«Women's Leadership and Change Management» – empowering program of LvBS

It is a well known fact, that involvement and  implementation of women is fundamental to democratic governance. The issue of gender policy in developing countries is one of the most important issues for a long time. According to the UN, women in Ukraine own 20-23% of small and medium enterprises and only 2% of large ones. We are convinced that this situation can be changed through special programs and public discussions on women's leadership.

That is why LvBS launched a program «Women’s Leadership and Change Management», which is based on the concept «Leadership based on character» that was developed by a Canadian researches from Ivey Business School. According to this concept, leadership involves a character that comprises 11 virtues and competencies, which make up four categories: organizational, human, strategic, and business comptetencies, as well as commitment. The participants learn to analyze their actions and behavior in order to develop their values and virtues. The program is practice-oriented that’s why one of the key methods that are used in education is a case-method. We are convinced that only studying real leadership cases helps the participants to understand the role of leader’s values to the utmost as well as trace the importance of every single virtue via different examples. The program is aimed at women-leaders from business, public and non-profitable sectors, which helps to build relationship between representatives from different areas. This variety creates a special dynamics and synergy within one group and also establishes partnerships between different sectors. Within 2016-2018 the Center for Leadership of UCU together with LvBS held 6 educational programs that involved 200 participants from different regions of Ukraine. In November 2017, the program «Women’s Leadership and Change Management» became one of the TOP-3 new programs of management development at the conference «Management, Executive and Professional Development» in Texas, USA. 

One of the brightest, most active and determined participants of the program is Maryana Petrash, who is one of the co-founders of the initiative «Woman for Woman» (see photo). This is a social project founded in the end of 2017 to support and revive «The Walnut House» (Center of Integral Care for Women in Crisis). The project is aimed to raise money to restore the building in Lviv, where the centre for women has to be located and drawing more attention to its activities. 

Due to a big demand on this program in Ukrainian context, LvBS runs it twice a year, all the details you can find here: leadership.info@lvbs.com.ua