Summer one: gold in Seville

My first project supported Professor Alison Wright's research into gold in Seville between around 1470 and 1530. It meant working through thousands of pages of chronicles and archives, many of them in Spanish. To manage that, I built a bilingual keyword system and a central file of summarised, translated extracts. Then I spent two weeks in Seville itself. As a Russian student based in London, researching in a third country in a third language was challenging. At one point, it took four attempts to find a church actually open, although the convent opposite, which sells nuns' pastries, made up for it.

The biggest lesson wasn't about gold, though. I began by reading the chronicles as plain fact. Over time, I realised that their descriptions of lavish wealth might be exaggerated or written to serve an agenda. I learned to ask not just what a source says, but why, and whose voice is missing.

Summer two: giving back at EveryLeader

For my Leadership-in-Action placement, I joined EveryLeader, a volunteer-run non-profit offering free online leadership training. I knew I'd accessed Laidlaw's training because of my university, finances and grades. A typical leadership course costs around £2,000, so I wanted to help people without those advantages. I wrote the organisation's onboarding and offboarding procedures, and created, wrote and designed its first newsletter. I've since decided to stay on indefinitely.

The Takeaways

* Both summers built the same core skill from different directions: taking something big and messy and breaking it into manageable steps. In Seville, that meant thousands of pages of sources. At EveryLeader, it meant a newsletter that had to launch on time, even when contributors from other departments went quiet during their exam season.

* My character is where I've changed most. This is where I've changed the most. I used to think that when someone on my team didn't deliver, the answer was to confront the problem straight away. Laidlaw taught me to listen first. Now, in my e-commerce brokerage, when a deliverable slips, I start by giving the benefit of the doubt and trying to understand what actually held that person back. At EveryLeader, when others couldn't deliver, I saw it from the other side. The people I admired most was my Head of Department, Afsana, who led through her own consistency and passion rather than through authority.

A global mindset

Being a Russian student in London researching Spanish history in Spanish was, in itself, a lesson in global thinking. But the Seville project also changed how I understand globalisation. The gold in those altarpieces arrived through transatlantic trade, at enormous cost to people in the Americas whose voices rarely appear in the chronicles I read. Seeing that history up close made me more aware that global connections always have winners and losers, and that it matters who gets to tell the story.

EveryLeader added a practical side to this. Working with a team split between the UK and Australia, across time zones and university calendars, taught me that a global mindset isn't just about ideas. It also means being patient with how differently people's lives are structured.

What comes next

For me, leading ethically as a global citizen means keeping a few commitments. I'll continue widening access to leadership training through EveryLeader. I'll lead my business with empathy and fairness. And I'll keep asking whose perspective is missing before deciding what's true. Laidlaw gave me an opportunity many people never get, and the best way to honour it is to help more people get it too.