Last week, I had the privilege of attending the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in New York City. I was honored to receive a scholarship from the Foundation to attend. For those of you who are not familiar with CGI, it was established by President Bill Clinton in 2005, as an initiative of the Clinton Foundation. CGI convenes global leaders to create and implement new solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. The annual CGI meetings bring together heads of state, Nobel Prize laureates, corporate CEOs, foundation and NGO heads, and major philanthropists. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Reimagining Impact.” The goal was to guide CGI members in better measuring and assessing the outcomes of their work, and rethinking how we create value through new approaches to address complex global challenges going forward.
Before I share my personal highlights of CGI, I want to share the commitment that PCV made as part of our participation. Entitled Empowering Entrepreneurs Through Skills-Based Volunteering, PCV committed to expanding our Business Advising platform— www.businessadvising.pcv.wpengine.com– nationally and, as a result, to working with 600 companies and creating 800 new jobs by the end of 2015. If you are business professional, you can help us meet this goal by signing up to be a business advisor. If you are an entrepreneur and would like some help growing your business, sign up as a small business owner.
I was fortunate to hear numerous amazing speakers during the week: President Clinton; Secretary Clinton; President Obama; Alibaba CEO Jack Ma; IBM CEO Ginni Rometti; World Bank President Jim Yong Kim; and the list goes on. Here are a few of the quotes and moments that stuck with me, and why.
“Growth and comfort never coexist.” —Ginni Rometti, CEO, IBM
PCV has grown significantly over the past several years. We’ve added SAIL, our small business loan fund, taken our business advising program online to scale it nationally, and established ourselves as a thought leader, helping investors and policymakers deploy more capital, more effectively to create jobs in low income communities. And, for the most part, the PCV team has had a great time making this growth happen—but it’s been anything but comfortable! Of course, like everyone, I like to be comfortable at times—we all need to restore and renew ourselves. But I agree—growth and comfort rarely co-exist—and comfort and boredom are never far apart!
“Optimism is the moral choice.” —Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank
I have had numerous conversations about this quote in the past week. I noticed that it was tweeted extensively—so clearly I’m not the only one who was impacted by it. Optimism is definitely a choice, but is it the “moral” choice? As I think about it, I believe it is. One is never empowered or inspired to action from a place of pessimism. We can only improve ourselves and world from a place of empowerment and inspiration. We all have an obligation to work to improve ourselves and our world. Ergo, optimism is the moral choice.
“A strong civil society is a matter of national security.” —President Obama
Whatever you think about President Obama, he is 100% correct here. A strong civil society—of which Pacific Community Ventures is proud to be part—is a critical tool to holding governments’ feet to the fire, keeping policymakers accountable. Civil society is also a “breeding ground” for innovative ideas for addressing old problems, ideas that government can then bring to scale. Without a strong civil society, there can be no sense of true community, no free expression, no force to keep authorities in line. Ultimately, the lack of strong civil society becomes an issue of national security.
“If you have dreams, you are young. If you don’t, you are old.” —(Paraphrased) 91 year-old President Shimon Peres, Israel, Nobel Laureate (Nobel Peace Prize 1994).
This is perhaps my favorite, said by one of my heroes. At 91, President Peres still walks with a bounce in his step. He was full of energy, articulate and sharp as a tack. He noted that he gets up at 4:30am every day, in order to read for a couple hours before going to work. At the moment, he is reading up on current research in brain science! While I don’t have his exact quote about dreams, basically what said was that even at 91 he still has purpose, things he wants to accomplish, dreams that keep him active and young. Without dreams, we all die.
May we all DREAM ON!