Daniel Ades
Daniel Ades is the Founder and Managing Partner of Kawa Capital, a hedge fund and asset manager based in Aventura. Daniel has been responsible for overseeing the firm’s investment decisions since inception in 2007, and continues to lead the firm to this day. He has a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from Tufts University, and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) from The Fletcher School, with a focus on economic development. He has been a board member in several community organizations and his interests are primarily focused on education and affordable housing. Most recently, he founded the Jewish Leadership Academy, a college-preparatory Jewish Day School in the Miami area that is need-blind and focused on developing leaders with a broad range of perspectives. An avid sailor, he was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil and has been living in Miami with his wife and three children since 2003.
Ahmed Benchemsi
A global rights watchdog’s spokesperson and comms director, Ahmed Benchemsi is an award-winning journalist, media entrepreneur, opinion writer and public speaker turned Human Rights advocate. Fluent in French, Arabic and English, his expertise is in human rights, individual freedoms and secularism within Islamic societies, media and social media in North Africa and the Middle East.
As the primary spokesperson for Human Rights Watch on the Middle East and North Africa, Ahmed gave 1200+ interviews to international media in three languages, including CNN, PBS, BBC, France 24, Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, and more. As HRW's MENA Communications and Advocacy Director, he initiated and led global campaigns including on freedom of speech, individual freedoms, women's rights, and LGBT rights.
As a journalist, Ahmed was published in TIME magazine, Newsweek, The Guardian, Le Monde, Le Nouvel Observateur, Jeune Afrique, and other global publications.
Ahmed started his career in Morocco in the mid-1990s as an investigative reporter, with a passion for defending democracy, secularism and individual freedoms, exposing corruption, and heralding cultural empowerment, especially for the youth. At 26, he founded TelQuel, a French language weekly news magazine covering politics, society, and culture that became the market leader in four years. In 2006, he founded the Arabic language news magazine Nichane, which, in turn, topped the national magazine market (even surpassing TelQuel) in just over a year. The TelQuel Group, of which Ahmed was CEO and editor-in-chief, soon became Morocco’s #1 magazine publisher (combined circulation, including of several offshoot mags, peaked at 500,000 readers) with 100+ staffers, USD 10 million annual revenue and USD 1 million profit. TelQuel and Nichane were hailed as “groundbreaking,” “innovative” and “pioneering,” including in TIME magazine, The Guardian and The Economist and reaped numerous international awards, including the CNN award for African journalists, the Press Now prize and Reporters Without Borders prize.
Such success attracted attention, which also meant adverse feedback from Moroccan authorities. Ahmed and his colleagues were arrested and brought in for interrogation many times, then prosecuted, sentenced to suspended prison terms and heavy fines for speech offenses including “undermining official institutions” and “disrespecting the king.” The police raided the printer’s plant several times, destroying tens of thousands of copies. Even though a market leader, Nichane suffered a government-led advertisement boycott campaign that drove down its ad revenue by 80%. Ahmed had to close it in 2010, resign his position in the publishing company and sell his shares to dissociate himself from TelQuel, thus allowing the company to survive and the magazine to continue (it still exists today, though with a different editorial line.)
In 2011, Ahmed left Morocco and moved to Stanford, California, where he was awarded a visiting scholar fellowship. During 2 years, he studied the “Arab Spring” tidal wave that shook the Middle East and inspired transformative movements around the world. While in Stanford, he contributed academic articles for the Journal of Democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Middle East Institute, the Cato Institute, the French political science quarterlies Pouvoirs and L’ENA Hors Les Murs. He was also a co-author of “Taking to the streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism” (2014, Johns Hopkins University press,) and in Arabic, “February 20: The Outcomes of Democratization in Morocco” (2018, Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, Qatar), two anthologies that examined the roots of the Arab Spring.
But academic work didn't cut it for Ahmed. Publishing long articles in savant journals was a fine thing, but wasn’t enough engagement and made little real impact. The media man in him took over. Originally meant to be a book, his Stanford fellowship project turned into an online platform, FreeArabs.com, that was designed to be a springboard for the ebullient “Arab Spring” generation. The Beta version was a success, praised by his Stanford mentors. But as the hope for democratic change faded, so did the interest of venture capitalists in funding it.
After 2 years of unsuccessful fundraising efforts to transform freearabs.com into a media venture (2 years during which he also continued his journalistic work, with publications in The new Republic, Foreign Policy, Le Monde, Harvard’s Nieman Report, Politico, Salon and other outlets,) Ahmed joined Human Rights Watch in 2015. Since then, he has been honing his advocacy skills by helming the organization’s communications efforts to fight injustice in a region with no short supply of it. His job is to convey the findings of a 40+ team of researchers and other human rights operatives into digestible, media friendly pitches, media interviews, and social media campaigns.
In the course of his career, Ahmed was awarded “Best investigative Journalist in the Arab World” twice by the European Union (Brussels, Belgium in 2004, and Beirut, Lebanon in 2007). He was also keynote speaker for the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism network (Amman, Jordan in 2009 and 2011) and the Oslo Freedom Forum (Oslo, Norway in 2011 and 2012,) and gave multiple conferences and seminars, including in Stanford, Harvard, Tufts, Georgetown, and other universities, and spoke publicly about the Arab Spring, Freedom of Speech, Secularism and individual freedoms in the Muslim world in various international venues in Europe, the Middle East, India and North America. he was also recognized by fellowships in Newsweek (New York, 2005 and 2008) and the Los Angeles Times (LA, 2005), and was invited twice to tour the US by the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (2000, 2008). Early in his career, he was awarded “Best Investigative Journalist in Morocco” at age 22 by the National Syndicate of Moroccan Press.
Ahmed holds an MPhil (eq. French “DEA”) in Political science from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (aka “Sciences Po”) in Paris, a master’s degree in development economics from The Sorbonne, and a bachelor’s degree in finance from Paris VIII University.
Ahmed also served as Communications and Media adviser to Morocco’s Secretary of State for Environment (1998). A dual Moroccan-American citizen, he lived in Casablanca (Morocco,) Palo Alto (California,) Washington D.C. and New York, and currently resides in Paris.
Ahmed and I have known each other for over a decade, working together with the Human Rights Foundation and consultations over MENA affairs. He has been a warm friend and valuable mentor to my community, especially its students. We share a passion for vibrant democracy. I admire his courage and integrity and value his friendship — Sherman
In Warren, R.I., new millennial-owned manufacturer is latest to bring metal fabrication back to US
The newest endeavor of my magnificent daughter-in law, Kelly Ward.
Read more here highlighted in the Boston Globe!
Ward’s Manufacturing is a new metal fabrication business which fiber laser cuts and CNC press brake bends custom metal parts. We are a woman-owned, family business with equipment that can handle thick cuts, tight tolerances, and unique metals, all manufactured in Rhode Island.
Their launch event, taking place on March 27, 2024, plans to follow this schedule:
Meet Kelly and Kiffin Ward, sibling co-founders who grew up in Rhode Island and are passionate about supporting manufacturing in their state
A congressional delegation will give remarks
See a demonstration of our state-of-the-art fiber laser cutter and computer numerical control (CNC) press brake
Connect over drinks and light refreshments with key stakeholders in Rhode Island’s manufacturing ecosystem
Sara Terry
Sara Terry is a documentary photographer and filmmaker whose work in recent years has focused on class and economic equity. She is a Guggenheim Fellow in Photography, a member of VII Photo and a Sundance Documentary Fellow. Her most feature-length documentary, A Decent Home, explored the wealth gap through the landscape of mobile home parks and aired on PBS in March 2023. Terry began her career as a print reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, where she also helped start the Monitor's public radio show. She moved from there into freelance magazine writing, with her work appearing in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Boston Globe Magazine and other publications. She was also a frequent guest host for the national public radio, To the Point. She picked up a still camera in the late 1990s at a time when she lost her faith in words and never looked back.
Her early photography work, covering post-conflict Bosnia (“Aftermath: Bosnia’s Long Road to Peace”) led her to create The Aftermath Project, a grant-making photography non-profit based on the idea that “War is only half the story.” The Aftermath Project has been giving grants to photographers working in post-conflict settings around the world since 2007. She led three Aftermath photography workshops for students from the Institute for Global Leadership in Uganda, India, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and Houston, Texas.
One of her most recent ongoing projects is 1in6by2030.
What if Regulation Makes the AI Monopoly Worse? by Bhaskar Chakravorti
Apart from being artificial intelligence’s breakout year, in the race to steer the technology’s development, 2023 was also the year when the AI community splintered into various tribes: accelerationists, doomers, and regulators.
By year’s end, it seemed as if the accelerationists had won. Power had consolidated with a handful of the largest of the Big Tech companies investing in the hottest of start-ups; generative AI products were being rushed out; and doomers, with their dire warnings of AI risks, were in retreat. The regulators were in hot pursuit of the accelerationists with uncharacteristic agility, unveiling bold regulation proposals and, with a year of many elections and an anticipated surge in AI-powered disinformation ahead, corralling bills to rush into law.
Ironically, though, the regulators may have added to the wind on the backs of the accelerationists: New regulations may inadvertently add to the accelerationists’ market power.
How can it be that regulators tasked with preserving the public interest could take actions that might make matters worse? Do we now need different regulations to rein in an even more powerful industry? Are there creative alternatives for safeguarding the public interest?
Consider, first, the reasons why the AI industry is already primed for concentration.
Felix Bhattacharya
I am a current Junior at Tufts University pursuing a degree in International Relations and Civic Studies. While I was originally born in Newton, Ma — I moved to Berlin, Germany when I was 6 and grew up there most of my life. I moved back to the US for high school, and lived in Pittsburgh, PA for those four years. Being half-German and half-Indian, I have always loved to travel and explore the world. Academically, I have found a profound interest in international law and its purpose, as well as AI and how we will have to assess both its potential and risks.
Outside of class, I play tennis, act on the stage, and compete on the Tufts Mock Trial team. This past summer, I worked in Berlin on a new global forum called Berlin Global Dialogue — which brought together leaders from the public and private sector. I love finding opportunities for dialogue across different opinions, and believe dialogue and collaboration can lead to a better understanding of the world and its primary issues.
My love for theatre and tennis, have taught me about teamwork and collaboration — the importance of trusting your partner, whether it be on the stage or courts with partners or in everyday life. My life experiences have taught me to never make assumptions about individuals and always trying to enter a conversation with an open mind.
Learning more about the IGL and its mission, through taking EPIIC (‘23) and being the Vice-President of Tufts Amnesty International, has shown me the power of a wide international network. I joined Trebuchet as an intern to learn more about the power of collaboration and dialogue, and how it can help make the world a better place.
I am a rising junior at Princeton University pursuing a degree in sociology with minors in cognitive science and creative writing. I was born and raised in New York City before briefly living in Cambridge, Massachusetts towards the end of high school.
David Rubin
I am a rising Senior at Dartmouth College studying International Relations and Geography. My time in school has focused on subjects of nuclear non-proliferation and geopolitical conflict with my regions of interest being the Middle East and Russia. At Dartmouth, I have been named a War and Peace Fellow at the Dickey Institute of International Understanding.
These academic interests and a family connection led me to Sherman, who introduced me to Trebuchet and Student Pugwash USA. With Sherman’s guidance, I have created a Pugwash Student organization at Dartmouth with the goal of creating a community to reflect and discuss subjects of Nuclear and advanced weaponry technologies and their implications on geopolitics. Our meetings involve dissecting publications put forward by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists or the International Security Journal, in addition to exploring recent headlines surrounding International Security and WMDs. Our group is currently 25 strong and highly motivated!
I am also involved with the Dartmouth varsity Squash team. As a returning senior and 4 year varsity letter winner, I will be at the helm of the team next year as one of its captains.
As a dual citizen of America and France, the ability to navigate two languages and cultures is my strong suit. In the spring of 2021, I took a gap year to live in Paris, where I worked as a paralegal at Gobert et Associes, a French real estate law firm. My duties at the firm involved judicial research and the management of dozens of British homeowners in France participating in a class action suit. This opportunity provided me the opportunity to navigate a fully professional francophone environment.
With my head now geared towards the foreign service, being a member of the Trebuchet team is an honor. The Trebuchet’s goals of creating meaningful dialogues amongst people of various opinions and backgrounds is essential to tackling multinational issues. I look forward to furthering these dialogues and to growing the Trebuchets vast network of avid and like-minded individuals.
Josh Hirshberg
I am a rising senior at Newton North High School in Newton, MA, planning on pursuing a degree in International Relations in college. Ever since I was little, I was always fascinated by the intersectionality of the world. I would find myself diving down rabbit holes relating to history, geography, politics, astronomy, environmental issues, and other various topics that piqued my interest. Nowadays, I’m specifically interested in how governments use physical resources to gain leverage over others. For territorial, economic, and environmental reasons, the growing disparity in global resources is actively shaping the world we live in.
I am involved in my school community, where I am a varsity Nordic Skier, statistician of the varsity Football team, officer of the Film club, and am a member of the Plant Parenthood (gardening) and Trailblazers (hiking) clubs. I have attended Camp Becket for all of my life, where I am going to be working as a Leader in Training this summer. This LIT program includes a two week service trip to the Sioux Nation in South Dakota. In addition to this volunteer trip, I participated in DCEP West, a four week service trip—also through Camp Becket— to Yellowstone National Park and its surrounding regions, as well as locally assisting in food preparation and delivery through Lasagna Love and Yad Chased.
I know Sherman through a connection with my Uncle, who has been next door neighbors with Sherman in Cape Cod for decades. My interests align perfectly with The Trebuchet’s initiatives, and I know that the experience I’ll have and the people I’ll meet working on this project will be fascinating and resourceful. I am honored and ecstatic to become an active member of The Trebuchet community.
Mikaëla Lavandero
I am a rising junior at Princeton University pursuing a degree in sociology with minors in cognitive science and creative writing. I was born and raised in New York City before briefly living in Cambridge, Massachusetts towards the end of high school.
Speaking both French and Spanish at home, I had always been interested in pursuing linguistics and integrating languages in my work. During the summer of 2023, I interned for Americans for Immigrant Justice, a non-profit in Miami, Florida. I was a legal assistant and helped with various forms and motions for court as well as interviewed clients over the phone and in person at Broward Transitional Center. All of our clients were detained immigrants seeking legal advice. I conducted one-hour interviews with each of them, often translating between French, Spanish, and English, before passing along their information to our staff attorneys who provided legal advice. Although fascinated by immigration law, I have had most of my experience working for organizations in the criminal justice system. I interned for the Emancipating Initiative, a non-profit in Boston with the goal of ending life sentences without parole. I was able to speak with our founder, Derrick Washington, who is currently incarcerated, about our goals and initiatives as an organization. I worked alongside staff attorneys who provided legal advice and aid to our clients behind bars. I also volunteered for a UCLA Law data project that helped track COVID-19 cases and vaccination rates behind bars in various ICE detention facilities during the summer of 2021.
On campus, I am the vice president of Princeton Students for Immigrant Empowerment (PSIE) and the French Language Head for the Princeton University Language Project (PULP). Through both of these organizations, I have been able to foster my passion for languages and immigration law. I am also part of the staff of our daily newspaper The Daily Princetonian and I copy edit for one of our campus literary journals The Nassau Weekly. I am also a student volunteer for a program called El Centro where I teach English to Princeton University staff and I volunteer with Solidaridad, an immigration organization that does similar work to my internship with Americans for Immigrant Justice.
Through these various experiences, I have learned the importance of communication and dialogue and I am thrilled to join the team. I was introduced to Sherman Teichman through my mother, who was in Sherman’s EPIIC class of 1994. I look forward to learning from my peers and colleagues through the impressive work of the Trebuchet team.
Exodus within Borders: The Uprooted who Never Left Home
In 1998, our EPIIC colloquium/symposium year was Exodus and Exile in which we had dedicated that year to the least protected refugees, IDP’s and worked closely with Roberta Cohen and Francis Deng. Our professional workshop that year was Emerging Issues in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies: What Works and What Does The Future Hold in Bosnia, Kosovo, the Great Lakes, and North Korea? . The 1998 Institute’s Dr. Jean Mayer Award for Global Citizenship was given to Francis Deng.
By Roberta Cohen and Francis M. Deng
According to the United Nations, since October 7, 1.9 million Gazans—representing 85 percent of the strip’s population—have been forced to flee their homes, but remain trapped in the Gaza Strip. Their plight contributes to the growing number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) across the globe. Amid war and conflict, climate-related disasters, and other humanitarian crises, tens of millions of people each year flee their homes to escape danger—but the majority of them never cross international borders. According to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2022 saw a record 71.1 million internally displaced people, more than double the number in 2012.
“These displaced persons are at the greatest risk of starvation, have the highest rates of preventable disease, and are the most vulnerable to human rights abuses,” Roberta Cohen and Francis Deng wrote in a 1998 essay. Deng, a Sudanese diplomat, served as the first Representative of the UN Secretary-General on IDPs, and, from 1994 to 2004, Cohen served as his senior adviser. Together, they helped put the plight of IDPs on the international agenda.
At the time of writing, there were roughly 20 million internally displaced people worldwide, but Cohen and Deng could see that this phenomenon was quickly becoming “the newest global crisis.” And this catastrophe was unfolding under the world’s nose. Unlike refugees, who had a system—however dysfunctional—of international protection and assistance, “those forced from their homes who remain under their government’s jurisdiction are not covered by any international arrangements.” Cohen and Deng argued that when a state failed to provide protection and assistance to its citizens, the international community was obligated to act—even if it meant setting aside principles of sovereignty and noninterference.
Today, the number of IDPs continues to skyrocket, but there is more attention to them at the international level. “The steps taken over 25 years to address their plight must not only be recognized but built upon with urgency,” Cohen wrote in a recent email to Foreign Affairs. In 1998, Cohen and Deng called for “strategies to prevent genocide and other crimes against humanity that lead to displacement.” And Cohen says that this is still what is missing today. There “is too little attention to the political settlements needed to resolve the disputes and inequities at the heart of conflicts causing displacement,” she wrote. “What conflict and displacement cry out for, and for which there is no substitute, are political solutions and reconstruction plans to help reintegrate displaced populations in accord with human rights and humanitarian norms.”
This Month At Abraham Initiatives
The Abraham Initiatives at the Knesset
The Abraham Initiatives hit the ground running in 2024 with meetings at the Knesset. Last week, we took part in the discussion initiated by MK Yoav Segalovich (Yesh Atid) on the issue of private citizen militias, an issue we have been involved with from the beginning. Our co-Director of Public Affairs, Moran Maimoni (pictured above) spoke about the heavy burden being placed on police and communities by the militias.
The Abraham Initiatives is deeply worried about the activities of these unregulated and often armed groups operating on the fault-line between Jewish and Arab communities, especially during a time of war. It is important that the state takes responsibility for the protection of all citizens of Israel.
Despite our strong differences with the current government, we continue to seek opportunities to advance shared society within relevant ministries. Co-CEO Dr. Thabet Abu Rass recently participated in a meeting with Minister of the Interior Moshe Arbel, along with several other officials. At the meeting, the minister stated his desire to cooperate with The Abraham initiatives and promote positive Jewish-Arab relations in Israel during this tense period.
WATCH MORAN'S STATEMENT (HEBREW)
New Policy Reports Issued
Since the current government took office last year, The Abraham Initiatives has invested additional staff time and resources into policy work—to both combat extremist proposals and promote recommendations that will advance shared society.
In the weeks since October 7th, Arab medical professionals have faced unwarranted suspicion and incitement. In response, we issued a detailed policy report to the Ministry of Health and Hospital authorities to ensure that Arab staff can work in an environment free of racism and harassment.
We also issued our final report on crime and violence in Arab communities in 2023. Last year saw the murder rate for Palestinian citizens of Israel more than doubling.
Anti-Racism Education in Pre-Army Academies
The Abraham Initiatives' anti-racism education work in pre-army academies (mechinot) is more important than ever—and we are pleased that we have been able to continue exposing students to the complex and shared reality of Israeli society. Angham Hussiem, our Director of High School Initiatives, recently led a series of meetings with the Lachish mechina in Jerusalem.
Angham, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, is an experienced educator who has forged remarkable connections with pre-army academy students, most of whom are drawn from very different backgrounds. One former student even reached out to Angham after October 7th to check in. She wrote, "For this whole difficult period, what has kept me going is the feeling of the lessons, the thoughts and knowledge that you instilled in me. And mainly the understanding that I have always known—that war is the last option and peace is the ideal."
Training Organizational Consultants
Many critical facets of the Israeli economy and society rely on cooperation within diverse working environments, which have come under strain in recent weeks. Hospitals, universities, municipal governments, and a host of private companies are being confronted with problems that existed before October 7th but have since been exacerbated.
At the end of last year, we developed a training program for management consultants whose clients include organizations with diverse staffs. Our training aims to inculcate expertise in dealing with conflicts or issues in shared work spaces. The model was developed by The Abraham Initiatives' Shahira Shalabi and Dr. Shany Payes, emphasizing flexibility in dealing with a wide range of potential problems.
Ajaita Shah awarded 2024 Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur
Convsiero mentor Ajaita Shah is awarded Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur for the year 2024!
The Schwab Foundation announces their Social Innovators of the Year 2024 recognizing 16 organizations who join a global community of 477 change leaders who are making an impact on over 891 million lives. These awards recognize social innovation over a range of organization sectors, sizes, types, and individuals.
From their newsletter, please read below:
Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 16 January 2024 – From India to Morocco, the United States to Ecuador, the 16 organizations awarded by the Schwab Foundation today are leading the way in advancing equitable access to healthcare, education, finance and law, while empowering women and young people and countering the effects of climate change.
In a world where trust in societal institutions is in decline due to rising geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty, violent conflicts and mounting climate fears, the organizations are part of a global community that offers proven methods for building a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable society.
“The Social Innovators of the Year 2024 represent a diverse group of entrepreneurs and innovators who are driving the change we need to create a more sustainable, inclusive future,” said Hilde Schwab, Co-Founder and Chairperson of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. “The collective potential of this community offers a beacon of hope for acting with purpose and collaboration during uncertain times.”
The 16 award-winners join an existing community of extraordinary organizations whose collective work has improved the lives of more than 890 million people in over 190 countries since 1998. Social innovation has grown significantly over the years, reaching at least 10 million social enterprises worldwide, according to a new study by the Schwab Foundation using globally available data. For over a quarter of a century, the Schwab Foundation has been providing a global platform for social innovators. The 64 organizations awarded by the Schwab Foundation in the past three years alone have created over $900 million of economic value for their communities.
This year's awardees include organizations empowering Indigenous peoples' stewardship of Amazon forests; promoting youth development through sport in Morocco; instilling leadership, innovation and agency in youth to build a culture of peace in Colombia; and using technology to bring legal services to a million citizens of Uganda to access their rights. The list of winners also includes pioneering corporate initiatives demonstrating a more impactful approach to business, and public sector leaders championing the social economy.
“Increasingly, the world is recognizing the contribution of the social and solidarity economy towards sustainable development, with the United Nations calling on governments to implement policies supporting social enterprise and other social economy actors,” said François Bonnici, Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. “There is a pressing need for the kind of deep change this year’s innovators provide to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.”
The 2024 awardees are awarded across four categories:
Social Entrepreneurs
Employing innovative, market-based approaches to directly address social issues.
Ajaita Shah, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Frontier Markets (India), an Indian social commerce platform that works with and for women to offer an essential last-mile connection to rural households. Using convenient smartphone technology, it helps a fast-growing community of women entrepreneurs connect to more than 1 million women customers in thousands of villages. It aims to serve 100 million rural households by 2030. Shah has more than 18 years’ experience working in rural India through microfinance, rural distribution, marketing and building gender-inclusive business models.
(Mohamed) Amine Zariat, Founder, Tibu Africa (Morocco), a non-governmental organization that is pioneering social innovation through sport. A former international basketball player, he founded TIBU Morocco in 2010, which has now become Tibu Africa. His organization aims to unlock the potential of young people and women across the continent and has a vision to become the locomotive of development through sport in Africa by 2030. In addition to his experience as a top sportsman, Zariat has held several leadership positions in educational organizations in Morocco.
Catalina Cock Duque, Co-Founder of Fundación Mi Sangre (Colombia), a social organization dedicated to helping new generations build a culture of peace in the country. It works to develop life, leadership and social entrepreneurship skills in young people, while activating systems that will enable their participation and amplify their voice. Mi Sangre began its journey by improving care for victims of violence, but has since established itself as a systemic transformation model, impacting more than 2 million people in Colombia. Cock Duque has over 25 years of experience catalysing systemic change and is a serial social entrepreneur.
Gerald Abila, Founder of BarefootLaw (Uganda), a non-profit group based in Uganda that uses innovative digital technology to empower people with free legal information and advance access to justice across Africa. It helps people and communities resolve legal issues and disputes on a pro bono basis through a full-time team of trained attorneys, supported by an AI lawyer called Winnie. Over the past decade, it has grown from a simple Facebook page to a hi-tech legal advice service, which has assisted approximately 1 million people. Abila has also established a presence in The Hague to spread the message about legal tech in Africa.
Rudayna Abdo, Founder, Chief Executive Officer and President of Thaki (Lebanon), a social impact non-profit organization that delivers learning tools to schools catering to refugee and vulnerable children in the Middle East. By taking used computer hardware and ed-tech software, it has delivered hope and educational opportunities to tens of thousands of children since its foundation in 2015. It works in partnership with companies that donate their second-hand electronic devices. Abdo previously had a successful career tackling housing, land use and urban transportation issues in North America and the Middle East.
Shuchin Bajaj, Founder and Director of Ujala Cygnus Hospitals (India), which operates 20 hospitals in New Delhi, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Haryana, providing super-speciality and emergency healthcare in parts of India where no such facilities exist. It aims to expand to 25 hospitals offering 2,500 beds by the end of 2025. In addition to being an eminent physician, Bajaj is also an investor in health tech. He is part of the founding team of Medpho, a digital health start-up providing quality healthcare to left-behind communities, which is already ensuring surgeries to hundreds of patients per month at zero out-of-pocket cost.
Temie Giwa-Tubosun, Chief Executive Officer of LifeBank Group (Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia), Africa’s foremost healthcare technology and logistics company, with operations in 11 cities across Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia. LifeBank provides end-to-end services to healthcare facilities in multiple segments, including the distribution of blood, oxygen, medical consumables and medical equipment. Giwa-Tubosun has extensive health management experience having previously worked with the UK Department for International Development, World Health Organization, United Nations Development Programme and Lagos State Government, among others.
Xia Li, Founder of Shenzhen Power-Solution (China), a Chinese supplier of off-grid solar home systems designed for the 730 million people worldwide who lack access to electricity and rely on candles and kerosene for lighting. To date, her company has provided solar-powered light to nearly 50 million people in more than seven million households, with a heavy focus on sub-Saharan Africa. In the process, it has protected tens of thousands of children from respiratory diseases caused by using kerosene and candles. She was inspired to bring solar lighting to the poor after visiting India’s slums in 2007.
Public Social Innovators
Working to create better policy environments and public programmes within institutions of government.
Chantal Line Carpentier, Head of the Trade, Environment, Climate Change and Sustainable Development branch of the UN Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) Division on International Trade and Commodities (Switzerland). She was previously Chief of UNCTAD’s New York Office of the Secretary-General. Line Carpentier is a campaigner for new economic models of sustainable development, and an advocate of the critical role of small businesses and entrepreneurs in the economic empowerment of women. She also chairs the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on the Social and Solidarity Economy.
Ibu Vivi Yulaswati, Director of Indonesia’s Ministry of National Development Planning and Head of the National Secretariat for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (Indonesia). She has extensive experience in developing poverty reduction programmes in the country, including working on subsidy reforms, community development and conditional cash transfer projects. She has also been involved in developing Indonesia’s National Social Security System and has been instrumental in a range of other initiatives covering financial inclusion, social protection and the use of big data for research.
Juan Martinez Louvier, General Director of the National Institute for Social Economy (Mexico) in the Mexican government, responsible for designing, implementing and evaluating national public policies aimed at promoting the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). He is a passionate believer in creating market enterprises with a social mission that can combat inequality and poverty. His team fosters SSE enterprises in both rural and urban areas that address gender issues, overhaul healthcare systems, create collaborative energy initiatives, facilitate internet access and help preserve wildlife.
Corporate Social Innovators
Using their influence to make companies more inclusive and purposeful.
Saugata Banerjee, Global Head of Sustainable Programming (Singapore) at leading eyewear group EssilorLuxottica. An industry veteran, based in Singapore, he has championed innovations in affordable eye care as part of the company’s ambition to help eliminate uncorrected poor vision around the world within a generation. In 2012, he pioneered the Eye Mitra programme, which trains young people to become primary vision care micro-entrepreneurs in rural India. The scheme has since been extended to countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Kenya and is now the world’s largest rural optical network.
Ruchika Singhal, President of Medtronic LABS (USA), a non-profit offshoot of medical technology group Medtronic that incubates new ideas for global health access. She leads a team of more than 100 technologists, designers and field operations experts across the US, Africa and Asia, designing and implementing healthcare delivery models for under-served communities. LABS has reached more than one million people by leveraging cutting-edge digital technologies to improve clinical outcomes through optimal utilization of limited healthcare system resources. Singhal previously worked at Medtronic for 14 years in various roles.
Collective Social Innovators
Bringing together organizations to solve complex problems that cannot be tackled by individual actors.
Financing Alliance for Health (Kenya), led by Chief Executive Officer Angela Gichaga. The Financing Alliance for Health is an Africa-based, African-led partnership collaborating with governments, donors and the private sector to address systemic financing challenges around scaling primary and community health programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. It works with ministries of health and finance to develop community health strategies and secure necessary funding.
Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance (Ecuador/Peru), led by Domingo Peas Nampichkai, President of the Governing Board, Atossa Soltani, Director of Global Strategy, and Belén Páez, Secretary-General. The alliance brings together 30 Indigenous nations in Ecuador and Peru to protect 35 million hectares of tropical rainforests and make them off-limits to industrial-scale resource extraction. It advocates a new economic model that prioritizes the well-being of Indigenous communities and the ecological integrity of the whole bioregion.
StriveTogether (United States) led by Jennifer Blatz, President and Chief Executive Officer, Vanessa Carlo-Miranda, Chief Operating Officer, and Colin Groth, Chief Advancement Officer. StriveTogether is a network of nearly 70 communities across the US working to build a world where a child’s potential is not dictated by race, ethnicity, personal circumstance, or zip code. It provides coaching and resources to eliminate inequities in education, housing and other areas, and its Cradle to Career Network reaches 14 million young people – more than half of them children of colour.
Lucy Kaplansky's Upcoming Performance in Portsmouth
War | Zeitgest - Sai University Student-Run Journal (Chennai, India)
Zeitgest is a Sai University (based in Chennai, India) student-run journal dedicated to critical issues on global affairs. This journal is the first volume published in September 2023 containing a collection of 12 academic articles, exploring the thematic area of war and conflict as well as their influences on geopolitics. With a focus on the Russia-Ukraine war, this collection dates the span of March 2022 — March 2023, shedding light on confrontation and its rippling effects.
Jonathan Wolff
Jonathan Wolff is a doctoral candidate at Boston College and is the Clinical Research Coordinator for the Ressler Lab and the Dissociative Disorders and Trauma Research Program. He has conducted research on subtypes of PTSD and dissociative disorders, policies and practices of domestic violence shelters, and sexual trauma experiences among racial-minority men. He has worked in community mental health, psychiatric inpatient, and college counseling settings primarily with individuals that have suffered violence. His research aims to center peoples’ voices and experiences, reduce stigma, and improve care. Prior to his clinical research roles, he worked as a Mental Health Specialist (counselor) on the inpatient Dissociative Disorders and Trauma Unit at McLean Hospital where he maintains a per-diem position. The clinical research studies he works on examine the phenomenology, neurobiology, physiology, and genetics of individuals with histories of trauma. Jonathan received his B.S. in Clinical Psychology from Tufts University. I am currently a PhD candidate in counseling psychology at Boston College. My academic research has been focused on the psychology of trauma, the ways individuals’ context and social location (e.g., class, culture, disability) influence their experiences of psychological trauma, and psychoanalytic practice. With respect to practice, I am passionate about community mental health work and dehumanization reduction efforts.
I was introduced to Sherman by Amit Paz in my first week as an undergraduate at Tufts. I immediately felt that Sherman greatly cared about me and my academic pursuits. He served as a model of academic passion for me, and he introduced me to the brilliant Justine Hardy who I was very fortunate to work with in Kashmir through an IGL scholarship. Sherman and Justine’s generous care and wisdom will always remain with me.
I had the privilege of having Jonathan as a member of the Institute. One of the most thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive and modest students I have had in decades, he worked with Convisero mentor Justine Hardy in her Healing Kashmir program in Srinagar. He was a Synaptic Scholar in 2014 who presented on “Bits: the Statue of Liberty and the Statue of Responsibility."
Global Maritime Accord - Academy Webinar
1,000 Israeli Musicians Calling the World to Bring Hostages Back Home
International Student/Young Pugwash Report and Reflections
ISYP Report & Reflections
This past year as well as the past few years have been particularly challenging as well as fruitful. The complexities and multitude of conflicts, existential risks and wars have challenged the ISYP leadership team on personal levels as well as the implementation of the work that we aspire to do. Nevertheless, ISYP has grown its leadership team and community, its outreach and work on diverse topics, which stands as a testament to our collective resilience and dedication.
As our mission statement, ISYP seeks to provide students and young professionals with opportunities to engage in cross-national dialogue and cooperation on issues at the nexus of science, ethics and security. ISYP takes an interdisciplinary approach to issues including nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies. In tandem, ISYP creates a space for its members to develop personal relationships and to understand “the other”—thereby nurturing common understanding. Later on, as these individuals gain influence, their cross-national relationships become crucial for policymaking that promotes peace. These goals are pursued in the spirit of the Pugwash network’s founding document, the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which reads: “Remember your humanity and forget the rest.”
It has become ever more crucial as well as challenging to fulfil this mission. We thank you for your interest and support; and, despite the many disheartening developments worldwide, we are more committed than ever to advancing our mission and are eager to share our progress and future endeavors with you.
If you want to know more about who we are, what we have been doing over the past 5 years, which projects are ongoing and what new initiatives we will launch, please have a look at our ISYP Report as presented to the Pugwash Council on October 21, 2023.ISYP Report & Reflections
This past year as well as the past few years have been particularly challenging as well as fruitful. The complexities and multitude of conflicts, existential risks and wars have challenged the ISYP leadership team on personal levels as well as the implementation of the work that we aspire to do. Nevertheless, ISYP has grown its leadership team and community, its outreach and work on diverse topics, which stands as a testament to our collective resilience and dedication.
As our mission statement, ISYP seeks to provide students and young professionals with opportunities to engage in cross-national dialogue and cooperation on issues at the nexus of science, ethics and security. ISYP takes an interdisciplinary approach to issues including nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies. In tandem, ISYP creates a space for its members to develop personal relationships and to understand “the other”—thereby nurturing common understanding. Later on, as these individuals gain influence, their cross-national relationships become crucial for policymaking that promotes peace. These goals are pursued in the spirit of the Pugwash network’s founding document, the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which reads: “Remember your humanity and forget the rest.”
It has become ever more crucial as well as challenging to fulfil this mission. We thank you for your interest and support; and, despite the many disheartening developments worldwide, we are more committed than ever to advancing our mission and are eager to share our progress and future endeavors with you.
If you want to know more about who we are, what we have been doing over the past 5 years, which projects are ongoing and what new initiatives we will launch, please have a look at our ISYP Report as presented to the Pugwash Council on October 21, 2023.
Christina Goldbaum
A veteran international correspondent, Christina is currently in Jerusalem with the New York Times Bureau covering the West Bank.
From the New York Times announcement of her assuming their Afghanistan/Pakistan bureau chief. position:
“During her first stint in Afghanistan as a new international correspondent for The Times, Christina Goldbaum was in Kabul the day it fell to the Taliban in August 2021. Ever since, she has written some of the most riveting portraits of the historic changes in Afghanistan, and in neighboring Pakistan. Now, we are excited to announce that she will officially take the title of the challenging role she has filled so well over the past year, as
She has ridden along with smugglers, embedded with rebels, traveled with migrants fleeing Afghanistan, trekked into coal mines, traveled to the frequently shelled borderlands with Pakistan and written a rich, firsthand account of the profound changes in the former government “green zone” in Kabul. Over the fall, she wrote unforgettable dispatches from Qatar during the World Cup. In Pakistan, she authoritatively covered that country’s political crisis and wrote wrenching accounts of life from the hardest-hit flood zones there last year, including the evocative piece about how villages had turned into islands overnight, and how families were haunted by the task of trying to bury their dead after cemeteries had flooded.
In addition to her own top-notch correspondent work, she has been a rock-solid advocate for the safety and well-being both of our former Afghan employees and their families through their relocation to the United States, and for our new journalists in Afghanistan who are working under difficult circumstances.
Christina, who grew up in Bethesda, Md., will also lead The Times’s efforts to open a new bureau in Islamabad, Pakistan, in the coming months.
Before joining The Times on the Metro desk in 2018, Christina reported from sub-Saharan Africa for four years as a freelance correspondent. She also lived in Mogadishu, Somalia, for over a year and received the Livingston Award for International Reporting, the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Frontline Club’s Print Journalism Award for her investigative series that found evidence that a U.S. military operation had resulted in the deaths of Somali civilians.
Her interest in that region dates from her first trip to East Africa as a 17-year-old, moving her to start studying Swahili as an undergraduate at Tufts. She returned several times during her college years and moved there to start work as a freelance correspondent right after graduating.
I had the pleasure of benefitting from Christina’s intelligence and insights as my superb student at the Institute. She completed her undergraduate degree in Political Science and Entrepreneurial Leadership studies at Tufts. She worked in East Africa and Latin America on various development and human rights-focused projects ranging from holistic education programs in Tanzania to the protection of indigenous populations' rights in Bolivia. She has served as the co-director of BUILD, the IGL’s student-led, collaborative rural development organization working with resettled combatants in Guatemala and with a community in Tamil, Nadu India, and was my Undergraduate Coordinator for the Empower Program for Social Entrepreneurship in 2012-13. She also conducted research internationally on public health programs in Rwanda and local perspectives on US military involvement in Uganda and was a member of the EPIIC Colloquium on Conflict in the 21st Century. Her interests include social entrepreneurship, non-fiction story-telling, and the intersection of entrepreneurial and political culture. A quintessential Synaptic Scholar, we had the privilege to fund the to explore the unusual and difficult compelling global issues she chose. She was passionate about her work, and always dignified and sensitive in her pursuits. It came as little surprise to me that she pursued journalism, She was a stellar member of the Institute’s Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice (2010-2018) which I created with VII’s Gary Knight to provide students the skills to explain the world around them to the people around them. The program taught students to shape global issues into multimedia stories that are narrative and compelling.
Already as an undergraduate, her demeanor was always professional and dignified her
She is a picture here awarding one of the Institute’s Dr. Jean Mayer Awards to Mary Kawar.