International development actors are taking cues from Silicon Valley’s boom to improve their ability to better serve the world’s most disadvantaged, transforming development in the 21st century. Technology, science and innovation are key to discovering new solutions to long-standing problems. Cutting-edge data techniques can help us measure the impact of interventions, continually improving services and scaling proven solutions to reach hundreds of millions of people.

Leading technology firms are also major philanthropists, providing both financial resources and technical expertise to support development innovations. By partnering together, alongside other non-traditional stakeholders, we can achieve what human progress has only now made possible — the end of extreme poverty by 2030.

How can development interventions become more adaptive and transparent? In what ways could shifting the culture of the way development organizations do business make them more responsive to beneficiary needs? How can we include local innovators and their contextual knowledge?

Join us on for a discussion with Ann Mei Chang, Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the Global Development Lab, a new entity within USAID at the forefront of these breakthrough solutions, and Jacquelline Fuller, the Director of Google.org, which provides over $100 million yearly to support innovators using technology for humanity.

Speakers Ann Mei Chang is the Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the US Global Development Lab at USAID and Jacquelline Fuller is the Director of Google.org.

The conversation is moderated by Scott Wu, Partner and Head of Investments, Omidyar Network.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/event-calendar/event/1649

Globalization has been one of the most influential economic forces of the last century. The Internet has connected the world in ways that would have been unfathomable just a few years ago, China and other emerging nations’ economic fluctuations have impacted international markets, and terrorism has caused the biggest refugee flows in decades.

It is no secret that many issues related to globalization such as trade, immigration, and climate change were at the forefront of the recent US elections. What policy decisions related to globalization will our new president face when he enters office next year? What immediate actions should the next administration take?

Jeffrey Garten, who served in the Nixon, Ford, Carter and Clinton administrations and is also dean emeritus at the Yale School of Management, will share his views. Through the riveting stories of ten extraordinary visionaries, Jeffrey Garten's new book, "From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives" explores how globalization has changed world history and continues to shape our lives.

Speaker Jeffrey E. Garten is Dean Emeritus of Yale School of Management, and Author of "From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives".

The conversation is moderated by Jane Wales, CEO, World Affairs and Global Philanthropy Forum; Vice President, The Aspen Institute.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/event-calendar/event/1659

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Iran deal — is perhaps the most important negotiated arrangement thus far in the 21st century. Iran’s capacity to construct a nuclear weapon has been stopped for 15 years and perhaps longer. It has not yet led to greater cooperation with Iran in the region, domestically on human rights and more democratic governance, and it has created problems for the governments of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Why? What are the prospects for the future for the next US president.

Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Suzanne Maloney, Deputy Director, Foreign Policy Program, The Brookings Institution

Thomas Pickering, Vice Chairman of Hills & Company, former Under Secretary of State for Policy and Career Ambassador

Moderator: Greg Dobbs, former Foreign Correspondent, ABC News

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most complex and polarizing conflicts in modern history. Nearly seventy years after the foundation of Israel and fifty years since the beginning of the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank territories, the struggle between the two sides seems to be almost as far from a resolution as when it first began.

How can Israeli and Palestinian leaders move toward a sustainable peace? Is a two-state solution the answer? Can the US and the international community help to bridge gaps and bring the two sides together? Join us for a conversation about the prospects for achieving peace and why it matters so much to the US and the world.

Maen Rashid Areikat, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, The General Delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States, and Jeremy Ben-Ami
Founder & President, J Street, are in discussion.

The conversation is moderated by Janine Zacharia, Former Jerusalem Bureau Chief and Middle East Correspondent, The Washington Post.

For more information please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/events/event/1601

Russia and President Putin are a renewed source of concern in US foreign policy. From the perspective of the NATO alliance and potential challenges along Russia’s western and southern borders, to the clashes and compromises in addressing the ongoing crisis in Syria, to growing evidence of Russian cyberattacks within the United States, the next president faces a Russian leader with an agenda and expectations on the world stage.  What are the strategic key strategic challenges and is there an endgame for US-Russia relations?

Masha Gessen, Russian American Journalist and Author

Kathryn Stoner, Senior Fellow, Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University

Moderator: Robert English, Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Southern California

In this special episode we feature two conversations from WorldAffairs 2016, Day One: The World that Awaits.

US Leadership: Where Do We Go from Here?

Anne-Marie Slaughter, President and CEO, New America Foundation

In conversation with Jane Wales, President and CEO, World Affairs

Global Economy Today: Can the US and China Work Together?

Henry M. Paulson Jr., Chairman, Paulson Institute, and 74th US Secretary of the Treasury

In conversation with Anja Manuel, Cofounder and Managing Partner, RiceHadleyGates LLC

In a 2009 speech in Prague, President Obama set out an ambitious agenda: committing to reducing the role of nuclear weapons, strengthening nuclear nonproliferation efforts and preventing nuclear terrorism. Seven years later, the world is fundamentally different than it was when President Obama embarked on what became known as the "Prague Agenda." As the Obama presidency enters its final months, we ask: What has been accomplished in preventing the threat of nuclear terrorism? What challenges remain? Join World Affairs for a conversation with Lt. General Frank G. Klotz, the Department of Energy's Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and Administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, about the state of global nuclear security in a rapidly changing world.

Speaker Frank G. Klotz is the Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Zachary Davis, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Security Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, moderates the discussion.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/event-calendar/event/1625

In this special episode, we feature three conversations from speakers at our 2016 Global Philanthropy Forum conference. 

Antony Blinken, United States Deputy Secretary of State, Elias Bou Saab, Minister of Education and Higher Education of Lebanon, and Alexander Betts, Leopold W. Muller Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs and Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, discuss the Syrian refugee crisis and how government, enterprise, and civil society can bring solutions to the issue.

For more information about these programs please visit: https://www.philanthropyforum.org/conference/gpf-2016/

South Sudan is the world’s youngest nation. Tragically, the euphoria of liberation following its independence in 2011 was soon undermined by deep-seated political, ethnic and geographical tensions. For the past 3 years, this power struggle has played out as a full-scale civil war in the country. Over 2 million South Sudanese are internally displaced, and over half of its 11 million population is facing famine.

This discussion reflects on important questions facing South Sudan 5 years after gaining its independence. Is there hope for peace and stability in South Sudan? What role will the international community play in bridging ethnic tensions in the country? What is the future for the UN South Sudanese peacekeeping mission that is opposed by the very government it aims to support? Can the UN impose peace on a reluctant nation? What is the role of youth and the diaspora in paving the way to sustainable peace?

Valentino Achak Deng, prominent South Sudanese advocate, will be joined by acclaimed author Dave Eggers in a conversation on these important issues.

As a boy, Valentino fled Sudan during its civil war and spent nine years as a refugee in Ethiopia and Kenya before eventually resettling in Atlanta. In collaboration with author Dave Eggers, his experience was memorialized in the acclaimed novel, "What Is the What."

Valentino Achak Deng, Co-founder, Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, speaks with author Dave Eggers.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/events/event/1642

ISIS surged to international prominence following its audacious prison camp raids in 2013 in Iraq, freeing more than 500 Iraqi insurgents. ISIS has since carried out increasingly bold attacks in Syria and beyond, cementing its reputation as a group more violent and ruthless than any that came before it. No longer an insurgency, ISIS’ focus is to establish its own rule on conquered territory, and declare a worldwide caliphate. Of course the roots of ISIS trace deeper, and are much more intertwined with the interventions of the West than they first appear.

Today’s ISIS jihadists are the "children of Zarqawi," General Michael Flynn would later warn Congress, referring to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the once-obscure jihadist who led Al Qaeda in Iraq and laid ISIS’ philosophical foundations. How did Abu Musab Zarqawi, a “small-time thug,” rise to such world-changing prominence? How did ISIS emerge so forcefully from the chaos, and power struggles, of competing jihadist groups? Did the efforts of the West to crack down on Al Qaeda, inadvertently fuel the growth of ISIS ten years later?

Pulitzer Prize winner Joby Warrick, a reporter with The Washington Post since 1996, will address these issues in a conversation at World Affairs about the birth of ISIS. His latest book, “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS,” pursues a thoughtful reflection on the origins the most notorious terror group in the world today.

As part of our "Engage" series, this event features a post-discussion Q&A, when you will have the chance to participate directly with the speaker and gain incredible insights that you won't get anywhere else.

Speaker Joby Warrick is Author and Reporter at The Washington Post.

The conversation is moderated by Kori Schake, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/events/event/1636