The huge increase in information flowing as a result of technology presents us with a historic opportunity to create a global culture driven by trust and inclusion. This is why it is so important for those who are defining the world’s future structures to consciously build the ethical skills necessary into their designs, say experts in this panel discussion. Bill Drayton, Mary Gordon, Keith Hammonds, Kirk Hanson and Jill Vialet consider how empathetic ethics must begin with individuals and can only then move into the organizations we lead and the societies we serve. They also ponder how change can be made to happen more quickly.
Bill Drayton is the CEO and Chair at Ashoka. He was elected one of the early MacArthur Fellows for his work, which has included founding Ashoka. The American Society of Public Administration and the National Academy of Public Administration jointly awarded him their National Public Service Award. Drayton has also been named a Preiskel-Silverman Fellow for Yale Law School and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Mary Gordon is the founder and president at Roots of Empathy. In 2005, she founded the Seeds of Empathy program. Gordon is a member of the Order of Canada, author, and social entrepreneur who has created award-winning programs based on the power of relationships as vehicles for learning.
Keith Hammonds is team leader for Ashoka's new Social Entrepreneurs in Journalism program. He is also the former executive editor at Fast Company magazine. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School, he worked in London and Johannesburg as a freelance journalist, and consulted with New Nation, a weekly newspaper in South Africa, on publishing strategy. Hammond also co-founded a drought relief food distribution network in Namibia.
Kirk Hanson is a professor and executive director at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. He is a graduate of Stanford University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Hanson has held graduate fellowships and research appointments at the Yale Divinity School and the Harvard Business School.
Jill Vialet is the founder and executive director of Sports4Kids (now Playworks). She has worked for more than 20 years in the nonprofit sector, during which time she focused her entrepreneurial skills on conceiving of and growing two successful nonprofit organizations, Sports4Kids and MOCHA (Museum of Children's Art in Oakland). Vialet graduated from a public high school in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Resources
This free podcast is from our Skoll World Forum series.
For The Conversations Network: