ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのDistinguished Leadership Awards 2020 Opening Remarks

ANNOUNCER: Live from Washington, D.C., welcome to the 2020 Distinguished Leadership Awards, brought to you by the Atlantic Council. Tonight our staff and leadership welcome you as we celebrate and honor extraordinary individuals who have uniquely contributed to our mission of shaping the global future together.

And now Atlantic Council Chairman John F.W. Rogers.

JOHN F.W. ROGERS: Excellencies, friends, honorees, and ladies and gentlemen, good evening from our nation’s capital. I’m John Rogers. I’m the chairman of the Atlantic Council. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to this 2020 Distinguished Leadership Awards. It is, of course, a bit of an understatement to say that we’re doing things a little bit differently this year in light of the pandemic. But I’m nevertheless delighted to have the opportunity to address you tonight and look forward to seeing you in person at some time somewhere down the road in normal times, whatever that may mean.

Against that backdrop, and hosting this first-ever Atlantic Council virtual gala, we are honored to bring together this incredible audience to celebrate three individuals who exemplify leadership, vision, and character needed to navigate one of the most uncertain and volatile geopolitical environments ever faced by the United States, Europe, and our allies worldwide. The global impact of COVID-19 and the economic downturn, social unrest, a rise of nationalism, climate-drive weather calamities and, yes, record-breaking levels of swarming locusts all in 2020. And with a quarter of the year still left to come, dare we ask what else?

But of course, we are weeks away from a very divisive and a significant US election, which some say is a referendum on the great experiment of democracy itself. Early turnout is on pace for new higher levels of voter participation on both sides. So it goes without saying that the need for authentic and effective policymakers and governance globally has never been so stark, so necessary. Which brings us to our assemblage this evening, where we recognize the accomplishments and look to the leadership and commitment of our outstanding honorees who have never faded in their enthusiasm or backed away from a challenge, or in their resolve to affect real change in their respective fields.

They are Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who will be introduced by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a longtime Atlantic Council International Advisor Board member. Lionel Richie, a music icon, a producer, and a philanthropist, who will be introduced by Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television and the RLJ Companies. Ambassador Luis Alberto Moreno, who led the American Development Bank as president for fifteen years, who will be introduced by the 74th Secretary of the US Treasury Hank Paulson.

Let me congratulate all of you for joining the academy of Atlantic Council honorees, representing a range of backgrounds and experiences and career paths, and bound together around a central theme and common cause to make the world a safer, more secure planet for tis global citizens, bringing with it more widely shared prosperity and opportunity. And in that same spirit, we are particularly proud to feature a celebration of the life and legacy of Atlantic Council’s former chairman, Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, one of the most respected and admired figures in our nation’s foreign policy history.

Dr. Henry Kissinger, the Atlantic Council’s longest-serving board director, will be joined by Steve Hadley and Ginny Mulberger to honor General Scowcroft and his myriad of contributions to the Atlantic Council and to his country.

Finally, we pay tribute to the unsung heroes of 2020, the result of our global campaign to gather and shine a light on those individuals who have demonstrated extraordinary resilience and leadership during this unprecedented moment in time. And in doing so we are delighted to welcome critically acclaimed singer, actress, and humanitarian Vanessa Williams, who will perform in honor of our 2020 unsung heroes. So I know you join me in looking forward to this special segment of our program this evening.

And with that, let me offer my congratulations once again to all of this year’s honorees and a warm welcome to everyone joining us by videoconference tonight. Thank you, enjoy the evening, and let me now turn it over to our president, Fred Kempe. Thank you.

FREDERICK KEMPE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership.

What an impressive group of awardees. For the first time in the history of these awards we are streaming the event live into your homes or wherever else you’re watching. Some of you are wearing black tie and gown. Some of you are more casually attired. But in the next hour or so I hope you’ll see what we’ve witnessed at the Atlantic Council since we began telework in mid-March, and that is the Atlantic Council’s consistency of purpose and trajectory of innovation.

To highlight the team that makes this happen the MCs tonight who will connect the parts of the program will be next-generation leaders, some of whom you saw in those opening segments. They will include Roberta Braga from the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, Denise Forsthuber from our Future Europe Initiative, Clementine Starling from our Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Clintandra Thompson from our communications team, and Reed Blakemore from the Global Energy Center. If any of you are worried about the future, get to know not only these individuals but dozens of others they represent. Nearly 65 percent of our staff is under thirty-five, and they are remarkable.

Our chairman, John Rogers, spoke of all the challenges we confront this year, including locusts. At the Atlantic Council, we have recorded this moment and we have regarded this moment as a call to action, a moment to double down on our mission of galvanizing constructive US leadership alongside friends and allies to shape a better future. At a time when the world has been most in need of the Atlantic Council’s unique community and our nonpartisan, values-driven, solutions-oriented work, we’ve stepped up our efforts more than ever before. We’ve doubled the readers of our publications. We’ve exponentially grown our global audience, from our smallest, most-curated events to our large, global-leader events. We’ve had 500-plus virtual public and private events since mid-March with at total audience of 1.5 million.

Before we get started tonight I want to salute those in our global audience who are previous recipients either of our Distinguished Leadership Awards, which are presented each year in Washington, D.C., or our Global Citizen Awards, presented each year in New York. This year we’ve combined the awards into this one virtual event. Previous honorees in tonight’s audience include Dr. Henry Kissinger, as John Rogers said our longest-serving board member, Nobel Prize winner, former secretary of state and national security adviser; Adrienne Arsht, Atlantic Council executive vice chair; Paul Polman, former chief executive officer of Unilever; and Fred Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of FedEx.

The military awardees in our audience are spectacular: General Stéphane Abrial, former NATO supreme allied commander transformation; Joseph—and he’s also a board member of the Atlantic Council—General Joe Dunford, Joseph Dunford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of our newest Atlantic Council board members; General Joseph Ralston, former supreme allied commander Europe; General Curtis Scaparrotti, former supreme allied commander Europe and a board member.

I am so delighted that you chose to be with us this year for this extraordinarily different virtual Distinguished Leadership Awards. Every year, these awards are made possible by our co-chairs, our Distinguished Leadership Awards co-chairs. You will see their names displayed on your screens throughout the evening.

On behalf of everyone at the Atlantic Council I express my gratitude to these co-chairs, not just for making this event possible but for contributing so much to empower our work. I’d particularly like to pause to recognize the daughter of General Brent Scowcroft, Karen Scowcroft, and General Scowcroft’s granddaughter Meghan. Karen, I know you’re watching with your daughter Meghan, age twelve, as we—as we pay tribute to the extraordinary life of your father, a man who touched the lives of so many of us gathered here virtually this evening. He will live on in our work in his legacy at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security forever more. Bless you, Karen. Bless you, Meghan.

For those of you who would like to follow tonight’s event on Twitter and send out alerts, please use the hashtag #ACAwards or the hashtag #UnsungHeroes2020. We are also streaming tonight live on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Tonight’s will be the largest audience these awards have ever had thought personally I do hope we’re all going to see you in person as soon as possible.

Ladies and gentlemen, I now have the pleasure of introducing our first segment of our 2020 Distinguished Leadership Awards, honoring the remarkable Kristalina Georgieva.