The Skill Up Festival
3rd Edition - Future Ready Leadership
Lead with purpose. Think with Confidence. Communicate with Impact.
This is where professionals from product, tech, and business roles come to sharpen real-world leadership skills that actually matter.
- Start Date: January 16, 2026
- End Date: February 6, 2026
- Every Friday from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
- IPL Campus, 2nd Floor, Koramangala, Bengaluru
Core Narrative
Across industries, expectations from professionals have shifted. Employers value people who can think, communicate, and lead with clarity. Building these skills has become essential.
The Skill Up Festival – Future Ready Leadership Edition is designed to help professionals build exactly those capabilities.
Across four curated sessions, participants learn how to use AI for smarter decisions, communicate with influence, build strong executive presence, understand modern leadership expectations, and network with industry practitioners and alumni.
Each session is practical, interactive, and focused on real outcomes that professionals can apply immediately.
What You Will Learn
Think Like a Leader
- Structured decision making
- AI supported problem solving
- Strategic thinking frameworks
Communicate with Influence
- Executive presence
- High impact storytelling
- Clear and confident communication in high pressure situations
Lead with Confidence
- Visibility and influence frameworks
- Understanding leadership expectations
- Navigating growth in the age of AI
Network with Intention
- Industry mentorship
- Peer learning
- Real conversations that creates opportunity
Festival Schedule
Workshop
Vibe Coding in Practice: Creating Real-World AI Apps and Scaling Them Responsibly
- Set up Identity, Access & Version Control — Create a secure GitHub account, repository, and first commit to establish traceability, ownership, and governance from day one.
- Kickstart an AI App Using Vibe coding Tools — Generate a working product experience using tools like Lovable or Gemini, and understand how AI can translate product ideas into real interfaces.
- Move to Local Development — Bring the project into Cursor or GitHub Copilot, and learn how to evolve AI-generated code into a maintainable codebase.
- Add Real-World Integrations — Connect your app to a database, OTP authentication, payments, and LLM intelligence to make it production-style.
- Ground & Evaluate the AI — Implement retrieval, grounding, and basic evaluation to reduce hallucinations and improve trustworthiness.
- Design for Responsible Scale — Introduce privacy, access control, cost/latency tracking, and fallback behavior to prepare the app for real enterprise usage.
Takeaways:
- Confidence to go from idea to a real, end-to-end AI application—with practical experience across product design, integrations, and deployment.
- A clear mental model for building AI products responsibly, including grounding, evaluation, privacy, and tradeoffs.
- A repeatable playbook for using AI tools to prototype faster while still thinking like an enterprise product owner.
Roundtable
How Leaders Build High-Impact Teams Using AI Workflows (Not Just Tools)
- What skills matter most for career growth in 2026 and how they are changing
- How leadership roles are evolving, why organisations now promote “influencers of outcomes” rather than “managers of tasks”
- How AI is reshaping expectations: not “leaders who know AI”, but “leaders who use AI to think and deliver faster”
- What professionals must start doing now to stay competitive and promotion-ready
Mixer
The Leadership Mixer: Connect with Speakers, Alumni, and Practitioners
- Create meaningful connections that go beyond exchanging contact details
- Learn how others navigated growth and transition in the AI era
- Showcase your own strengths and interests in a natural, authentic way
- Move from being a spectator in the industry to being part of the community
Workshop
Storytelling and Communication for Influence
- How to influence decisions without authority
- How to handle disagreements, pushbacks and scope pressure calmly
- How to speak in meetings so people remember and take action
Speakers
Neeraja Ganesh,
Leadership trainer and coach
Tanya Mathur Bhattacharya,
Business Storyteller &
Story Coach
Sumi Jain,
Sr. Manager – Technical Product Leader
Ramkumar Arumugam,
Product Management
Madhura Bhat,
Senior Product Manager
Rakesh Mondal,
Ex-Associate Design Director
SaiSatish Vedam,
Ex-Senior Director of Product Management
Pinkesh Shah,
Founder & CEO
Rakesh Mondal,
Ex-Associate Design Director
Past Speakers
K Preethi,
Head of Product ( Asia / ANZ )
Praveen Sheethalnath,
Director of Product Management
Ankita Das,
Lead Product Manager
Manish Thapa,
Director – Product Management
Padmakumar Nambiar,
Director Of Product Development
Ketan Gandhi,
Senior Product Manager
Who Should Attend
Professionals who want to:
- Think faster and make better decisions
- Improve their communication and presence
- Grow into leadership roles
- Use AI to solve problems and influence outcomes
- Build networks that fuel career growth
No prior leadership experience is required. Curiosity and willingness to grow are enough.
Why Attend the Skill Up Festival
- Learn directly from industry practitioners
- Build skills through live, hands-on sessions
- Discover what separates managers from leaders
- Understand how careers grow in the age of AI
- Gain visibility, frameworks, and proof of work
- Connect with alumni, mentors, and hiring managers
Add Your Heading Text Here
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop is ideal for Product Managers, Project Managers, Engineers, Designers, and professionals who need to influence decisions, handle stakeholders, and communicate clearly at work.
Do I need a leadership title or prior experience to attend?
No. You don’t need a formal leadership role. The workshop is designed for professionals who influence outcomes through communication, even without authority.
Is this an online session or an In Person workshop?
This is an In Person workshop conducted at the IPL Campus, Koramangala, Bengaluru.
Is the session practical or theoretical?
The session is highly practical and interactive, focusing on real workplace conversations such as meetings, pushbacks, and decision discussions.
Will I receive a certificate after attending?
Yes. Participants will receive a Certificate of Participation from the Institute of Product Leadership.
