Conversations With Global Citizen Leaders Interviews with Men and Women in Global Leadership Positions

By Ronald Israel

Interviews With Global Citizen Leaders has a dual purpose. First, it is intended to highlight global work being done in different sectors by people dedicated to making a difference in the way the world works. It also provides readers with the life stories of these leaders, and the factors that motivated them to work globally.
Secondly, the book is intended to present a tapestry of global changes being made by leaders in different sectors that, when taken as a whole, provide a picture of an emerging world community. This community is emerging because the world has become a smaller place. People across the planet now share common concerns about a range of global problems, such as human rights, poverty reduction and the environment. The global leaders, interviewed in this book, are working hard to address these issues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ronald Israel
• Release date: Feb 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311044556

Book preview

PREFACE

This book consists of conversations with thirty-two very amazing people; people whose leadership improves the way our world works. Each conversation tells the story of how the person being interviewed became a global leader; how they became engaged and committed to making the planet better. As you’ll see, there are interesting commonalities and differences in the paths these global leaders have taken. But all of them share a common global identity and see themselves as global citizens of the planet as well as their countries.

This series of conversations also should be read from a larger perspective. Taken as a whole, they tell the story of how we are building institutions that can address the challenging global problems of our time; problems that cannot be solved by any single nation-state acting on its own. Collectively, these global leaders (and many others like them), are weaving a governance tapestry for a world community. They are creating pathways that are needed to address the problems and the whole world needs to solve; and to take advantage of the increasing opportunities we have to work and live collaboratively across traditional boundaries.

The conversations were compiled over a two-year period by the Executive Director and Content Editor of The Global Citizens’ Initiative (TGCI). TGCI is an International Non-Governmental Organization that helps its members learn to work together to address global problems. For more information about TGCI and how to become a member, visit http://www.gcitizen.org.

I want to thank each of those whose interviews make up this Series. My colleagues and I, and the members of our organization, learned so much from their stories and were inspired by their efforts. I also want to thank my Co-Editor Jonathan Newton, who has worked closely with me since we started this project. Special thanks also go to members of the Board of TGCI that have supported this initiative; to my parents, who set me off on this path; and to my loving wife Fern without whose support this book would not have been produced.

The Global Citizens’ Initiative plans to continue with this interview series. There are many more talented global leaders whose experience and ideas we want to capture.

Ron Israel

Co-Founder

Executive Director

The Global Citizens’ Initiative (TGCI)

Boston, Massachusetts

www.gcitizen.org

September, 2013

INTRODUCTION

This book consists of a series of thirty-two conversations conducted with leaders of global organizations. The conversations were conducted over a two-year period by staff from The Global Citizens’ Initiative (TGCI), TGCI is an International Non-Governmental Organization that helps its members learn about the principles and practices of global citizenship and work across countries to address global problems. For more information about TGCI and how to become a member, visit http://www.gcitizen.org.

Interviews With Global Citizen Leaders has a dual purpose. First, it is intended to highlight global work being done in different sectors by people dedicated to making a difference in the way the world works. It also provides readers with the life stories of these leaders, and the factors that motivated them to work globally.

Secondly, the book is intended to present a tapestry of global changes being made by leaders in different sectors that, when taken as a whole, provide a picture of an emerging world community. This community is emerging because the world has become a smaller place. People across the planet now share common concerns about a range of global problems, such as human rights, poverty reduction and the environment. The global leaders, interviewed in this book, are working hard to address these issues.

Sharif Abdullah is the Founder and Director of the Commonway Institute. He is a spiritual leader whose mission is to create a world that works for all. He has written award-winning books and speaks across the world about values, such as tolerance and compassion, that all people hold in common.

Sunil Abraham is Executive Director of the Indian-based Center for Internet and Society (CIS). His organization conducts research and helps develop Internet policies throughout the world on issues related to access, accessibility, and Internet governance.

Yilmaz Arguden is Chairman of the Rothschild Global Investment Bank in Turkiye, where he promotes the practice of global corporate responsibility. In his interview with TGCI he makes an impassioned case for developing a stronger system of global governance.

Ian Ball is the New Zealand-born CEO of the International Federation of Accountants. He discusses how his organization sets best practice standards for accounting organizations around the world. He believes that accounting expresses the international language of business, and therefore the rules and standards by which accountants work should not be different across political jurisdictions.

Chris Bashinelli is a television actor (The Sopranos) and UN Youth Ambassador. He discusses his new TV series, Bridge the Gap,that seeks to show the commonalities of the human experience; how all people, wherever they are, face common problems and share the same capacity for kindness and generosity toward one another.

Juan Carlos Botero, is Executive Director of the World Justice Project. He describes how different countries are responding to his organization’s efforts to develop a global Rule of Law Index. The Index ranks countries according to internationally recognized Rule of Law Factors, such as limited government powers, absence of corruption, order and security, fundamental rights, open government; regulatory enforcement, and civil, criminal, and informal justice.

Stephane Boyera manages the Social Development Program at the Worldwide Web Foundation. He discusses how his organization is working to ensure that poor rural people, who may be illiterate and speak only local languages, get access to the web to help empower their work and quality of life.

Ron Diebert, served as Co-Founder of the Open Net Initiative, a landmark effort that sought to investigate, expose, and analyze Internet filtering and surveillance programs in a credible and non-partisan fashion. He warns of the dangers of maintaining free and open Internet access in an increasingly security conscious world.

Lalanath de Silva is Director of The Access Initiative at the World Resources Institute. He works with civil society organizations to strengthen the roles that citizens play in the process of environmental policy-making. He sees global citizenship as being an essential framework for the environmental work that he does.

Annie Duflo is Executive Director of Innovations for Poverty Action. Her organization is a worldwide leader in the application of randomized control evaluation studies of poverty projects in different countries. In her interview with TGCI she describes how her organization helps decision-makers find out what kinds of interventions work best for the poor.

David Griggs is former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Scientific Assessment Unit. He speaks of the challenges that the IPCC faces in getting several hundred scientists from countries around the world to agree on the current status of global warming and CO2 emissions.

Barry Herman is a former Senior Economic Advisor to the UN Secretariat. He draws on his experience to discuss the pros and cons of current global economic governance mechanisms such as the G-20, and makes a case for having more inclusive forums.

David Howman is the Director-General of the World Anti-Doping Agency. He discusses the challenges of getting countries, sports associations, and athletes themselves to comply with an international Convention on the use of performance enhancing drugs.

Dan Kanstroom is the Director of the International Human Rights Program at Boston College, where his work focuses on legal issues related to citizenship. In his interview with TGCI professor Kanstroon contrasts two historical views of citizenship: the cosmopolitan ideal, which asserts that human identity needs to transcend the concept of being a legalistic member of a nation-state; and those who believe that first and foremost we need to be members of such nation states because it is the nation state that is in the best position to protect our basic human rights.

Michael Keyzer is the Director of the Center for World Food Studies at VU University in the Netherlands. His organization provides support to the formulation of food and agricultural policies and programs aimed at poverty reduction. In his TGCI interview Dr. Keyzer points out that food supply shortage, even in the face of projected population growth, is not the main cause of hunger. Most countries, he says, have enough food resources to feed themselves. The problem is that other factors get in the way of having access to food: problems such as poor health and education, landlessness, unemployment, poor governance, and lack of adequate physical infrastructure.

Parag Khanna is a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation. His work focuses on global governance and he is the author of the widely read book How to Run the World. He believes that organizations such as the UN should not be the end state of global governance. Citizens need to create their own mechanisms for delivering the goods that many seek from established global organizations.

Zuzanna Kulinska is a member of Amnesty International’s Executive Committee and a human rights leader in Poland. She speaks out against world-wide discriminatory policies against gays and lesbians; and describes the human rights struggle going on within her country and across the world to develop anti-discriminatory policies that protect gay people’s rights.

Katherine Marshall served as Counselor on Ethics, Values, and Faith to the President of the World Bank. She spoke with TGCI of the necessity of countries having policies and practices that support religious pluralism. In Marshall’s experience, bringing together people of different faiths around a common social need, lays the foundation for religious cooperation during times of crisis.

John McArthur is a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation. He discusses the importance of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the development of a world community, the progress that’s been made in achieving the current goals, and the challenges of developing a post 2015 second generation set of MDGs

Branko Milanovic is the Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Research Department. His work focuses on measuring global income inequality, i.e. the differences in income and consumption among all the world’s population. His efforts document the growing inequalities in the incomes of similar people living in different countries, e.g. men, women, whites, blacks, engineers, bus drivers.

Russ Mittermeier is President of Conservation International and a widely recognized expert in primates, protected areas, and other conservation issues. He discusses the important need, from a climate change perspective, to have natural capital accounting incorporated into national and corporate income accounting procedures. He also describes the important work that his organization is doing in the Pacific to create large marine reserve parks the size of Alaska and California.

Bacre Ndiaye is one of the leading figures in the field of international human rights. Mr. Ndiaye currently serves as Director of the Human Rights Council and Treaties Division and Special Procedure Division at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He has played a lead role in most of the major human rights cases that have taken place over the past two decades.

Nestor Osorio is the current President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). He discusses the need to establish better arrangements for collective decision-making at the global level. Ambassador Osorio says we need to go beyond the G-8 and G-20 groupings and take into account the voices of all countries. We also need to broaden the participation of civil society, the private sector, and the business community in the UN’s decision-making processes.

Janice Perlman is Founder and President of the Mega-Cities Project. She points out that there currently are one billion people living in urban slums or shantytowns in cities across the world; by 2030 this number will double to 2 billion people; and by 2050 it will grow to more than 3 billion. If we can’t find ways of including this population in our efforts at economic growth, we will be missing out on their economic and citizenship power, and more importantly their intelligence and capacity for generating the innovations we need to build a sustainable planet.

Fadi Rabieh is Co-Manager of the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land in Jerusalem. In his TGCI interview he discusses how Palestinians and Israelis compete with one another in claims about who is the victim in their conflict. When people see themselves as victims, religious identities become salient and religion becomes a tool in the hands of extremists to dehumanize the other. In psychology, once you perceive yourself as the victim, you strip the other side of its humanity, and construct your narrative and world view around the victim’s perception of how things are.

Fernando Reimers is a Ford Foundation Professor of International Education at Harvard University. Professor Reimers believes we must prepare the next generation of leaders to find solutions to the problems of the future. In order to do this they need to develop global competencies (the skills and interest to understand the interdependence of human beings and the environment) because their future will be completely intertwined with the future of their fellow human beings throughout the planet.

Dinah Shelton is a member of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, and serves on the boards of many human rights and environmental organizations. She believes that the greatest challenge in human rights work is to develop more effective mechanisms for the monitoring and implementation of existing international human rights agreements, and to put in place domestic legal structures that effectively support international human rights.

Lindiwe Majele Sibanda is CEO and Head of The Diplomatic Mission of the African Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resource Policy Network (FANRPAN). She believes that the major agricultural and food policy issues facing the world today are poverty reduction, insufficient food, water scarcity, malnutrition, and climate change. In her interview she describes the impact that each of these factors has in the development of food and agriculture policy.

Mathew Spitzer is former President of the Board of Directors of Doctors Without Borders/Medicins Sans Frontieres. He discusses the passionate commitment that MSF makes to its patients in conflict zones all over the world. He states "MSF’s primary purpose is the provision of direct care, that is being on the ground with patients, and treating legal barriers or organizational requirements as secondary.

Rob Steele is Secretary-General of the International Standards Organization (ISO). The ISO constructs standards that are used to guide the practices of businesses and industries around the world. He describes how the standards-setting work of the ISO can serve as a model for other types of global governance organizations. In developing its global standards ISO reaches out to government, industry, and consumers and shows respect for their opinions. In this way the organization helps bring these different sectors together to find a common point of view.

Kumble Subbaswamy is Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He discusses the various ways in which his university is integrating the teaching of global citizenship into their academic and non-academic activities. He believes that today’s students must gain the understanding, knowledge and skills needed to become a part of the world community in which they live.

Marcos Vaz is the Founder and Director of O.N.E. Sustenabilidae a Brazilian company that helps the private sector develop products that are environmentally sustainable. He describes the trend in many countries among large-scale companies to embrace sustainable production processes and produce environmentally friendly products and services.

As you’ll soon see, each of the people interviewed in this book are true global citizen leaders. They see themselves as being part of an emerging world community, and are making leadership contributions to the building of this community’s values, standards and practices. We hope you’ll enjoy learning about their important work, and that their stories inspire you on your own path to global citizenship.

Boston, August, 2013

INTERVIEWS

Interview with Sharif Abdullah

Field: Spiritual, Social, Cultural Transformation

Position: Founder and Director of the Commonway Institute

Sharif Abdullah is an author and advocate for inclusivity and the social/ spiritual transformation of society. Sharif is a transformationist, working to align our global human societies with our common spiritual and moral values. His vision and work for a world that works for all beings stems from his spiritual awareness and his experiences in over 100 distinct cultures, spanning 38 countries. He is founder and director of Commonway Institute.

Sharif’s vision and mission is simple: we can create a world that works for all beings. We can end the toxicity of our current human societies through the application of our common human, moral and spiritual values and principles. Given our present planetary crises, we have no choice – we evolve or we die.

His books include The Power of One: Authentic Leadership in Turbulent Times, the award-winning Creating a World That Works for All, and Seven Seeds for a New Society.

Sharif brings his experiences of growing up in generational poverty in a brutal urban environment, of breaking racial and poverty barriers to obtain a law degree, and 35 years of local, national and international work, assisting organizations and people in creating a world that works for all.

Sharif has appeared in several international forums, including Forum 2000 in Prague and A Century of Auschwitz in Poland. Sharif is a graduate-level adjunct professor of Conflict Resolution at Portland State University, a Senior Advisor to Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka and is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions.

TGCI Executive Director, Ron Israel, and Newsletter Editor Jono Newton, conducted the following interview with Sharif.

TGCI: We are interested in your own definition / vision of what a global citizen is, based on the work you’ve done. How does this concept resonate with you?

SA: I have been to 38 different countries and over 100 distinct cultures (I mention cultures because lots of people go to many countries but stay at the Sheraton and eat at MacDonald’s and never leave their own cultures). Having had deep experiences in so many cultures, I begin to see my home base (in Portland, OR) as just another culture.

My brand of global citizenship might be described more accurately as a global culturalship because it really is about perceiving and harmonizing with the many different cultures (sets of behaviors, attitudes, expectations etc), that exist around the world. There is a tendency among humans to think that their own culture or citizenship is the only one, or the norm from which everyone else deviates. This kind of thinking lends itself to cultural and political imperialism and separateness, and leads to wars, civil strife etc. The challenge of being a global citizen is not racking up frequent flyer miles and seeing how many countries you can visit, but really shifting your consciousness so that you are able to see the similarities as well as the differences in cultures around the world.

TGCI: If you achieve this perspective, I imagine you see all cultures as being relative and having their own world view? Where do the commonalities come in?

SA: Yes, this gets a little tricky. Right now I’m talking to you from Portland Oregon. I can, without any trouble, look out my window and see 5 or 6 subcultures here in Portland: some people with ties, some with baggy clothes, or tattoos, or no tattoos etc., but I’m seeing them within the context of a unified culture. When I’m talking about cultural difference I’m not just talking about differences in how people dress or eat their food. I refer to these differences or perspectives as MMAAPPSS (or MAPS-2), which stands for: Methodologies, Materials, Attitudes, Assumptions, Patterns, Paradigms, Systems and Structures. When there’s a fundamentally different set of MAPS-2, you have cultural differences. The more different, the more significant the cultural difference. That’s what causes people to start thinking that the way that I do things is right and the way you do things is therefore not right. That I am normal, which makes you abnormal.

The MAPS-2 of Western European culture has been the most pervasive culture and norm