RIYADH — The third Misk Global Forum closed Thursday with young people imagining jobs of the future, while leaders, thinkers, and influencers from around the globe drew inspiration on how to work with young people to meet the challenge of change and develop skills for tomorrow.

In the final panel of the two-day event, Imagining Your Future Job, three young Saudis took to the main stage to tell the audience of the jobs they believed would soon be developed to harness new technologies and confront new challenges. As they spoke, a concept artist visualized their jobs on the screen, presenting a vision of the future from the event’s youngest participants.

“Humans have always needed to explore,” said Rakan Sarhan, aged 10, “But where will we explore next when we have already explored most of the earth?”

“Mars!” answered his classmate Abdullah Al Dekhiel, also aged 10, going on to identify a vital job to the future of mankind in such a hostile environment as “creating water... by building a factory that has autonomous robots that create water by combining two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen.”

After this inter-planetary challenge and solution, Sarah Al Harthi, aged 16, spoke of her future job. She identified a “neuro-engineer” as the first profession to develop direct “two-way communication between the brain and a machine.”

Drawing on her ambition to study ophthalmology, she envisaged her dream job as being one of the first to be “responsible for connecting an artificial eye to the brain via the optic nerve.”

Previously on the second day, fashion designer icon Reem Acra, science ground-breakers Ian Blatchford and Dana Akilbekova, and business and non-profit leaders such as Rania Nashar and Eric Dawson took part in interactive panel sessions guiding and being guided by the participants in the youngest, most diverse Misk Global Forum ever.

Participants at the event also had access to a Skills Factory, where they were able to brainstorm with experts; Skills Garages, where they workshopped new ideas; and the Skills Majlis, a co-creating space focused on specific skills for tomorrow. Whatever their background, experience level, and specific interests, the participants came together to seize the opportunity for uniquely human collaboration offered by the Forum as they developed the skills needed to thrive in the future.

Shaima Hamidaddin, executive manager of Misk Global Forum, said, “It has been our privilege and pleasure to welcome so many people, from so many countries. We set out to bridge the gap between those speaking and those listening. I opened the event with an invitation to participants: to join the conversation about meeting the challenge of change; to listen, but also to speak; to learn, but also to teach; and to be inspire, but also be inspirational. Together, this optimistic, dynamic group of young people have truly met that challenge, inspiring and energizing all of us at Misk in the process. And we look forward to working with them, and many others, in the years to come.” — SG