Fuzieh Jallow

Who will hold the room when the people holding it now step back — and what are we doing today to prepare them?

A Question We Rarely Ask Out Loud

I have spent two decades in the corridors of global forums — from the side events at COP to multilateral negotiations in Geneva, Bonn, and Belém. And one pattern persists: the faces leading these spaces are largely the same. Veteran advocates. Experienced diplomats. Communicators who have spent years building the relationships and fluency that allow them to move with confidence and precision.

Their expertise is real. Their networks took decades to build. And at some point, they will step back.

The question of who comes next rarely gets asked in the open. It should — because the answer does not take care of itself.

Leading effectively at global forums is a learned capability. It is not simply being knowledgeable about your issue area. It is understanding how multilateral processes work, how to build trust across cultural and institutional contexts under pressure, and how to represent an organization’s positions — not just your own perspective — in spaces that are simultaneously political, technical, and deeply relational. These skills develop through deliberate preparation, good mentorship, and honest feedback. For organizations serious about long-term influence, building this pipeline is foundational work.

What This Kind of Leadership Actually Requires

Emerging forum leaders need development that goes beyond traditional leadership programs. Along with subject matter depth and communication confidence, they need:

• Process literacy: an understanding of how multilateral negotiations are structured, what the formal and informal channels are, and how decisions actually get made in rooms in Nairobi, Geneva, Belém, or wherever the next convening takes place.
• The ability to build trust across differences: forming genuine relationships with counterparts from different political, cultural, and institutional contexts — often in very compressed timeframes.
• Strategic patience: knowing when to push, when to hold, and when to let a conversation develop without forcing a conclusion.
• Organizational representation: the capacity to speak on behalf of an institution — its positions, its tone, its existing relationships — rather than only expressing one’s individual views.

That last quality is worth naming directly. Emerging leaders who are strong individual advocates sometimes experience tension between their personal convictions and institutional strategy in negotiation contexts. That tension is workable with the right support and coaching. It is one of the places where experienced mentorship makes the biggest difference.

Where Organizations Get This Wrong

The most common failure is treating forum participation as recognition rather than development. Junior staff and emerging leaders are brought along to observe — carrying materials, logging sessions, supporting logistics — but not given the structured practice they will need to lead one day.

A second problem is insufficient preparation before and insufficient reflection after. Arriving at a forum without deep contextual grounding makes the experience wasted. Leaving without a structured debriefing wastes the learning. Both are preventable with planning.

A third, more uncomfortable failure: assuming that emerging leaders from historically underrepresented communities will find their own path in spaces that were not designed with them in mind. Some do, with remarkable results. But that is not a strategy — it is a gap that masquerades as an opportunity.

Representation without preparation is not leadership development. It is visibility without investment.

What a Real Development Framework Looks Like

Organizations serious about this work build it in stages. Before the forum: preparation that covers both the substantive agenda and the interpersonal landscape — who will be in the room, what dynamics are at play, where the organization’s voice fits, and why. During the forum, graduated responsibility, where emerging leaders take on specific tasks with real stakes — a speaking role in a side event, a bilateral conversation, a debrief with senior delegation members. After: honest reflection on what worked, what needs more development, and what the next step in the progression is.

Mentorship from experienced practitioners is not optional in this model. The knowledge that veteran forum participants carry — the things that never appear in a briefing document — is transmitted through proximity, trust, and conversation. That relationship needs to be built deliberately, not assumed.

At Terra40, this is the work we do alongside our clients. Whether we are managing a global delegation, designing a side-event program, or supporting an organization’s full-forum engagement strategy, we treat leadership development and strategic engagement as inseparable. Cultural intelligence — the ability to move fluently across institutional, political, and cultural contexts — is not a soft skill. It is the infrastructure that makes every other capability.

The Equity Dimension

Who gets developed matters as much as how they are developed. Global forums have historically centered a narrow set of voices — geographically, institutionally, and in terms of lived experience. Organizations that want to change this need to be intentional about who they invest in, not just who they bring along.

This is both the right and the strategically sound thing to do. The perspectives most underrepresented in multilateral spaces often carry the most direct understanding of the issues being debated. Bringing those voices forward — with thorough preparation and genuine support — produces better outcomes for everyone in the room and beyond.

Who shaped your understanding of how to show up at a global forum? What did that look like — and what do you wish had been different?

These are questions I think about deeply — shaped by twenty years of sitting in these rooms and by the work we do every day at Terra40. If you’re building a delegation, developing your organization’s forum presence, or investing in the next generation of leaders in your space, I’d welcome a conversation.

→ Connect with me on LinkedIn or reach out to us directly at Terra40.