Focus on the Relationship Between Health and Development
"The thread in my career has always been the patient: finding the most meaningful ways to help the patient. The medical school I attended focused on public health. The goal wasn’t to train doctors to diagnose rare syndromes; it was to address the issues of the country and diseases that were common in the population."
Engaging Community Responses to Crisis Situations
"What worries me most is that, as time passes on, we're all spending more time concentrating on our differences than our similarities. At the end of the day, there's a lot more similarities."
A SENSE OF PURPOSE: ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT FOR REFUGEES
"We tend to think of refugees as poorer individuals who might have not had a chance to get that much education, but that’s not always or even often the case. At NaTakallam, we’re tackling a forgotten niche in the refugee world and community"
THE ART OF EFFECTIVE HUMANITARIAN LOGISTICS
"Donating is not as easy as cleaning out the closet. We’re trying to help in a global world now, across languages, cultures, and backgrounds—so you need to work very carefully based on a sensitive regional understanding and cultural awareness."
UN SECRETARY-GENERAL CANDIDATE NATALIA GHERMAN
"Whether we are talking about peace, or about sustainable development, we will be guided by an all-embracive slogan: we will leave no one behind. Leaving no one behind means including, informing, and empowering all the categories of people in our society to feel ownership over processes that are important for them."
PART II: ADVOCATING FOR GREEN BUILDINGS: IMPACT OR RHETORIC?
"Recognition can drive some of that demand from CEOs and clients, and mechanisms like that also help to create that demand and interest, but also guide the specifics to make sure that those buildings are true to being a green building."
PART I: ADVOCATING FOR GREEN BUILDINGS: URGENCY AND POSSIBILITY
"When you look at a vehicle, you see the emissions coming from the vehicle. It's different with buildings—you don't actually see the emissions that come from buildings, even though buildings contribute to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions"
NO MORE CAMPS: SONIA BEN ALI ON URBAN REFUGEES
"Most refugees now live in cities, yet the humanitarian community struggles to adapt to this reality. This is why we are building a "Best Practices Network," which is a space where NGOs working with urban refugees share information on successful programs and mentor each other to replicate them."
DO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS MAKE US FEEL GOOD ABOUT POVERTY?
"Hope sells. Not quite as well as sex, but certainly better than despair. Politicians know this, marketers know this, and the politicians and marketers in the organisations concerned with global poverty know this."
ENVISIONING ALTERNATIVE FUTURES
"The future of countries, organizations, and individuals will not happen in a “vacuum”—that is, their futures will not be determined solely by a narrow set of parameters isolated from developments in the larger world around them. Nor will their destinies be simply of their own making or a result of navigating their immediate economic, political, or social ecosystem."
