In February 2026, Lilah Fear stepped onto the ice at the Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games with four years of preparation behind her and an Olympic medal within reach. One minute into the routine, she wobbled during a twizzle, a spinning sequence she had performed thousands of times. In an instant, Fear and her partner, Lewis Gibson, saw their hopes of a medal slip away.
Four months later, Fear stood before Ivey's MBA students and revealed what the Olympic mistake had taught her.
“My twizzles were not built on a solid foundation, and I had been getting away with it for years. I chose the comfort of a pattern I knew over the discomfort of admitting a weakness,” she said.
The anecdote was fitting for MBA Leadership Day, an annual event hosted by Ivey's Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership that encourages students to reflect on their development as leaders. At Ivey, that growth is often understood at three levels: leadership of the self, leadership of others, and leadership of organizations. Fear's story spoke directly to the first of those tiers.
“Leadership of the self begins with self-awareness. What is that aspect of my life where I feel the most discomfort? And knowing that's where you're ripe for growth,” said Dusya Vera, PhD ’02, Executive Director of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership.
She framed the day around a central question for the students: “Who are you becoming while you are busy doing?”
The day featured keynotes from Fear and Candice Faktor, HBA ’00, Co-Founder and CEO of Disco, as well as a faculty-led workshop on Invictus. Although the speakers discussed leadership from very different angles – Fear through elite sport and Faktor through navigating artificial intelligence (AI) – both pushed students to approach it as something that begins with how they understand and manage themselves.
Lilah Fear – Feel the fear and do it a new way
Sharing her experience of the Olympic disappointment publicly for the first time, Fear argued that fear is not something to be suppressed or simply pushed through.
“Fear is a terrible, terrible liar,” she told the students. “It is actually one of the greatest truth tellers, if you are willing to listen.”
For years, she said she had lived by the phrase "Feel the fear and do it anyway," engraved on a bracelet she wore. After the Olympics, she replaced it with a new mantra: "Feel the fear and do it a new way."
In the three weeks between the Olympics and the 2026 ISU World Figure Skating Championships, Fear rebuilt her technique from the ground up. She studied footage of the mistake, retrained the movement, changed her self-talk, and practised under difficult conditions to simulate worst-case scenarios.
She called it a three-step framework – truth, trajectory, and train – for identifying weaknesses, understanding their long-term consequences, and deliberately changing course.
Her work paid off. At the World Championships, Fear executed the same twizzle sequence cleanly, demonstrating the progress she had made in just three weeks.
For Fear, the lesson was simple: growth starts with admitting what isn't working and rebuilding from there.
(Video above) Watch an interview with Lilah Fear
Candice Faktor – Own your inner world
Entrepreneur and AI expert Candice Faktor, an Ivey AI Fellow, explored a similar theme through the lens of uncertainty about the future of work in an AI era.
Drawing on her experiences immigrating to Canada at a young age, overcoming career setbacks, and navigating waves of technological change, Faktor said uncertainty is not something to fear, but to embrace.
“You are sitting at the nexus of one of the most transformative times in the history of our species,” she said.
She argued that success in an AI-driven world will depend less on technical expertise and more on distinctly human capabilities such as judgment, curiosity, presence, and resilience. Faktor challenged the students to see themselves not as the last generation of a familiar world, but the first generation of a new one. Drawing a parallel to her own HBA class, among the first at Ivey to have Internet access on their laptops, she noted that many classmates later built businesses by embracing the technology rather than fearing it.
“What if you are actually being asked to lead this transformation into this new chapter?” she asked.
(Video above) Watch an interview with Candice Faktor
Faktor said adapting to the AI revolution begins with what she called the “inner world” – the things leaders can own regardless of how the technology unfolds. She said attention, state, presence, and mindset form the foundation.
When she asked how many students had gone 48 hours without their phones, only a handful indicated they had. She challenged the class to try it.
“This is a choice,” she said. “Your life is going to be made up of your attention.”
She also introduced the students to the idea of antifragility – becoming stronger because of disruption rather than merely enduring it. Reflecting on an early startup she shut down, Faktor said she later realized the venture had not failed because of the idea itself, but because she had the wrong investors and was measuring the wrong things. For Faktor, the experience reinforced her belief that leaders and organizations cannot afford to be fragile. They must learn to adapt, experiment, and grow through uncertainty.
Quoting venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, she reminded the students that growth requires a willingness to embrace uncertainty.
“The single greatest risk you can take in your career and your life is not taking risks,” she said.
The idea echoed Fear's message earlier in the day: growth begins when people are willing to confront uncomfortable truths instead of avoiding them.
“The only thing standing between you and your change is the willingness to be more afraid of where you are going now than you are of doing things a new way,” said Fear.
(Photo above) Ivey's MBA students with Candice Faktor
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