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Putting creative minds together

The young leaders are brought together in a series of meetings to generate "creative, shared approaches to leadership and problem-solving."

Jamie F. Metzl

Jamie F. Metzl is a long-haul guy. He has completed four Ironman triathlons - 4-km swim, non-stop; then, 180-km bicycling, non-stop; and then, 42-km race, non-stop.

He has also completed 20 marathons. All testimonies to his endurance and will to get to the finish line.

During the Clinton presidency, Mr. Metzl was a White House insider and a middle-level bureaucrat.

He once ran, unsuccessfully, for Congress from his home State of Missouri. Besides a PhD in South East Asian history from Oxford, he holds a law degree from Harvard. He is a one-book novelist too.

Now Mr. Metzl is putting his varied experience and academic achievements to another realm: promoting understanding between the people of his native United States and Asia.

As executive vice-president of Asia Society, which was founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller III, Mr. Metzl is trying to connect the giants-in-the-making, China and India, and other Asian nations to America, the majority of whose people are famously ignorant of the rest of the world.

The half-century-old Asia Society is now on an active mode. To mark the golden jubilee, the society has launched a unique Asia-21 Young Leaders Forum.

The programme picks up about two dozen young achievers with a deep, value-based commitment to community from varied fields of activity across the Asia-Pacific region every year.

The Fellows are brought together in a series of meetings to generate "creative, shared approaches to leadership and problem-solving."

They meet twice a year in different cities in Asia to hold brainstorming sessions on issues like environmental degradation, poverty eradication, conflict resolution, HIV/AIDS, public health challenges and corporate social responsibility.

Mr. Metzl spearheads this programme.

This year's Asia-21 batch of 23 young leaders, which includes four Indians, met in Kochi on March 3 - 5.

A Kochi-born business executive, Shaffi Mather, who co-founded the `Dial 1298 for Ambulance' in Mumbai, is among them. The other Indians are Niret Alva, Malini Mehra and Logsang Sangay.

Mr. Metzl said that the three-day discussions helped to "cross-pollinate ideas." The young (under 40) leaders came up with new ideas and ways to tackle the pressing problems of the region. They also held meetings with last year's batch.

Together, these 40-plus young achievers and geniuses were an incredible pool of vision and talent, Mr. Metzl said.

The impact of the programme, which was supported by the international financial corporation Merryl Lynch, was not expected to come immediately but over decades, though each of the Young Leaders would also complete a specific public service project.

It was basically an ideas programme, he explained.

K.P.M. Basheer

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