2025 Global Impact Summit: George Sifakis and Alexa Sifakis

From Athens, we sit with George Sifakis to unpack a simple truth with big consequences: the world’s hardest problems yield when we bring unlikely partners to the same table. Government, business, nonprofits, and academia each carry their own language, incentives, and blind spots. When those worlds converge with respect and clear goals, stale roadblocks turn into shared wins—and listeners walk away with a blueprint to make that happen in their own work.

We go beyond labels to define leadership as the practice of empathy, humility, and visible effort. George shares how real leaders don’t just tell teams what to do; they model the grind, own mistakes, and build trust through consistent action. Resilience runs through the conversation like steel cable. You can’t download it or fake it. It forms through failure, reflection, and the decision to show up again. The pace of recovery becomes the edge: not how hard you fall, but how quickly you rise, learn, and reset the plan.

For emerging global leaders, we get practical. Listen before you prove. Ask sharper questions. Use AI to explore options, check assumptions, and translate across domains without surrendering your judgment. Treat curiosity as a strategic asset and show up prepared to do the unglamorous work that moves projects forward. We close with a reminder that feels personal and actionable: one person can change the world. Often that change starts with a single conversation that sparks a partnership, a risk taken after a setback, or a young leader who chooses to keep going.

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Chapters

• 0:11 Welcome From Athens
• 0:33 Why Cross-Sector Collaboration Matters
• 1:24 Defining Leadership Beyond Titles
• 3:06 Failure As Fuel For Resilience
• 4:30 Advice For Emerging Global Leaders
• 5:38 Curiosity, AI, And Showing Up
• 5:58 Closing Gratitude And Motivation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

Hello, everyone. My name is Alexis Siphocis. Today we are here in Athens, Greece, and we are here hosted with the Idea Gen Global Foundation, talking about future global leaders. And today we'll be interviewing George Sipakis. Hello, Dad. So let's dive in. Let's talk about global leaders. And my first question to you is why is cross-sector collaboration so important?

SPEAKER_01: 0:42

You know, Alexa, you've heard this many times, but for our global audience, it's important to really put a pin on how important cross-sector collaboration is. Cross-sector collaboration is important because I believe and Idea Gen believes that many of the world's most vexing issues are solved by convening sectors. Sectors speak different languages, there's different axioms, there's different ways of communicating. And when you bring these sectors together, magic happens.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16

And you can solve so many of the world's most vexing issues by convening people across sectors.

SPEAKER_00: 1:21

And it's so inspiring to see you do it so often. So how do you define leadership?

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

That's a good one. Having interviewed thousands of global leaders on Idea Gen TV and here now today with you for the Idea Gen Foundation, focused on future global leaders, leadership is an amalgamation. It's a confluence of all of your life's lessons. And it's not easy to lead. You have to have empathy. You have to be humble. And yet at the same time, you have to be able to inspire others and show others with your work and your in and actually your doing that you're willing to also step in and do the hard work. And so, and it's also failure, building on your failures. That's a big part of being a leader, is understanding that you have a certain sense of resiliency that's been built within you to be able to look at someone like yourself starting the career and say, you can do it. And here's why. Fail often. Something we hear sometimes. It's really important to be able to fail, to build that scar tissue so that when you go through life, you're able to stand back up after you fail and keep going. You can't skip the line. You cannot skip the line.

SPEAKER_00: 2:50

Especially teaching the younger generation that it's okay to take risks. And, you know, I think a lot of people don't realize until they actually fail later when they succeed that failure was important. So uh and that goes on to my next question of why is resilience so important?

SPEAKER_01: 3:13

So resilience is something that is a byproduct of failure and experiences. So you can't just become resilient. It's something that happens over time throughout your career through failure. Some people have multiple failures. How many people have you heard that are tremendous successes that have failed in the past?

SPEAKER_00: 3:39

Absolutely, so many.

SPEAKER_01: 3:40

If you read any, any any autobiography, inevitably it will talk about failure and how that failure led to the success. And so resiliency is something that's built up throughout a lifetime and it's so critical to understand that you have to you have to show up. Like I've told you so many times, you have to show up. Nothing just happens, you have to show up. And by doing so, sometimes you do fail. Uh, but you learn from those lessons, hopefully, and then you keep going. And it's not how hard you fall, but it's how fast you get up.

SPEAKER_00: 4:16

Yeah. Hard work always pays off. And especially today with what you're doing and podcasting, people are so inspired by listening to conversations. So I think these conversations are so important because they inspire so many people around the world. And so, what would you advise people like me, new emerging global leaders? What advice would you give them in their aspiring careers?

SPEAKER_01: 4:50

I would say it's so important to listen. You know, when you're young, you want to show, you know, that you know a lot. It's counterintuitive. You're you just graduated from university or whatever it may be, or you're you're in your first job. And I think the most people, most young folks want to show their bosses or show their, you know, the leadership in a company or any entity how smart they are. But at the same time, if you just stop to listen and to learn and to ask questions, it's so important to be inquisitive. And today, with AI and everything else that we have at our fingertips, it's so easy to find out and to have your questions answered. Like, what do you think about this? You can get the answer. And so be inquisitive, be inspired, and ultimately you get to that destination. And most importantly, one person can change the world.

SPEAKER_00: 5:51

Absolutely, and you're doing it.

SPEAKER_01: 5:53

And so are you.

SPEAKER_00: 5:55

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 5:57

Thank you, Alexa.

SPEAKER_00: 5:58

Let's go.

SPEAKER_01: 5:58

Let's go.