Eric Nonacs the head of the Clinton-Hunter Development Initiative. This project focuses on health, agriculture and water / sanitation and this in two countries – Rwanda and Malawi – in order to encourage economic growth. Some of their main achievements included brokering lower interest rates for micro credits, negotiating lower prices of fertilizers in Rwanda and improving the national health care infrastructure in Malawi. I have known Eric Nonacs for years and I have to say that he does a great job at the Foundation. It makes it easier to donate funds to a not for profit when you see not only the vision of President Clinton but managers like Eric Nonacs in charge.

Ira Magaziner is one of Clinton´s best managers. His business background at the Boston Consulting Group, couple with years in government during the Clinton Administration helped make him a great manager in the not for profit world.

Ira Magaziner spoke about the Clinton Foundation HIV / Aids Initiative and the Clinton Climate Initiative. The mission of the HIV / Aids initiative is to assist governments in making HIV / Aids care & treatment available to more of their citizens rather than prevention like,for example, others like the Gates Foundation do. They partnered with 25 countries and pioneered new approaches for children and rural care.

Ira is the perfect manager for this area as he does not seem to hesitate to take difficult decisions – he knows that sometimes action is more important than waiting for the right answer to come –, that hundreds of people can be saved by reacting quickly to certain circumstances. The main achievement has been that the team managed to significantly negotiate lower prices for medications, so that more patients can be treated and therefore more lives saved.

Ira Magaziner also leads the Climate Initiative. Global warming is a major threat to our future and a change in behaviour is very important (as it was mentioned, if we do not act now, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year). The Clinton Climate Initiative is partnering with 40 of the largest cities in the world to assist them to become more energy efficient and to use cleaner energy. (This is an area that I am very interested, since I invested in wind energy in Spain)

Some of my readers will be familiar with this initiative as I went to the annual meeting in September in NYC and wrote about my experiences there. The special thing about the CGI is that each participant has to make a commitment which the CGI will follow up on. Each participant can make a commitment of his choosing – as long as they live up to it! The CGI in September was great and visited by top level politicians, business people, artists, musicians and actors.

John Needham, formerly with Fortune Magazine, informed trustees about the success of the Clinton Global Initiative that he manages. At CGI $7.3 billion were commited in 2006 to benefit more than 500 organizations in 100 different countries. This initiative is like a Davos…. with a mission.

Bob Harrison manages the Alliance for a Healthier Generation Initiative. What really shocked me was the dramatic increase in childhood obesity in the US. Out of 3 US children born in 2000, 1 in 3 will develop Diabetes and this is an alarming figure.

The Alliance for a Healthier Generation was created to reverse this trend, to encourage schools to sell and serve healthier food and drinks and to emphasize more on physical education. Already certain producers and bottlers agreed I 2006 to support this initiative by sending healthier food and drinks to schools.

This Initiative is also supported by a TV program and other school initiatives that teach the kids a healthier lifestyle and to bring across the message that healthy food and sports are cool compared to spending all day on the sofa or ni front of the computer.

I am attending the Clinton Foundation Strategy Briefing to trustees. I have been a trustee of the Clinton Foundation since its inception and I made a committment to donate $1 million to the foundation over 10 years.

Since 2001 I have been to quite a few of these meetings and they have been getting better and better. I am very impressed at the quality of the team that President Clinton (in America Presidents are called Presidents even when out of office) has put together.
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Most people pimp their cars to be seen. Jack Hidary pimps his car, to see, to be connected, to be in touch. I have been in a lot of cars in my life and I had never seen a car like this. Jack Hidary´s car has EVERY piece of electronics you can imagine in a car and more. He describes it all in this video.

(which unfortunately was shot at night!)

So now Xing is another one of my web 2.0 investments that you can see scrolling down my blog on the right. In the meantime, I thought that Lars Hinrichs, Daniela and the Xing crew would appreciate this picture.

We recently circumcized our son Leo. In the process there´s always the doubt as to whether, in so doing, one is simply continuing with a barbaric tradition or if it actually makes sense in this day and age to circumcize a child. Well, I feel better after reading this article on the subject in the NYTimes. It seems that circumcision actually halves H.I.V. risk.

Here´s a Wikipedia definition of Holocaust deniers and here´s a Wikipedia definition of Creationism. What do these two have in common? That they are both movements of people who try to fight facts with ideology.
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