I was honored to attend the 2014 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which wraps up a season of predictions for the year ahead and helps set the coming agenda for world business, civil society and political leaders. Continue reading “Davos 2014: Takeaways for the Year to Come”
Author: Michele
Confronting a Superstorm of Challenges: A New American Grand Strategy
I was honored to moderate this year’s Tisch Forum on Public Health at Hunter College Roosevelt House, “Confronting a Superstorm of Challenges: A New American Grand Strategy,” on November 18, 2013.
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Will US Intervene in Syria?
On CNBC Squawk on the Street August 29, 2013, I raised the possibility of an intervention by Russia, Iran and/or China to secure a solution for Syria that would avoid a US military intervention. Here’s the clip.
Davos 2013: Black Swans and Gray Rhinos
Gray Rhinos are highly probable, high impact crises. Introducing a framework for dealing with these seemingly obvious but nevertheless very poorly handled events, I delivered this address at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 26, 2013.
CNN: Lean In to Learn from Global Examples of Women
CNN In America asked me to put the brouhaha over Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, Lean In, into a global context. Here’s what I came up with:
Opinion: Lean in to learn from global examples of women
March 8, 2013
(CNN) – The courage of women like Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old student leader in Pakistan who was shot and nearly died for fighting for girls’ right to education; Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who endured nearly 15 years of house arrest because of her stand for democracy in Myanmar; and of precedent-setting presidents like Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil is inspirational.
America’s women and work discussion could take a lesson from other countries.
Americans make plenty of pronouncements about why countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia should let women go to school, drive cars and have many of the rights American women take for granted.
But focusing exclusively on the extreme examples of restrictions on women’s rights elsewhere provides a convenient way to overlook the ways we could do better here at home.
Davos 2013 -Balance Short with Long Term Thinking
My biggest takeaway from the 2013 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos was that we need to find ways to encourage long-term thinking -and acting. Read more HERE in this February 5th post to the World Economic Forum blog.
Down with Short Termism; Long Live the Long Term
If only I had a nickel for every time during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2013 that participants held up short-term thinking and actions as the bogeyman standing in the way of the Meeting’s Holy Grail: dynamic resilience.
Delivering a scathing assessment of the European Union’s response to the euro crisis, especially in the early stages, Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti blamed it for short-term thinking when “leadership is the opposite of short termism.” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde similarly urged longer-term policy strategies: “If we look beyond the short term, we would indeed move past the crisis,” she said.
This is hardly the first time anyone has criticized short-term thinking as a danger. But the chorus of voices creates a real opportunity to move from talking to doing. Let’s use it to create the right incentives to encourage politicians, businesses, investors – and, for that matter, individuals – to think and act for the long term as well as for immediate priorities.
Continue reading “Davos 2013 -Balance Short with Long Term Thinking”
Elected to Serve Far Away -Wall Street Journal
Three Dominicans living in New Jersey were elected recently to national legislative positions in the Dominican Republic, created precisely so that the country’s diaspora will be represented
Sumathi Reddy writes about this phenomonenon in the July 31 Wall Street Journal article, “Elected to Serve Far Away,” in which she quotes me about the significance of diaspora elected officials: “Michele Wucker, president of the World Policy Institute, said countries ‘have been reaching out to diaspora, increasingly offering them seats in Congress…, recognizing their remittances, their technical skills and their international networks are all important assets.’ ” More than a dozen countries have created similar positions, mostly over the past several years.
Those of you who have read my first book, Why the Cocks Fight, may recall the profile of a Dominican living in Washington Heights who ran for the equivalent of a seat in Congress from his home province in the Dominican Republic, but pledged to represent the more than one million Dominicans estimated to have been living in the United States and Canada at the time. More than a decade later, the country will finally be giving formal representation to these “dominicanos ausentes.”
Closing the Gender Gap
The media frenzy over the naming of YGL Marissa Mayer as CEO of Yahoo drew attention to the challenges women leaders face, as personal decisions become fodder for other people’s agendas. It also set the stage for the second Silicon Valley Summit July 24-27, in which I participated with about 100 other World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders.
Discussions on two panel sessions and throughout the gathering took up the challenge of closing the gender gap –a particularly salient issue in the tech industry. Not just a women’s issue, the gender gap affects business competitiveness and the health and success of every single man, woman, and child everywhere in the world.
Read more on the World Economic Forum blog