The Glass Cliff is not a theory.
It is a documented organizational pattern, first identified by researchers at the University of Exeter in 2005 and replicated across 11 studies. Women are systematically appointed to leadership positions during crises. Then they are evaluated on whether they fixed conditions that were already broken before they arrived.

The cost is measurable.
Women CEOs average 5 years in role against 8 for men.
Women appointed to Glass Cliff positions are considered for fewer leadership roles afterward than both their male peers and women appointed during stable periods. 38% of women have had their judgment questioned in their area of expertise, compared to 26% of men.

The organization pays for this too. Recurring leadership turnover in crisis conditions destroys institutional knowledge, delays recovery, and signals instability to investors and boards. Most organizations absorb this cost without naming it.

On 24 March, you will sit as a juror.
You will review five real cases. Five women appointed to lead organizations in crisis, tasked with building credibility without institutional backing, and expected to deliver results against conditions no one disclosed upfront. Each case ended with the same verdict: she failed.

Your job is to determine whether those verdicts were accurate, or whether the conditions made failure the only available outcome.

This is a working session. It uses live QR voting, group deliberation, structured cross- examination, and expert witness testimony from Selina Adedeji Mortoni. By the end, you will have named the specific blind spots in your own organization's decision-making record.

You leave with one question you are expected to answer: who had the authority to issue those verdicts, what did they not see, and what are you going to do with the authority you have?

This session is for you if you are an entrepreneur managing the dual build of business and credibility, a leader operating without institutional backing, a board member, or someone who has watched competence fail to produce the credibility it should have earned. It is also for the men who want to understand why their female co-founders and colleagues are burning out faster, and who are willing to examine their own role in that pattern.

The future of work requires leaders who perform under pressure without hierarchy, stability, or institutional cover. Most leadership development does not train for that. This session does.

Your facilitator

Dr. Audrey-Flore Ngomsik operates at the intersection most institutions claim does not exist: where science, policy, sustainability strategy, and business transformation converge. CEO of Trianon Scientific Communication, VP of the Brussels Capital Region Climate Committee, European Policy Centre board member, and TEDx speaker, she has spent 20 years exposing the systematic blind spots created when organizations treat competence and credibility as the same thing. They are not. Her PhD in Physical & Chemistry (Sorbonne, Paris), 180+ business transformations, and track record of 60-80% profit increases mean she walks into every room with data, not declarations. She will facilitate the jury experience and ensure the evidence lands.

The expert witness 

Selina Adedeji Mortoni took over her father's publishing house after his death. She did not apply for the role. She inherited the business, the team, the stakeholder relationships, and the unspoken expectation that she would perform grief and leadership at the same time. She built Editions Mabiki while simultaneously building policy influence across European institutions. She will speak to what that actually looks like: the invisible labor of establishing legitimacy in every new room and the exhausting gap between competence and credibility.