Global Goals in an Uncertain World

Speaker(s):

• 
  Darren Walker

  President, Ford Foundation

  Darren Walker is President of the Ford Foundation, the nation’s second largest philanthropy, and for two decades has been a leader in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. He led the philanthropy committee that helped bring a resolution to the city of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy and chairs the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance. Prior to joining Ford, he was Vice President at the Rockefeller Foundation where he managed the rebuild New Orleans initiative after Hurricane Katrina. In the 1990s, as COO of Harlem’s largest community development organization, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, Darren oversaw a comprehensive revitalization program of central Harlem, including over 1,000 new units of housing. He had a decade long career in international law and finance at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and UBS. He is a member of the Commission on the Future of Riker’s Island and serves on the boards of Carnegie Hall, New York City Ballet, the High Line, the Arcus Foundation and PepsiCo. Educated exclusively in public schools, Darren received the “Distinguished Alumnus Award,” the highest honor given by his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin. In 2016, TIME magazine named him to its annual list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of ten honorary degrees and university awards.

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• 
  Lauren Fletcher

  CEO, Biocarbon Engineering

  Lauren Fletcher is the Founder and CEO of BioCarbon Engineering which has the objective to plant 1 billion trees a year with drones. He holds a PhD in Physics (Oxford) and M.S. in Civil & Environmental Engineering (Stanford). He has 20+ years of experience as an Engineer and Scientist for NASA and Lockheed Martin across Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and Mars exploration programs. He also has extensive entrepreneurial experience as founder of two previous companies and as a member of the founding faculty of Singularity University. His expertise includes project management; environmental engineering, bio-technology and biological sciences; space and systems engineering; planetary science; and social impact and entrepreneurship. He is driven by a genuine concern about the state of our world: degrading climate, loss of natural environments, significant biodiversity losses, and a increasing potential for human suffering driven by a rapidly changing climate. He believes that emerging and exponential technologies, when appropriately applied, can solve global scale problems in ways that we have never been able to do before.

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• 
  Susan Myers

  Senior Vice President, United Nations Foundation

  Susan Myers is the UN Foundation’s Senior Vice President. She serves as the Foundation’s chief liaison with the UN and the diplomatic community and works to identify new opportunities for building partnerships and relationships with a range of stakeholders to support the UN’s work. As a member of the Foundation's leadership team, she provides overall guidance and participates in the development of long-term strategy for the organization. Previously, she operated as the UN Foundation’s Vice President for UN Relations, leading the evolution of the New York office of the organization and the UN Foundation’s overall relationship with the UN. She led programs to support the UN Secretary-General’s leadership on Every Woman Every Child, the Millennium Development Goals, and the Post-2015 Development Agenda. She also previously served as Legislative Director of the Better World Campaign, a bi-partisan, non-profit national education and outreach effort dedicated to enhancing the awareness of and appreciation for the vital role the United Nations plays around the world. Susan holds a B.A. from Duke University and an M.A. from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Previous experience includes working in the Governmental Relations and Public Affairs Office of the Legal Services Corporation and Governmental Affairs Office of the American Bar Association. She has served on the boards of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition and Citizens for Global Solutions, and currently serves on the board of the Ban Ki-Moon Centre for Global Citizens.

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• 
  Vivek Maru

  CEO, Namati

  Vivek founded Namati in 2011 to grow the movement for legal empowerment around the world. Namati and its partners have built cadres of community legal workers – sometimes known as “barefoot lawyers”– in ten countries. The advocates have worked with over 65,000 people to protect community lands, enforce environmental law, and secure basic rights to healthcare and citizenship. Namati convenes the Global Legal Empowerment Network, more than 1,000 groups from every region in the world who are learning from one another and collaborating on common challenges. This community successfully advocated for the inclusion of access to justice in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Vivek is co-author of Community Paralegals and the Pursuit of Justice (Cambridge University Press). His TED talk, How to Put the Power of Law in People’s Hands, has been viewed over a million times.

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