Michelle Obama lit up the stage at Impact Bucharest 2025 with a mix of candor, wit and wisdom, urging the packed house to fight cynicism, embrace balance, and never doubt their place at the table.
The former First Lady, 61, spoke about her journey from Chicago’s South Side to the White House, stressing that leadership is built not only on skills but on exposure to different people, ideas and struggles. “Great leaders,” she said, “are the ones who can shape a vision and get others excited about it.”
Obama got personal about motherhood, admitting her kids forced her to rethink balance: “They didn’t have schedulers. They didn’t care about my meetings. I had to put them, and myself, on my calendar first.”
On adversity, she recalled being doubted by teachers and attacked during her husband’s campaign, but said she found strength in the example of her late father, who battled multiple sclerosis. “It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself when you watched him get up and keep going every single day,” she reflected.
Obama also spoke openly about impostor syndrome, saying even at the highest tables of power she sometimes wondered if she belonged. Her advice: stop wasting time questioning yourself and focus on making more room for others. “If you’re there, you earned it,” she declared to applause.
Family, she emphasized, remained her anchor. Her “kitchen table”, a circle of trusted friends and relatives, kept her grounded through White House pressures. “That’s why our girls came out sane,” she joked, praising her daughters Malia and Sasha.
Looking ahead, Obama highlighted the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which will focus on training the next generation of leaders worldwide. She closed her keynote with a call to arms against despair: “Hope is absolutely necessary. I want leaders to be so stubbornly optimistic that it aches.”
The crowd gave her a standing ovation, a reminder that even far from Washington, Obama still knows how to command a room. The second edition of Impact Bucharest brought together over 2,500 participants and more than 200 speakers, growing faster than the original edition in Poland.
Representatives of major international companies—Mastercard, Uber, BMW—took to the Impact stage alongside leading Romanian brands: UiPath, eMAG, Banca Transilvania, Metaminds, Netopia Payments, and tennis superstar Simona Halep.
