Fixing Systems, Not Symptoms: How Great Leaders Think Differently.
Dr. Oby Ezekwesili — former World Bank Africa VP and former Nigerian Minister of Education — joins Nexford to break down how great leaders solve for systems, not symptoms.
Former Vice President of the World Bank and Former Minister of Education, Nigeria
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Event details
Most leaders fix what’s in front of them. Dr. Oby Ezekwesili built her career fixing what’s underneath it.
As Vice President of the World Bank’s Africa Region, she managed a $40 billion portfolio across 48 countries — work that meant looking past isolated failures to the systems producing them. Before that, as Nigeria’s Minister of Education, she took on structural reform at the ministry level. She also co-founded Transparency International, built on the same premise: symptoms keep repeating until someone fixes the system.
In “Fixing Systems, Not Symptoms: How Great Leaders Think Differently,” Dr. Ezekwesili walks learners through how she approaches a problem — how to separate the obvious issue from the structural one causing it, and how to build solutions that hold instead of reactive fixes that don’t.
The session is interactive. Learners can ask Dr. Ezekwesili questions directly and hear how she applies this thinking to leadership, policy, and problem-solving at scale.
- Spot the system behind the symptom
- See how she managed a $40B World Bank portfolio across 48 countries
- Learn what separates reactive leadership from structural problem-solving
- Ask your questions live
- Leave with a framework for diagnosing root causes