World Affairs Council 60th Aniv. Gala

Ladies and gentlemen good evening. Thank you very much. I am George James, Chairman of the Board of the World Affairs Council and I think we have a very exciting night plan. So thank you very much for being here. Tonight we celebrate three individuals who are emblematic of our efforts to connect people, to knowledge and networks they need to better understand our world. It is hard to imagine any one more appropriate than our honoraries tonight on the 60th anniversary celebration of our founding in 1947 right after the charter for the United Nations was signed in the San Francisco. The Council is a non-partisan membership organization dedicated to engaging the public in a discussion of the issues and opportunities that transcend borders. Among the many outstanding projects in the council is the Global Philanthropy Forum. Rather than have me describe it let us take a look at this video before we have dinner and thank you very much. Good evening and thank you for coming out tonight to support the Worlds Affairs Council on it's 60th anniversary. We are pleased today to be able to honor three remarkable individuals and I have the honor to present our Global Citizenship Award to Larry Brilliant. He is an active member of the Council's Global Philanthropy forum and he is really an inspiration. He has worked with the World Affair, - with the World Health Organization to help eliminate small pox. He and his wife established the Seva Foundation which gives sight to over two million in South East Asia. And now as the Executive Director of Google.org we know he will continue to shake the world and inspire positive change. Larry you can join me on stage. On behalf of the World Affairs Council, it is my pleasure to present you with this Award for Global Citizenship. Thank you. I would like to thank you for both of these awards. I would also like to point out that it's really weird seeing that big picture of me up there. I want to thank my wife Girija who is in the back there and my two sons Jon and Joe who are here and I would like to very much thank all the people from the Seva Foundation who are here and from Google.org and I would like to thank you all of you very much. Thank you Jane wherever you are. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome Jane Wales who will present the Council's 2007 Corporate Citizenship Award. Good evening and welcome. In deciding to honor Bruce Chizen and the company he leads Adobe we were particularly struck by that company's commitment and his commitment to the education of our youth. It's a commitment that the Council shares. We offer teacher training in World History and of course, we offer scholarships to kids to learn more about their world. Bruce's personal commitment, to education was demonstrated by the founding, the launching last year of Adobe's youth voices which gives young people the tools to express themselves creatively and to collaborate, to work cooperatively. Adobe's teacher training seminars Digital Kids Club and online forums are also designed to empower young people with the tools that they need to succeed. So please join me in welcoming and recognizing Bruce Chizen and Adobe for Corporate Citizenship. This is a fragile world. We are going to take it away from you for a moment. Great. Thank you Jane. It's an honor to be recognized here tonight. I also want to congratulate the two other award recipients Dr. Larry Brilliant and John Doerr who I respect for their achievements. I also want to congratulate and commend Jane along with the members of the World Affairs Council on 60 years of engaging citizens in national and global issues. Through their efforts thousands of people have participated in dialogues on the most important issues of our time, freedom and democracy, terrorism and immigration just to name a few. I am particularly impressed by the work that they do with high school students. One of the focus areas for Adobe and because of that tonight I am pleased to announce that we are going to grant $25000 towards the support of the World Affairs Council Scholarship Program. Thank you again on behalf of myself and the Adobe employees. Please welcome former council Chairman Bill Draper who will present the Council's 2007 Venture Philanthropy Award. This is going to be a little longer. My father was an amateur magician. He earned his way through college going down the New Jersey coast from town to town known as the motorcycle magician. He came to Silicon Valley in 1959 and started the first venture capital company in the west. He died in 1974, the very year that another magician came, riding into the valley to practice his slight of hand in venture capital. John Doerr with his bewitching personality is a magician on the order of Houdini. Sure, some of his power comes from good education, through engineering degrees from Rice an MBA from Harvard but no one, no one, no one could have accomplished what John Doerr has accomplished in the past 30 years without the power of magic. He waves his wand and powerful companies are born with the help of a bit of money from his venture capital company Kleiner, Perkins - Caufield & Byers sorry Brooks. He waves his wand again and the money is restored 10, 20 a hundred times over from grateful entrepreneurs who with John's magic built Amazon into Sun and Google just to name a few. Forbes Magazine agrees with me that he is an alchemist. And they list him as number two on their Midas list this year. But money alone doesn't drive this wonderful exciting, enchanting man. Building companies is an important part of his life and he is passionate about them, every one of them even goal right John. Right. But good non-profit causes make him absolutely levitate. His wife Ann and he founded the new school's venture fund with Ted Smith and his wife. They create charter schools for under served, k through 12 students in urban settings. He waves his wand and more magic. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of course, decide they should give $22 million to this charming guy who is frisking everybody in sight. Hold on to your wallets tonight. He co-founded TechNet which took Silicon Valley in its causes to Washington, a place where I happen to know nothing gets done without magic. Our favorite magician cast his spell on the public as well. He co chaired the successful Proposition 39 raising $18 billion funding for public schools and he co-chaired the Brilliant campaign for 70 Prop 71 authorizing $3 billion for stem cell research with overwhelming success against overwhelming odds, sheer magic. Today John the wizard is leading the charge in Silicon Valley for green technology and global fight against infectious diseases. My father would be pleased to know there is still magic in Silicon Valley and that a good man with a big heart and an extraordinary energy is performing it so well. Welcome John Doerr. Oh Bill said he went a little over the top; I think that's an understatement. When he told me of this award I said you have got to be kidding, this is some kind of mistake. I didn't do these things, it was entrepreneurs and what I have learnt from my partners' Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers is it's the entrepreneurs could do more than any one things possible, less than any one things possible. And where we live and what we stand for and what this organization stands for is empowering, supporting, assisting any way we can entrepreneurs. Sure those technology entrepreneurs but also the social entrepreneurs, the education entrepreneurs, the poverty entrepreneurs, the global health entrepreneurs, the climate crisis entrepreneurs. We will talk more about those in just a moment so. Despite the error of someone's judgment in honoring me with this award I am extraordinarily grateful. And I want to thank my friends who are here tonight, my partners and my wife Ann and my 15-year old daughter, Mary. Thank you.