Ready, Set, Go! Launching the Sustainable Development Goals
Speakers
-
Secretary General, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
Dr Dhananjayan (Danny) Sriskandarajah has been Secretary General and CEO of CIVICUS since January 2013. Headquartered in Johannesburg, CIVICUS is the global civil society alliance with members in 170 countries. His previous roles have included Director of the Royal Commonwealth Society, Interim Director of the Commonwealth Foundation, and Deputy Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research. Danny is the author of numerous reports and academic articles on international migration and economic development. He writes and appears often in the media on a range of topics, including contributing regularly to Al Jazeera, Guardian, HuffPost, and Weekend on the BBC World Service. He sits on the boards of several organisations, including the Baring Foundation, Comic Relief and International Alert, and was a member of the United Nations Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Humanitarian Finance. He has been a consultant to several international organisations and is a co-founder of the Ockenden Prizes and the Migration Museum Project. Danny holds a degree from the University of Sydney, and an MPhil and DPhil from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2012, he was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Born in Sri Lanka and a national of Australia, Dr Sriskandarajah has lived and worked in five continents, and been invited to speak at events in over 50 countries. He can be found @civicussg on Twitter and Facebook.
-
Deputy Chief Executive Officer, United Nations Foundation
Before joining the UN Foundation, Elizabeth Cousens served as U.S. Ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council and Alternate Representative to the UN General Assembly (2012-14). She previously served as Principal Policy Advisor and Counselor to the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, Susan Rice (2009-12). In this capacity, she was lead U.S. negotiator on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, including representing the United States in the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals. During her stint as ambassador, she led U.S. diplomacy at the UN on human rights, humanitarian, social and environmental issues; served on the boards of UN agencies, funds, and programmes, and was the U.S. representative to the UN Peacebuilding Commission. She was also sherpa to Ambassador Rice for the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability.
Dr. Cousens has lived around the world, serving with UN political missions in Nepal and the Middle East and working as an analyst in conflict zones, including Bosnia and Haiti. Her prior experience includes Director of Strategy for the HD Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue which promotes and conducts mediation of armed conflict; Vice President of the International Peace Institute, where she led initiatives on global crisis management and UN reform; and Director of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum, a research group that provides country and regional expertise to the UN on conflict and crisis situations.
Dr. Cousens has a D.Phil. in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a B.A. in history and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Puget Sound. She has written widely on conflict management, peace processes, state-building, and the United Nations. She and her husband, Bruce Jones, have one child.
-
Company Group Chairman Janssen EMEA, Janssen-Cilag Ltd
Jane Griffiths is the first female Company Group Chairman of Janssen in EMEA, the pharmaceutical division of the Johnson & Johnson family. She is responsible for this business across the entire region.
Her personal approach focuses on sustainability, accountability, openness and collaboration, and she is leading Janssen EMEA to live these values. Jane has held a number of senior sales, marketing and research & development positions including International Vice President for Western Europe and South Africa, and Head of Market Access for Janssen EMEA.
She is a sponsor for the Women’s Leadership Initiative in Janssen. Other industry roles include past Chairwoman of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) Executive Committee and past Chairwoman of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Europe Committee.
Jane is a sponsor of the Johnson & Johnson Global Pharmaceuticals Sustainability Council. Jane is also Chair of the Johnson & Johnson Corporate Citizenship Trust in EMEA and a Board member.
Completing her PhD in Plant Biochemistry at the University of Aberystwyth, UK in 1982, Jane Griffiths started her Johnson & Johnson career as a sales representative.
-
Michael Green is Chief Executive Officer of the Social Progress Imperative. An economist by training, he is co-author (with Matthew Bishop of ‘The Economist’) of Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World and The Road from Ruin: A New Capitalism for a Big Society. Previously Michael served as a senior official in the U.K. Government’s Department for International Development, where he managed British aid programs to Russia and Ukraine and headed the communications department. He taught Economics at Warsaw University in Poland in the early 1990s. His TED Talks have been viewed more than three million times. His 2014 Talk was chosen by the TED organisation as one of the ‘most powerful ideas’ of 2014 and by The Telegraph as one of the 10 best ever.
-
Freelance Journalist, Individual
Ray Suarez is co-host of the weekly radio program "World Affairs," presented by the World Affairs Council of Northern California and KQED FM. He has just completed an appointment as the McCloy Visiting Professor of American Studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts.
Suarez has hosted programs for Al Jazeera America, PBS, and NPR. He has authored three books, "Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation"; "The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America"; and "The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration." His series of interviews with historian Howard Zinn has been collected for a new volume from New Press this year, and he contributed a chapter to "The Good Fight," a collection of writing from historians and activists on the long struggle for equality in the United States.
During his years at the PBS NewsHour, Suarez was the lead correspondent for coverage of global health challenges, filing a vast array of stories from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, from the H1N1 pandemic in Mexico, to fighting HIV-TB co-infection in Southern Africa, to broadening vaccine access in Nicaragua, eliminating a major cause of child death.
Earlier in his career, Suarez was a Los Angeles correspondent for CNN, a reporter in London and Rome, and an editor and producer for ABC Radio News in New York. An active Episcopal layman, Suarez is a member of the governing body of Washington National Cathedral, the Chapter. He holds a BA in African History from NYU, an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and 15 honorary doctorates from colleges and universities across the US.
