Earlier this month, the Skoll World Forum met us on our screens for three days of plenaries, panel discussions, and community sessions that reflected on the theme “Closing the Distance.” From exploring systems-change frameworks to the innovative solutions making way for a better future, this year’s Forum sought to bridge divides between the world’s greatest inequities, bringing together a global community committed to building a better future for all of us. During a global pandemic that is still exposing and deepening systemic inequality, the Forum sessions urged us all to use collective action and collaboration to shift power, privilege, and resources to the communities who need them the most.
Echoing Green at Skoll World Forum
Echoing Green President and Skoll Foundation Board Member Cheryl L. Dorsey participated in two panels at this year’s Forum.
In “Cultivating Systems Leaders in an Age of Pandemics,” Cheryl joined systems leaders Agnes Binagwaho (University of Global Health Inequity); Joe Hsueh (Systems Impact Multi-Family Office); and Paul Poman (IMAGINE) to discuss the importance of leadership in a crisis and the necessity to reimagine what effective leadership looks like for this decisive decade. When asked how Echoing Green approaches identifying and cultivating talent, Cheryl said, “It is a question and exercise about power. How do you cede it, how do you share it? We talk so much about systems change but it is forged in a moment of systems capture and systems failure… These are devastating structural inequities that are indications that systems cannot be changed. The work becomes how do we push back against that? This is an exercise of shifting power.”
