The problem with leadership conferences that we’ve attended is that we never talk about failing.  We are in a society that seems to have an allergy to failure: if everyone gets a prize, no one fails, right?  But the thing is that we fail.  We fail in small ways and epic ways.  We fail on a daily basis.  So how do we, as leaders, deal with this failure?  How can we look at it in a way that helps us achieve our individual or collective vision? The session will draw on our own professional experience to give you some advice on how to make the most of failure.  It will ask important questions about how we fail effectively.  Ultimately, this session will provide you with a frank and safe space to talk about failure, ask questions and try to find answers together.  Hopefully, this session won’t be an epic fail.

Stephen Price is a friend of failure.  He started failing at a young age and continued to fail progressively more epically until the University eventually took pity on him and gave him the role of Student Recruitment and Retention.  In this role, he consistently fails to convince people that SFU Science is better than UBC.  Even though he’s right.  This makes him particularly well-positioned to talk about failure.  Or, maybe not.

Emma Horsley personally enjoys failing.  Her first failure in life was being the second of two twins born.  This has set her up for a series of visionary failures in the course of her life.  She currently has failed to find work for just a single Faculty, dividing her time between FCAT and FASS as a student advisor-recruiter, engagement officer and a generally helpful person when it comes to failure.