Punching Above Your Weight: Leadership Lessons from the World Stage

Ireland's former US Ambassador, Daniel Mulhall, on leading through crisis and winning as the small player.
About this Event

What can a founder learn from someone who spent more than 40 years getting people to say yes when he had no power to make them?

That's the job of a diplomat... leading without authority, in rooms full of people you can't instruct, where the only tool is influence. It's also, quietly, the job of every founder pitching an investor, closing a customer, or holding a team together on a promise. Different room, same skill.

Daniel Mulhall was Ireland's Ambassador to the United States, the UK, Germany and Malaysia. He was in the delegation that negotiated the Good Friday Agreement. He was Ireland's man in London when Brexit landed, and in Berlin through the financial crisis. Since 2022 he's taught at NYU, held a fellowship at Cambridge, and advised the global law firm DLA Piper.

In this conversation, we'll dig into what diplomacy actually teaches about leadership you can use:

• How to move people you don't control
• How to lead through a crisis you didn't cause and can't stop
• How a small player wins against much bigger ones
• How relationships, not tactics, are what compound over a career

Daniel will also share the story behind the Stelios Foundation North–South Business Cooperation Awards — a €500,000 prize fund for entrepreneurs trading across the border, which he helped create with easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. Applications are open until 7 September 2026, with a €150,000 Gold Award on offer. If you're building something cross-border, this is non-dilutive money worth chasing — and you'll hear how to go for it.

This isn't a diplomatic memoir. It's practical, direct, and built for the people in the room who have to lead something themselves.

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Agenda

🕑: 01:45 PM - 02:15 PM
Networking
🕑: 02:15 PM - 03:15 PM
Leadership Lessons from the World Stage with Daniel Mulhall
Host: Dan Mulhall
🕑: 03:15 PM - 03:30 PM
Q&A
🕑: 03:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Networking