Leading Our Way

6INTEGRITY: Comfort Ero

IT WAS A GREY week in November 2022. I had recently started my new job—as the managing director of an international foundation—and was in Paris for the first days with the team. After four days of back‐to‐back meetings, I decide at the last minute to stay one more day and attend a large peace forum that is hosted each year in the stock exchange palace in the heart of Paris, hoping to get some insights into how to position the ambition of my new organisation into the peace and security debates at the European level.

A former colleague and friend is in charge of running part of the forum's programme, and during one of the coffee breaks, he offers me the chance to join his next meeting: a closed‐door discussion with the newly appointed CEO of the International Crisis Group (ICG). “Elle est trop forte”, he says in French [“she is very cool” for the non‐French‐speaking]. Positively surprised by the fact that it's a “she”, in a sector in which women occupying leadership positions is rare, I say yes. And on the way to the meeting room, I start asking questions. “Her name is Comfort Ero”, he says, as I try to remember if we ever crossed paths in my previous roles, or if I saw her on TV or in some newspaper. “She is British–Nigerian”, he adds, “and no, she wasn't a well‐known personality before”.

Typically, CEOs of the Crisis Group, and of equivalent organisations ...