Why Smart Companies Are Betting Big on Youth Leaders (And You Should Too)

A rockstar, a CEO, and a teenager walk into a room. It’s not the start of a joke, but the essence of a decade-long partnership between SAP and We Are Family Foundation (WAFF). Together, they’ve built a model that shows how young leaders can move from token voices to strategy shapers, from climate action to AI regulation. And the results offer practical lessons for every company looking to future-proof their business.

The challenges facing businesses today demand fresh ideas, digital fluency, and bold thinking. These are the qualities youth leaders bring in spades. For more than 20 years, WAFF, co-founded by music legend Nile Rodgers and his lifelong partner Nancy Hunt, has mentored young leaders from more than 100 countries. Over the past decade, WAFF and SAP have partnered to deepen that global impact, moving youth voices from symbolic gestures to central drivers of innovation.

From roundtables where teenagers challenge senior executives, to shaping initiatives at the UN Climate Change Conferences and the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, WAFF and SAP have developed a blueprint for embedding youth-led ideas into corporate strategy, supply chains, and culture while delivering measurable business and societal impact.

Here are five lessons from the collaboration on how intergenerational partnerships unlock value for both business and society.

1. Problems that span generations require leadership that does too

Traditional business models silo generations: executives design the strategy, then hand it down for others to execute. In today’s world, that handoff wastes momentum and risks irrelevance.

WAFF’s 2024 global study, Collaborating Across Generations, found that when senior leaders and young changemakers co-create from the start, ideas are stress-tested in real time. This results in strategies that are bolder, more resilient, and more adaptable to fast-moving challenges.

In short, instead of passing the baton on the final leg, build your strategies together from the starting line.

2. Intergenerational collaboration is a smart strategy

Youth leaders aren’t just “future leaders.” They already bring expertise that legacy teams lack. Digital natives understand platforms, trends, and user behavior instinctively. They also bring the urgency of living through the climate crisis and global inequality.

Take WAFF Youth Leader Arunima Sen, who uses AI to track plastic debris and apply data-driven models to malnutrition. Her work bridges grassroots innovation with scalable solutions, which is exactly the kind of thinking that can de-risk corporate strategies and ensure relevance from day one.

For companies, including youth voices isn’t an act of goodwill; it’s strategic de-risking.

3. Where business, policy, and community align, impact follows

Global challenges cannot be solved in silos. The biggest breakthroughs happen when companies, policymakers, and social entrepreneurs collaborate.

One example is Mozamel Aman, a young Afghan impact entrepreneur and immigrant in Germany, who built StartSteps to create inclusive employment pathways. In 2023, he began a partnership with SAP Germany connecting women to the opportunity for tech jobs in the SAP ecosystem, blending corporate support with government stipends. His organization leverages government stipends from the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (Federal Employment Agency) to train unemployed individuals and connect them with job opportunities. 

Germany’s technical talent gap is nearly the same size as its unemployed refugee population. Partnerships like this solve social challenges while closing critical business gaps in talent and innovation.

4. Purpose, profit, and the power of inclusion

Authentic inclusion of young experts, especially Gen-Zs, builds credibility, trust, and stronger business performance.

Employees notice:

• Engagement: Only 31% of U.S. employees were engaged in 2024, the lowest level in a decade.
• Retention risk: Employees who feel aligned with their company’s mission and values are much more likely to stay, while misalignment drives turnover.
• Business impact: Highly engaged employees drive up to 21% higher profitability.

WAFF’s global study findings underscore these statistics, indicating that young people see inclusivity and accountability as non-negotiable factors. By authentically including youth, organizations set a standard of purpose that fuels stronger engagement, deeper loyalty, and, ultimately, higher profitability.

5. Strategic procurement for social good

The most powerful financial corporate tool for change isn’t in giving, but perhaps in spending.

SAP Business Network facilitates US$6.1 trillion in annual commerce. Compare that to an average corporate social responsibility (CSR) budget of $12 million among FTSE 100 companies, and the potential is clear: redirecting even a fraction of procurement spend toward youth-led, sustainable enterprises can transform impact at scale.

Watson Institute, with leadership from former WAFF alumni, James Okina, has recently published a new research report on the opportunity for young social entrepreneurs in impact-led procurement. The report found that young, impact-driven entrepreneurs who succeed in selling to corporations report an average revenue increase of $170,187.50, while those who fail to secure deals lose between $7,000 and $300,000 in potential revenue. Okina offers that he “doesn’t understand why youth involvement in business is still so controversial.” SAP and WAFF agree. By integrating expert impact entrepreneurs who happen to be young into procurement pipelines, for example, companies embrace innovation and align with corporate goals and values while maintaining quality, price, and performance. It is a smarter, systemic approach than writing philanthropic checks.

A blueprint for the next decade

Over the past decade, SAP and WAFF have shown that partnering with young impact leaders creates a true competitive edge.

Companies that co-create with the next generation design strategies that are bolder, more relevant, and more sustainable. They build workforces that are engaged, trusted, and innovative. They align business goals with societal needs in ways that deliver measurable results—and, across generations, they operate on longer runways to implement lasting solutions.

Businesses that win in the next decade won’t just listen to youth; they will build with them. And that’s smart business.

Jennifer Beason is global director of Corporate Social Responsibility at SAP. Annie Greene and Jamie Roach are global program leads at We Are Family Foundation.