On 27 November 2026, UNU will host “The Future of Leadership: Humanity, AI and the Rise of Performance Intelligence”, a conversation with Dr. Sharmla Chetty, CEO of Duke Corporate Education. This event will start at 18:30 in the 1F Annex Space at UNU Headquarters in Tokyo.
Artificial intelligence is transforming how we work, learn, lead and govern, but the pace of change has outrun the playbook. The challenge is no longer simply improving productivity. It is bringing different forms of intelligence together to strengthen institutions, improve decisions and deliver meaningful outcomes for society. For the first time in history, leaders are managing two workforces, a human one and an agentic one, and they have a unique opportunity to shape the arc of AI towards humanity’s most pressing challenges.
For this conversation, Dr. Sharmla Chetty will join UNU Rector Tshilidzi Marwala for a discussion building on their recent joint publication "The Rise of Performance Intelligence", published in Dialogue Magazine. They will explore how human judgment, creativity and ethical reasoning can combine with AI, autonomous agents and social intelligence to create more effective organizations and institutions. Central to this model is leadership: guarding purpose, building trust, ensuring accountability and safeguarding human dignity and public value.
The discussion will consider what this means for education, governance and global development, asking a fundamental question: in a world of increasingly capable machines, how do we intentionally create a combined intelligence that delivers fundamentally better human outcomes? There is no playbook for a moment like this. Our role as leaders is to write it, and both speakers return to the fundamentally optimistic view that this is an opportunity and a privilege, not a challenge.
This event is part of the UNU Conversation Series, which aims to foster audience participation. You are encouraged to engage with the speakers during the conversation and at the reception that will follow, where all event attendees are invited to enjoy hors d’oeuvres and drinks while exchanging ideas and making new contacts.
This event will be in English. Advance registration (by 26 November at 15:00) is required. Please click on the REGISTER button above to access the online registration page. Please be prepared to present identification at check-in.
We also ask guests to be aware of the following event-related policies:
- UNU Code of Conduct to Prevent Harassment at UNU Events
- UNU Data Protection Notice for Meetings and Events
Please note that food and photography are prohibited during events at UNU Headquarters, unless prior permission is granted by UNU.
About the speaker
Dr. Sharmla Chetty is CEO of Duke Corporate Education, a global leader in custom executive education and leadership development, working with organizations in more than eighty-five countries. She brings more than 30 years of international business experience and works with boards and senior executives on strategic transformation, with a focus on the evolving role of leadership in an AI-driven world. She recently co-authored The Rise of Performance Intelligence with Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of the United Nations University. She established and scaled Duke CE’s South African business into a leading provider of custom executive education on the continent, before taking on global leadership responsibilities spanning North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Earlier in her career, she spent nearly two decades at Nedbank, where she led human capital development and helped build the organization’s future leadership pipeline.
She is Chair of the International Women’s Forum UK and the founder of Women Leading Change, Lead with Her and The AI Club. Her advisory experience includes the Advisory Board of the Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs at the University of South Africa. She was named AWCA’s 2025 Woman of Substance. She holds a Doctorate in Leadership Resilience from Middlesex University London.
