The event gathered seven generations of the Academy’s Alumni – young professionals from all sectors – media, politics, public administration, business and civil society. The programme started on the Friday afternoon in the IMPACT - European Centre for Cross-Sector Partnership with the opening speech by Nevena Crljenko, Executive Director of Academy for Political Development, followed by the welcome speeches delivered by Therese Aalberg, Charge d′affaires. a.i. First Secretary from Royal Norwegian Embassy in Zagreb and Darko Kasap, Deputy Mayor of Zadar. The first lecture of the programme was given by Hoyt B. Yee, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of the United States to the Republic of Croatia, and was entitled “Leadership: a view from United States”.

The Saturday programme continued at the hotel Kolovare where Professor Ivan Šiber gave a lecture on a theoretical concept of theories of leadership and characteristics of a good leader entitled “What we talk about when we talk about leadership?”. After the introductory lecture the programme continued in smaller and more interactive groups – the participants were able to choose between two parallel thematic discussions: “Leaders on local level: how to succeed in a centralised state?” (the speakers were Josipa Rimac, Mayor of Knin, Ivan Vrdoljak, Deputy Mayor of Osijek and Damir Mateljan, Mayor of Kamanje) or the thematic discussion entitled “How do we handle science” (the participants were addressed by Dejan Vinković from Physics Department of University of Split, Bojan Pečnik, astrophysicist and technical director, Hipersfera and Mirko Petrić, sociologist from University of Zadar).

The Saturday afternoon programme continued with the two parallel thematic discussions of which the first was entitled “Public sector’s good management” (Damir Kaufman, director of Financial System Directorate, Ministry of Finance, Krešimir Buntak, Head of State Office for Metrology and Krešimir Kvaternik, Member of Board from FINA – Financial Agency). The second thematic discussion was entitled “It’s about us: leaders of civic initiatives” (Tomislav Tomašević, President of Green Action, Don Ivan Grubišić from the Croatian Academic Association and Zoran Milić from the Secular Franciscan Order).

The last day of the conference began with a lecture entitled “Business leaders and their strategies” (Ivana Šoljan, CEO from Jupiter Adria, Zlatko Pavičić project manager, DOK-ING and Dean Skira, owner of Lumenart and Skira) followed by the most interesting lecture of the conference entitled “Quo vadis, Croatia”given by the Governor of the Croatian Central Bank Dr. Željko Rohatinski.

The 4th annual conference was concluded by both oral and written evaluation which confirmed that the participants supported the idea of an annual conference as a platform for young leaders to meet and analyze the current state of affairs in the most important sectors of public life.