Impact Live – The hard call: Candid conversations on leadership and character

Every hard decision reveals something about the person making it. And for those leading SMEs and not-for-profits – where a single call can ripple through an entire organization overnight – what gets revealed is character. That's what shapes the decision, and that's what your people remember.

So how do you build the character to lead well when it counts most?

At Impact Live – The hard call: Candid conversations on leadership and character, a panel of diverse SME leaders engage in a candid conversation about the pivotal role character plays in the moments that test us most. Grounded in Ivey's award-winning Leader Character research, panelists unpack the hardest calls of their careers, the character traits that carried them through, and the daily habits that built those traits in the first place.

This conversation, which originally took place on October 27, 2026, is moderated by Kimberley Milani, Director of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership at Ivey Business School, with panelists Neil Hetherington, EMBA '13 (CEO, Daily Bread Food Bank), Peter Katz (JUNO-nominated musician and Speaker Hall of Fame inductee), and Shirley Zhong, HBA '26 (Co-Founder & COO, Xatoms).