BBC Forum: Is Heroism Obsolete?
Video Description
At this panel at the Skoll World Forum 2011, this intellectually provocative conversation centers around the question, “Is Heroism Obsolete?” Drawing upon themes relevant for social entrepreneurs, host and BBC correspondent Bridget Kendall engages participants and audience members in this special taping of the acclaimed BBC Forum radio programme airing to 40 million globally.
Speakers
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Ms. Roshaneh Zafar is the founder and managing director of Kashf Foundation which is Pakistan’s first specialized microfinance institution catering exclusively to women. Through her work, Ms Zafar has demonstrated the business case for investing in women led microfinance and shown that a scalable impact driven program can work in Pakistan. Ms. Zafar started her career as a Women in Development specialist for the World Bank and soon realized that to truly change womens lives economic access was pivotal which led her to founding Kashf Foundation. Ms. Zafar sits on several board and committees where she advocates gender mainstreaming and client centricity. Ms. Zafar has been recognized for her work via multiple awards and accolades including the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Skoll Award, Schwabb Foundation Award, Vital Voices Award and others. Ms. Zafar holds a Masters degree in Development Economics from Yale University and a Bachelors degree in Finance and Economics from the Wharton Business School.
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President, Library Foundation of Los Angeles
Kenneth S. Brecher is president of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. He was formerly executive director of the Sundance Institute, president of the William Penn Foundation, director of the Boston Children’s Museum, and associate artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum. An anthropologist by training, Brecher was an honors graduate of Cornell and a Rhodes Scholar. He has received numerous fellowships, including a research grant from the Getty Center for Education in the Arts and a Ford Foundation Fellowship for his study of Amazonian tribesmen. He has lectured and published widely and served as an international consultant on challenges facing arts leadership. He has been a keynote speaker at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship and played a central role in organizing the closing plenary on the importance of activist artists in social change.
He is the author of Too Sad to Sing: A Memoir with Postcards and editor of the classic Xingu: The Indians and Their Myths, by Orlando and Claudio Villas Boas. His installation “The Little Room of Epiphanies” was at the Santa Monica Museum of Art.
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Dr. Larry Brilliant is a physician and epidemiologist, CEO of Pandefense Advisory, senior advisor at the Skoll Foundation and a CNN Medical Analyst. Previously on the boards of the Skoll Foundation and the NGO Ending Pandemics; president and CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund; vice president of Google, and founding executive director of Google.org. He co-founded the Seva Foundation. Earlier, he co-founded The Well, a progenitor of today's social media platforms. He was an associate professor of epidemiology and international health planning at the University of Michigan. He lived in India for nearly a decade where he was a key member of the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme for SE Asia as well as the WHO Polio Eradication Programme. He was the founding chairman of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee (NBAS); member of the World Economic Forum's Agenda Council on Catastrophic Risk; and a "First Responder" for CDC's bio-terrorism response effort. He is also an author.
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Diplomatic Correspondent and Presenter, BBC
Bridget Kendall is BBC Diplomatic Correspondent, covering major international developments, with a particular interest in Russia. She is also host of The Forum, the flagship ideas programme for the BBC World Service.
