On Wednesday night I had the honor of attending the Children’s Defense Fund‘s New York “Beat the Odds” awards ceremony for five high school seniors who have done just that. It was an extremely well orchestrated affair, featuring a number of distinguished speakers like Harry Belafonte, Whoopi Goldberg and the organization’s president, Marian Wright Edelman.
A few years ago after giving a talk at Cornell University, I asked a group of students what they were doing to change the world. The answer was a collective shrug by almost everyone present, and when one girl remarked that she just felt overwhelmed, everyone pretty much agreed. This aimlessness really got to me,
After spending the last few months studying bold new ideas that could make a big difference to the planet and its inhabitants (beyond what I have been doing with Greenopolis and RecycleBank), I am happy to report that innovation is now more “in” than ever. In fact, our society appears to be every bit as
Over the Thanksgiving holiday I was able to take a few moments to focus on the global changes we will start to see as China, India and the Southern Hemisphere replace the U.S. and Europe as the world’s dominant economic powers. One startling statistic from a recently published McKinsey Study on resources was that three
On a recent trip to South America, I was walking down a street outside Buenos Aires when I noticed gardeners engaging in a very strange motion — exercising their back muscles by pulling this pole towards them while making a kind of pleasant, rhythmic sound as they moved across the area. At first, I was
Recently I wrote a blog on the great perspectives of big thinkers like Bill McDonough and Tony Michaels. But today, I want to talk about the kinds of perspectives we can gain from those individuals with a special gift for conveying and receiving emotional signals in unique ways that so often go unacknowledged. I’m talking
Last month I arrived at JFK Airport smiling and feeling especially mellow. Now, keep in mind that I had just spent five-and-a-half hours awake but for the most part in a confined position, which ordinarily I would consider a form of torture. So as I proceeded to make my way into Manhattan, I reflected on