Africa: Progress, Crisis, and Challenge with Arthur Mutambara in conversation with Elliot Gerson at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival.
In this, its third year, Aspen Ideas Festival once again gathers scientists, artists, politicians, historians, educators, activists, and other great thinkers around some of the most important and fascinating ideas of our time. As these thinkers present their provocative ideas, they engage a sophisticated and highly motivated audience.
Bio
Elliot Gerson
Elliot Gerson is executive vice president for Seminars and Public Programs at the Aspen Institute. Gerson is responsible for the Aspen Institute's seminars, including the Executive Seminar, topical and custom seminars, and those offered in Socrates programs. He also manages the Institute's public programs, including the Aspen Ideas Festival and the World Biomedical Forum.
As American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, he manages the US Rhodes Scholarships. He is also a founding trustee of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation Trust, which focuses on African higher education and leadership; a director of the International Biomedical Research Alliance, affiliated with the National Institutes of Health; and director of a Kabul-based logistics, security, and construction company focused on the reconstruction and redevelopment of Afghanistan.
He was a US Supreme Court clerk and has practiced law, held executive positions in state and federal government and in a presidential campaign, served as president of leading insurance and health care companies, and served on many nonprofit boards, especially in the arts and humanities.
Arthur Mutambara
Arthur Mutambara is a Zimbabwean opposition leader, president of one of the two Movement for Democratic Change party formations. He also serves as managing director and CEO of the Africa Technology & Business Institute in South Africa and professor of Operations Management at the University of South Africa's Graduate School of Business Leadership.
Extensively involved in socio-economic-political issues in both the US and Africa, he was named one of the World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders" in 2007. Mutambara was formerly a director of Standard Bank with responsibilities in 17 African countries. He is also a former Rhodes Scholar, NASA research scientist, MIT professor of Robotics and Mechatronics, visiting professor of Business Strategy at Northwestern’s Kellogg School, and management consultant with McKinsey & Company. Mutambara is also a Fellow of the African Leadership Initiative, a partnership of the Aspen Institute.