Thursday, March 27, 2008
Empathy And Ethics: Drivers Of Our Shifting Culture
Session Description
Technology has increased the flow of information and made our decision-making more transparent. This rapid shift presents us with an historic opportunity to create a global culture driven by the need for trust and inclusion. This is why it is so important for those who are defi ning the world’s future structures to consciously build the ethical skills necessary into their designs. The building of empathetic ethics has to begin with individuals and quickly move into the organisations we lead and ultimately the societies we serve. How are we doing this? And, more importantly, how do we make this happen more quickly?
When | Where
10:00 - 12:00
Thursday, March 27
Session leaders
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Founder and CEO, Ashoka
As the founder and CEO of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, Bill Drayton has pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship, growing a global association of over 3,600 leading social entrepreneurs who work together to create an ‘Everyone a Changemaker’ world. Mr. Drayton is the Chair of Youth Venture, Community Greens, and Get America Working!, and previously served as Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, founded Save EPA, and worked at McKinsey. He is a graduate of Harvard, Balliol College at Oxford University, and Yale Law School.
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Founder and Executive Director, Sports4Kids
Jill C. Vialet is the founder and Executive Director of Sports4Kids. Jill has worked for more than 20 years in the non-profit sector, during which she focused her entrepreneurial skills on conceiving of and growing two non-profit organisations. Jill launched Sports4Kids in 1996 with two schools in Berkeley, California. Currently the organisation brings play and physical activities to more than 115 schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, Baltimore, Maryland, Boston, Massachusetts and Washington, DC with plans to expand to Charlotte, NC this coming school year. Prior to Sports4Kids, Jill founded the Museum of Children’s Art (mocha) in Oakland, California. Jill served as the Executive Director at mocha for nine years, ultimately expanding its programs to reach 20,000 young people each year. Jill was a Eureka Fellow from 2000 to 2001, and in 2004 she was selected as an Ashoka Fellow.
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Director, News & Knowledge Initiative, Ashoka
Keith Hammonds is a writer and editor based outside New York City. He is team leader for Ashoka’s journalism fellows initiative, a new programme funded by the Knight Foundation to identify, seed, and connect social entrepreneurs in the realm of journalism. Hammonds was previously executive editor at Fast Company magazine, where he helped shape editorial strategy – and where he co-founded the Fast Company / Monitor Group Social Capitalist Awards. Over eight years, he wrote many of Fast Company’s defining articles, including: “Why We Hate HR,” “Balance is Bunk,” “Size is not a Strategy,” and “The New Face of Global Competition.” Hammonds also has been a bureau chief and editor for BusinessWeek in Boston and New York; a writer for The New York Times in London and Johannesburg; a consultant to New Nation in Johannesburg; director of an emergency food distribution program in Namibia; and (currently) coach of the Firebolts, a fearsome girls soccer team.
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Executive Director, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
Kirk Hanson is Executive Director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, and holds the John Courtney Murray, S.J. Endowed University Professorship. He retired after 23 years teaching at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2001 to head the Markkula Center, one of the most active ethics centers in the world with a staff of 26. He has expanded the Center's staff, budget and influence in his 15 years there. The Center has programs in business ethics, medical and health care ethics, government ethics, nonprofit ethics, internet ethics, technology ethics, media ethics, and character development.
Hanson writes on managing the ethical and public behavior of corporations and other complex organizations. He recently co-edited a four-volume series titled The Accountable Corporation. His current research interests include the design of corporate ethics programs and the responsibilities of boards for the ethical culture of their organizations. He has always been fascinated by ethical issues which arise in Silicon Valley companies and life.
Hanson has been an ethics consultant to over 100 public corporations, government entities and nonprofit organizations. He has served on the boards of several foundations and nonprofit organizations, and currently serves on the board of the Skoll Community Fund, one of two entities which make up the Skoll Foundation.
Hanson received the 1997 John Gardner Award from the American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley for contributions to the Silicon Valley community, the 2007 Aspen Institute Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to the study of business and society, and the 2012 Master Ethics Teacher Award from Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Business. In May 2013 he received an honorary doctorate and was the commencement speaker at the University of Portland.
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Founder and President, Roots of Empathy
Mary Gordon is Founder and President of Roots of Empathy, a citizen-sector organisation harnessing the power of the parent-infant attachment relationship to build empathy in elementary school children. This programme – evidence-based to reduce aggression and bullying – has reached hundreds of thousands of children on three continents. An internationally recognised social entrepreneur, educator, author and child advocate, Mary is an Ashoka Globalizer Fellow and in 2011 received a Manning Innovation Award as Canada’s top social innovator.
