MIPtalk» Environment

Judy Stewart – Great Barrier Reef Foundation

Noam Dromi — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 02:01:48 +0000

Judy Stewart walked into a room of financial gurus at Goldman Sachs and bent them to her will.

Stewart has been the Chief Executive and Managing Director of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) for the last six years. She came to her role after several years as a director in the Australian performing arts sector, bringing with her deep practical experience of the challenges and opportunities confronting Australia’s not-for-profit sector. A graduate in law, she was admitted to practice as a Barrister in 1982.

Judy has positioned GBRF as the primary national fundraising interface between the private sector and the complex network of universities, research institutions, statutory authorities and government agencies which engage in Reef research and management.

Galvanised by the dire warnings of the 4th Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change, which give the Reef no more than another ten years before catastrophic bleaching begins to take hold and compromise its future, Judy’s aim is to lift the Reef to a top order issue – with government, business, philanthropy, the public at large and the international community – and to mobilise all the resources she can to fund the research which is needed to help the Reef to adapt to and meet this challenge.

On September 22, 2010 GBRF announced at the Clinton Global Initiative that in conjunction with Goldman Sachs Australia and KPMG they developed a new fundraising framework to fund a substantial portfolio of research required to support the GBRF’s mission of protecting and preserving Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. GBRF will deliver a comprehensive research program focused on enabling coral reefs to successfully adapt to climate change.

Episode 3 – L. Hunter Lovins – My Good Rope Horse Is Not For Sale

Noam Dromi — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:54:47 +0000

During one of her trips to Afghanistan, L. Hunter Lovins put out the word to some of her young guides that she wanted to meet with Ismail Khan, a warlord known as “The Butcher” who president Karzai had recently appointed as the Minister of Energy for the country. One of the guides said he might be able to make a connection. Two nights later she got a call asking if she was still interested in meeting Khan. She responded in the affirmative. “Then we go now”, said the voice on the other end of the telephone.

Only problem was, it was 9:00 o’clock in the evening. You never went out on the streets in Afghanistan after dark. Especially if you were a Westerner — and a woman. But that wasn’t going to stop the cowgirl from Colorado. So off she and the guide went, through various checkpoints, until they got to Khan’s location. After being searched at gunpoint in the lobby they were ushered into a simple room with little more than a desk, a bed and a low table. Lovins recalls that her first thought upon seeing Khan was that “he had kind eyes”.

To find out what happened next, check out the latest episode of MIPtalk.

You can learn more about Hunter and her company Natural Capitalism here.

For additional reference we’ve included links to some of the people, places and things discussed in this episode: