Macedonia2025 and the Ivey School of Business from Canada organized another outstanding edition of the Leader project. The last day, out of ten days intensive training, the Final Pitching Competition took place on May 13, 2022 in UACS in Skopje. As in previous years, on the last day, the participants of the training presented their business ideas, which were evaluated by an expert jury composed of prominent members of the business community.

We are expressing our gratitude to the expert jury of the competition consisted by:

1. Diana Piquete MBA, Alumni of Ivey Business School
2. Monika Rizovska – Growth at Emteq Labs | Women in Tech® Ambassador | Co-founder at Ways2help | World Chicago Fellow | Marketing Consultant (Leader Alumni 2021)
3. Trajche Velkovski – Assistant Professor at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering)
4. Aleksandar Klashniski – CEO of Brainster Next (Leader Alumni 2021)
5. Lazar Nedanoski, Executive director of the Macedonian Enterprise Development Foundation
6. Hari Shutoski, Advisor for Ecosystem Development at GIZ North Macedonia
7. Romela Popovic Trajkova, Project Manager, Youth employment specialist at UNDP
8. Andreas Mueller, International Junior Short Term Consultant – “EU for Economic Growth” Project, North Macedonia
9. Voislav Ilievski, Senior Associate for Business Programs at Macedonia2025

A special guest at the official closing of the 14^th edition of BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT TRAINING – THE LEADER PROJECT was Mike Zafirovski, founder and president of “The Zaf Group”, a management and investment consulting company, also co-founder and member of the board of directors at Macedonia2025. He shared his experience and lessons learned and challenges for developing and running a family business, leading large corporations, but also the essence of leadership and the leader – how to strike the right balance between family, profession and friends.

In this program, all participants are winners and gainers of new knowledge and experience. Nevertheless, we would like to send sincere congratulations and would like to single out the excellent presentations of business ideas of the following participants:

• Ivica Peshovski, “The dream of youth – Everything else is just a beer”
• Katerina Smiljkovski and Ognen Ognenovski “Intelligent Metasurfaces – Control your beams on demand”
• Dimitar Mitevski “Bintern – Shaping employees for the future!”
• Frosina Trajkovska & Ivana Nikolic „Vinozito.mk – Making employees and clients feel valued through personal gifting„