Simon Taylor of Global Witness Accepts Skoll Award
Speakers
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Simon is a co-Founder & Director of Global Witness. He has investigated malfeasance of the extractives industries - oil, gas and mining sectors over the past 25 years and campaigned to hold them to account. He is a conceiver and co-founder of the International Publish What You Pay (www.pwyp.org) Campaign. Simon is currently focussed on accountability of the fossil fuel industry, in particular related to the climate crisis, and their serially corrupt business practices and lax environmental controls. Simon is a Steering Committee member of the Fossil Fuel non-Proliferation Treaty campaign.
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Charmian Gooch jointly led Global Witness's first campaign, exposing the trade in timber between the Khmer Rouge and Thai logging companies and their political and military backers. Subsequently, Charmian developed and launched Global Witness’s ground-breaking campaign to combat ‘blood diamonds’; Global Witness was nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize as a result of this work.
In 2014 Charmian was awarded the TED Prize, given to an ‘extraordinary individual with a creative and bold vision to spark global change’. In the same year, Charmian along with Global Witness co-founders Patrick Alley and Simon Taylor, received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, awarded to ‘transformative leaders who are disrupting the status quo’. She was also named one of Fast Company’s 100 most creative people in business and is a Young Global Leader Alumni.
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Patrick is one of the three founders of Global Witness. Founded in 1993 Global Witness has become one of the world’s leading investigative organisations dedicated to rooting out corruption and environmental and human rights abuses around the world, with Patrick taking part in over fifty field investigations in South East Asia, Africa and Europe.
Taking the findings to lawmakers and into the boardrooms of multinational companies Patrick and his colleagues have challenged the assumption that you can’t change things. Global Witness now has major focus on tackling the climate crisis.
Patrick is the author of Very Bad People, published in 2022, which charts some of Global Witness’ key investigations.
Alongside his two co-founders Patrick received the 2014 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the same year that Global Witness won the TED Prize. Global Witness was nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for their work exposing the murderous trade in blood diamonds.
