“I believe it is possible to end torture in my lifetime.”In 2000, Karen founded International Bridges to Justice to help create systemic change in criminal justice and promote basic rights of legal representation for defendants on the ground. Her foundation complements the work of witness groups, who do the equally vital work of advocacy, reports, photographs. Tse’s group helps governments build new systems that respect individual rights. In IBJ’s first years, she negotiated groundbreaking measures  in judicial reform with the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. It now works in sixteen countries, including Rwanda, Burundi and India.

International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) is a non-governmental organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. The organization’s stated mission is “to protect the basic legal rights of ordinary citizens in developing countries by guaranteeing all citizens the right to competent legal representation, the right to be protected from cruel and unusual punishment, and the right to a fair trial”. IBJ has the additional stated goal “to end torture in this Century”

IBJ only works in countries whose international treaty obligations and national laws have already laid the legal framework for the protection of their citizens and where a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed with the relevant government and legal authorities, setting out the parameters under which IBJ will work. It adopts a three pillar approach to accomplishing its aims:

Other articles/links/videos:
Documentary on her work in India and Cambodia (18 min/ French with English subtitles):

Karen Tse’s TED Talk: How to End Torture  (transcribed in over 30 languages)

Career:  Bestselling author, strategic advisor, innovation activist dubbed “Mr. Creativity” by The Economist; Chairmen & CEO EdgeMakers; Chairman ILSI
Interests: Jazz, Film & Theater (actively!). Unpeeling the onion, reinvention of education, innovation at societal scale.
Hometown: San Francisco, USA

John Kao was born in 1950 to Chinese immigrant parents. An accomplished jazz pianist, he spent the summer of 1969 playing keyboards for Frank Zappa. Kao studied philosophy at Yale College, received an MD from Yale Medical School, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He taught at Harvard Business School from 1982-96, where he specialized in innovation and entrepreneurship and created executive and MBA programs on innovation. He has also held faculty appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, Yale College, and the Naval Postgraduate School.

John is a leader in creating and delivering high end innovation leadership executive programs for both public and private sectors. He is chairman of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, whose i20 group is an association of 30 national ‘Chief Innovation Officers.’  John coined the term “large scale innovation” to refer to innovation as a societal agenda.  He has advised numerous nations and regions on innovation strategy and execution, including Finland, Singapore, the City of San Francisco, Abu Dhabi and elements of the US government as well as the European Union innovation policy team.

His advisory work for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was described in The New York Times as “out of the box”

More:
www.johnkao.com
John Kao on Wikipedia
John on Twitter
www.edgemakers.com

Key publications:
Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity (1996; still reprinted and available in 16 languages)
Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back (2007) 

Career: political theorist, author of bestseller ‘Jihad vs. McWorld’ and ‘If Mayors Ruled the World’; defender of “strong democracy”
Interests:  Theater, Opera and Film (active as playwright, lyricist and film-maker)
Hometown: living and working in New York City (where he was born in 1939)

Benjamin R. Barber burst into the media spotlight on 9/11 when his book Jihad Vs. McWorld, published in 1995, assumed newly horrific relevance. With his prophetic analysis of the emerging collision of tribalism and globalism, Barber established the parameters for 21st Century political debate.

Prof. Barber is a Senior Research Scholar at The Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society of The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, President and Founder of CivWorld/ the Interdependence Movement, and Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science Emeritus, Rutgers University and initiator of The Global Parliament of Mayors Project. He was an outside adviser to President Bill Clinton and a foreign policy adviser to Howard Dean’s 2004 Presidential campaign. Barber has advised political parties and political leaders in the U.K., Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland and Italy on civic education and participatory institutions, and has done the same, more controversially, with civil society and government leaders in Turkey, the Emirates, Libya and China.

Barber’s 17 books include Strong Democracy (1984), Jihad vs. McWorld (1995 translated into thirty languages), How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, (2007), If Mayors Ruled the World (2013).
A passionate advocate of democracy’s power, Barber continues to explore solutions for dysfunctional systems and political paralysis.  Barber shows how decentralized local governments can be more flexible – and more in tune with their constituents – than their federal counterparts.

More:
http://benjaminbarber.org
Benjamin Barber on Wikipedia
Benjamin on Facebook and Twitter 
CivWorld
The Interdependence Movement
Global Parliament of Mayors on Facebook
If Mayors Ruled the World on Facebook
Benjamins books on Amazon

Other articles/videos:
TED Talk: Why mayors should rule the world (TEDGlobal 2013)
Richard Florida in CITY LAB: Why Mayors Need a UN-Like Organization of Their Own
The European: Nation states no longer work (03/2014)
Video: Opening of Global Parliament of Mayors Planning Session on 19 Sept. 2014
Video: Benjamin Barber at Falling Walls Conference in Berlin in 2013

Career: First Prime Minister of Tibetan Government in Exile. Eminent Buddhist Philosopher, Scientist and Politician. Counselor at World Peace University (USA) and at Institution for Asian Democracy (NYC) and many others. Close confident of HH the Dalai Lama.
Interests: Non-Violence,  Education, Present Generations, Social Change, Morality and Mental Development
Hometown: Born in Kham (today China), fled 1959, living in Dharamshala (India)

Professor Samdhong Rinpoche was born as Samdhong Lobsang Tenzin in 1939, in the Tibetan province of Kham. At age of five, he was recognized and enthroned as the reincarnation of the fourth Samdhong Rinpoche. He began his monastic studies at age 12 at the University of Drepung in Tibet and eventually obtained a Doctorate in Buddhist sciences at Gyutö Monastery, Dalhousie, India in 1970. In 1959, Rinpoche fled to India to escape the repressive Chinese government in Tibet. There, he was commissioned by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to serve as a teacher to monks in exile. He was appointed director of the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in Varanasi in 1988 and remained there until 2001. On July 29, 2001, Rinpoche was named Kalön Tripa, or Prime Minister of the Tibetan Exile Government, the first political leader to be directly elected by the people in exile. He is an eminent and distinguished scholar, teacher and philosopher, and a life-long campaigner for Gandhian principles especially that of non-violence or peaceful resistance.

99Faces interviewed him in Berlin, Germany, after giving a lecture on ‘Tendrel – Mind and Reality” for students of the Tarab Institute International.

Tibet & Tibetan Parliament in Exile: The territory of Tibet is under the administration of and occupation by the People’s Republic of China, a situation that the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) considers an illegitimate military occupation. The position of the CTA is that Tibet is a distinct nation with a long history of independence. The position of the People’s Republic of China, however, is that the central government of China has continuously exercised sovereignty over Tibet for over 700 years, that Tibet has never been an independent state, and that Tibet’s de facto independence between 1912 and 1951 was “nothing but a fiction of the imperialists who committed aggression against China in modern history”. The current policy of the Dalai Lama is that he does not seek full independence for Tibet, but would accept Tibet as a genuine autonomous region within the People’s Republic of China.

More:

Biography Samdhong Rinpoche 

Book Review – UNCOMPROMISING TRUTH FOR A COMPROMISED WORLD: TIBETAN BUDDHISM AND TODAY’S WORLD

Tibet at a glance

A new generation Exile

Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration

Samdhong Rinpoche on Facebook

Unity in Duality on Facebook

Video:

Concluding Session of 2010 ICTB with Keynote Address by Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche

Why meditate – Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche

Unity in Duality – An introduction, Part 1

Career: Orchestral Conducter, Maestro, Leadership Coach
Interests: Art (from ancient to contemporary), Haiku Poetry and Literature in general, People – in particular, how we exchange important messages …
Hometowns: Tel-Aviv, Israel; Amsterdam, Netherlands; temp. Transsilvania, Romania

Itay Talgam is one of the leading figures in the Israeli music scene. He is a champion of contemporary music, and in particular music of contemporary Israeli composers. He is internationally renowned for developing the ‘Maestro program’, that explores the relationship between conductor, musician and audience to achieve inspiring new insights into leadership, management, and team work. Using a range of innovative techniques, these energetic and thought-provoking programmes challenge standard thinking and offer participants a fresh perspective on a range of organisational issues and work styles.

More:
www.talgam.com
Wikipedia: Itay Talgam
Twitter: @itaytalgam

Other articles/links/videos:
Video: TEDtalks – Itay Talgam at TED (10/2009; 23 min.)
Video: Itay Talgam – Zeitgeist Europe 2009 (11/2010; 31min.)
Conducting Collaborative Creativity: Understanding collaboration through the lens of Itay Talgam and a collection of the worlds foremost conductors (02/09)
Video: Itay Talgam at PICNIC08 – Conducting Creativity (2009)