Johor Bahru – Academic Leadership, UTMLead started the year of 2021 with a discourse called Wacana Kepimpinan Akademik (Academic Leadership Discourse) featuring Prof Datin Dr Norizan Binti Abd Razak as the speaker and Associate Prof Dr Norhayati Abdullah as the moderator of the event. The event took place online on the 18 of February 2021 from 9-11 am with 258 participants from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Universiti Malaya (UM) and Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). Prof Datin started the talk with the situation on the best leader that is able to provide food to the table during this difficult time. She also mentioned on how grooming leaders should be an ongoing process in Higher Education Institution in order to sustain more quality leaders to ensure we are able to go through all future challenges. The process needs to start now in order to create leaders in the coming years. Experiential learning is a method for leaders, but leaders should also have motivation in developing their own self academically as well as the proper career path. A good leader is a leader who creates more leaders. She also elaborated on how to have strategic leadership planning, in terms of community involvement, academic achievement, family commitment and financial independence. Despite of being online, her talk was casual and managed to engage all participants until the end of the session. The talk was embedded with question and answer verbally as well as in the chat room. Participants commented on how inspiring and motivating the talk was.