspiring leaders: “You are the changemakers of the future – the future relies on your vision, on your action, and on your commitment to inclusive leadership”.
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