Once a year, ULI hosts an “exchange program” for Young Leaders at a selected North American city. This May, I joined two dozen Young Leaders from across the country at the Toronto Young Leader’s Exchange. As the selected city, Toronto was proud to welcome our group of curious Young Leaders to tour us around the most multicultural city in the world – that’s right, more diverse than New York City. Did you know?

Tours and Speakers: The host city for these exchanges are put together by the other Young Leader groups. They compete to win the bid to host the exchange and aim to impress! This is the best value deal to learn about the most exciting, new developments re-shaping a city. On top of that, the development teams are there to present their projects and answer all of our curious Young Leader questions.

International Engagement: Traveling to other cities to learn about their most creative developments is inspiring. At the Young Leader Exchange, this is complimented by the various perspectives of the other Young Leaders from across the country. Not only do you learn about the destination city, but you learn about the most interesting happenings in the home cities of your fellow participants. Have you heard about the dockless scooters ride-shares disrupting sidewalks in multiple US cities?

https://www.curbed.com/2018/5/29/17407116/bird-scooters-billion-dollar-funding-unicorn-startup

Eats: Finally, food. The thing that knits together so much of our experience of a place. In Toronto, the Young Leaders set us up with a delicious variety that you should check out when in Toronto. Gusto 101 from parent company Gusto 54 Restaurant Group is even making a name for itself in LA. The best Lebanese food at Souk Tabule adorns their shelves with books like Zahav making you wonder if Michael Solomonov opened an outpost up north. Don’t miss The Distillery Historic District and grabbing a shot of liquid chocolate from one of the world’s best chocolatier.

Look out for next year’s Young Leaders Exchange program and let your co-chairs know if you’re interested.

Lindsay Bodin, Construction Manager at Insomnia Cookies, is a co-chair of the Young Leaders Council and member of WLI.