We are pleased to introduce a unique group of global young leaders who will participate in the 2012 Legatum Institute Summer School. The finalists were selected from hundreds of global applicants and include government advisors, elected officials, entrepreneurs, NGO leaders, university professors, authors, playwrights, journalists, and film producers. Selections were made based on professional accomplishments and a commitment to exploring cross-disciplinary solutions to current global challenges.
The Summer School aims to be a place of fusion and fission bringing together up and coming global leaders and a world-class faculty across disciplines and generations. This year’s inaugural event will explore the question ‘What makes civilizations flourish – and fail?’, and the week-long curriculum will address today’s global economic and political issues through a prism of history, culture, politics and science. The program also entails a comprehensive mentor and alumni program to create lasting networks in support of careers and professional development.
The participants will be joined by an outstanding faculty, including Sylvia Nasar, best-selling author and Professor of Business Journalism at Columbia University; Vali Nasr, Professor at Tufts University and designated Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; Dorothy Kosinski, Director of the Philips Collection in Washington, D.C.; John Hale, archaeologist and Director of the Liberal Studies Program at the University of Louisville; Robert Kagan, best-selling author and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; Anne Applebaum, Director of Political Studies at the Legatum Institute, Washington Post columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning author; Gungwu Wang, Chairman of the East Asian Institute and University Professor at the National University of Singapore; William Connell, Professor of History at Seton Hall University; author and historian Hywel Williams; Robert Hahn, Director of Political Studies at the Legatum Institute, and Psychiatrist and author Iain McGilchrist.
The Legatum Institute Summer School will take place from 30 July to 5 August 2012 at the Castiglion del Bosco estate in Tuscany, Italy.
Class of 2012
Reuben Abraham is Assistant Professor and Executive Director of the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions (CEMS) at the Indian School of Business (ISB), where he serves on the Next Generation Leaders Board of the school. He was selected as a 2009 World Economic Forum Global Leader. A TED Global Fellow in 2007, he now sits on the TED Fellows Advisory Board, and is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. He is also a founding board member of First Home Realty Solutions, which builds low-income housing across India.
Sumeet Aggarwal is Director in the office of the Executive Chairman at Fortis Healthcare Limited in Singapore, where he leads on collaboration with senior management of subsidiary business units and function heads to align operations with strategy, overseeing strategic projects with the primary focus on initiatives affecting the value chain, global eminence building, external relations and conducting ad-hoc analysis. Prior to joining Fortis, Sumeet worked as a Global Leadership Fellow at the World Economic Forum in New York.
Khairudin Aljunied is Assistant Professor in the Department of Malay Studies at the National University of Singapore. He has a long-standing interest in the history of colonialism and the enduring impact of decolonization in the Malay World, particularly in the areas of identity politics, anti-colonial movements and colonial state practice. At the heart of his research is a preoccupation with how individuals and collectives from different backgrounds interact with one another. More recently, he has worked on a monograph on anti-colonial movements in British Malaya.
Juliet Asante is the founder and President of Assegai, a media production organisation and publisher of Entertainment Today magazine. She is also the founder of the Voice Of Africa Forum, which focuses on closing the gaps between media entrepreneurs and investment. As the founder of Save Our Women International and the Eagle Women Empowerment Club, she works with the Africa Business Women’s Network to impact more than 23,000 women in six countries. She was a member of the Entertainment Council of the World Economic Forum. Juliet has also written and directed long-running shows on Ghana Television.
Dawood Azami is an award winning broadcast journalist working for the BBC World Service in London as a Senior Producer/Desk Editor. Until recently, he was the BBC World Service Bureau Chief and Editor in Kabul, Afghanistan. Dawood is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster, London, where he teaches Globalization, Power and International Governance. He has also taught as a visiting scholar at the Ohio State University, Columbus, USA.
Elana Berkowitz is an Associate at McKinsey & Co. and an adjunct fellow with New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative. Prior to that she served in the Obama Administration, first as Director of Economic Opportunity for the National Broadband Plan at the FCC and then as an Innovation Advisor in Secretary Clinton's office at the Department of State. Elana previously wrote on cultural and political topics for publications including: New York Times, New Republic, Wall Street Journal, Time Out New York, Salon.com, Nylon, and Metropolis.
Cathryn Clüver is the Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School, a project which examines the challenges to negotiation and statecraft in the 21st century. Cathryn has a ten-year career in international journalism and communications, and has served on the management team of the European Policy Centre in Brussels, where she was the Deputy Editor of its public policy journal, Challenge Europe. She is a Truman National Security Fellow where she leads an expert group on transatlantic security issues and writes regularly on the security dimensions of immigration.
Duncan Darroch-Thompson works in Corporate Finance at Evolution Securities China Limited, where he works on outbound Chinese mergers and acquisitions valuing up to £500m, involving large SASAC-controlled SOEs, Chinese listed companies and private enterprises. He has spent the past seven years researching and writing on the rises and falls of the Chinese civilisation, from a cultural, political and an economic perspective. He has also spent time working and studying in China and Taiwan.
Benjamin Dong Wei is an online journalist and website producer for the China Daily website, the digital arm of China’s largest English newspaper. For the past five years, he has been managing coverage of international news, including political, economic and cultural issues. His reports on China’s foreign policy and Cancun climate change negotiations won him two of China’s top news awards respectively in 2009 and 2011.
Ahmed El Mahi is a London-based Consultant at NUR Energie, a start-up multi-technology solar power plant developer in North Africa and Southern Europe. With a previous background in banking, Ahmed chose to refocus his career towards development in Africa, in January 2011, with a focus on the renewable energy and agricultural sectors. He is also a co-founder of Africa-Access, a gateway to investment in Africa. In 2011, he was Executive Producer on a short film, Faisal Goes West, which depicts a Sudanese family’s adjustment to life in the U.S.
Melissa Frakman is Senior Manager for Financial Policy at the U.S-India Business Council, based within the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where she provides strategic advisory services on India to global companies and institutional investors. She has previously worked for Sabre Systems, Inc. as an International Business Consultant, as well as Goldman Sachs on their Global Entrepreneurship Initiative, where she coordinated participation of an Afghan delegation at the U.S. Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship.
Lynda Hammes is Publisher at Foreign Affairs magazine at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has been largely involved in redefining the strategic direction of the magazine including digital initiatives and global expansion. Lynda has also spent time teaching journalism and media studies at the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program of Bard College, and also at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Previous professional experience includes radio production for a Spanish-language daily program at the United Nations.
Raina Kumra is a creative and strategic consultant with over a decade of experience working for some of the largest brands in the world, from the U.S. Government to Nike. She is currently the Director of Innovation at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, where she leads strategy for access, distribution, brand and content innovation for the BBG and its networks. She is also the CEO of Juggernaut, a digital agency. Previously, Raina worked as a Senior Media Advisor at the U.S. Department of State, Office of eDiplomacy. Raina began her career as a documentary filmmaker and video editor.
Francisco Leturia is Attaché to the Permanent Mission of Chile to the UN in Geneva, where he is dedicated to improving the administration of justice in Chile. His principal research interests lie in the economic analysis of corruption, motivation and human behaviour and the relationship between law and culture.
He is also a Professor at the Faculty of Law, Catholic University and Diego Portales University, and a Director of the National Center for Arbitration in Chile.
Elizabeth Linder is the Politics and Government Specialist for Facebook. She is based in London and works with politicians and government agencies in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region on building out their Facebook strategies. Her European constituents include NATO, the government of Latvia, the Chancellor of Austria, and the British Home Office, among others. Prior to joining Facebook, Elizabeth worked for Google in California.
Manjushree Patil is the Founding Director of the Aatman Academy, a specialised instruction school for children with learning disabilities - a one of its kind school in India. She has worked with children with learning disabilities for more than two decades, while fulfilling a desire to make a difference in the lives of children who have specific disabilities such as Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia. In 2009, Manjushree won the All India Achiever Foundation’s "Shiksha Bharati Puraskar" award and also the National Achievement Award for Education Excellence.
Mark Russell is a journalist and the author of Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music and Internet Culture. He is also the editor and a contributor to new book about the history of Korean rock, folk, and pop music in the 1960s and 70s. He has written about culture, technology, science, and more from around the continent, including South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and India. He was the Korea correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and Science magazines, and contributed to the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, among other publications.
Reihan Salam is a non-fiction writer and policy analyst based in New York. He is a policy advisor at Economics 21, a columnist for The Daily, a contributing editor at National Review and National Affairs, and a CNN contributor. Earlier on, he served as a researcher, editor, and producer at The New Republic, the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York Times, NBC News, and The Atlantic. He is the co-author, with Ross Douthat, of Grand New Party.
Travis Sentell is an Author and Screenwriter. His fiction has been published in such diverse places as the Berkeley Fiction Review, the award-winning collection Silent Voices, and the cult-journal Ampersand Review. His book, In the Shadow of Freedom, was published in 2010 by Atria, a division of Simon and Schuster. His newest novel, Fluid, was released by Coliloquy in January 2012. In 2006, he was named one of the top thirty new writers under thirty by Random House. His first novel, SINergy, was recently optioned for the screen with Mark Ordesky (Lord of the Rings) set to produce and Jim Uhls (Fight Club) attached to write.
Cenk Sidar is the Founder and Managing Director of Sidar Global Advisors (SGA), a Washington, DC-based global macro research and strategic advisory firm that has been assisting top financial institutions and multinational corporations investing in emerging markets since 2009. Prior to starting SGA, he served as the director of the American-Turkish Council for four years and oversaw the defence and energy programs of the Council. He also founded a political organisation, the SU Hareketi/Political Vision Movement, became one of the largest and most active independent, youth-focused social democrat movements in Turkey.
Jan-Sebastian Van Lissum is Chairman of Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD) in Amsterdam, the largest political party in The Netherlands and leader of the current Government coalition. In 2006 and 2010 he was elected and re-elected to the Amsterdam City Council for VVD. Currently, he is a Foreign Affairs Advisor for MPs in Dutch Parliament, with a special focus on the Middle East, EU and credit crisis. Previously, Jan-Sebastian was a Senior Consultant at RE-Creations Strategic Management Consultants, working on international projects in emerging markets.
Jakub Wisniewski is Director of Department of Strategy & Planning at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His role is to coordinate research and policy-making activities in the Department. Previously, he was the Head of Section in the Department of Analyses and Strategies where he conducted analytical research, negotiation within government and preparation of governmental positions for EU initiatives, such as the post-Lisbon strategy, Working Programme of the Commission 2010-2015. He was also involved with the programming of the Polish EU presidency held in 2011.
Learn more on the Legatum Institute's website.