PASSION AND PERSEVERANCE: FROM THE FRONTLINE – Skoll World Forum 2013
Speakers
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Bill Strickland is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Manchester Bidwell Corporation and its subsidiaries, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, Bidwell Training Center, and National Center for Arts and Technology. His duties include developing and implementing major fund-raising plans of action; working with Boards of Directors and Industrial Advisory Boards; encouraging participation of corporate executive officials from major multi-national Pittsburgh corporations
Strickland was born in Pittsburgh in 1947 and graduated from David B. Oliver High School in 1965. In 1969, he earned a bachelor’s degree in American history and foreign relations from the University of Pittsburgh and graduated cum laude. In 1968, he founded Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, assumed leadership of Bidwell Training Center. Inc. in 1972 and founded National Center for Arts and Technology in 2007.
Throughout his distinguished career, Strickland has been honored with numerous prestigious awards for his contributions to the arts and the community including receiving the Key to the City of Pittsburgh (August 2018) and in 1996, the MacArthur “Genius” Award for leadership and ingenuity in the arts.
In January 2012, Bill Strickland was selected to serve on the Task Force for Child Protection by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, received the GOI Peace Award in 2011, served on the White House Council for Community Solutions in December 2010, served as Chairman of the Expansion Arts Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in Washington, D.C. and served a six-year Presidential appointment as a Council Member to the NEA. In 2002, Strickland was sworn in as a member of the Presidents Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
Strickland currently holds 22 honorary doctorates, is the author of Make the Impossible Possible and is working to replicate Manchester Bidwell model in cities throughout the US and internationally.
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Former Prime Minister of Norway and Deputy Chair, The Elders
Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway, served as Director General of the World Health Organization from July 1998-2003. From 2007-2009, she was the UN Secretary-General`s Special Envoy for Climate Change. Dr. Brundtland has served on the UN Secretary-General`s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability since its launch in August 2010. As Deputy Chair of The Elders, she contributes her wisdom, independent leadership and integrity to tackling the world’s toughest problems, with the aim of making the world a better place.
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Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to improving health care for the world's poorest people. He is Co-founder and Chief Strategist of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct health care services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. Dr. Farmer and his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad have pioneered novel community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings.
Dr. Farmer holds an M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he is the Kolokotrones University Professor and the Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School; he is also Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. Additionally, Dr. Farmer serves as the United Nations Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.
Dr. Farmer has written extensively on health, human rights, and the consequences of social inequality. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, the Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award from the American Medical Association, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and, with his PIH colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Mabel van Oranje is a global advocate for equality, justice and freedom and serial entrepreneur for social change. During the last decade, she played a catalytic role in the creation and growth of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, the Girls First Fund and VOW for Girls. Mabel is currently a board member of Fondation Chanel, the Lego Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust and VOW for Girls (chair). She is also an advisor to Apolitical Academy Global, Co-Impact’s Gender Fund, Global Witness, the Graca Machel Trust and The Elders. Mabel is a champion of Girls Not Brides, and a co-founder and chair emeritus of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
You can follow her tweets @MabelvanOranje
