Ella Robertson McKay
Managing Director, One Young World
2025
Ella Robertson McKay is the Managing Director of One Young World, the global forum for young leaders which convenes annually in a different city, including Pittsburgh in 2012. Under her leadership, One Young World has advanced youth-led strategies to counter hate through initiatives such as Extremely Together, a pioneering programme on preventing violent extremism, Young Leaders Against Sexual Violence, and PACT, a movement for radical goodness that unites changemakers to confront hate with creativity and compassion.
Beyond her work on hate prevention, Ella oversees the organisation’s global strategy, partnerships, and high-profile annual Summit, which brings together over 2,000 young leaders from 190+ countries alongside heads of state, Nobel laureates, and influential figures from business and civil society. She has driven the growth of One Young World’s scholarship programmes, ensuring representation from underrepresented regions and communities, and has produced large-scale opening and closing ceremonies featuring world-class artists and activists.
Ella is the co-author of How to Make a Difference, a practical guide to activism, and has delivered keynote speeches for global corporations, governments, and universities. She sits on advisory boards for UNLOC and Daughters for Earth, is Chair of the Board of Governors at a London primary school, and is a member of the Magnitsky Human Rights Awards committee.
This cannot be thought of as a conference or a summit. The stakes are simply too high and the data/conversation and methods to drive action more valuable/motivating than any gathering I have attended. I took more than 100 pages of notes and have shared them with my CBS News leadership team, anchors, producers, and correspondents. Nothing about this gathering was easy. The agony around this topic is real. But no one curious about it could ask for a more devoted, rational, or unflinching look into this dark but decipherable world.
