Simon Taylor of Global Witness Accepts Skoll Award
Speakers
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Simon is a director of the NGO Global Witness (www.globalwitness.org), which he co-founded together with friends and colleagues, Charmian Gooch and Patrick Alley in 1993. Simon is a Steering Committee member of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative (https://fossilfueltreaty.org/steering-committee).
Simon was a co-founder of the Publish What You Pay campaign (www.pwyp.org), in 2002. He has extensive public-interest advocacy & policy making experience across multiple jurisdictions. His work has also sought to hold human rights abusers, the corrupt and corporate criminals to account, including using the law. He was a complainant to the Milan Public Prosecutor, which led to the trial of Shell and Eni for their corrupt deal for the OPL 245 oil block in Nigeria (See public documents: https://shellandenitrial.org/).
Simon, Charmian & Patrick have concluded a succession process at Global Witness, leaving staff in November 2023. They remain on the board.
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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.
