Global GoalsCast: Recent Episodes

We Are All Human Foundation

Is it possible to change the world? Can we make the world a better place for all? The answer is YES. Claudia Romo Edelman and Edie Lush share the inspiring stories of people working to create a more sustainable world while sharing simple ways for you to start taking action today.

Cindy Izzo is the Global Head of Digital Risk at KPMG International and a powerful example of what it means to lead A LA LATINA. In this episode, Cindy shares her inspiring journey—from translating for her family as a child in Arizona, to navigating the Big Four as a young mother, to becoming one of the few Latinas in cybersecurity at the global level.

🔑 Here are three key takeaways from our conversation:

Find your tribe: As the only Latina in many rooms, Cindy proactively sought out Hispanic networks to feel seen and supported.

You can’t be an A+ everywhere, every day: A powerful piece of advice from a mentor helped Cindy realize she could excel in different areas of life at different times—and that was more than enough.

Turn your early experiences into superpowers: From translating for her family to bridging communication between teams at work, Cindy learned how to lead by understanding people and bringing them together. She reminds us that empathy, authenticity, and faith can be the greatest assets for building a thriving career—and that being a mother is a leadership style in itself.

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NEW EPISODE: Maria Lensing – The Power of Being SeenGlobal Chief Information and Technology Officer at Sorenson CommunicationsIn this powerful episode of A LA LATINA, Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner sit down with Maria Lensing, one of the few Latinas to have reached the C-suite in Fortune 10 companies in the tech space.From escaping Peru with her family to save her brother’s life, to becoming a transformational leader in corporate America, Maria opens up about her story of resilience, leadership, and identity.3 Key Takeaways:Agent vs. Hammer of Change: Maria warns Latinas about being used as drivers of uncomfortable change in organizations that aren’t ready for it — and the personal cost that can bring.Your Network = Who Knows You for What: A redefinition of networking that prioritizes reputation over quantity.The ‘Manual of Me’: Maria shares the literal document she gives her team when starting a new role — a guide to working effectively with her.Plus: She talks about caregiving as a privilege, navigating corporate politics, motherhood, and how to dream bigger — even when you've already made it.Visit our website to nominate yourself or another Latina to be on the podcast: alalatina.comFOLLOW OUR SOCIALSInstagram: @alalatinapodcastTikTok: @alalatinapodcastYouTube: @alalatinapodcast

In this new episode of Season 4 of A LA LATINA, Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner sit down with Jennifer Salinas—EVP, Chief Administrative Officer, and General Counsel at Cerence AI, a global leader in automotive voice technology.

From growing up in a home marked by domestic violence to leading in one of the most competitive and fast-evolving sectors, Jennifer shares her remarkable journey of resilience, reinvention, and rising to the C-suite.

One of the most senior Latinas in the AI space, she reflects on the power of betting on yourself, navigating corporate America with authenticity, and turning pain into purpose. Here are 3 key takeaways from this episode: The art of knowing your value. Jennifer shares a powerful, tactical playbook to help Latinas claim their worth—personally and professionally—without losing themselves along the way. The AI revolution is now—and it's a level playing field.

Whether you're technical or not, this is the moment to become AI-literate and indispensable in your career. Your background doesn’t define you. Jennifer’s story proves that being the first in your family to graduate high school—or law school—can be the start of something extraordinary.

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Lucy Pérez went from a small town in Puerto Rico to Harvard, from lab coats to boardrooms, and from science to strategy. Today, she’s a senior partner at McKinsey & Company and a global leader in health equity and economic opportunity.In this episode, Lucy shares:✔️ Why no one is a mind reader — and why asking for help is a strength✔️ How her mentors (who didn’t look like her) helped her unlock her full potential✔️ Data-backed proof that investing in Latinos isn’t charity — it’s smart economics✔️ Her groundbreaking work on women’s health that made it all the way to the White House✔️ And the most important lesson of all: be your full, authentic selfWhether you're building your network, your career, or your confidence — this episode is your new playbook.🎧 Listen now and share with a Latina ready to lead.

In this new episode of Season 4 of A LA LATINA, Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner welcome the amazing Mónica Gil—a visionary leader redefining what success looks like for Latinas in media and business.As Chief Administrative and Marketing Officer at NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, Mónica leads the network’s Operations, Marketing, Strategy & Insights, and Communications teams—making her one of the most influential Latina executives in the U.S. media landscape today.Since joining Telemundo in 2017, Mónica has been instrumental in propelling the network to become the #1 Spanish-language broadcaster in the nation. From spearheading groundbreaking digital and brand campaigns—including Telemundo’s record-breaking 2022 FIFA World Cup broadcast—to overseeing nearly 4,000 hours of annual content production at the state-of-the-art Telemundo Center, her impact is undeniable.A trailblazer at the intersection of technology and leadership, Mónica shares her personal and professional journey—from her early days in political strategy in California to transforming media insights at Nielsen, and ultimately breaking glass ceilings at Telemundo. She also opens up about her passion for empowering women and youth, including her creation of Telemundo’s Women Leadership programs and the Telemundo Academy.Here are 3 key takeaways from this episode:1.-Learn the unspoken rules – Success in any organization often depends on understanding what’s not said. Watch, listen, and learn from those around you.2.- Embrace technology now – Staying ahead of the tech curve is critical. It’s far easier to keep up than to catch up.3.- Use code-switching thoughtfully – Adapting how you communicate in different settings can be a valuable tool for growth—without losing your authenticity.Mónica’s wisdom, warmth, and strategic insight make this episode a must-listen for anyone looking to lead with courage while staying grounded in their identity.Tune in and get inspired to rise A LA LATINA.Listen to the extended video version of this episode on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ALaLatinaPodcast/videosVisit our website to nominate yourself or another Latina to be on the podcast: alalatina.comFOLLOW OUR SOCIALSInstagram: @alalatinapodcastTiktok: @alalatinapodcastYoutube: @alalatinapodcastFacebook: A La Latina PodcastFor partnership opportunities, click here.

In this uplifting episode of A LA LATINA, hosts Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner welcome the remarkable Citlalli Rojas, Inland Empire General Office Managing Partner at New York Life Insurance Company. They delve into her inspiring journey—from her early days in Chiapas, Mexico, to becoming a nationally celebrated leader in financial services.Citlalli opens up about how she designed a life grounded in purpose, leadership, and authenticity. Her rise—from a college intern at New York Life to Managing Partner—was driven by ambition, heart, and a relentless commitment to empowering others. Today, she leads one of the company’s most successful offices and serves as a national voice shaping strategic direction for the future of financial leadership.She shares how she champions Latina empowerment through legacy-building and financial impact, and how motherhood, community service, and honoring her heritage shape her path.Here are the three takeaways:1.- Design the life you want: You have the power to shape your future. Plan boldly, live intentionally, and pursue what lights your soul.2.- Be a Goldfish: Let go of what doesn’t serve you. Don’t dwell on the past—stay focused, resilient, and forward-moving.3.- Celebrate your roots: If someone shaped who you are—like your mom—tell them. Gratitude has the power to heal, connect, and inspire.From leading with love to lifting others along the way, Citlali’s story is a testament to what’s possible when you stay true to your values and never stop rising.Listen now to be uplifted, energized, and reminded that your authenticity is your superpower.Listen to the extended video version of this episode on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ALaLatinaPodcast/videosVisit our website to nominate yourself or another Latina to be on the podcast: alalatina.comFOLLOW OUR SOCIALSInstagram: @alalatinapodcastTiktok: @alalatinapodcastYoutube: @alalatinapodcastFacebook: A La Latina Podcast

In this new and inspiring episode of A LA LATINA: The Playbook to Succeed Being Your Authentic Self, Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner welcome the incredible Rebeca Vargas, Chief Marketing Officer at Girl Scouts of the USA.

Rebeca’s journey is one of bold leadership, personal sacrifice, and unwavering authenticity. As the CMO of one of America’s most iconic youth organizations—serving nearly 2 million members—Rebeca is redefining what it means to lead with purpose. Her career spans powerhouse institutions like Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and BBVA, as well as founding and growing transformative nonprofit initiatives for Latinas and underserved youth across borders.

From pitching herself directly to CEOs to launching groundbreaking multicultural campaigns and building the largest Latina STEAM mentoring network in 22 countries, Rebeca shares how she built a remarkable career—without ever leaving her culture, values, or voice behind.

Here the three takeaways of the conversation:

Be your own advocate – Rebeca teaches us the value of raising your hand—even when no one asks. By directly pitching roles and ideas to leadership, she reminds us that courage and initiative open doors.
The power of sacrifice – With raw honesty, Rebeca reflects on leaving her 5-month-old daughter in Mexico to pursue her dreams in the U.S.—a decision many immigrant women know too well. Her story is one of resilience, hope, and generational impact.
Understanding DEI vs. Multicultural Marketing – In today’s evolving corporate landscape, Rebeca sheds light on the crucial differences between diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) and multicultural marketing—and why knowing the distinction matters for real change.

A Latina trailblazer recognized by Adweek, Diversity MBA Magazine, and The White House, Rebeca Vargas brings unmatched insight, heart, and brilliance to this must-listen conversation.

Tune in now to be inspired, empowered, and reminded that the most powerful version of success is the one where you stay true to yourself!

Listen to the extended video version of this episode on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ALaLatinaPodcast/videos

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In this new episode of A LA LATINA: The Playbook to Succeed Being Your Authentic Self, Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner are joined by the incredible Betsabe Botaitis, a trailblazing strategist and fintech executive with over 15 years of experience. Her career spans large financial institutions, fintech companies, and blockchain and cryptocurrency companies. Betsabe's journey is nothing short of inspiring.

Betsabe has held several senior roles at renowned, leading-edge companies, including Uplift (the leading BNPL in travel), Kueski (Mexico’s largest BNPL), Lending Club, and Citigroup. Today, she serves as the CFO and treasurer for Hedera, the number one enterprise blockchain governed by leading organizations around the world.

In this powerful conversation, Betsabe shares the lessons she's learned throughout her impressive career, the obstacles she's overcome, and how she stays true to her authentic self.

Here are the three key takeaways:

Corporate America is not a Meritocracy: Betsabe sheds light on the reality that success in corporate America isn’t always about merit alone. She emphasizes the importance of being strategic, building your own network, and leveraging relationships to break through barriers, especially if you don’t have a prestigious degree.
Facing the wall from Latinos: Betsabe talks about how she encountered a scarcity mentality within the Latino community, where the instinct to compete sometimes overshadowed the need for support. She advocates for a cultural shift toward collaboration, solidarity, and creating networks that lift each other up.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: Through her own hardships, Betsabe has become a living testament to the power of resilience. From humble beginnings to overcoming countless unexpected challenges, her story proves that what doesn’t break you only makes you stronger. Her journey is a beacon of hope and inspiration for anyone facing adversity on their path to success.

Betsabe’s experiences offer invaluable lessons for anyone looking to rise, stay true to themselves, and succeed on their own terms. Tune in to hear her remarkable story and feel empowered to take on whatever comes your way.

Listen to the extended video version of this episode on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ALaLatinaPodcast/videos

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In this episode of A LA LATINA, Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner are thrilled to welcome the incredible Araceli Lewis, a powerhouse global sales executive at Dell Technologies. With a deep expertise in cybersecurity, cloud solutions, AI, and managed services, Araceli serves as a Global Account Manager, leading a team focused on forging resilient C-level partnerships and driving global sales initiatives. Her role centers around creating robust joint solutions, directly contributing to sustained revenue growth.

Araceli’s commitment to innovation and excellence, combined with her consultative selling approach, enables her to tailor strategies that address the complex needs of Dell’s strategic accounts. Through inspiring her global sales team and cultivating strong partnerships, she leads efforts that not only exceed expectations but also deliver groundbreaking technologies that elevate human progress and uplift society as a whole.

Three key takeaways from this episode:

The power of your roots: Araceli shares how growing up in a border town shaped her worldview, work ethic, and sense of purpose, turning her Latinx heritage into a source of strength in everything she does.
Turning failures into triumphs: She discusses how to embrace and unpack failures, using them as a tool for growth and resilience to ultimately achieve the success you desire, no matter the setback.
Leveraging latinidad as a superpower: Araceli emphasizes how to embrace your Latinx identity as a unique superpower in navigating today’s fast-paced, global environment, using cultural understanding and connection as an asset in all areas of life and career.

Tune in to hear Araceli’s empowering insights on how to lead with authenticity, build meaningful partnerships, and use your cultural strengths to make a lasting impact in the world. This episode is an inspiring reminder that being true to yourself is the key to success and progress!

iwork4dell

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In the opening episode of Season Four of A LA LATINA podcast, hosts Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum-Milner are delighted to start the season with the incredible Teresa Barreira, a transformational leader and innovator who currently serves as the Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Publicis Sapient.

We are beyond excited to begin this new season with such an inspiring and trailblazing guest!

Teresa’s journey is one of fearlessness and innovation, embracing the unknown and turning challenges into opportunities. Her leadership has earned her prestigious awards, including the Gold Stevie Award for Achievement in Management and Excellence in Leadership from Consulting Magazine, and she has won three Clio Awards for the social impact documentaries she produced: Never Done and Forgiving Johnny.

Here are the three takeaways from this incredible conversation:

Resilience and entrepreneurship from an early age: Teresa reflects on how her career began in her father’s café when she was just seven years old. This experience helped her develop resilience, scrappiness, and an entrepreneurial spirit that has shaped her entire career.
Embracing your background as a superpower: Teresa shares a valuable lesson—recognize your background as a source of strength. She didn’t fully realize the power of her heritage until later in her career, and she encourages everyone to embrace their roots early on to unlock their true potential.
Mastering the art of super prioritization: Teresa reveals her secret to success—super prioritization. Instead of focusing on everything you can do, she advises to focus on what you won’t do. This strategic approach helps you dedicate time and energy to what really matters, leading to greater success.

This episode is packed with powerful insights and inspiring stories that will leave you motivated to stay true to your authentic self and thrive in your career. We are so excited to share Teresa's wisdom and kick off this new season with such an extraordinary guest!

You can find the links to her documentaries below:

https://www.publicissapient.com/impact/never-done-film

https://www.publicissapient.com/impact/forgiving-johnny-film

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In the latest episode of A LA LATINA: The Playbook to Succeed Being Your Authentic Self, Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner had the privilege of chatting with the multi-talented trailblazer Jessica Alba, about her journey to the top being authentically Latina.

From her iconic roles in films, to becoming the youngest Latina to take a company public in 2021, Jessica’s story is one of resilience, innovation, and empowerment.

In this conversation, Jessica shared how she came to be the rockstar she is. Tracing back to her early years and breaking stereotypes both in Hollywood and business. Here are the three key takeaways of the conversation:

1. Embrace and elevate your identity. Jessica inspires us to fully embrace our cultural identity and recognize the profound impact of our early role models, especially within our own families. For her, the incredible support and strength of her family were crucial in shaping her confidence, resilience, and sense of purpose. By embracing who we are, we unlock the power to achieve greatness, with our roots serving as a powerful source of strength and determination.

2. Trust your Instincts and own your journey. One of Jessica’s key pieces of advice is to trust your instincts, especially when stepping into the unknown. She encourages us to believe in our own abilities and stop seeking validation from others. Over time, she learned to trust herself and follow her unique path.

3. Be ready to overcome obstacles Jessica’s journey teaches us that with persistence, optimism, and a mindset of growth, we can break through any obstacle. Whether launching The Honest Company or navigating the challenges of Hollywood, Jessica turned setbacks into stepping stones by staying open to learning and trusting the process. She shows that success comes not from having all the answers upfront, but from the courage to keep going, to learn, and to never give up.

Jessica’s dedication to social justice and sustainability has earned her recognition on prestigious platforms like Forbes' Self-Made Women issue and Fortune's 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs. She’s also been recognized by Fast Company, UK Glamour, and Vanity Fair, and received prestigious awards like the March of Dimes Grace Kelly Award and the Golden Heart Award for Outstanding Philanthropy.

Jessica’s journey is a testament to the power of staying authentic, embracing one’s heritage, and using success to uplift others. Don’t miss out on this uplifting and motivating episode with one of the most influential Latinas of our time. Stay tuned for all the wisdom Jessica Alba has to share!

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In this dynamic episode of A LA LATINA: The Playbook to Succeed Being Your Authentic Self, hosts Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner welcome the inspiring Ana Maria Rodriguez-Figueres, a global leader in culinary innovation with an impressive career spanning emerging and developed markets. Former Chief Innovation and Quality Officer at Pizza Hut International, Ana Maria has led initiatives across the food industry, from ideation sessions and new product development to consumer insights, marketing positioning, and quality assurance. She’s an expert in commercialization, supplier development, prototyping, and consumer research, with a track record of successfully launching new products and driving growth.

Ana Maria shares her unique perspective on how to make an impact in the corporate world while staying true to your authentic self. She gives valuable insights on the importance of building meaningful connections and how leadership is about inspiring others as much as it is about expertise and hard work. With her global experience and deep knowledge of the culinary industry, she offers a behind-the-scenes look at how innovative ideas come to life, and how to ensure they’re executed successfully with measurable results.

Key takeaways:

If you don’t get a seat at the table, bring the conversation to your table. Ana Maria emphasizes that you don’t need permission to create your own opportunities — everyone has the power to carve out their own space, have their voice heard, and make a difference.
What really gets you to the top is not just expertise, but the ability to inspire others. Leadership is about more than just technical knowledge. Ana Maria stresses that the capacity to motivate and guide people is what sets you apart in any field.
A playbook to go above your boss (without getting fired). In this episode, Ana Maria provides practical advice for navigating organizational dynamics and climbing the career ladder while maintaining respect, professionalism, and authenticity.

With her deep experience in everything from product commercialization and consumer research to successful market launches and quality assurance, Ana Maria offers listeners a playbook for success that is as much about personal growth as it is about professional achievement. Tune in for an empowering conversation that will inspire you to lead with confidence and authenticity, no matter where you are in your career journey!

Listen to the extended video version of this episode on our YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/@ALaLatinaPodcast/videos

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In this empowering episode of A LA LATINA: The Playbook to Succeed Being Your Authentic Self, Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner welcome the incredible Claudia Jaramillo, a highly accomplished board member and former global CFO with a proven track record of enhancing financial performance and maximizing shareholder value at Fortune 500 companies like Schlumberger (SLB) and Jacobs. With extensive experience in multinational corporate and operational finance, Claudia has led multi-functional teams of up to 1,800, driving transformative initiatives that optimize financial outcomes and accelerate long-term growth.

She’s also a passionate advocate for diversity and innovation, known for fostering environments where teams exceed their financial and operational goals. Claudia is the founder of #WISE, a global platform focused on accelerating women’s readiness for leadership positions, and has been a frequent speaker at prestigious events like the Women Economic Forum and EuroFinance.

In this conversation, Claudia shares invaluable insights from her extraordinary career, focusing on how women can thrive in male-dominated industries while staying true to themselves. From offering a playbook on surviving in a global corporate world to redefining female leadership, this episode is filled with actionable advice and inspiring stories.

Key takeaways:

Embrace your authentic self: Claudia explains how she navigated the corporate world by confidently presenting her authentic self at every stage of her career. Rather than blending in, she made it clear from the outset what she brought to the table—strengths, values, and all.
Thriving in a global, male-dominated industry: Claudia provides a powerful playbook for women seeking to succeed in industries with fewer women in leadership roles. She shares practical strategies for standing out, building influence, and leading effectively across cultures and continents.
Redefining female leadership: Claudia discusses the critical need for organizations to recognize that female leadership comes with its own unique strengths. She challenges traditional expectations and advocates for leadership styles that embrace collaboration, innovation, and inclusivity, rather than conforming to masculine norms.

Tune in for a conversation filled with inspiration, wisdom, and actionable insights that will empower you to embrace your true self, rise to leadership, and make a lasting impact in your career and beyond!

Listen to the extended video version of this episode on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ALaLatinaPodcast/videos

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The world really is too much with us. After years of peace, prosperity and progress toward the Global Goals, challenges and setbacks are following one after another now. Mark Malloch Brown, one of the world’s experts on development, calls it a Tsunami of Crises. Covid-19 set this wave of trouble in motion. But now as the World Health Organization sees the end of the pandemic in sight, economic disruptions are deepening and inflation is rampant.We visit with an aide worker in Pakistan, Samya K. Paracha, who reports that the price has doubled for a package of basic food and fuel for families dislocated by the historic flooding.Malloch Brown notes that the rich world’s ability to help is deeply hindered by what he describes as a crisis of democracy that has distracted many developed countries. “Our global house is on fire but they’ve not heard the alarm because its not ringing in the north, “ Brown said. “There just isn’t the bandwidth to understand that this is part of a wider breakdown."Co-hosts Claudia Romo Edelman and Lush end the episode on an upbeat note with a look at the decision by Patagonia’s owner to dedicate all the company’s future profits to protecting the planet.

Feeling distraught about the state of the world? This episode is for you. It turns out your pessimism is not evenly shared. Younger people, particularly younger people in the developing world, have a bright view of the future and expect their lives to be better than their parents. “This is the optimism of the tech generation that can see a way forward,” an expert on generational change, Dr. Eliza Filby explained. “They have a sense of what’s possible because they have access to information.” Which also means their hopefulness is built on a clear-eyed view, says co-host Edie Lush. “It’s not all rainbows and chocolate chip cookies,” she observed. “They do also see the challenges.” But they believe they have access to the education, skills and support to tackle those challenges, from climate to mental health to healthy food. "I think technology helps us learn alot more effeciently and faster," said Eden van Wyngaardt, a student in South Africa. While many people in the developed world feel their expectations thwarted and worry that young people won’t do as well as their parents, in the developing world there is a strong sense of possibility and agency. “The world that we would want to have depends on each and everyone’s personal actions,” said Ibrahim Kondeh, whose story of survival as a refugee from west Africa was featured on earlier episodes of Global GoalsCast. Eden and Ibrahim were two of the young people interviewed for this episode. We asked them several of the questions from a UNICEF survey of 21,000 people, young and older, all around the world. This intergenerational survey identified the optimism of the young. “Young people are 50% more likely than older generations to believe the world is becoming a better place,” reported Unicef, a Global GoalsCast partner. This episode was sponsored by Mastercard and features Payal Dalal of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. Thanks to our partners at One Young World and iamthecode.org for introductions to some of the young people we interviewed.

As we enter year three of the pandemic, the virus is winning. That sober assessment comes from a Special Envoy of the World Health Organization, Dr. David Nabarro. “Its winning because we have not presented a united front against it,” Nabarro explains. “and that can only be possible if world leaders work properly together.” Global GoalsCast sits in on one of Nabarro’s Covid-19 briefings with public health workers from around the world. “Unless we do this together this virus is going to beat us,” Nabarro warned, saying he and others were planning to focus next year on lobbying governments to improve cooperation against this pandemic, not just future ones. Vaccines need to be more equitably distributed, Nabarro said, yet at the same time the world needs to recognize that vaccines save lives but do not end transmission of the virus, especially with the more transmissible Delta and Omicron variants. Stopping them requires better adherence to non pharmaceutical measures like masking and social distancing. “There is no excuse for not wearing face masks,” Nabarro said. “We cannot fight the virus if we are fighting each other,” said Co-Host Edie Lush. “Amen,” replied Co-Host Claudia Romo Edelman. This episode of Global GoalsCast is brought to you by Universal Production Music, one of the world’s leading production music companies and features an interview with Jane Carter, Managing Director, Universal Production Music UK & VP Global Repertoire.

The rich world placed a big bet on vaccines. But the flaw in that gamble became clear as a new variant spreads. The vaccine was never enough to stop the pandemic, Edie Lush points out in this episode, even if the world had enough vaccine. Most of the world did not have enough vaccine and the new variant, Omicron, mutated and began to spread. Wealthy countries, which had kept most of the vaccine for themselves, are now trying to block this variant by blocking travel from countries who first identified it, Botswana, South Africa and neighboring countries in southern Africa. “People are truly livid,” Professor Magen Mhaka Mutepfa of the University of Botswana reports. Africans feel they are being ostracized by the rich world for doing the right thing: reporting the new variant the moment they identified it. Jane Badham, a health consultant, offers a heart rending report of sorrow from Johannesburg. “African governments and people will need all the solidarity of everybody,” says Dr. David Nabarro, special envoy of the World Health Organization, “The last thing we want is people saying, ‘oh, we'll cancel flights.’ What's it do? What does it do?... I am so fixated on the importance of solidarity and so fixated on the unfairness of single-handed, high-handed responses. And particularly high handed responses from rich countries who've been hoovering up the vaccine and who've been making it difficult for poor countries to cope. No, we actually need to be able to count on each other in dealing with this pandemic. It’s got months, and years to run. So let's just be civil to each other.” Travel lockdowns may buy some time. But the crucial defenses are, as they have been from the beginning, masks, distancing, testing and isolating of those potentially infected. Peter Hebard, a systems engineer, offers advice on selecting effective masks. You can also learn more from the WHO here: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks Edie Lush says empathy is crucial to an effective and appropriate global response. “We have to hold the consequences of what we do in mind,” she said, urging the developed world to increase vaccine and medical supplies to southern Africa as well as economic aid to ease the impact of travel bans.

Everyone seemed disappointed with the Glasgow climate summit. But maybe it was not as bad as it looked? That is the provocative insight of Isabel Hilton, an expert on both climate action and on one of the pivotal countries, China. Yes, it was “unhelpful,” as she put it, that India, with China’s backing, changed the wording of the final communique to promise a “phase down” rather than a “phase out” of coal. But this language may have reflected the need to manage domestic politics while actually making progress. “I don't think coal is safe at all after Glasgow,” Hilton told co-host Edie Lush. More generally, Edie and co-host Claudia Romo Edelman explore a fascinating reversal. Where in the past political leaders overpromised and under delivered on climate action, Glasgow may mark a moment when what is actually happening exceeds what politicians feel able to talk about as they worry about nationalist and anti-climate forces. Not everyone, of course, shares this hopeful outlook. Edie describes conversations she had with several experts who expand on the widely held view that action on climate simply is moving too slowly to cap rising temperatures at 1.5 centigrade. The mayor of Dhaka North, Atiqul Islam, described how 1500 climate migrants were arriving in Dhaka every day as sea level rises in Bangladesh. Walter Roban, deputy premier and Home Minister of Bermuda, explained his vision to create a blue economy in the island nation and why help would be needed from the rich world. Anne Cairns, from our sponsor Mastercard, and Jude Kelly, from the Women of the World Foundation, describe the importance of gender equity in solving the climate emergency. “Climate change is a man-made problem and needs a female solution,” Kelly says.

The World Health Organization’s emergency committee on Covid-19 says that “analysis of the present situation and forecasting models indicate that the pandemic is far from finished.” To curtail it, a “coordinated international response” is needed, reports Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman. “Where have I heard that before?” replied co-host Edie Lush. A coordinated response is exactly what the world has not had. Edie and Claudia explore the chaotic response with Dr. David Nabarro and other health experts at his regular briefing. Rebecca Kanter, a nutrition expert based in Chile, described how travel had become a crazy patch work of rules that could only be met by taking extra doses of vaccine. “I have a PhD and I can't even figure out now what the new travel restrictions are,” she said. “I have friends who say, ‘I don't want to get 5 vaccines.’ But if the only way they can move around is to get five vaccines they're in a weird ethical dilemma.” John Atkinson, an expert on how systems work, and why sometimes they don’t, said: “systems like this are almost inevitably not designed to be that way. They're the unintended consequences of really caring often and smart people trying to do the right thing. Each time layer upon layer upon layer. And the whole thing ends up in a complete mess. We have to surface these contradictions and make them visible. So people just see how crazy it is.” David Nabarro, special envoy on Covid-19, said the tangled rules disadvantaged the poor and helped those who knew how to play the system. He also described how vaccination distribution remained wildly inequitable. Rich countries should pay for vaccine supply to go directly from manufacturers to COVAX, the global system for distributing vaccine, rather than donating surplus supplies they have been holding. These surpluses are often near their expiry date, he said, and giving them away was like donating stale bread to the hungry.

In this episode, taped live at the end of the United Nation’s General Assembly meeting, three experts face the challenge of making up ground lost to the pandemic. Measures of wealth, health, education and equity have all been set back. “The world has a lot of work to do,” said co-host Edie Lush.

“The pandemic has really set back the cause of human progress in terms of all the metrics around health, and inclusion and gender violence etc. etc. around the world,” reports Gillian Tett, co-founder of Moral Money at the Financial Times. “The reality is that grappling with these challenges and trying to uphold the SDGs now is harder than it was say two years ago in terms of where we are starting.”

Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman shares data from the Gates Foundation Goal Keepers report that shows the start of recovery on everything from vaccination rates to total numbers of people caught in extreme poverty.

Ivan Weissman, journalist and entrepreneur in South America, said that the pandemic crisis was accelerating the empowerment of women and thus economic recovery from the downturn. He cited, for example, the decision by Argentina to credit the domestic work women do at home when setting their pensions.

Anthony Kefalas, Vice chair of the Democracy and Culture Foundation, offered a simple summary of the current challenge: “At the bottom of everything it is the question of inequality.”

Rising inequality, compounded by the pandemic, is undermining support for democratic government. “The main problem is to reduce inequality. The corollary to this is that if you don’t reduce inequality then you will not be able to operate in a system that you could call liberal capitalism. You can easily go into a system you where you have authoritarian capitalism.”

Kefalas, author of the new Athens Charter for Business, said that the end goal of all corporate responsibility efforts must be to reduce inequality.

The pandemic and economic collapse dealt a severe blow to the progress that was being made toward eradicating extreme poverty, improving health and education, and reducing hunger and inequity. Those are the Sustainable Development Goals, aka the Global Goals, the World’s ‘to-do list’ for a better, fairer world by 2030. “A lot of of the people who were in precarious situations ended up falling deeper into poverty,” explained one of the leading experts on the goals, Vishal Gujadhur, an economist at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “And that’s something that’s really disappointing and that’s really a setback to the SDGs.” But here is the good news. Or at least what co host Edie Lush calls “the better news.” “Due to really strong action from individuals from governments, from communities we’ve averted the worst-case scenario,” Gujadhur reports, based on the Gates foundations latest Goalkeepers report on the SDGs. The “apocalyptic” numbers being reported at this time last year are already beginning to turn around, Gujadhur said. The recovery is uneven. The poor have suffered the worst and are recovering more slowly, both between countries and within countries. The world needs to redouble efforts to get back on track toward the global goals. Every effort counts and local, small-scale efforts can add up to big change. We visit a hotel in Rwanda, empty during lockdowns, that stepped up by using its kitchen and staff to deliver meals to hungry kids at the local primary school. “They were happy,” one of the hotel trainees, Jesca Rusaro, said of the school children. “And that makes me happy, too.” Edie and Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman urge every listener to find ways to help their communities. That can include supporting the food program at the Mirama primary school in Rwanda through the Community Conservation Fund/Africa. They promised to include the link in these show notes and here it is: https://www.ccfa.africa/support/#get Featured Guests Vishal Gujadhur is an economist and deputy director of policy at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He leads a group that addresses how countries raise, spend, and allocate resources—and how they deal with debt, national planning and budgeting, and digital public finance. Ian Williams is General Manager of the Mantis EPIC Hotel and Suites in Rwanda’s Nyagatare District, an eco-hotel near the northern entrance of Akagera National Park. When lockdowns cut off most travel, Williams worked with members of his staff to use the hotel’s kitchen and resources to help feed kids at the local primary school. Jesca Rusaro is a trainee in food and beverage at the Mantis EPIC Hotel and Suites, Nyagatare District, Rwanda. Nyesiga Charles Kabujangari is a receptionist at the Mantis EPIC Hotel and Suites, Nyagatare District, Rwanda. This episode of Global GoalsCast is brought to you by The Royal Academy of Engineering’s Leaders in Innovation Fellowships, supporting innovators developing creative solutions to further the Global Goals. In this episode we heard Dr. Nusrat Sanghamitra on the impact her innovation is having in the global fight against cancer. In case you were looking for the link to help the school food program here at the end of the show notes, where Claudia kept saying it would be, here it is. Again: https://www.ccfa.africa/support/#get

Season 6 trailer

Do you think Climate Change is something that will happen in the future? Or something that will happen somewhere else? Well, as Co-hosts Claudia Romo Edelman and Edie Lush, say: think again. The climate is warming and one of the predicted effects, extreme weather, is happening faster and more severely than climate scientists had forecast. This has produced record heat in western Canada and the United States and unprecedented rain and flooding in China and Europe. Global GoalsCast visits Mayschoß, one of the German towns ruined by flooding and hears about the physical destruction and the jarring realizations brought on by the flooding. “It has shown as a community and I think also as a country that we are really vulnerable,” says Anja Menzel, a political science professor whose street was turned into a raging river. “That is something we did not experience before. Because, oh, its those third world countries that are affected by climate change. It isn’t us. we are well equipped.” This has increased the urgency for both mitigation, such as the European Unions proposal to reduce carbon emissions, and measures to adapt to handle extreme weather events that can no longer be averted. Will the shock of this year of extreme weather be enough to motivate these needed changes? Featured Guests Dr. Anja Bierwirth, Head of Research Unit Urban Transitions, at Wuppertal Institute, an international think tank for sustainability research focused on impact and practical application. Dr. Anja Menzel, Research fellow at the Chair for International Politics, FernUniversität in Hagen David Ryfisch, team lead for international climate policy at Germanwatch, where he manages the portfolio on sustainable and climate finance. Harvey Scherer, event organizer & safety expert who is part of the rescue of Mayschoß, one of the German villages destroyed by the recent floods.

The world has had it with lockdowns at just the wrong moment. Covid is spreading faster than ever even as political leaders back off restrictions designed to curb it.

Dr. David Nabarro, Special Envoy of the World Health Organization on Covid-19, warns that the next six months will be rough. “We are in the middle of a really difficult pandemic and we are nowhere near the end of it,” he said. Vaccines alone cannot stop the pandemic. There is not enough supply and, in any case, the vaccines are better at preventing severe illness than at stopping transmission of the virus. He warns that measures of hospitalization and death miss the serious “Long Covid” afflicting many younger patients. Dr. Nabarro discusses effective public health measures with public health experts in Botswana and Canada.

This episode is sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Leaders in Innovation Fellowships. Dr. Jo-Ann Passmore of the University of Capetown Medical School describes her innovation, GIFT, which measures inflammation as a simple test for sexually transmitted diseases.

The world is exhausted with this pandemic. Yet, the virus perseveres, mutating in ways that have made it far more contagious. This has created a dangerous situation. Many communities want restrictions lifted, even as the need to curb the virus has never been greater. David Nabarro, special envoy of the World Health Organization for Covid-19, explains in this episode that it is vital to reduce the presence of the virus now before it mutates further to evade vaccines. Colleagues have told him that the Delta Variant could be within two mutations of being able to do that, Nabarro reports. The Delta Variant is spreading rapidly in Africa, where very few people have yet to be vaccinated, as well as among the unvaccinated even in rich countries with relatively high levels of vaccination.

Dr. Lucky Aziken, an optometrist in Nigeria, is one of many health providers working to hold back the spread. He describes how he organized safety measures for one of Nigeria’s most vulnerable populations, inmates in the country’s 240 prisons. Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman talks with Dr. Nabarro about how she lost her own mother to Covid-19 and how each of us has a role to play in stopping the spread of the virus.

While we cannot vaccinate our way out of the crisis, greater vaccine supply must be part of the long term solution. Co-host Edie Lush speaks with the CEO of the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world, Adar C. Poonawalla of the Serum Institute of India during the India Global Forum. He urges a global plan to have vaccine manufacturing capacity standing by in the next pandemic.

Also appearing in this episode are South African nutritionist Jane Badham and Holly Wheeler, a global health advocate.

In New York they are shooting off fireworks to celebrate reopening. But in other parts of the world the coronavirus is continuing to spread, with lethal results. Public health workers are angry and frustrated. A senior official of the World Health Organization, Maria Van Kerkhove, says the world needs to pull together to use all available tools to curb the virus. “Right now the narrative is vaccines, vaccines, vaccines,” she said, “and while vaccines, vaccinations are an incredibly powerful tool, we've completely forgotten about everything else that works. And I feel that frustration.”

In this episode, Public health experts in Botswana and Chile describe the continuing rampage of Covid-19 in their countries and Dr. David Nabarro, special Covid-19 Envoy of the WHO, criticizes leaders of the world’s most developed countries, the G7, for offering vaccines but not much else to the rest of the world at their just concluded summit. “It was a pretty bad outcome,” Dr.Nabarro said. “It was a lot of banging chests -- “we’re good” -- but not enough responsibility.”

Co-host Edie Lush noted that a very similar criticism of the G7 could be made around their tepid response to climate change. Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman says she understands the desire to get back to living, but that this must happen in a globally conscious way.

Fact and Actions in this episode are presented by Regina Larko, founder and co-hot of the podcast, Hashtag Impact.

Covid-19 is moving from a pandemic to an endemic disease. The virus will be with us for a long time to come, maybe forever. Dr. David Nabarro, special envoy of the World Health Organization, says we need to prepare for this with strong leadership - both local and global. Global GoalsCast attends Dr. Nabarro’s latest briefing where he introduces us to health workers who have made a real difference controlling the virus and supporting those struck down by it in their local community. These include a nurse-run campaign to isolate and vaccinate in Nepal to a program in the United Kingdom to assist long-Covid sufferers. “The sort of leadership that's needed is leadership that connects,” John Atkinson, a specialist in systems change, tells Dr. Nabarro. “Leadership that doesn't seek credit for itself. Leadership that knows there's no limit to what you can achieve if you don't give a damn who takes the credit.” Invisible leadership, Dr. Nabarro calls this. Globally, Nabarro calls for a new approach from rich countries. “it’s ok to lead for the world,” he tells the leaders of the G7 countries, explaining that protecting just their own constituents won’t work. He argues that rich countries should stop holding vaccines for booster doses when poor countries still need first doses. Protecting the vulnerable everywhere is the only sensible strategy while vaccine is scare. “You are actually serving your constituents better if you lead for the world.” Global GoalsCast is co-hosted by Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman. Other guests on this episode include: Durga Sapkota, a nurse in Katmandu who continues to organize a community public health response to combat Covid-19 in Nepal. She is an ambassador for Women Deliver, a Global GoalsCast partner. Clare Rayner, a specialist occupational health physician and honorary lecturer at the University of Manchester Medical School Iman Ahmed, a Global Public Health expert currently working vaccinating the Sudanese diaspora in Canada. Nazeem, a singer-songwriter from The Gambia. This episode is brought to you by our listeners. Thanks also to CBS News Digital and Universal Production Music.

The world’s fight against Covid-19 is at a crossroads. Four out of five doses of vaccine have gone to a few rich countries.

“What are we all working for,’ asks Dr. David Nabarro, a special envoy of the World Health Organization. “Are we working for a small number of groups of people in well endowed countries to be able to be protected? People like me? Is this all about us being able to be okay?” Or, Dr. Nabarro adds, will the rich world take up the responsibility for manufacturing and distributing enough vaccine to protect everyone?

Inventing the vaccine was a triumph for science, says the Director General of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. But inequitable distribution is a “failure for humanity.”

In this episode, Global GoalsCast attends a high level briefing lead by Dr. Nabarro, with updates on the spread of Covid-19 in India (Dr. NK Sethi), Nepal (Dr. Rojan Dahal), Chile (Rebecca Kanter) and Argentina. Co-host Edie Lush also speaks with her old boss, Ivan Weissman, a journalist in Argentina, about a creative approach to lockdowns in one of that countries poorest communities.

Global GoalsCast is invited to an exclusive briefing on Covid-19 for global health leaders. The Covid-19 situation is more sobering today than at any time in the pandemic, Dr. David Nabarro, special envoy of the World Health Organization, informs the group. India is the challenge now, he reports. But where will the problem be tomorrow? “I don’t know,” he warns. Nabarro notes that some wealthy countries are trying to vaccinate their way out of the pandemic, even planning for the vaccination of children. But there is not yet enough vaccine to protect the world. So the right thing to do is use vaccine to protect the most vulnerable first, wherever they are and rely on non-pharmaceutical tools, like distancing, masks and washing, to curb the spread. Also featured in this episode is Dr. Jonathan Fitzsimon, a family physician in Ontario, Canada and the inspiring music of Nazeem, whose ballad, Respect, honors frontline workers and encourages everyone to abide by public health measures. You can support Nazeem’s music at GoFundMe.com, One World Covid Ready Response. Dr. David Nabarro is a Special Envoy of the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General on COVID-19 and Co-Director of the Imperial College Institute of Global Health Innovation at the Imperial College London. As Strategic Director of 4SD, a social enterprise based in Geneva, Switzerland, he and his team have been offering Open Online Briefings since the beginning of the pandemic. More at: https://www.4sd.info/covid-19-open-online-briefings/ and https://covid19.who.int/. This episode of Global GoalsCast was made possible by listeners like you, who care about the future. We survive on your support, so like us, subscribe and give us all the stars you can.

The fight to curb Covid-19 has created a new divide between those who have had the vaccine and those who have not. The United States, The United Kingdom and other well off countries are on their way to immunizing their entire adult population. Yet dozens of less wealthy countries have yet to receive their first dose. This inequity is both a moral challenge and a public health crisis. “You have coverage of a hundred percent in one rich country and then, in the following day, you have importation of new variants so all your efforts become useless,” warned Eduardo Samo Gudo, Scientific Director at Mozambique’s National Institute of Health. “From where we are in Africa,” said Emma Ingaiza who manages a clinic in the legendary Mathare slums of Nairobi, “we would want the world out there to understand that we are equally important. That our lives also matter. We're just on the front line as much as everyone else is.” Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman, who worked on the challenge of supply of treatment and vaccine for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said the world saw this crisis coming. But the solution created by the World Health Organization and other groups, called COVAX, has been slow to raise the money from high income countries and then buy the vaccine supply it is committed to delivering to low income countries. Roz Scourse of Doctors Without Borders says COVAX has failed and that the solution is plan offered by South Africa, India and many countries in the global south to waive Intellectual Property rights on the new vaccines so poor and middle countries can make their own. Others, however, worry this might undermine manufacturing quality while doing nothing to solve the problem that high income countries have bought most of the current supply. Kristina Kloberdanz, Chief Sustainability Officer for Mastercard, sponsor of Global GoalsCast, discusses Mastercard’s work on global gender equity – for example by conducting annual salary reviews, closing the gender pay gap, instituted gender neutral parental leave and establishing mentorship for leadership growth.

Putting the world back on track after the pandemic will require a level of cooperation and partnership unlike anything we have seen. That is the conclusion of experts convened by Global GoalsCast to assess the crisis of the Sustainable Development Goals and the road forward.

The world before the pandemic proved dangerously vulnerable because of the very challenges the SDGs are designed to address.“And really this is our opportunity right now to focus in on who is being left behind, who is not getting the access and be able to find those supercharged solutions,” said Annemarie Hou, head of partnerships at the United Nations. “The SDGs are our way out of this, if we work together,” added Rajesh Mirchandani of the UN Foundation.

Recorded live at the end of Global Goals week, this is part two of our special on the setbacks and solutions if the world is to build back better. Also featured in this episode are Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever; David Nabarro of the World Health Organization; Gillian Tett of the Financial Times and Kate Garvey of Project Everyone, who noted her organization's proposal to rebrand the SDGs as the Sustainable Development Solutions.

Rose Beaumont, from our sponsor, Mastercard, shares more on Mastercard’s index on Women Entrepreneurs.

The pandemic has set the world back in so many ways. In this special, two-part episode, Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman look at the damage inflicted on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. The worldhad been making real progress toward the goals, which include eradicating poverty, educating everyone, providing health care for all and equity for women and girls. But in the space of a few months the progress hasbeen reversed on everything from vaccinations to literacy. In Part one, Henrietta Fore of UNICEF describes the crisis for children and for the SDGs overall. Melissa Fleming, Under Secretary General of the UN, describes the opportunity to embrace the lesson of the pandemic: inequity created this crisis. Building back a more equal worldwill help prevent the next one. Edie also visits with students in India and Uganda to hear how they have tried to keep their education going through the lockdowns. At the peak of the pandemic, 1.6 billion children were out of school. Unicef warns that a generation is being lost through school closures. Rose Beaumont from our sponsor Mastercard describes how women entrepreneurs are the bedrock of our societies’ economies and are helping to build back better.

Returning to work and curbing coronavirus are not competing ideas. That is a false choice. We can have jobs and health by building back in new ways that improve workplaces, education and medical care while deterring the infection. Co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman seek out provocative ideas for immediate change.

They are joined in this search by Gillian Tett of the Financial Times, inventor and editor of the FT’s Moral Money newsletter and coverage. “The key question is how do we go forward and build back better and not merely survive but thrive in the future.”

Dr. Oxiris Barbot, New York City Health Commissioner, says that “an equity lens” is essential to recognize that risk of disease weighs heavier on communities of color and lower incomes. Repairing this requires not only improved access to health care, but also to better housing, jobs and education. “We are only as healthy as our most challenged resident,” she said.

Jack Hidary, the Artificial Intelligence expert, serial entrepreneur and leader of Alphabet’s X project in quantum computing, says that we have sixty days to use the crisis to convince leaders to adopt immediate innovation. He suggests, for example, that big companies decentralize and create satellite offices so no employee has to commute more than ten minutes to a desk. He says he has discussed this with WeWork. He also offers ideas for on-line learning and telemedicine.

David Milliband of the International Rescue Committee speaks with Edie about how innovations spurred by the fight against coronavirus may have long-term benefits. Improved sanitary conditions, for example, curb other diseases in poor countries. Milliband notes that the simple instruction to wash your hands regularly is a major challenge for the three billion people who don’t have clean running water at home. Their conversation was part of a ‘ThinkIn’ that our colleagues at Tortoise run for their members and is included in Global GoalsCast with their blessing.

Facts about the crisis and Actions to build back better are presented by Alice McDonald of Project Everyone.

From our sponsor, Mastercard, Senior Vice President Amy Neale describes how Startpath, Mastercard’s startup network, solved a Covid-19 fundraising challenge for the City of Los Angeles in eight days.

Not since World War II has so much of the world been so shattered by a single global event.

How do we recover?

We look at recovery from multiple perspectives. An Israeli peace-maker turned comic shares her frightening tale of Covid-19 diagnoses and survival. She was quarantined in a Jerusalem hotel with Arabs and Jews, an education in the true meaning of coexistence. Dr. Tom Frieden, one of the world's leading public health physicians, describes how to keep coronavirus in its box so we can carefully resume at least some parts of life and work. From two parts of Africa, Kenya and Cameroon, we hear about the fight to keep the pandemic from running rampant over Africa. Facts and Actions are offered by Jonathan Rivers, the Head of WFP's Hunger Monitoring Unit of the World Food Program, which warns that the economic disruptions of Covid-19 are increasing serious hunger in several parts of the globe. Amy Neale, Senior Vice President Start Path & Fintech at our sponsor, Mastercard, highlights two start-up companies that pivoted quickly to apply their abilities to challenges of the pandemic. Our partner, One Young World, played a special role in this episode. They introduced us to three of our guests.

The Israeli comic, Noam Shuster, who first appeared on Global GoalsCast last year in our episode on how comedy can demolish stereotypes. When we heard about her Covid-19 experience we invited her back. She was a One Young World Ambassador. So are both of this week's guests from Africa, Achaleke Christian Leke of Cameroon and Emma Ingaiza of Kenya.

Global Goal 5, gender equity, is both a purpose in itself and a vital accelerant to achieving all of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. “We’re trying to move past the gravitational forces, the barriers that hold women back,” explains Melinda Gates, philanthropist, author and mother of three. “Because if you can remove those barriers and help lift women up, they will lift up the world.”

In this special episode, Claudia Romo Edelman and Edie Lush share the How To Academy podcast in which journalist Hannah MacInnes interviews Melinda Gates in front of a live audience in London. For the last twenty years Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. One lesson she has learned is that to lift society up you have to stop keeping women down.

The How to Academy hosts leading artists and thinkers in London for public talks, debates and conferences. Selected talks are featured in the How to Academy's podcast series, available wherever you get your podcasts.

The pandemic can be stopped. We already know how, explain two of the world’s top public health doctors in this episode on lessons from the pandemic. The solution involves truly understanding how the disease was stopped in the early countries that confronted it. “We’re going back and relearning a lot of the lessons from China,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, who led the World Health Organization’s mission to China and is working to share those findings in Italy and other countries. Dr. Aywalrd says leader’s in the West were slow to listen to the lessons. “We are all human at a certain level and we tend to cherry pick that part of the information, which we find most reassuring,” he observed. Dr.David Nabarro, TITLE, said that quick action will contain the virus. “If when a case arrives, you prevaricate, you're half-hearted, you pretend it's not real and you wait perhaps two, three, four weeks before you start to implement measures of any kind,” he warned, “what happens is that it basically doubles in scale every two to three days.”

Following the lead of Drs. Nabarro and Aylward, Co hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman share their plan to offer regular episodes of the podcast that detail success in attacking the pandemic and share them widely while the lessons can make a difference.

Listen on Apple Podcasts https://bit.ly/globalgoalscast or the Global GoalsCast website https://globalgoalscast.org/s4e3 or wherever you listen.

Measured against history the change has come swiftly. After living in the countryside for thousands of years, humanity is in the midst of an epic move to the city. Co-host Edie Lush points out in this episode that as recently as 200 years ago little more than one person in ten lived in a city. Today, the UN estimates just over half of us live in cities. By 2050 that will be two thirds.

Population is growing and urbanizing at the same time, says Renata Rubian, Adviser on Inclusive Sustainable Growth at the United Nations Development Program. Which is why the Global Goals include a goal explicitly focused on creating Sustainable Cities, SDG # 11.

Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman notes that other goals, like eradicating poverty or hunger, are easier to understand even if they are challenging to achieve. But given how much of the world will be living in cities we can not hope to achieve the global goals – from climate to equity, from good health to decent jobs and living standards – without creating sustainable cities. So what is a sustainable city and how do we create them, Edie Lush asks. She seeks out two well-know experts on sustainability and urban design, William McDonough and Samir Bantal. McDonough, author and architect, explains his concept of cradle to cradle production, designing products so there components can be reused and there is in a perfect case no waste. This concept can apply not only to products but to cities, which can imitate the organic patterns of the natural world.

The architect Samir Bantal emphasizes the importance of countryside. Countryside, The Future is the name of a new exhibition he and his famous colleague, Rem Koolhaas, the architect and urban designer, have just opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The exhibition calls it “absurd” that most of the world’s people are being concentrated in a tiny corner of the planet’s space. “Cities only represent 2% of the Earth's surface, which means that the other 98%, perhaps, is ignored,” Bantal says. “There's a kind of single focus on urbanism and on cities while actually the countryside is perhaps, the most interesting area to investigate right now, not only as architects, but as humanity.” Facts and Actions are presented by Stan Stalnaker, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Hub Culture, the social network which operates the digital currency Ven. He invited listeners to join Hub Culture’s Emerald City project, which is building a virtual city and generating revenue to sustain Amazon Rain Forests. Music in this episode includes tracks from a new album ‘100% HER’ which is now live on the Universal Production Music website and Spotify. One of the artists - Kate Lloyd shares what it's like to be featured on an album where every track was composed, mixed and mastered by women.

The sponsor of this episode is Brevet Capital Management, which identifies 100% responsible investment opportunities that do well and do good.

We must end our dependence on Fossil Fuels. “There is no choice,” Claudia Romo Edelman says. But it is not as simple as just stopping, experts explain in this episode, produced in cooperation with the Alphaville blog of the Financial Times. Eighty percent of our energy today comes from Fossil Fuels, explains Izabella Kaminska, editor of Alphaville. If we just go cold turkey, or even transitioned too suddenly, the global economy would shudder. That, in turn, would push other important goals out of reach and cause worldwide disruption and potential political upheaval.

Claudia and co-host Edie Lush frame this challenge in terms of the Sustainable Development Goals: How do we achieve Goal 13, Climate Action, while also moving toward Goal 1, eradicating extreme poverty or Goal 8, decent work and economic growth? To find answers, they speak with experts who are working on the transition from fossil fuels.

Adam Matthews, Director of Ethics and Engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, describes the Transition Pathway Initiative (https://www.transitionpathwayinitiative.org), which assesses corporations on how effectively they are moving away from Fossil Fuels. Investors like the Pensions Board can then increase their investment in companies that are part of the transition while withdrawing from those that are not, Matthews explained. For example, Royal Dutch Shell makes the list of recommended investments while ExxonMobil does not, Matthews said.

Izabella Kaminska shares an interview with the iconoclastic environmentalist, Michael Shellenberger, who says that Nuclear power will be an essential component of any plan that maintains adequate power supplies while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Claudia says it is important to have open conversations with all options on the table.

Facts and Actions are presented in this episode by the United Nations Development Programs Senior Climate Advisor, Cassie Flynn. The UNDP has just launched Mission1point5 (https://mission1point5.org/us), a mobile game that educates people about climate policy and provides a platform for them to vote on the solutions they want to see. Flynn said these results will be presented to world leaders later in 2020.

Wildfire season in Australia has brought human and environmental tragedy. It also has sent a warning to us all. “There's a huge, really very important message for everybody in the world looking at these fires,” Matthew England, a professor of oceanography and climate at the University of New South Wales, explains in the final episode of Global GoalsCast’s Season Three. “This is a glimpse into our future. we only have to take warming levels of the planet to about three degrees Celsius, which we're not far off… We're a third of the way to that warming…(and) the summer we've just had will be basically a normal summer event.” In fact, 2019 was the warmest driest year ever recorded in Australia, with temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius above the average in the late twentieth century. Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman speak with Australians to understand the impact of these fires. Catriona Wallace, the founder and director of Flamingo Ai, a machine learning company, describes the flaming hell that consumed both her family farm and the neighborhood around her family summer home. “It's like driving through something from a Mad Max movie or through an apocalypse,” she reports. “It's something quite terrifying and extraordinary to experience.” The frightening experience has prompted her to focus her skills in Artificial Intelligence on creating tools to prevent or alleviate fires. She notes, too, that with men in charge things aren’t going well in Australian climate policy. Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and had a major hand in derailing the 2019 climate talks in Madrid. Wallace says a new approach is needed, to balance the influence of the coal industry with the needs of other Australians. Wallace, one of the first women to have a company listed in the Australian stock exchange, points out that women are skilled at this broader, multi-stakeholder approach. Empowering women to steward the planet is the goal of Pollyanna Darling, founder of the Australian chapter of TreeSisters, a global organization that raises funds to reforest the tropics and encourages women to seek leadership roles in protecting trees, forests and the overall environment. “We have a political environment that's not particularly favorable to environmental protection and care of the earth, which, because a lot of our economy's based on resource extraction,” Darling says of Australia. “From a TreeSisters perspective, one of the things that we have made it our mission to do is to help human beings to remember who and what they really are. And a part of that is remembering that we ARE nature and that without a healthy, thriving earth, we actually have nothing.” Claudia points out that the United Nations has put Sustainable Development Goal 13, climate action, at the top of the Global Agenda. All three of our guests say they hope, and even sense, that the wildfires will encourage stronger action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Actions you can take are proposed in this episode by Rob Galuzzo, from the Lion’s Share, a project co-founded by UNDP to encourage corporations to pay into a fund for conservation and environmental protection every time they use an image of an animal in their advertising. Mars Corp., the candy-maker, is a founding partner. In addition, Pollyanna Darling urges everyone to plant trees in their community and support TreeSisters (treesisters.org) in its work restoring tropical forests.

It is that end-of-the-year time to take stock. Global GoalsCast doesn’t judge whether you’ve been naughty or nice. But co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman do take a look at the world in 2019 and ask whether it is still getting better, or going to hell in a handbasket, as Edie so delicately framed it. She cites the failure of the climate talks and the rise of nationalism everywhere from the UK to Brazil. Things are not as bad as they seem, Claudia replies. In fact, the replenishment of the Global Fund to fight Malaria, Tuberculosis, and Aids shows that collective multilateral action is still possible. The world seems to be going in two directions at once, Edie and Claudia agree. To help sort things out Gillian Tett, founder of Moral Money at the Financial Times, joins the conversation. Some governments are dragging their feet, including the United States, Tett says. But Tett adds, “this was the year that business really stepped up.” The SDGs are a valuable checklist for business, she explains, and virtually every CEO she talks to wants to discuss the environment, corporate governance, and sustainability. This episode also features a special look back on some of the top Global GoalsCast conversations of the year, on everything from curbing global warming and eradicating poverty, to educating girls and aiding migrants. There is also a special Facts and Actions this episode, drawn from some of the best recommendations throughout the year. Laurie MacKenzie from our sponsor, Mastercard, describes how women and their families benefit from Mastercard’s digital pay project. “by educating and enabling these women they pass it on to their children and therefore that next generation grows up with a greater set of rights and education and aspirations.”

“Imagine all the people, living life in peace…. no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.” Those lyrics are surely familiar to you. They are from one of the most successful songs of all time, Imagine, by John Winston Lennon. Lennon, singing of his better world, voiced certainty that he “was not the only one” with this dream. Now, prominent corporate leaders have begun a new firm with the express purpose of making business and industry better global citizens. They have named the firm, Imagine, after the song.

In this episode, Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman discuss Imagine and talk with two of the founders, Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, and Valerie Keller, a well-known CEO whisperer, coach and expert in transformational business leadership. With governments acting too slowly or in many crucial places gridlocked, more focus has fallen on the role of business in curbing climate change and achieving the other Sustainable Development Goals.

Keller and Polman argue that much can be accomplished by creating “collective courageous behavior” by corporations working together to achieve what no one of them might take on alone.

Their first effort is underway in the Fashion industry and they talk about future plans for travel, tourism and, perhaps, even energy. Claudia observes that Imagine, the song, which was written in 1981, seems to call for the Sustainable Development Goals long before they were created in 2015. But Lennon also sang of “no possessions,” which might be a step further down a socialist road than Imagine, the company, envisions. Edie and Claudia discuss Imagine, the company’s place in what they describe as a movement to create a “better capitalism,” not replace it. “What we are really seeing in this world is that many people are dreaming of a better world than we have currently,” Polman says. Facts and Actions “to help meet the moment…the decisive decade of the 2020s” are from a leading expert in sustainable business, Aron Cramer, President and CEO of BSR, a not-for-profit which advises companies on sustainability. You can read Cramer’s 2019 CEO letter, “A New Climate for Business”. Laura MacKenzie, Senior Vice President of our sponsor, Mastercard, describes Mastercard’s work creating digital systems to pay garment workers, predominantly women, around the world. This protects their earnings and increases their access to the formal financial system. “many of the women,” MacKenzie says, “also have ambitions of their own. They would like to own land they would like to start a business. That’s what’s so exciting about this work.”

More than 30,000 African migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean. Ibrahim Kondeh narrowly escapes becoming one of them. But through luck and courage he makes it across to Italy, although he pays a terrible price on the way. Claudia Romo Edelman and Edie Lush complete the story of this one migrant. “The story of migrants should be told more,” Ibrahim says in this episode. “People tend to follow what the media tells about migrants and refugees -- seen as people who come in to steal jobs, criminals. So as a result no one knows what our actual stories are. Positive stories can change the mindset of people.” Ibrahim encounters frustration and racism in Italy. But he also is helped along the way, particularly by an innovative use of text messaging called U-report. Tanya Accone of Unicef explains that U-report connects Ibrahim and other migrants and refugees with experts who can advise them when they are at their most vulnerable, alone in a new land without language our resources. With the help of U-report Ibrahim navigates the Italian immigration rules and enrolls in high school. “A simple SMS,” says Tanya Accone, “can it change your life? I think Ibrahim would say, yes, it has.” Fact and actions are offered by one of the creators of U-report, Mathias Devi Nielsen of Unicef. “U report is a tool for all youth to raise their voices battle stereotypes connecting youth to service on a global scale. “ U report currently operates in 65 countries with 8.5 million uses. It is growing rapidly. Mathias invited companies, agencies, NGOs and youth groups to partner with u report to help provide migrants and refugees with answers to their questions

His name is Ibrahim Adnan Kondeh. He is one of thousands of young African’s who have crossed the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea in search of opportunity. Thousands more have died trying. We usually hear the tragedy and the controversy about migration, as cohost Edie Lush notes. So in this episode, Global GoalsCast wants you to meet one migrant and to hear his story, from him. Ibrahim is a remarkable young man. Courageous, resourceful and, it turns out, poetic. "In plastic boats, we are choked up as much as they can just like fishes in a sardine can. Irrespective of our religions, we pray for God's mercy. For it was only by his grace that we made it through that great sea. A true hero is what we are..."

Ibrahim retraces his journey from his village in Sierra Leone to the Libyan seashore. A trip that took him a harrowing nine months. He started as a teenager running away from tribal initiation. But by the time he was done he had joined an extraordinary stream of humanity flowing north. A report by the United Nations Development Program shows that Ibrahim is representative of a large group of young migrants from West Africa. They are by no means the poorest or the least educated from their countries, explains Mohamed Yahya, lead author of the report. Indeed, they are prompted to risk the dangerous journey as their rising aspirations outstrip their sense of opportunity at home. Yahya urges both African and European officials to address this opportunity gap. This episode also features Ann Cairns, from our sponsor Mastercard. She discusses Mastercard's Digital Food initiative in partnership with the World Food Programme to provide money to refugees to buy food themselves, along with other basic necessities.

Is it possible to eradicate extreme poverty? Here is the remarkable thing. For the first time in history, the answer is yes. Co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman talk about the new thinking about how to end the worst poverty. Macro solutions like growth, trade and migration still matter, a lot, they agree. But so do local solutions. Tanya Accone of Unicef explains how a failed effort to involve Silicon Valley in anti-poverty efforts produced a different approach in which solutions are developed with local communities not just for them. A good example from Uganda is Spouts of Water, which has invented clay pot filters that cost no more to use than the previous system of burning wood or coal to boil the water. Plus, Ugandans like the flavor! One of the basic lessons is that to help very poor people, often at the end of long dirt paths or isolated in slums, solutions must be designed for their situations, Accone explains. Context is crucial. Edie and Claudia also discuss the meaning of two Nobel prizes that connect directly to eradicating poverty – the prize in economics for the new field of research-based solutions and the peace prize to Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, for his efforts to create stability in the Horn of Africa, one of the world's poorest regions. Ending extreme poverty is the first of the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Edie points out that the idea we can even talk about ending poverty as a serious goal captures how far the world has come. Both proportionally and numerically, the number of poor people has been shrinking for decades. Much of this has been the result of broad economic growth, particularly in China. But that's left us with some of the most difficult situations, for example in rural India and sub-Saharan Africa. It will require sustained effort on multiple fronts to address these areas. Facts and Actions are offered in this episode by Saskia Bruysten, co-founder of Yunus Social Business, which invests in sustainable businesses such as Spouts of Water. Ann Cairns, Executive Vice Chairman of our sponsor, Mastercard, describes their Hundred Million Meals program to keep children in school by making sure they are fed. The effort is run jointly with the World Food Program, a Global GoalsCast partner.

Is the zeitgeist shifting toward action to curb global warming and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals? Veteran Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett joins Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman to consider that question in the aftermath of the United Nation’s climate summit and General Assembly. While the actions of governments were disappointing, they see a new attitude among many businesses, who were far more engaged in UN activity this year. “The balance of risks in the eyes of many business executives have shifted,” says Tett. Many executives now think it is “riskier to stand on the sidelines and do nothing than to actually be involved in some of these social and climate change movements,” Tett reports. The challenge now is not whether to act but how. Edie completes her visit with Professor John Sterman at MIT, whose En-Roads computer model of the climate lets Edie identify policy actions that will hold contain heating of the atmosphere. “The conclusion here is it is, technically, still possible to limit expected warming to 1.5” degrees Celsius, Sterman concludes. Facts and Actions come this week from Bradley Tusk, venture capitalist, political strategist, writer and host of the podcast, Firewall, which looks at the intersection of tech, politics and culture. This episode is sponsored by BSR, a non-profit working with member companies to support corporate social responsibility. Check out their upcoming event here: https://bsr19.org/Podcast

The climate challenge is sprawling and extraordinarily complex. It is too much for any individual to hold all of it in their head. That knowledge void has become a major political obstacle to effective climate action (SDG 13) as we fill it in paralyzing ways, from denial to apocalyptic fear. The best way to learn that we can curb climate change is to do it. So Global GoalsCast co-host Edie Lush sat down with John Sterman, professor of Management at MIT, to solve the climate crisis on his ClimateInteractiv model of the world’s climate and economy. Edie tried everything from energy efficient homes to a steep tax on carbon in a search for solutions that would hold global temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit). How did she do? Listen to this special two-part episode of Global GoalsCast, timed to coincide with the United Nations Climate Summit and the global journalism effort to increase awareness of the climate challenge, #CoveringClimateNow.

Sustainable Development Goal 12 calls for responsible production and consumption. As co-host Claudia Romo Edelman points out in this episode, that does not sound as dramatic as ending poverty or educating everyone, but it may be just as important. There is a disparity of consumption between the Global North and South. SDG 12 is the only goal that specifically calls on rich nations to lead. In our interview with Jared Diamond, he says that one American consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. Diamond, UCLA professor and author of the new book, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nation’s in Crisis, says this inequality is unsustainable as citizens of poorer countries demand better lives. The only sustainable world, he says, is a more equal world. Our most dangerous overconsumption is energy from fossil fuels. Co-host Edie Lush reports on a Financial Times chart which shows only a small percentage of the worlds largest corporations on track to reduce their carbon emissions enough to meet the goals of the Paris Climate accord. Fuel consumption continues to increase and therefore carbon emissions increase. According to the oil major, BP, renewables and natural gas are the fastest growing energy sources , yet in 2018 carbon emissions grew at their highest rate for 7 years at 2.0%. “We use more resources and we are having a heavy footprint which is affecting the biosphere and affecting the climate” says Author and Royal Astronomer Sir Martin Rees, author of On The Future and other books. We need to invest now to protect our children and grandchildren from climate risk, Lord Martin explains, and spending decisions can’t be judged with the same financial tools, such as the discount rate, used to measure the value of traditional investments. Once again we describe the interconnections of the SDGs. Achieving goal 12, Claudia explains, is connected to achieving goal 13, action to control climate change and The Ceo of our partner, APolitical, Robyn Scott, points out that educating women and girls is on the list of important actions to curb climate change. She offers Facts and Actions. Claudia and Edie give a shout out to a listener from Pittsburgh, Jason Hallmark. He is on a journey of a lifetime to learn about sustainability in the Arctic and we are very proud to have helped inspire him in a new chapter of his life. Two executives from our sponsor, MasterCard, describe financial tools that can improve lives.

The single largest cause of acute hunger in the world is not a lack of food, it is war and conflict. The World Food Program says conflict has pushed 74 million people to the edge of starvation. One of the most severe situations is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where militias and marauding gangs have driven millions of farmers off their land. GGC discusses the crisis with the director of the World Food Program in the DRC, Claude Jibidar, Rosette Kasereka, a farmer and Zachary, a former child soldier. The fertile DRC could easily grow enough food for all its people and all of Africa, for that matter, if the fighting would only stop, Jibidar tells co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman. Humanitarian groups and governments have adopted a new approach focused on ending need rather than merely delivering aid. In the DRC, that need is an end to violence. So WFP and other groups have focused on peacemaking. Kasereka credits a WFP program for uniting farmers. “Through union is power,” she says, ”we have become one. It has brought us together in this in this conflict situation that we lived before.“ This episode also features an interview with Tara Nathan, Executive Vice President of Humanitarian Development at our sponsor, Mastercard. She describes the digital aid network Mastercard has built to help humanitarian groups, corporations and governments to get out of their silos and work together.

No child should die of measles in 2019. Or any disease that can be prevented by Vaccine or basic preventive care. That’s the view of Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, speaking to Edie lush on this Episode. Yet children still do die needlessly. Which shows the world still has work to do to continue to grow healthier. Progress over the last decades has been remarkable. The near abolition of measles is just one example. A good part of the credit goes to two organizations, The Global Fund and Gavi, the vaccine alliance. Their work has helped people live longer healthier lives, particularly in the poorest places on earth. But now governments must decide whether to replenish their funds. Sue Desmond Hellman argues that it is the best investment in the future.

How will Artificial Intelligence shape the next decade? Will thisrevolution be a positive force, spurring global growth and improving lives around the world? Or will the benefits flow heavily to those who already have the knowledge and wealth to use these revolutionary technologies? Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman pursue those questionsaround the world. They speak to an author of a major United Nation’s report who says that AI will spur global growth more than earlier innovations like steam power. But who benefits from that growth will be shaped by how well Africa, Latin America and the rest of the Global South absorb and adapt these powerful tools and manage the inevitable disruptions to work. “In some ways, the Luddites weren’t wrong,” says the co author of the report, Michael Chui of McKinsey. In other words, AI can either help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals or move them out of reach. To understand what is already being done in Africa, Edie and Claudia speak with two African experts, Nathalie Munyampendaof the Next Einstein Foundation and Abdigani Diriye from IBM Research in Nairobi. They stress the importance of Africans developing African solutions to solve Africa’s challenges. “The conversation really needs to be around how we can effectively use artificial intelligence to improve the human condition and how we can prepare ourselves and the next generation,” says Diriye. Two special guests cite one basic challenge: inclusion. Christopher Fabian, innovation expert from UNICEF, and Rosemary Leith of the World Wide Web Foundation, note that half the world is not yet on the internet. Those who are not connected do not and will not have access to the powers of AI. This episode also features a conversation about the gig economy with Jennifer Rademaker, Executive Vice President of Global Customer Delivery at Mastercard, the sponsor of Season Two of the Global GoalsCast.

Annie Lennox is the special guest on this episode of Global GoalsCast. The rock star talks about why she moved away from music and into an activist role fighting HIV / AIDS and working to improve the lives of girls and women around the world. She urges women -- and men -- to embrace the term Global Feminism. “If you use the term Global Feminism to describe what you represent and what you stand for,” Lennox says, “you understand feminism all around the world. It is not only from a western perspective.” At its heart, Global Feminism recognizes that there are millions of girls and women around the world that “don't have a voice and by using the term you're making them present and known.” Facts and Actions are offered by Sioned Jones, Executive Director of The Circle, the organization founded by Annie Lennox. You will also hear about the Index of Women Entrepreneurs created by our sponsor MasterCard.

Co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman meet three female comics who challenge bias through their jokes and their lives. “I like to play with stereotypes,” says Irish comic Catherine Bohart. “I like to upend them. I like to use them.” Noam Shuster, an Israeli, took up comedy after she failed in more traditional approaches to peacemaking. “Through comedy and performance you can reach more audiences and diverse audiences and audiences maybe I would have never met.” Sindhu Vee (her real name is Venkatanarayanan. Guess how funny she makes that!) explains that her comedy is powered by the “outsiders gaze” of being a bit different all her life. She was born and raised in South India, became a banker, moved to London and married a Dane (they have 3 kids). “I think the biggest stereotype is a mother in comedy,” She says. Co-Host Edie Lush notes how similar these three modern female comics seem to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, who fought to break into a man’s world of comedy sixty years ago. That’s a fictional TV show but this is real life, now. Special Guest Julia Streets, a comic in London and host of the DiverCity Podcast, recommends facts and actions for this episode. You will also hear from Ann Cairns, the executive vice chair of MasterCard, sponsor of this season of The Global GoalsCast. A research engineer, she was the first woman to work an oil rig in the North Sea. Edie and Claudia also try their hand at comedy, which is why they are sticking to podcasting.

The Global GoalsCast regularly highlights the importance of educating girls. This episode Co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman talk with two remarkable women whose lives dramatize how much difference a woman can make when she is trained in technology. Marieme Jamme, founder of #Iamthecode, tells her story: Sold into prostitution as a teenager in Senegal, she escaped the traffickers, taught herself to read, write and code and ultimately founded the program that intends to teach a million girls to code by 2030. Victoria Alonso Perez grew up in Uruguay dreaming of Mars. Uruguay has no space program but Victoria persisted and became a trained engineer working with small satellites. Now she is using that training to help her country’s ranchers solve their biggest problems -- tracking their cattle herds, preventing theft and reducing the carbon footprint of raising beef. Also, Shamina Singh, President of the Center for Inclusive Growth and EVP for Sustainability at our new sponsor, MasterCard, describes Girls4Tech, a program started in 2014 to teach the foundations of STEM to 10 to 13 year olds. Photo Credit: IamtheCODE

Food is powerful in ways you may not often think about. Farmers in Zambia couldn’t get a market for their crops until a mobile phone application connected them to buyers. Now, their income is up and their community is growing. They’ve gone from being subsistence farmers to agricultural entrepreneurs, reports cohost Edie Lush. The same technology that others use to find cabs on Uber or dates on Tinder has now created “eBay for farmers” who otherwise would remain isolated at the end of a long dirt road.

This bonus episode features an episode of Business Extra by The National AE where Global GoalsCast co-host Edie Lush and Business Extra co-hosts Mustafa Alrawi discuss the Sustainable Development Goals which are large-scale, ambitious and inspiring. They are also changing the way we seek out investment opportunities as we move to meet this defined future with over $12 trillion up for grabs for the private sector according to the UNDP. The podcast was produced as part of The National’s Future Forum initiative which will examine how advancements in technology and societal developments will impact our future, and also coincides with The National’s tenth anniversary.

The fight to end extreme poverty is one of the great success stories in the modern world as more than a billion people have risen out of extreme poverty since 1990. SDG #1 is to eliminate all extreme poverty by 2030, yet as the date gets closer the work gets harder. The Gates Foundation Goalkeepers annual report states the worst poverty is increasingly concentrated in the places least able to fight it, especially countries south of the Sahara. In this episode, Bill Gates shares his surprising projection numbers and Dr Joyce Banda, former president of Malawi, President Emmanuel Macron, and other guests, share their ideas for how we can take increased action in the fight to end extreme poverty. Finally, hear how our sponsor, Cisco, uses their technology and expertise to accelerate global problem solving to benefit people, society, and the planet and to create an inclusive digital economy.

In this episode, we share the newly-launched results of the Hispanic Sentiment Survey, showing how Hispanics are the main driver for the middle class in America, and yet underestimate their own contributions. Latinos are launching more new businesses, achieving higher levels of education, and reaching the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies in greater numbers than ever, but more than three-quarters of Latinos recently surveyed were surprised by at least one of these and other well-documented facts, as reported by the We Are All Human Foundation. Listen and understand how the time is now for perceptions to catch up with the many significant contributions being made by the Hispanic community in the U.S.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will make the world a better place for all, but the world cannot reach these goals without the active energy and new thinking of young people. Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman explore that idea in this episode about youth and political activism. Speaking to young people on every continent, they find a strong desire to team up with friends to solve social problems, though, they also hear concerns about “clicktivism,” a tendency to confuse expressing a desire for action on social media with real action. This episode touches on the increasing role of young women as leaders and the shapers of agendas, including more attention to issues of concern to women, such as menstrual health, as well as efforts to bring more women into politics and governing. Also, hear how our sponsor, Cisco, introduces you to a valuable resource for youth, Global Problem Solvers: The Series.

Even here in the 21stCentury human beings are still enslaved by other human beings. Hard to believe? Listen to HRH Princess Eugenie of York and her friend and colleague, Julia de Boinville, describe their campaign to stem the scourge of Modern slavery. An estimated 40 million people, many of them women and children, are sold into bondage for sex or labor. The ISIS slave market described by Princess Eugenie may sound much like slave markets of old, but modern slavery can look very different from what you imagine from history. Modern slaves often work in domestic labor or even cleaning offices. They walk among us, explains Ms de Boinville. Edie Lush points out that Sustainable Development Goal eight calls for ending slavery by 2030, as part of creating proper working conditions for all. Princess Eugenie urges every one to play a role by asking how your food and services are brought to you, especially if they seem surprisingly inexpensive. Unquestioning consumers help make Slave labor hugely profitable for businesses who get away with it.

On this episode of Global GoalsCast, UN Foundation is taking over to discuss SDG progress, specifically in regards the High Level Political Forum, or HLPF, an event where country representatives come from all over the world to share the progress they are making on the Sustainable Development Goals. From Rajesh Mirchandani, Chief Communications Officer of the UN Foundation, on this episode, he states: 'where I hope we are in 2020 is that we have not only identified what are the key blockers, the key transformative issues, and the key questions that we need to solve by that time to really accelerate SDG progress, But we're well on the way to solving. Because we want to kind of make sure that people keep on track. Now we've made it three years in [to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change]. There is progress. We need to do more. But you know what? As a Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed said 'we can do this and we have to do this.'

In the developed world, refugees are often viewed as a menace or a burden. That is just one of the myths busted in this episode of the Global Goalscast. For one thing, nine out of ten refugees don’t come to the developed world. They flee from one poor country to another. For another, in many of those countries, innovative thinking has turned refugees into an opportunity to develop the economy and make life better for both newcomers and their hosts. Uganda gives out land to refugees. Kakuma Camp in Kenya creates business and agriculture zones where hosts and refugees can work together. Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman talk to the International Rescue Committee, UNHCR, Western Union and others about this urgent topic. Urgent because in the years to come the number of displaced persons will climb as climate change adds to the disruption.

The Sustainable Development Goals have excited the creative industry - fierce rivals in marketing and communications have found common ground to tackle the world’s biggest challenges. In its June 2018 Episode, Global GoalsCast will explore the stories behind the partnerships that have resulted in some surprising changes in consumer behaviour. We’ll also examine how the new Sustainable Development Goals Lion with Cannes Lions and initiatives by creative forces such as SAWA are increasing attention on the Global Goals. Partnerships forged for good are partnerships that create positive change.

Continue the Green Miniseries with a disheartened Robert Swan on the South Pole. After a sunken boat, $1.2M debt, and a questionable promise, discover the friendship that restores his vigor to become the first man to walk to both the North and South Poles. Meet his son Barney and hear how their bond grows as they develop a mission to protect the planet. Joined by British Antarctic Survey’s Jon Shanklin and NASA IceBridge’s Nathan Kurtz, our hosts dig into the realities that fueled Robert’s crusade.

Look into the career of explorer, Robert Swan to hear how human vulnerability reflects the Earth's fragility through his previous expeditions to the North and South poles and the inspiration they had on his passion towards climate action and the preservation of Antarctica. Robert then reflects on the experiences of great historical explorer Robert Falcon Scott who attempted a journey to the South Pole in the early 20th century. Also, hear how climate change affects Antarctica and the whole planet, from sea levels rising in Fiji to commercial extinction threatening the global shrimp population.

This episode examines trust, which is, "the dark matter" of society, invisible yet essential to accomplishing great progress e.g. the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From good health & well-being to reducing inequality, the SDGs require massive cooperation between all people and governments. But how is this possible in an era of uncertainty and mistrust? Our hosts, Claudia and Edie, explore how mistrust has stalled progress on health and other goals and share methods for rebuilding trust.

Jimmy Wales and Richard Edelman talk to Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman about the globalism vs nationalism debate at Davos and how it shapes prospects for achieving the Global Goals. Leaders from countries as different as India, Canada and France said the global economic system isn't working. Fix the roof while the sun is shining, said Christine LaGarde of the IMF. President Trump presented a kinder, gentler face at Davos; but he was clear in his view that nations should put their own interests first.

Thirty years ago, Robert Swan walked across this icy desert to the South Pole. He tried again, departing November 2017, this time with his twenty-three-year-old son, Barney. Their goal was to highlight the importance of sustainable energy and the imperative to curb climate change. They traveled with only renewable energy sources.

Rob, now 61, was obviously older than the first time. He trained hard to make up for his own change, though what he could not prepare for was a change in the Antarctic.

“Migrants are the ultimate agent of development,” William Lacy Swing, head of the International Office for Migration, says in this episode of Global GoalsCast. Indeed, 13 of the 17 Global Goals are linked to migration. Decisions made now about migration – by countries and individuals – will likely determine whether the Goals are achieved by the deadline of 2030. Find out why by tuning in!

Education is the “key” and “the foundation” to improving the world, according to the United Nations. Episode 2 of Global GoalsCast explores the power of education, particularly educating girls. Lush and Romo Edelman visit two schools to show “a thousand small steps that add to the big dream”.

Can we eliminate extreme poverty while curbing climate change? Can we have more equity and more economic growth? Put simply, can we make the world a better place for all?

This isn’t just some daydream you’ve probably had. It is the direct commitment made by 193 nations when they agreed to 17 Global Goals for the year 2030, 12 years from now.

This brief episode introduces you to the Goals and to your co-hosts, Claudia Romo Edelman and Edie Lush.

Get a taste of father-son explorer team, Robert and Barney Swan's 600-mile trek across the South Pole using only renewable energy sources. Hear the emotional, mental, and physical hardships faced during this perilous journey while they also witnessed the drastic negative impact of climate change on the rapidly shrinking South Pole. Subscribe to hear their full story on the premiere episode of Global GoalsCast, launching January 2018.