EMERGING LEADERS UPDATE: MENTORING SCHEME 2022 LAUNCHES, ANNUAL COMPETITION, EVENT SCHEDULE, Apr 2022

Contributed by ITFA’s Emerging Leaders Committee

The first quarter of 2022 is behind us and the ITFA Emerging Leaders Committee is keeping busy! In this month’s newsletter we would like to share some exciting updates. Please make sure to share these updates with emerging talent within your organisations and your broader network; after a long pandemic, early-stage professionals are excited to (re)engage with their peers, learn new skills, and grow their careers.

Martin Ashurst Trade Finance Mentoring Scheme

This year’s version of the Martin Ashurst Trade Finance Mentoring Programme is now live, with more than 60 participants taking part. In April, the Emerging Leaders Committee led a kick-off webinar introducing the programme to the mentors and mentees. Veronika Koroleva, Partner at Gunnercooke llp and long-term mentor and coach, gave a presentation on best practices for mentoring. We are delighted to see so many of our Emerging Leaders continuing to make the most of this fantastic initiative and we are grateful to the mentors who make it possible by offering their time to give back to the industry.

2022 ITFA Emerging Leaders Competition

The Emerging Leaders Competition will return for the fourth time in 2022. This has quickly become the “Oscars” of trade finance and we were delighted with how incredibly successful the first three editions were.

The main goal of this initiative is to allow Emerging Leaders in trade finance to showcase their ability to add value to the industry and we have certainly achieved that both in 2019, 2020 and 2021. The three shortlisted projects gain free entry to the ITFA Annual Conference in Porto, where the winner will be chosen.

We will soon be announcing the details of this year’s competition. Make sure to join our ITFA Emerging Leaders LinkedIn group to make sure you don’t miss out.

Events

In March, we held our first in-person event since the pandemic, and it was a major success! The topic was Legal Issues in Trade Finance and the keynote presentation was given by Sam Fowler-Holmes, Emerging Leaders Committee Member and Partner at Sullivan. The event also featured an interview and interactive Q&A session hosted by Pouya Jafari, Chair of ITFA’s Emerging Leaders Committee, SMBC Bank International Plc, with Geoffrey Wynne, Senior Partner of Sullivan in London.

Our next event will tentatively be held in the second half of June (date TBC) and will be on the topic of Distribution. This will be announced via the usual ITFA communications as well as on our Emerging Leaders LinkedIn group.