Michael Poulshock

Michael Poulshock is a consultant and lawyer specializing in computational modeling. He was previously a fellow at Stanford CodeX Center for Legal Informatics, an adjunct professor at Drexel Law School, and a human rights lawyer. He also directed humanitarian operations for the American Friends Service Committee in postwar Kosovo. Michael lives in Philadelphia, PA with his wife and children.

Michael’s publications include “An Abstract Model of Historical Processes” from the Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution, “National Power as Network Flow” from Cornell University’s journal Arxiv, and the book Power Structures in International Politics .


Abraham Initiatives

Dear Sherman,

It has been almost three months since October 7th and the start of the latest, longest, and deadliest war between Israel and Hamas. 

In Israel, the ties between Jewish and Palestinian citizens have been tested. While the intercommunal violence the country experienced in May 2021 has thankfully not recurred, tensions remain high.

As an organization composed of and jointly governed by Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, The Abraham Initiatives has seen these tensions play out up close. Our staff is deeply committed to the cause of shared society, and they have carefully and delicately negotiated the feelings of their families, communities, and colleagues. 

Building a truly shared society in Israel was never going to be easy, but our continued work in these times has proved it is possible—and necessary. Please make an end-of-year gift to support The Abraham Initiatives.

I wanted to end off the year with a story from Fayroz Alatayaka, who serves as our Safe Communities Coordinator in the Negev. Fayroz is a Palestinian citizen of Israel dedicated both personally and professionally to a shared and equal Israel. As we head into the new year, I hope you will find her words as inspiring and rejuvenating as I do.

I heard the siren on October 7th from Rahat. My house in the nearby village has no bomb shelter or safe room, and in a panic I jumped into a large hole that my uncle dug in the yard, covered with a concrete and iron roof. I know very well that this pit will not be able to save my life in the event of a direct impact of a rocket, but in the absence of real protection, there is no choice but to take risks to protect ourselves.

 

Since that morning, the rift around me has been deepening. My friend 'Aisha al-Ziadne is currently being held hostage in Gaza. My friends from all over the Bedouin diaspora in the Negev are facing a difficult economic situation as a result of the war. Our families continue to scatter the children between the rooms of the house to distribute risks in the event of a rocket falling.

In the early days, my work as coordinator of the Safe Communities in the Negev project at The Abraham Initiatives also came to a halt. As part of the project, young men and women undergo training in personal security, learn to cope with emergency situations, and become acquainted with the relevant rescue organizations such as Magen David Adom and the Fire Department, in cooperation with the [IDF] Home Front Command. At a time when everyone's personal safety was at risk, we couldn't continue to be together. We had no safe place to gather, and in the shadow of the sirens, the women and young people couldn't come to the meeting.

My desire to find a bright spot in the great darkness led me to the "Jewish-Arab war room," led by Shir Nosetzky, CEO of Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?, and Hananal Sana from Itach مَعَكِ (Ma'aki). The slogan "Partners in Fate" resonated with me. I was excited to see the joint mobilization for the benefit of the unrecognized [Bedouin] villages and the residents of the [Gaza] envelope alike, and I started volunteering every week. Slowly, I felt that a community was being created there. We all live in the same country, and all of us in Israel, Jews and Arabs, are in a state of emergency. I invited a women's group from Rahat, which participates in the Safe Communities Project, to volunteer with me and they responded enthusiastically. Like me, the women in the course felt that volunteering was a source of light amidst the darkness.

In recent weeks, the project I lead for The Abraham Initiatives has returned and even expanded. Together with the local councils in the Negev and the Home Front Command, we committed to focusing on "volunteering and contributing to the rescue of others." In addition to the women of Rahat, young groups from Hura and Kseife joined the volunteer work, and together we realize the values of Arab-Jewish work and partnership.

Despite all the pain around us, volunteering together and mobilizing women and young people gives me hope that we will soon live together in peace and equality. These shared hours are yet another reminder of what it means that we are all human beings whose lives intertwine, with dreams and the right to live in peace.

 

If you haven't done so already, please consider making an end-of-year gift to The Abraham Initiatives. To those who have given, thank you again for your generous support of our work—it means so much to all of us.

 

Best,
Jimmy Taber
International Development Director

American Friends of Combatants for Peace

Dear Sherman,   

Usually, we write to you at the end of the year to share our highlights from the year that is ending and share our hopes and dreams for the year ahead. But this year feels different.

Someone that knows us well recently told us that to them, we are like the cabin crew that they look to in bad turbulence. They try to look for any signs of panic or concern in their eyes to know how they should react. Well, we are choosing to keep our heads up, and remain determined and hopeful while coming to terms with our present and reality. We are all still grieving, still mourning for those that we have lost, and still attending funerals and wakes in unimaginable numbers in both Israel and Palestine. We still look on in shock and horror as the people of Gaza are dying, suffering, and starved. And still, we are all denied any sense of security or safety, and we fear for our families, our friends, and our collective futures.

Butwe have power in our togetherness and take comfort from the small yet heroic acts that occur in our movement every day--the Israeli activists that are still traveling to the Jordan Valley to protect the Palestinian shepherds from the barbarity of the settlers and the impunity of the army, the Palestinian activists that speak out with such humanity and bravery, and our staff that keep our movement running despite their own sadness, instability, and pressures.

We also want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Without the support of the international community, nothing would be achievable, and there have been many proud moments throughout the year that we will look back on soon. But for now, we are focused on today, and the day after the war. What comes next for our societies and how can we begin to repair and recover from this horror?

 One thing that we know is that we can't take our 'Togetherness' for granted. We have to work through a barrage of obstacles and dig deep to keep our teams united and not let our grief or anger overwhelm us. Combatants for Peace has existed since the Second Intifada in 2006, when it took the bravery and imagination of a few fighters to create something magical. We are looking back to our roots and asking for that same bravery and commitment to non-violence to carry us forward. Please join us in keeping up international pressure to insist on a political solution to end this conflict and stop the bloodshed now. We know that there is simply no military solution here, and nothing to gain from this empty loss of life.

We have updated our vision for 2024: 

"We believe in a future where all people live in peace with

dignity, justice, and liberty."

 

It sounds simple, but we are a long way from achieving this. This is what we will strive for in 2024 and beyond, and what our organization proudly stands for. Please support this vision, use your voice to share our message, and stand with us as we prepare for the day after the war.

 All that is left is to wish everyone a peaceful New Year. We hope for better days ahead for us all.

Our Way Forward - From Convisero's Dahlia Shaham

Our Way Forward - Captioned by Convisero’s Dahlia Shaham

At a time of great rupture
In the midst of a harsh reality
When the distinction between despair and hope
Is fragile and sometimes shatters into fragments
As violence rears its head
As human dignity is threatened by inhuman cruelty
We must remember there are some things we do not give up on
There are some values that cannot be shaken 
We were all created in God’s image
And even in the hardest of times
There is a path we must walk
And we must walk that path together
For we are destined to live in this land together. 

“Righteousness shall go before God, and shall make God’s footsteps a way” 
[Psalm 85:14] 

Please donate to Rabbis for Human Rights so that we can continue to build a way forward

Confronting Grief Meet the Newly Bereaved

Maoz Inon is one of the newest bereaved members of the Parents Circle – Families Forum. Inon’s parents were killed on October 7th, 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel. Mohamed Abu Jafar, a Palestinian member of the Parents Circle, lost his brother in 2002 when he was killed by Israeli soldiers.

Join us for a conversation between Maoz and Mohamed on how they are confronting grief and the work of bereaved peacemakers during a time of war.

Confronting Grief: Meet the Newly Bereaved webinar recording December 19, 2023

RefugePoint’s Leadership Role at the Global Refugee Forum

The Global Refugee Forum (GRF), a quadrennial event taking place from December 13-15 of this year, is the main venue to drive and review progress towards the objectives of the Global Compact on Refugees, which include: 

  • Easing pressures on host countries

  • Strengthening refugee self-reliance*

  • Increasing access to third-country solutions such as resettlement, family reunification, labor, mobility, and other pathways*

  • Supporting conditions in countries of origin that allow refugees to return home safely 

 

RefugePoint is playing a leadership role in four multistakeholder pledges relating to two of these objectives: refugee self-reliance and third-country solutions (starred above). Additionally, RefugePoint leadership will be speaking in several official events at the GRF as well as formally announcing the multistakeholder pledges on family reunification and on economic inclusion and social protection, an honor reserved for the leaders in each of these areas.

 

Why is RefugePoint So Heavily Involved in the Global Refugee Forum? 

The goals of the Global Refugee Forum align with RefugePoint’s strong agency-wide commitment to systems change. RefugePoint is leading the development of several multistakeholder pledges that are aligned with our programmatic priorities. Our engagement and investment in global initiatives such as the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative and the Global Family Reunification Network position us well  to provide leadership and convene others to take collective action on these themes. 

RefugePoint’s commitment to refugee-centeredness has informed much of our involvement in the 2023 GRF. RefugePoint and the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative are proud to  have refugees and former refugees join our delegations to the GRF, and we are also supporting these colleagues as they have assumed prominent roles at the GRF. 

See below for a comprehensive list of RefugePoint’s involvement in the events of the 2023 Global Refugee Forum.

 

Refugee Self-Reliance

Multistakeholder Pledge Leadership: The Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative, hosted by RefugePoint, is the lead coordinator in the Multistakeholder pledge on economic inclusion and social protection, in collaboration with the governments of Denmark, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, and United States of America, as well as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in Eastern Africa. 

In Plenary: Kari Diener, Executive Director of the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative, will be announcing the pledge in the plenary session. 

Parallel High-Level Events: The Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative, and through it RefugePoint, is also helping to plan two high-level side events relating to refugee self-reliance: one on employment and entrepreneurship  for refugees and another on social protection for refugees.  The event on economic inclusion will be moderated by RefugePoint Board Member and U.S. Enterprise Executive Director of Alight, Nasra Ismail.

 

Third-Country Solutions

Resettlement

  • Multistakeholder Pledge Leadership: RefugePoint co-chairs the Friends of Resettlement Initiative (along with the Government of Australia and UNHCR), which has been responsible for developing the Multistakeholder pledge on resettlement. 

  • Parallel High-Level Event: RefugePoint CEO Sasha Chanoff will be speaking at the Parallel High-Level Event on Resettlement, an event RefugePoint has helped to plan.


Family Reunification

  • In Plenary: RefugePoint CEO Sasha Chanoff will be formally announcing the Multistakeholder Pledge on Family Reunification in the plenary session. 

  • Speakers Corner: RefugePoint delegate Geeta Rahimi will be delivering remarks in a Speakers Corner focusing on Family Reunification. Geeta is a resettlement professional in the U.S. and the Refugee Congress Delegate for the state of Texas. She will be speaking about her experience of family separation and reunification and noting best practices and recommendations.

  • Linked Event: In coordination with the FRUN, RefugePoint will be co-hosting an evening reception on family reunification at the Red Cross Museum. The program will feature refugee leaders and senior representatives from UNHCR and the Red Cross and will be an opportunity to highlight some of the contributors to the multistakeholder pledge on family reunification.

 

Labor Mobility

  • Multistakeholder Pledge Leadership: RefugePoint is a member of the Global Task Force on Refugee Labor Mobility, which co-leads the Multistakeholder pledge on skills-based complementary pathways.

  • Parallel High-Level Event: RefugePoint CEO Sasha Chanoff and RefugePoint Board Member Nasra Ismail will speak at a High Level Side Event on Refugee Labor Mobility. 

  • Linked Event: Both Sasha and Nasra will reprise their roles at a high-level evening reception featuring speakers from the whole society, including UN organizations and corporate leaders. Both events work toward RefugePoint’s goal of demonstrating a refugee-centered model for labor mobility for the world and for our partners.

George Orwell, Gaza, and “The Debasement of Language”

“Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” George Orwell wrote these words, which come at the end of his essay “Politics and the English Language,” in 1946. He could be writing them from the grave today and thinking of ways in which language is being used in the context of the so-called “Israel-Gaza war.” “In our time,” Orwell says, “political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” He is not alluding to falsehoods or fallacies, but to words and phrases that keep us from the facts, or from the effect the facts would otherwise have on us. His essay is about “debased language”: language that defends the indefensible by preventing us from thinking.

Day after day, as Israel has laid waste to Gaza, unspeakable atrocities have been spoken about in language that robs them of their horror. Israel’s relentless devastation of Gaza, the destruction of 40% of homes in the strip (at the time of writing), as well as hospitals and infrastructure, the blockade on fuel and electricity and other vital services, the killing, the maiming, the terrorizing, the aerial bombardment that has wiped out entire families, the mass displacement of 1.9 million people (at the time of writing), all this is indescribable.

Sometimes it is better to be lost for words. Perhaps we should remember this more often. Perhaps we should hold our tongue until we find words that approximate to reality—the brutal human reality of suffering, grief, loss, and despair. This means suppressing the impulse to appropriate the facts for our agendas, or resisting the urge to smother those facts with words that cushion their impact, euphemisms that soften their blow. Sometimes we should just stand open-mouthed, without a political analysis falling fully formed from our lips. There are times when we need to stop talking in order to start thinking—thinking politically. Now is such a time.

Sometimes it is better to be lost for words. . .  . Perhaps we should hold our tongue until we find words that approximate to reality—the brutal human reality of suffering, grief, loss and despair.

Orwell writes in his essay: “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed …” Phrases do not have to be around for long in order to become hackneyed. A turn of speech can turn into a cliché almost overnight, provided there is a sufficient incentive. People will latch onto it with alacrity if it helps to conceal an inconvenient truth or to take cover from the implications of their own unbearable position. Take, for example, “humanitarian pause,” a phrase that has become a commonplace in the last couple of months. There has, so far, been one temporary ceasefire, which was towards the end of November 2023. But Israel could not be clearer about its intentions: to continue to lay waste to Gaza. And that is just what they have done, blasting whole neighborhoods to smithereens. Yet there are calls for more “humanitarian pauses.” How reassuring the word “humanitarian” is! But whom does it console: the people of Gaza or the people who utter the phrase? Sara Roy asks: “What does a pause mean in the middle of such carnage? Does it mean feeding people so they can survive to be killed the next day? How is that humanitarian? How is that humane?” But critiquing a mindless mantra or a hackneyed turn of speech is a thankless task. The repetition of the phrase “humanitarian pause” is like a lullaby, and the debate around it is a form of sleep-talking.

Sleep-talking can also take the form of stringing together stock items of vocabulary, “ready-made phrases,” as Orwell calls them, letting them “construct your sentences for you – even think your thoughts for you.” Or, to put it differently, they make the act of thinking passive. They do this according to a kind of algorithm, dictated by a political ideology or program. “It is at this point,” Orwell observes, “that the special connexion between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.” What could be more debased than a jargon that turns barbarism into justice, atrocity into progress, so as to get the facts to fit a preconceived frame? Consider this set of facts about the actions of Hamas or its allies during its incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023: around 1,200 people killed in “more than 20 different locations”; in kibbutz Be’eri alone, “at least 100 people slaughtered … dragged from their homes and murdered”; women “raped before they were shot”; over 200 people abducted as hostages, “including infants, children, and elderly people.” Here is how these horrific facts were reflected in the banner headline of a “progressive” newspaper two days later: “Rejoice as Palestinian resistance humiliates racist Israel.”  In this headline, the horrific is turned into the heroic at a stroke. By a kind of verbal alchemy, civilian victims of the crimes committed on October 7th become mere tokens of a state: personifications of Israel, not persons in their own right. It is the Israeli state (“racist Israel”) that was raped, not individual women; the state that was murdered and abducted, not infants or children or the elderly. Similarly, an eminent Israeli historian, but coming to the defense of Israel, declared : “On 7 October Israel [itself] was raped  …” You could say this is hyperbole, but it amounts to theft: stealing the ordeal of rape from the women who experienced it and transferring it to a theoretical entity, the state. To recall Orwell’s words: “the concrete melts into the abstract.” In the banner headline that I have quoted, the flesh-and-blood victims of horrendous acts are erased by a phrase “racist Israel.” Even Israel is not the ultimate villain or target, as the subhead, via a dubious historical comparison, explains: “Like the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968, the Palestinians’ surprise attack has humbled imperialism.” Jargon (“imperialism”) has the last word.

The repetition of the phrase “humanitarian pause” is like a lullaby, and the debate around it is a form of sleep-talking.

Moreover, in these two sentences (the headline and the subhead), Hamas’s onslaught is referred to as “Palestinian resistance,” regardless of whether or not this is how Palestinians themselves see it. The synonymy is assumed. But this is a matter for Palestinians themselves to debate and to decide, not something for a person or group in faraway Britain to decree. In this scheme of things, however, Palestinians do not count in their own right, any more than Israelis do. They count only as representatives of (to quote another phrase from the article) “the oppressed.” It is quite an achievement to write an article about the strife between Palestinians and Israelis in which Israelis and Palestinians come into the picture only as stand-ins for “oppressor” and “oppressed.” This article—and there are many others like it—is a helpful demonstration of how “the debasement of language” degrades political thinking. For thinking is not political unless it is grounded, and it is not grounded when, to quote Orwell again, “the concrete melts into the abstract.”

In the passage in which Orwell talks about “the defence of the indefensible,” he immediately illustrates the point with a scenario that is uncannily recognizable. “Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside … the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.” Substitute “Israel’s right to defend itself” for “pacification” (and maybe “tents” for “huts”), and the picture corresponds to the here and now. Perhaps he really is writing from the grave.

True, President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Rushi Sunak, and other world leaders who assert Israel’s right to defend itself, add that Israel should act within international humanitarian law (or “the laws of war”). But add is the operative word. The emphasis falls repeatedly on the former, giving the clear impression that the right of the state has priority over the human rights of the Palestinian population of Gaza: “Israel has the right, but…” The “but” is an echo of the refrain, “We stand with Israel,” which Biden and Sunak and other world leaders have declared from the start. (Or, as Sunak said, shaking hands with Netanyahu in Jerusalem, “We want you to win.”) The sound of the refrain, like background noise, never fades, even if we are not aware of hearing it. This too is how speech can confuse and mislead. Language is an instrument. And Biden, Sunak, and the others, are like a collective Nero, fiddling while Gaza burns.

What language can prevent, language can promote: thinking politically. This requires using words that bridge the gap between the concrete and the abstract, without either flinching from the facts or appropriating them for the sake of a cherished theory or agenda. Only thus can we broach the most political of questions, not least for Palestinians and Israelis: how to share the common spaces we inhabit, so as to advance the common good. This, apart from the diagnoses of linguistic malpractices, is what I take from Orwell’s essay—a prophetic blast from the past, which speaks powerfully to us in the present abysmal moment.

Jehane Sedky

Jehane Sedky is a seasoned senior executive and chief of staff known for providing strategic guidance and support to prominent leaders such as former US President Bill Clinton, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy and the late Harvard University Professor Dr. Paul Farmer. Her expertise spans a wide spectrum of responsibilities, including strategic program development, implementation, fundraising, media, and communications. Renowned for exceptional project and people management skills, Ms. Sedky excels in unifying teams toward common goals. Notably, she served as President Clinton’s senior advisor and head of office during his tenure as UN Special Envoy for Haiti and, earlier, as his spokesperson and speechwriter for his role as the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery. Furthermore, in her capacity as a senior advisor to Dr. Paul Farmer, Ms. Sedky played a pivotal role in steering the strategic direction and executing his vision for both his UN office and the subsequent establishment of the think tank he founded, the Science of Implementation Initiative.

Prior to her work with President Clinton and Dr. Paul Farmer, Ms. Sedky served as senior strategic advisor to UN Assistant Secretary-General for Conflict Prevention and Recovery. In this chief of staff role, Ms. Sedky was instrumental in shaping the strategic direction of a 200-person global operation, managing communications, fundraising efforts, delicate staff relationships, and overall program strategy.

Renowned for her team-building skills, Ms. Sedky has effectively led senior management teams, navigated crises calmly, and fostered an environment focused on achieving strategic goals. Her extensive experience in cultivating and managing partnerships across diverse institutions and continents underscores her proficiency in establishing impactful global networks.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Sedky served a stint at CNN International and later led the UNICEF Global Media Relations team responsible for spearheading the organization’s messaging and crisis management across 150 country offices. Ms. Sedky has authored a book on children and armed conflict and a chapter in Paul Farmer’s book Haiti After the Earthquake. In addition, the cutting-edge research she led at the United Nations and later at the Science of Implementation Initiative has been cited in Paul Farmer’s books and various articles.

Ms. Sedky speaks four languages and is the proud mother of three. In her free time, she leads a youth group that supports the homeless in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Adam Levy

Adam Levy is a career diplomat with the U.S. Foreign Service. He currently serves in Bogota, Colombia leading the Department of State's efforts to advance human rights and peace.  Previously, Adam worked as a Special Assistant to Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, as a desk officer for Syria supporting peace building efforts, in addition to assignments in Canada, Cuba, Mali, and China. Prior to joining the U.S. Department of State, Adam worked for Beyond Conflict where he was involved in reconciliation and track 1.5 negotiations initiatives involving Iran, Cuba, South Africa, Kosovo, and elsewhere and with a transitional justice initiative in East Africa. He completed his undergraduate degree with high honors from Tufts University with a focus on peace and justice studies and earned a Master's degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.  Originally from Ecuador, Adam calls (the winters of) Massachusetts home.

At Tufts, Adam was deeply involved with the Institute for Global Leadership's EPIIC and BUILD programs and was an avid member of the university's Klezmer Ensemble. He describes his time with the IGL as full of sparks. Sparks that created lifelong friendships and professional peers, Sparks that gave him early previews of the intellectual challenges, informational grey zones, trade offs, and moral quandaries facing foreign policy practitioners through research in Serbia and Kosovo, photojournalism projects focused on migration along the U.S.-Mexico border and in Nepal, as well the seeds for a reconciliation initiative in northern Uganda with two IGL alums.

Adam was one of the students who thoroughly drew upon the Institute's offering and routinely gave more than he received.  

Thoughtful, incisive, and perspicacious he always knew how to assess and integrate knowledge, theory, and practice, well-honed skills which won him the Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship Program, a graduate school fellowship program that provides funding for graduate students as they prepare academically and professionally to enter the U.S. Foreign Service and enabled Adam to attend Harvard.  

Adam's picture and Michael Eddy in Prizren, Kosovo during an IGL-EPIIC sponsored research trip in January 2007. Adam and Michael, both Tufts 2008 magna cum laude graduates and EPIIC alumni were studying the impact of the United Nations on Kosovo graces this Institute archive page documenting the exponential growth of Institute research.  By the time I left to become Emeritus in 2016 well over one hundred students were engaged in such immersive efforts, one of the Institute's distinctive accomplishments. 

Serendipitously, given what Adam is currently doing at State, as a senior, helped organize and conduct this Program of Justice in Times of Transition workshop with the Colombian Senate entitled: “Politics without Violence: National and International Reflections on Facing Electoral and Political Reform” which surely helped him in his current role.

The Program sought to achieve two interrelated goals: 1) to help the leadership in the Colombian Senate consider how Colombian political institutions such as the Senate could better contribute to the fledgling peace process with the ELN and the FARC and how the Senate in particular could go about reestablishing credibility as a democratic institution; 2) to present to the Senate with strategies drawn from the Central American peace processes for keeping the peace process alive and facilitating a transformation from violence to peace despite evolving and challenging circumstances. The practitioners PJTT brought from Central America to share experiences included: Ana Guadalupe Martínez, Senior Advisor to the Vice President of the El Salvadoran Legislative Assembly and former FMLN leader; Alvaro DeSoto, former Secretary General’s Personal Representative for the Central American Peace Process and Secretary General’s Special Adviser on Cyprus, Western Sahara, and Burma; and José María Argueta, Director of the Central American Institute of Strategic Studies, former and first Civilian National Security Advisor of Guatemala, and former Ambassador of Guatemala to Peru and Japan. The workshop with the Senate was held at a very timely moment when many Senators had been discredited due to links with paramilitary organizations. Discussions at the meeting helped the remaining Senators consider how to revitalize the credibility of the Senate and be a more active leader in facilitating a serious peace process in Colombia. 

The PJTT at the time was hosted and the Institute for six years and created this mentorship program, ACCESS.   

Adam also participated in the Institute's Program on Narrative and Documentary Practice. He wrote the text "Mining for a Better Life, a story about a Honduran immigrant man, Israel who worked in an immense copper mine in Mexico and who was seeking citizenship papers.  

Here is his work with wonderful Sam James, an EPIIC and Synaptic Scholar, and lecturer in the PNDP program who provided the accompanying pictures and subsequently went on the great recognition as a photographer. 

What endeared me to Adam is love for his family, especially his younger brother. It told me all I needed to know about his vast reservoir of care and concern for people, both close to him but also quite distant. Human rights were not something abstract for him. 

Isabel Weiner

Isabel Weiner works in the field of sustainability, ESG, and social impact, focusing on strategy, advisory, and investment.

Most recently, Isabel has been based in Saudi Arabia, working with McKinsey’s sustainability practice to support clients across the region and globally, in developing their ESG strategies and investment prospects.

Before McKinsey, Isabel oversaw special projects at Open Society Foundations, supporting the discretionary portfolios of President Chris Stone, President Patrick Gaspard, President Emeritus Aryeh Neier, and Chairman George Soros. First based in the Arab Regional Office in Jordan, Isabel’s work initially focused on migration and women’s rights in MENA, and later expanded to cover a range of topics globally, including human rights, criminal justice, climate, education, and economic development.

Isabel began her career working in non-profits advocating for refugee rights and survivors of torture, in Egypt, Jordan, and Israel / Palestine. She later returned to Egypt through EPIIC to conduct research on the ousting of then President Mohamed Morsi, and the influence of the Egyptian military on social movements.

Born and raised in New York City, Isabel received degrees in Arabic and International Relations from Tufts, and an MBA from INSEAD.

Frontier Markets at COP28

From Ajaita Shah

Dear All,

We are looking forward to seeing you at COP 28 this year!

 We're thrilled to announce that Frontier Markets and Frontier Innovations Foundation will have a presence at COP 28 this year.

We will be introducing our new initiative: "She Leads Bharat: Mahila Kisaan.” which aims to unlock the potential of 1 million small women farmers as climate champions of rural India through women facilitators, digital platforms, and market solutions in agriculture, renewable, energy and finance. This initiative is powered by Frontier Innovation Foundation’s “She-Leads Impact Fund,” a $20MN blended capital facility aimed to unlock markets and private sector capital for women. This first-of-its-kind catalytic capital fund was initiated by women leaders to harness the power of grant funding, corporate partnerships, and technology designed by women for women.

Our ultimate goal is to enable 1 million women digital facilitators who will positively impact the lives of 100 million women by 2030. The inaugural investments of the She Leads Impact Fund will focus on inclusive finance and climate interventions in India.

I am looking forward to speaking at several amazing COP 28 events this coming week thanks to amazing partners like Kite Insights, Edelman, EY, Adelphi, and of course, 2X. I'm looking forward to sharing insights and learning from the discussions at the summit.

Reach out if you want to chat more or find opportunities to collaborate: https://www.frontiermkts.com/she-leads-bharat

Here are the events – looking forward to seeing you there,

Ajaita

Event 1: Women In Finance and Energy Transition ROI: The new ROI return on impact through women in finance

Diversity is proven to be a competitive advantage across various industries and locations. A recent Blackrock study reveals that companies with more gender-balanced workforces outperformed their least-balanced counterparts by up to 2 percentage points annually from 2013 to 2022. Our panel discusses how gender parity is particularly crucial in the clean energy transition, where women often drive innovative and inclusive solutions. 

We will be discussing the challenges in recruiting and retaining more women at all levels of the energy transition, from fund management and middle management to on-the-ground business ownership. The discussion emphasizes the unique perspectives and skills women bring, the impact of gender parity on decision-making, and the necessary steps to achieve it.

Location: Mubadala Pavilion, Energy Transition Hub, Green Zone

Date : December 4

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Event 2: 2XG : Gender and climate-smart investing: the key to accelerating climate action

Despite being disproportionately negatively impacted by climate change, women – whether at a global, national or local level, within a political, business or social context – are already leading the charge for climate action. Moreover, as outlined by the UNFCCC women are key critical agents of change to building our society’s resilience and need to have elevated roles in decision-making positions and as users of climate capital. It’s been shown that corporations with robust female leadership have yielded a Return on Equity (ROE) of 10.1% annually, in contrast to the 7.4% for those lacking such leadership. Financing and supporting innovative climate solutions at speed and scale is key to meeting the targets set out by the Paris Agreement and ensuring a just transition. Moreover, advancing and further funding gender- smart adaptation and mitigation climate solutions is a core part of this inclusive pathway. 

We will be discussing our role as a social business leading on gender and climate in India via She-Leads Bharat: Mahila Kisaan, and the opportunities to unlock private sector capital into the Agriculture, Finance and Renewable Energy sectors when investing in women entrepreneurs and women as market drivers.

Location: Technology and Innovation Hub, Green Zone

Date : December 4th

Time : 16:30 - 17:30 GST

Twist the kaleidoscope: Climate, gender and youth.

The roundtable discussion will examine how blended funding is particularly well suited to support young women entrepreneurs advancing solutions related to loss & damage, and adaptation & resilience, and explore what cross-sector, cross-industry and cross-skill collaborative solutions can be deployed towards this aim. How can thinking with a climate, gender, and youth lens help social impact entrepreneurs access the support they need to reach their full potential? 

We are looking forward to sharing our experience in bringing a gender and emerging market lens via She-Leads Bharat: Mahila Kisaan, the blended capital approach via our Foundation to drive pilots around climate gender solutions in India unlocking businesses to take strong interest in rural market, gender, and climate initiatives.

Location: Majlis Room, DP World, Green Zone

Date : 5th December 2023

Time : 10.30-11.30 am

Climate Impact Female Founders Council

ClimateImpact is collaborating with EY to host the third Female Founders Council alongside COP28. In line with COP’s thematic agenda, we will be exploring the topic of Just Transition through varied discussions. 

As Founder of Frontier Markets and Frontier Innovations Foundation, I will be sharing our perspective around where women farmers’ voices and experiences need to be included to design better green and climate interventions in India. Women as climate solvers, women as influencers, women as co-creators, women as the solution for Just Transitions.

Location: The Palm Jumeirah, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Date: Tuesday, 5 December

Time: 4-6pm GST

UNFCCC COP 28 Side Event Concept

This event will address key issues of a proactive climate foreign policy: How can cooperation between different partner countries address the climate crisis and accelerate the global energy transition - complementary to the climate negotiation process? How can the phase-out of fossil fuels be realised as quickly as possible, even in countries whose economies are still largely based on corresponding export revenues? How can partnerships be designed in such a way that they are successful for both sides and enable a just transition to a climate-neutral and socially just future?

We are looking forward to sharing our perspective from working in India, the role that Development Finance can play to unlock the potential of gender and climate, and share more about our She-Leads Impact Fund

Location: German Pavilion, Blue Zone

Date: Friday, 8 December

Time: 11:30am - 12:30pm GST

Jan Kaliba

Former U.S. Correspondent to Czech Radio, public service media, Jan Kaliba has recently (September 2023) turned into the very first Climate Correspondent in a nationally relevant media in his „climate change sceptic“ home country.

As a lifelong sports enthusiast, during his studies at Charles University in Prague Jan started to work in Czech Radio as a member of the sports desk, covering predominantly soccer and skiing. As a radio journalist he attended and broadcasted live from two Winter Olympics, soccer World Cup in Brazil, two soccer European Championships and many other events. His storytelling gained him a place among the top 10 in 2016 AIPS Sport Media Awards where the best sport stories of the world are recognized. In 2017, he also co-founded Football Club, Czech quarterly magazine for soccer culture.

In 2017 he was selected by Czech Radio to serve as its Foreign Correspondent to the USA. In the following six years until summer 2023 he experienced and covered on the ground the 2020 Presidential Election, storming of the national Capitol in Washington D. C. on January 6, 2021, covid-19 pandemics, the protests after the murder of George Floyd and many other events, just to name a few. He also focused on the topics of systemic racism, climate change, situation of Native Americans, refugee crisis and other issues on the southern border, Czech-American community etc. His stories on Tangier Island and on the US southern border won the international category of reportage at the annual radio festival Prix Bohemia Radio two times.

In July 2023, Jan moved back to Czechia with his wife Adela (Head of International Relations in Czech Radio and an international production of Czech Radio´s broadcasting of 2020 US Elections) and two kids who were raised in Bethesda, Maryland, and Washington D. C..

Jan has turned into the very first Climate Correspondent to Czech Radio, based in Prague. Inspired by many international media outlets, figuring out his future within Czech Radio, Jan came up with a new position of a Climate Correspondent. This is the very first position of this kind in any national media in the Czech Republic. Jan is now trying not only to bring climate stories and the issue of climate change generally more into public awareness in Czechia, but also finding the best techniques to do so and trying to create networks with other journalists and experts. Just to illustrate his daily struggles let´s mention that Czechia is one of the most sceptical country in protecting climate and the debate about it among the EU member states.

Jan of course loves to play soccer and finds it as a worldwide language which took him to many great places and let him know many wonderful people, including members of Shahin AC, the international community soccer group in Bethesda, Maryland.

Steedman Hinckley

Steedman Hinckley worked more than 30 years on Russian affairs and US-Russian relations at the departments of State and Defense, the White House, and the intelligence community. He served in Russia in multiple assignments for the Department of State.

Prior to joining government, he worked on Russian and Soviet affairs at the RAND Corporation and was a wilderness guide in Alaska. He holds a B.A. in Russian and Soviet Studies from Wesleyan University and an M.A. in Policy Analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He lives with his wife, Lisa Farnsworth, a landscape painter, in Truro, MA.

I've had the privilege of enjoying a close friendship with Steedman, learning from him and thinking with him on a broad range on security and geopolitical issues, often in wonderful conversations on Truro beaches. 

He is a nuanced, careful and thoughtful analyst, with a great depth of knowledge of Russia.

Steedman is a superb host. Iris and I enjoy his culinary skills and his renowned cosmopolitans. He is well-known for his sense of humor, love of music, and playing his guitar. Remi greatly enjoys his Newfie, Sona.

Tracy Bourke

Tracy Bourke has a passion for bringing stakeholders together to create value and impact. Tracy was born in Melbourne, Australia, where she grew up in the diverse suburbs south of the city.

She graduated top of her class and went on to complete degrees in business from Melbourne University and applied finance from Monash down the road. She started her career at Ernst & Young's office in Melbourne before moving across the world to New York to join the team's innovation and digital practices. She has led projects looking at digital transformation work for a range of fortune 500 companies, and has a passion for creating accessible banking products and financial literacy. 

Tracy recently completed her executive MBA at Stern, NYU, and was named by poets and quants as one of the "best and brightest" EMBAs of the year.

Carmen Avcioglu

Carmen Avcioglu was born and raised in Puerto Rico where she became a pharmacist.Looking to expand her professional and personal horizons she moved to Boston,MA  during her mid-twenties. She has continued her career as a pharmacist in a number of diverse areas in the fields like Hospital,Pharmaceutical Sales, HIV  Specialty Pharmacist, Home Infusion and latest as Community Pharmacist. Her biggest belief is about patient care and wellbeing. It has been a challenge to practice her career in a for profit healthcare system. Nowadays she is looking for her third Act.

Asi-Yahola Boutelle

I’ve been committed to social justice and activism my whole life, a calling nurtured by my family, my San Francisco Bay Area upbringing, and my time with Professor Sherman Teichman.  I first met Sherman following the EPIIC Program in the 2002 Global Inequities Symposium, at the Global Health Inequity panel.  It was here where I also met another long-time mentor of mine, Dr. Paul Farmer, after putting a fellow panelist of his who represented a pharmaceutical company in the hot seat during Q&A at the sophomoric age of 18.  Following the 2002 EPIIC symposium, I became intrigued by this fascinating program and educational format, which led me to join the Sovereignty & Intervention EPIIC Colloquim the following year.  Sherman would also introduce me to a beloved mentor of mine and fellow Convisero mentor, Dr. Sousan Abadian.  I worked with Dr. Abadian in my junior and senior years, doing research on Indigenous Peoples in America and the use of culturally based treatment modalities to combat intergenerational trauma and oppression.  I went on from Tufts to earn Master’s Degrees in Bioethics, Biomedical Sciences, and Business Administration, and I’m currently completing my fourth Master’s Degree in Public Health.  I’ve researched and written on topics from Indigenous public health, to novel ways to fight antimicrobial resistance, heart disease, and global health.  I’ve also published my research on the impact of climate change on kidney disease in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.  I currently work for a non-profit in Upstate New York doing community development and case management work while raising my two beautiful children.  My ultimate goal is to practice clinical medicine, which I will work towards after completing my Public Health Degree.


Erica Goldstein

Erica Goldstein is a palliative medicine physician at North Shore University working within an interdisciplinary team that specializes in serious illness across a breadth of clinical conditions. She has particular interests in care coordination and accessibility, health policy and management, physician engagement, global partnerships, social medicine, and diversity and inclusion within the health field.

Her training includes medical school at NYU Langone, emergency medicine residency at McGovern Medical School (formerly known as the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston), and palliative medicine fellowship at NYU Winthrop. She took time between years in medical school to complete a Master of Public Administration degree in Health Policy and Management at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service, which developed her skills of managing and working within teams, conducting program analysis and evaluation, communicating patients’ needs to essential decision-makers and stakeholders, and understanding the business of medicine.

In the emergency department, she worked in what is often the gateway to the US healthcare system at the height of the COVID epidemic in Houston, which was one of the cities that was hardest hit.  During that time, she was in the EMRA Leadership Academy and completed the Texas College of Emergency Physicians Leadership and Advocacy Fellowship. The latter, she sat in on board meetings of an organization with over 2000 members and proposed and founded the Diversity and Health Equity (DIHE) task force. These experiences provided insight to the world of organizational medicine and policy change. Within her residency training program, she also had roles as Vice Chair of Administration and Vice Chair of Community Engagement. She has written multiple pieces for the EM Resident + Policy Prescriptions Journal Club and for SheMD and was awarded the EMRA FIX Travel Scholarship to attend the FemInEM Idea Exchange (FIX) in 2020, which unfortunately was cancelled due to COVID.

She looks forward to continuing to serve patients and their families within the hospital and bolstering education around symptom management and ensuring that patients' care is aligned with their values and preferences. Down the road, she has ideas of making transparent the realities of people with serious illness to advocate on their behalf and to help others better understand what to expect when they or their loved ones fall ill.

Outside of work, Erica enjoys traveling, learning about other cultures, reading, writing, hiking, dance, music, and theater.