E9: What Do You Tell the Next Generation?

"As educators, we need to start thinking about what we're educating people on."In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad work through a question all three keep getting asked. What do you tell a student, an emerging leader, or a colleague who just lost their job, about a career in humanitarian and development work, when the old pathway into it no longer exists the way it used to?The conversation moves between the personal and the structural. Ali Al Mokdad shares what he hears from students and early career leaders across the Global South and Global North, and returns to a distinction that shapes how he thinks about artificial intelligence: purpose versus task. The task, writing the email, taking the notes, is disappearing into artificial intelligence. The purpose behind it, overseeing a project, building judgement, learning how an organisation actually works, should not. Kim Kucinskas presses harder still. If entry-level roles disappear, where does the next generation get the hard-won judgement leadership actually requires? And if a seat at the table survives, does it just teach them the same power structures everyone says need to change?Ali Al Mokdad speaks about the hat he wears as a humanitarian diplomat: building bridges, keeping the door open when others choose to close it. Thomas Jepson-Lay closes on leadership identity, and the strange advantage emerging leaders have: they don't need to unlearn a version of leadership built for a world that no longer exists.Honest thinking, shared without scripts and without talking points.