The Power To Lead 2013 SWF Ray Suarez, Gro Brundtland, Vera Cordeiro, Mary Robinson & Lydia Wilbard
Speakers
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Lydia Wilbard is Co-Director of Camfed Tanzania and Co-Founder of the Tanzania chapter of Cama, the pan-African network of educated young women supported by Camfed. Lydia has been central to Camfed Tanzania’s programme of support to 310,512 children and young women, and is a specialist in gender, education and health with a Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. A leader and role model, Lydia grew up in rural Tanzania and has personally overcome the barriers to women’s empowerment.
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VERA CORDEIRO
FOUNDER AND CHAIRWOMAN OF THE BOARD
Doctor Vera received her MD as a general practitioner in 1975 from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). From 1978 to 1998, she worked at the Hospital da Lagoa founding in 1979 the Psychosomatic Department.
In 1991, she founded Dara Institute (ex Associação Saúde Criança), a social organization that uses a pioneering methodology to promote the well-being of socially vulnerable families, with long-term results, proven by researchers at Georgetown University in 2013.
Dara Institute was elected by NGO Advisor in 2021 the best social organization of Latin American and the 20th best of the world.
Dr. Vera is an Ashoka fellow, a Skoll Foundation awardee, Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur, an Avina leader, a member of the World Council of Ashoka, and from 2005-2011 a Board member of PATH: A Catalyst for Global Health.
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Freelance Journalist, Individual
Ray Suarez is a host of the radio and podcast series WorldAffairs, heard on KQED San Francisco and public radio stations around the country, and a Washington reporter for Euronews. He recently completed an appointment as the McCloy Visiting Professor of American Studies at Amherst College. Suarez hosted Inside Story, a daily news program on Al Jazeera America, until the network ceased operation in 2016.
Suarez joined American public television’s nightly newscast, The PBS NewsHour in 1999 and was a senior correspondent until 2013. During his years at the NewsHour he was assigned to cover global health. His reporting from Africa, Asia, and Latin America won many awards. He hosted NPR’s Talk of the Nation from 1993-1999. In more than 40 years in the news business, he has worked as a reporter in London and Rome, as a Los Angeles correspondent for CNN, and for the NBC-owned station WMAQ-TV in Chicago.
Suarez is the author of three books: Latino Americans: The 500 Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation (Penguin, 2013), The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration: 1966-1999, reporting on the causes of the destitution found in American cities after the Second World War, andThe Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America, examining how organized religion and politics intersect in America. His next work, on immigration, political, demographic, and cultural change, will appear in 2023.
He is a contributor to the Oxford Companion to American Politics (June 2012), and many other books, including How I Learned English, Brooklyn: A State of Mind, Saving America's Treasures, and About Men. He’s been published in The New York Times, the Washington Post, Britain's Independent, Harvard University's Nieman Reports, and the Chicago Tribune.
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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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Chair of The Elders, The Elders
Mary Robinson is Adjunct Professor for Climate Justice in Trinity College Dublin and Chair of The Elders. She served as President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002. She is a member of the Club of Madrid and the recipient of numerous honours and awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the President of the United States Barack Obama. Between 2013 and 2016 Mary served as the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy in three roles; first for the Great Lakes region of Africa, then on Climate Change leading up to the Paris Agreement and in 2016 as his Special Envoy on El Niño and Climate. Her Foundation, the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, established in 2010, came to a planned end in April 2019.
A former President of the International Commission of Jurists and former chair of the Council of Women World Leaders she was President and founder of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative from 2002-2010 and served as Honorary President of Oxfam International from 2002-2012. She was Chancellor of the University of Dublin from 1998 to 2019.
Mary Robinson serves as Patron of the International Science Council and Patron of the Board of the Institute of Human Rights and Business, is an Ambassador for The B Team, in addition to being a board member of several organisations including the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the Aurora Foundation. Recently she became joint Honorary President of the Africa Europe Foundation. Mary’s memoir, ‘Everybody Matters’ was published in September 2012 and her book, ‘Climate Justice - Hope, Resilience and the Fight for a Sustainable Future’ was published in September 2018. She is also co-host of a podcast on the climate crisis, called ‘Mothers of Invention’.
