Youth Leadership Academy 2025

What is YLA?

YLA is a programme that consists of 4 main pillars to develop the skills, knowledge and experience you need to fulfill your potential

3 workshops, to build your problem-solving and leadership capabilities

led by McKinsey & Company volunteers who will teach you how to approach, dissect and tackle problems through problem solving methods they use in their client engagements, with support from distinguished speakers that will inspire and instill confidence

A social entrepreneurship project

that you will define, develop and pilot with your team. Throughout this project, a volunteering McKinsey & Company faculty member will be your project advisor to support you and your team as you turn ideas into clear initiatives and actions

Speaker series

featuring influential leaders in Malaysia share experiences from their leadership journeys, and small steps you can take to achieve your ambitions. Past speakers include: Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan (former CEO of TNB), Gökhan Öğüt (CEO of Maxis), Mark Chang (CEO of JobStreet), Dato’ Seri Nazir Razak (former Chairman of CIMB Group), Sajith Sivanandan (Managing Director of Google), Dato’ Shahril Ridza Ridzuan (CEO of EPF), Khailee Ng (Managing Partner of 500 Global) and Datuk Hisham Hamdan (Executive Director of Khazanah)

Personal mentoring/coaching

from a host of distinguished mentors, who will share their experiences on topics ranging from career choices and work-life balance to what made them leaders today. Past mentors include: Chen Chow (Co-founder of Fave), Dzameer Dzulklifi (Founder and former MD of Teach for Malaysia), Zaman Ahmad (former Head of Corporate Ventures at TNB and now Head of Gentari Renewables) and Gurpreet Khera (Chief Business Officer at Boost Digital Bank)

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Making an impact with Youth Leadership Academy

Past YLA Projects

Past participants of YLA have exemplified social entrepreneurship in projects that have included:

Refugee powered handicrafts

Heart in Craft is a YLA social enterprise that partnered with refugees and upskilled them through workshops to make and sell handcrafted products, upskilling >25 refugees in the course of 12 weeks

Transforming scrap paper into writing booklets for those in need

Project Paplet partnered with institutions nationally to collect >1000 kg of scrap paper, and transformed them into >10,000 'paplets' (notepads) for NGOs and orphanages

Increasing language skills through an uno-inspired card game

EduLab worked with teachers and game designers to develop a evidence-backed card game targeted at improving English literacy amongst K-12 students, launching in bookstores nationwide with >70% improvement in student outcomes during pilots

Helping people meet health goals through an app

Project Sugr tested and launched an app that supports individuals to define, manage, and track health goals, and helped ~100 users meet ~90% of their goals in a 6 week span