Skip to main content

Thank you to everyone involved for making this programme such a success.

McKinsey and Future Foundations look forward to keeping in touch with all our graduates, and seeing you become leaders in society.

This is a Legacy Programme we are proud to have delivered for 5 years supporting 500 young people from 100 schools.  We are no longer accepting registrations for the programme.

For further details about this programme and how Future Foundations can support you or your organisation, please contact us.

This month Future Foundations reunited graduates of the 2015 McKinsey Leadership Academy for a two day residential workshop at Wellington College, Berkshire. The programme was designed to reconnect friends, offer support and advice  from programme alumni whilst celebrating their individual and collective leadership accomplishments over the past year. 

The McKinsey Graduate Residential and McKinsey Leadership Academy is delivered in tandem by a hard-working and passionate group of McKinsey & Company consultants and experienced Future Foundations coaches.

From McKinsey & Company, the Graduate Residential was led by Vanessa Freund and Alex Hays-Plumb, and supported by 5 McKinsey professionals who took on coaching and delivery roles.

From Future Foundations, the Operations Director was Amy Mander.  Our Lead coach was Andy Dunn, and our coaches were: Lucy Moses, Chetna Bhatt, Ella Simms and Nic Whitfeld. Our pastoral team were Olivia Hildebrand and Martin Ramsey.

The programme was supported by the following returning McKinsey Leadership Academy Alumni; Danielle Ball, Rafay Kamal, Monsheil Kahai and Thomas Rafferty.

The annual Graduate Residential brings back together students who first met one another last July, as part of a unique programme that launched them on an exciting leadership journey. The McKinsey Leadership Academy is a selective residential programme which enables participants from across the UK and Ireland to learn about leadership by working in small teams in a fun informal atmosphere, giving them a toolkit of approaches and an action plan for the coming year.

Both the McKinsey Leadership Academy and Graduate Residential are funded and run by McKinsey & Company, a world-leading management consultancy who work with companies, governments and not-for-profit organisations to help them tackle their biggest challenges. Working alongside Future Foundations they provide a range of sessions and one to one consultations to young people over the course of one year that gives a unique, insiders insight into the world of management consultancy and corporate leadership.

The participants travelled from across the UK and Ireland to Wellington College for a two day itinerary focussed on finessing their leadership skills, receiving one to one career coaching, taking part in team building activities and enjoying a formal dinner with the consultants and coaches they met the previous year.

A highlight of the programme was learning how our graduates have put into action the leadership skills they acquired at the 2015 Academy. Participants were inspired to launch individual leadership projects in their schools or communities with which have received remote support and guidance from McKinsey & Company. These projects were incredibly wide ranging in themes and outcomes with three selected as finalists to present their work and compete for an overall prize, the Oscar Pearce Higgins Scholarship.

The Oscar Pearce Higgins scholarship is awarded annually to the graduate who our panel feel has demonstrated excellence in leadership and is presented at the formal dinner night. The scholarship is much sought after and provides financial support of £1000 per year whilst the recipient is at university as well as a 4 week work experience opportunity at McKinsey in London.

The projects completed by the Graduates were a great example of the variety of Leadership challenges undertaken by graduates and demonstrated the potential impact young people are capable of.   These included

One of the finalists selected to present at the Gala Dinner, included Ralph Moran.  His project focused on the creation of a multi-platform application called Locadot which allows tracking through a phone’s GPS.  The project was in response to a missing person’s story which highlighted the number of people who go missing in the UK and in Ireland.

Another of the finalists were the pairing of Olamide Odanye and Kikelomo Adediji whose project called L.I.V.E (Learn, Inspire, Visualise, Elevate) focused on the creation and delivery of a mentoring programme.  This consists of 5 mentors who would work with students from Years 8 to 12 to equip these young individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge to improve themselves; encouraging them to strive for success.

The winner of the Oscar Pearce Higgins Scholarship was Luc Bellintani whose project was deeply personal, and showed incredible ability and dedication.  Luc is working with top surgeons to create a device which can reverse the effects of scoliosis, a condition which causes the spin to curve.  Luc’s project focused on the creation of a cheaper alternative to the current treatments available.  This project was truly inspirational, demonstrated an incredible ability to look at a problem and see the potential solutions.