By Barbara Krylova, GMIM2027
When I was writing my thesis on soft power and female leadership, I interviewed a number of remarkable women. One of them said something that stayed with me: in the women she admires, there’s so much to learn from the way they are in the world; there’s a softness that’s never fragile. This thought comes back to me all the time at LBS, especially in the past couple of weeks, spent fully immersed in preparation for LBS’s 26th EQUALL Conference, dedicated to the women rewriting power in a changing world (I’m even moderating a panel, woohoo!).
When I was applying to LBS, I wrote about wanting to further my work on female leadership and surround myself with women who shared my values and ambitions. I fully meant it, but I hadn’t yet understood what it would feel like to be in a room with that many incredible women at once — not as inspirational figures, but as colleagues, teammates, and friends.
There’s a part of these weeks that still makes me slightly giddy: EQUALL has connected me with female role models I’d previously only known from a distance — absolute powerhouses, the ones I see in an interview and think I want to take notes on everything they say. Some of them will be joining the EQUALL Conference (eek!!), and I don’t have a cooler word for that feeling. It’s excitement, of course, but it’s also a relief. A relief that the women I wrote about in my thesis aren’t exceptional cases in a solely academic sense. They’re real, they’re accessible, and they’re determined to make a difference for the women who follow in their footsteps. As one of them put it, she realised she wants to make a difference for the women in her life right now, and for her daughter in the future. She felt like she had to do something. That sense of urgency is something I felt echoed in every conversation I’ve had these past few weeks.
But the ones I admire even more are the women who surround me at LBS every day. It’s my WiB EQUALL team, who, in just a couple of weeks, has become a source of real inspiration, leading by example what it takes to show up no matter what and offer unwavering support and positivity. It’s the women in the R&A department, organising ambassador socials, giving us a platform to share our insights, and passionately shaping future cohorts. It’s the Careers Centre, with their drop‑in sessions to check on us, and the academic and programme teams, who are always doing everything in their power to make our year at LBS as smooth and as enjoyable as possible. LBS can get quite hectic, and I genuinely don’t know what I would have done without their constant reminders, gentle check‑ins, and the reassurance that they have our back.
And it’s my peers, who amazed me from day one. I expected to feel like I was competing at LBS. Instead, I found myself surrounded by support that went far beyond academics — a text after a tough exam, a friend showing up to a lecture with freshly baked banana bread because she’d noticed I was having a long day, and the day I spilled coffee on myself mid‑class, several of them rushing over, offering their clothes, ready to run home and bring whatever I needed. All so different in background and ambition, and yet identical in the one thing that matters: the way they show up for each other.
When I wrote my thesis, I was writing about women I admired from the outside. What LBS has given me is much more: the chance to be surrounded by those women, to work alongside them, and to have them become my closest friends.