Ira Magaziner On Climate Initiative And The HIV/AIDS Initiative

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)