📺 RECORDING | How to Reach Those in Need

Joe Wong, a leading political scientist and scholar of global affairs, shares how to be a global changemaker and reach those most in need.
Like

About

How do you deliver vaccines to children living in a slum? We know that vaccines save lives cheaply and have a disproportionately positive impact on children who are the poorest of the poor. But if you are one of these children, you likely don’t have a birth certificate, don’t go to school, and don’t have an address, which means you don’t have access to any system of delivering vaccines. 

In this case, we know what we need, but we don’t know how to get it to the people who need it the most. Joe Wong, Vice-President, International, University of Toronto, tackles problems like this in his work to combat poverty with innovation worldwide. In this session, we discussed Mr. Wong’s lessons on how a leader can take small steps to make big changes in addressing the world’s most intractable problems.

  


    Timecodes

    02:45 - You have founded the Reach Alliance, an organisation which allows students to lead research dedicated to investigating how to reach the world’s most marginalized populations. Why is ‘reaching’ people such an important and under-addressed challenge?

    06:10 - What is an example of a project you have run driven by these students? What was its aim? How did it innovate to reach a marginalized population?

    12:32 - What makes projects innovative? Why is innovation important?

    20:35 - Based on your experiences with students, what are the important principles of good collaboration, and how can we apply them to our own work?

    24:45 - The Reach Alliance was inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. How do you orient your work around the SDGs? How do you aim to move beyond or change the way that people look at reaching these targets?

    29:29 - As a young person, what is the best way to get "a seat at the table" to orient future global goals?

    39:05 - How can the next generation of leaders prepare to lead in principle & skill and to shape future goals?

    43:20 [Audience Question] - I have heard you speak about storytelling, or the idea that your research is only as effective as your ability to communicate it. Do you have a storytelling philosophy, or is there room for researchers to be activists through their research?

      50:14 - [Audience Question] There are people I have learned from because they were incredible and other people I have learned from because I did not want to become that person. Would you share with us your biggest stories in terms of positive/negative inspirations?

      55:50 - [Audience Question] Who was your role model during your intellectual development?

        



       

      Speakers

      Joe Wong, Vice-President, International, University of Toronto

      Professor Joseph Wong is Vice-President, International, University of Toronto, where he is also the Roz and Ralph Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global Affairs, and Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Arts and Science. He held the Canada Research Chair in Health, Democracy, and Development for two terms from 2006 to 2016. He is the author of many academic articles and several books, including Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea and Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia’s Developmental State, both published by Cornell University Press. Inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals, in collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, Professor Wong founded the Reach Alliance, a model for student-led, faculty-mentored, multi-disciplinary research dedicated to investigating the pathways to success for innovative programs that are reaching the world’s most marginalized populations: http://reachalliance.org/what-is-reach. He is a graduate of McGill University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

      INTERVIEW BY 

      Kayla Kim, Marketing Manager, Laidlaw Foundation

      Kayla was a Laidlaw Scholar in 2019, researching national, regional, and local identity in northern Tajikistan through the lens of women's fashion. After graduating from the University of Oxford in 2020, she worked in the Geneva office of the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) as a Communications Coordinator. She now manages marketing for the Laidlaw Foundation. She is beginning a Master's Degree in Anthropology & Development Management at the London School of Economics in Autumn 2022.


      Previous Extraordinary Leaders Episodes

      Please sign in

      If you are a registered user on Laidlaw Scholars Network, please sign in