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2016 Annual Meeting
Daniel Shapiro, director of Harvard's International Negotiation Program, conducts workshops for diplomats and business leaders all over the world. In his decades of teaching people how to negotiate better, he has observed that we all experience the repetition compulsion cycle, repeating time and again the same damaging patterns of interaction with friends, loved ones and colleagues. How can we end negative patterns in our own lives - and resolve every conflict that comes our way? Read More...
The "architect" of President Obama's two presidential victories, David Plouffe, is acclaimed for his adept use of technology, his pioneering new applications, his message development and discipline, his management skills and his focus on competitiveness. Now he's taken his craft to Uber - one of the most valuable startups in Silicon Valley - as it continues its ascendance on the world stage. (Watch Video)
David Rubenstein is an American-history buff who practices what he calls “patriotic philanthropy,” on behalf of the national heritage. After a magnitude-5.8 earthquake shook the Washington Monument for twenty seconds in 2011, Rubenstein stepped up to cover half of the funds for repair, saying “The government doesn’t have the resources it used to have. We have gigantic budget deficits and large debt. And I think private citizens now need to pitch in.”Read More...
Coding is basic literacy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Code powers the digital world, which makes coders the architects and builders of the digital age. So, what better way for Latin America and the Caribbean to be part of this revolution than by giving its children the tools that they need to be digital citizens? This is where Peru's Laboratoria comes into play.. Read More...
"Working now across the continents with leadership from government, from business, and people really at all levels of organizations, what I found is a tendency for people in negotiation to focus on the facts and the figures -- the numbers -- when in fact so much of what drives our negotiations is more than just that rational component but that component that’s beyond reason; the emotional component."... Watch the video
Economists want to know why prime-age workers, people 25-54, aren't working. NPR host Mary Louise Kelly talks to David Wessel of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. (Listen to Podcast)
Chris Stone of the Open Society Foundation says the Brexit vote is a result of many things: the complicated and distant bureaucracy of Brussels, the EU’s inept management of the refugee crisis (and the euro crisis before it), and the failure of cosmopolitan elites to place the public interest over their own self-interest. But, he says, it is really the politics of fear that hinders reform and has become one of the greatest threats to an open society. Read More...
The future of Brazil hangs in the balance as economic relief continues to be forsaken by political controversy. Can Brazilian leaders restore their credibility or will the Brazilian economy plunge deeper into recession? Augusto de la Torre of the World Bank shares his insight on the turbulent road ahead. Read More...
The lives and futures of millions of children are in jeopardy. We have a choice: Invest in the most excluded children now or risk a more divided and unfair world. Read Tony Lake's Foreword in this year's State of the World's Children Report.
To United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, the Middle East is a place of both peril and promise. Although, from his vantage point, Iran and Islamic extremists pose a threat to the entire region, the next generation of young people is spreading a culture of optimism, opportunity, and openness, the ambassador said. Read More...
Jim Messina, President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign manager draws parallels between 2008 and 2016 primaries by stating that "the question isn't what's going to happen now, but what's going to happen the day after the primary". He believes that there is no chance that "someone who is going to vote for...Bernie Sanders in the primary is then going to go to Donald Trump in the general election". Read More...
From the executive director of UNICEF to this century's campaign management guru, here are some of the upcoming speakers for this year's G50 annual meeting.
I [Tony Lake] am writing to you because this month, the month of your birth, leaders from virtually every country are meeting about the shape of your future.
The 17 global goals they are committing themselves to achieving over the next 15 years — the Sustainable Development Goals — span everything from protecting the planet... to promoting a more peaceful world... to helping people everywhere live lives of dignity and security. Read More...
Before November’s terrorist attacks in Paris, it was legal to stage a demonstration in a public square in that city. Now it isn’t. In Uganda, although citizens campaigning against corruption or in favor of gay rights often faced a hostile public, they didn’t face jail time for demonstrating. But under a frighteningly vague new statute, now they do. In Egypt, government authorities recently raided and shut down prominent cultural institutions – an art gallery, a theater, and a publishing house – where artists and activists once gathered. Read More...
Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba is the most charming man in Washington: He's slick, he's savvy and he throws one hell of a party. And if he has his way, our Middle East policy is going to get a lot more aggressive.
Lack of money is a stubborn obstacle, but not as hopelessly unyielding as some of the others, and so would-be world-changers often set out to overcome it. Some try to raise money, but that can be depressing and futile. Others try to make money, but it’s hard to make enough. There is a third, more reliable way to overcome this obstacle, however, and that is to give away money that has already been made by somebody else, and has already been allocated to world-changing purposes. This is the way of the grant-makers of the Ford Foundation. Read More...
The homebase for this year's G50 meeting will be at the newly rennovated Ritz-Carlton in Foggy Bottom.
Darren Walker was a panelist at this year's Income Inequality Panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference in early May. Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, spoke about the challenges that low-income, African-Americans face due to "our inherently biased educational and criminal systems". When asked how to fight such inequalities, he advised that we must focus on "structures and systems".
Jim Messina has signed on to be David Cameron's "senior strategic advisor" for his campaign to keep Britain in the EU. Messina told Politico, "Given these challenging economic times, the very last thing we should do is risk the U.K. and EU economies with this risky [Brexit] move".
