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The Future of Democracy, Money, and the Surveillance State
Nov. 01, 2019
Please join us on Friday when we will hear from Alex Gladstein. Technology is rapidly changing governance, economics, and our personal freedoms. From Beijing to Silicon Valley, new kinds of smart cities and social media and electronic payments are offering unprecedented conveniences with different kinds of tradeoffs. Most threaten our privacy. What's wrong with these centralized systems and are there decentralized alternatives? Alex Gladstein is Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. He has also served as Vice President of Strategy for the Oslo Freedom Forum since its inception in 2009. In his work Alex has connected hundreds of dissidents and civil society groups with business leaders, technologists, journalists, philanthropists, policymakers, and artists to promote free and open societies. Alex’s writing and views on human rights and technology have appeared in media outlets across the world including The Atlantic, BBC, CNN, Fast Company, The Guardian, Monocle, The New Republic, The New York Times, NowThis, NPR, Quartz, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, and WIRED. He has spoken at universities ranging from MIT to Stanford, presented at the European Parliament and U.S. Department of State, and participated in Singularity University events from Berlin to Johannesburg, where he lectures about decentralized technology. He currently lives in the San Francisco area. |
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Exploring the Biodiversity of Borneo
Nov. 08, 2019
Please join us Friday when, after several of our weightier topics, we will get a breath of fresh salt air when our speaker will be the Founder and Director of Shark Stewards, David McGuire. A marine biologist and shark advocate, David is the founder of the Ocean Health and Shark Conservation nonprofit Shark Stewards, dedicated to saving sharks and protecting critical marine habitat. As a sailing captain, dive master and filmmaker, David has explored the world’s oceans on numerous sailing voyages producing media with an emphasis on sharks and ocean awareness. David’s undergraduate work in Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara lead him to study whales in Mexico, and join an expedition across the Pacific. He has a master’s degree in environmental health from UC Berkeley, where he worked for over a decade in the Department of Integrative Biology. A Research Associate of the Department of Aquatic Biology at the California Academy of Sciences, David is conducting a shark research program that includes shark population studies, movements and fisheries impacts. An adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, David teaches marine protection policy and marine ecology. He has participated in numerous sailing voyages and scientific diving expeditions with Academy researchers communicating the wonders of the natural world and ocean life and the need to protect them, including a two month biodiversity expedition to the Philippines where he filmed and produced an Emmy award winning documentary Reef to Rainforests. David is the writer, producer and underwater cinematographer of several award winning documentaries focusing on sharks, including an online series in Borneo. A National Geographic Explorer, he has also published numerous articles on the state of the ocean and sharks and writes a National Geographic Explorers blog and an Ocean Voices column on sharks and ocean health. David selects and emcees films and hosts panels at film festivals including the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival and the San Francisco Green Film Festival and is a popular public speaker sharing his ocean stories and images. He has received numerous awards for his work including an award for Journalism with KQED for the investigative story Sea Horse Sleuth, the 2011 Hero of Marin Environmental Stewardship Award, and an Emmy award for his work on the documentary Reefs to Rainforests. David has been recognized by Congressman Jared Huffman for his work, and was awarded the Hero of Marine Award for catalyzing shark fin trade bans in North America. He has also been recognized as a Hero of the Environment by the Town of Pacifica for his educational and ocean conservation work. An ocean adventurer and athlete, David has competed in numerous endurance events such as the Trans Pacific Yacht Race, Hawaii Ironman and is an open water marathon swimmer, swimming for sharks. Current projects include an adventure film on diving with sharks in Malaysia and a book on sharks and rays of the San Francisco Bay. |
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Nov. 14, 2019 7:00 p.m.
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Stealth War Part Two
Nov. 15, 2019
Please join us on Friday when our speaker will be Dr. Robert S. Spalding III, Brigadier General, USAF (ret), Author, Speaker, and Entrepreneur. But wait, you say, isn’t he the presenter the night before at our Salon? Why, yes he is. How often have we had a regular speaker and thought you would have liked them to be a Salon? And how many times have you gone to a Salon and after digesting the material thought of the perfect question to have asked? Well, here is your chance for both. Our meeting will be an extension of the Salon, and Dr. Spalding will continue his discussion of the “Stealth War”. Rob Spalding is a national security policy strategist, and globally recognized for his knowledge of Chinese economic competition and influence, as well as for his ability to forecast global trends and develop innovative solutions. He has served in senior positions of strategy and diplomacy within the Defense and State Departments for more than 26 years, retiring as brigadier general. He was the chief architect for the Trump Administration’s widely praised National Security Strategy (NSS), and the Senior Director for Strategy to the President at the National Security Council. Dr. Spalding has written extensively on national security matters. His book, STEALTH WAR : HOW CHINA TOOK OVER WHILE AMERICA’S ELITE SLEPT (Portfolio; 2019) is an executive summary of his almost decade-long work countering Chinese Communist Party influence. It is being translated into additional languages. Dr. Spalding is a former B-2 Stealth Bomber pilot. He is a former China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, as well as having served as the senior defense official and defense attaché in Beijing. Dr. Spalding is an Olmsted Scholar, a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. He has lectured globally. Dr. Spalding holds a doctorate in economics and mathematics from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He was a distinguished graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, and is fluent in Chinese Mandarin. |
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The Journey with Partners in Health
Nov. 22, 2019
Please join us on Friday when our speaker will be Lesley King who sits on the Board of Directors for the Partners in Health organization. Their mission is to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care. By establishing long-term relationships with sister organizations based in settings of poverty, Partners In Health strives to achieve two overarching goals: to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need of them and to serve as an antidote to despair. Lesley graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with a BSE in Strategic Management and went on to spend 15 years on Wall Street at JP Morgan as a Managing Director in Fixed Income Sales. A determined social justice advocate, Lesley retired from JP Morgan to focus more of her energy on non-profit work, primarily with Partners In Health (PIH) out of Boston where she has served as an active board member for ten years. She served as Interim COO for Village Health Works, a PIH sister organization operating in Burundi, and is now the Chair of the Board of Directors. She is also a founding board member of the University of Global Health Equity, a new medical university located in Rwanda. Lesley and her family run “The Back 40 Farm”, an organic vegetable farm in Washington, Connecticut, where they are involved in the local and organic food movements as well as international food security. They are co-owners of a few food related businesses in Greenwich, Connecticut including “Back 40 Mercantile”, a country store that gives 10% of all profits to PIH’s Food Security Program. She is an active member of her community, is on the board of the Perrot Memorial Library in Old Greenwich and previously served as PTA president for Old Greenwich School, interim executive director of Trinity Church, and the co-head of the Trinity Church Rwanda Council. Lesley‘s family and two other families founded the Old Greenwich Farmers Market in 2010.. Lesley and her husband Bill have four children- one in college, one in high school, one in middle school, and one in elementary school. Lesley and Bill are taking a sabbatical of sorts to participate in the Distinguished Careers Institute program here at Stanford. Lesley’s work with Partners In Health and Village Health Works will continue from West Coast. |
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The Federal Debt: The Room Where it Happened, Modern Monetary Theory, and Parts in Between
Dec. 06, 2019
Please join us on Friday when our speaker will be our own Jim Van Horne. Always informative and entertaining, Jim will expound on fiscal policy and more recently fiscal and monetary policies from 1790, and the very first Funding Act in that year, to the present. Jim Van Horne is the A.P. Giannini Professor of Finance Emeritus at Stanford Business School, where he has been a teacher and, for 7 years an academic dean, since 1965. He is the author of four books and five dozen articles in finance, economic and management journals. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of U.S. Treasury in the mid-1970s and was President of the American Finance Association in the early-1980s. He also has served on: several State of California and Federal commissions involving economic matters; together with corporate boards of directors for three tech companies, a bank, a mutual fund, and a dairy products company; and on four non-profit boards. He is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the first recipient of the MBA Distinguished Teaching award. He holds an AB degree from DePauw University and MBA and PhD. degrees from Northwestern University. He lives in Palo Alto with his wife, Mimi, and they have three sons and seven grandchildren. |
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New Member Talk and Funding Our Future
Dec. 13, 2019
Please join us on Friday when one part of our meeting will be a New Member Talk from Thomas Winther. Thomas is a Danish national with a Masters in Economics from University of Copenhagen. He started working for the Danish Government and soon he found himself working in the department of the Minister for Trade and Industry, with responsibility for policies related to small business development, innovation and European Union affairs. Here he met his wife-and-mother-of-two-to-be Katrine Paaby Joensen, a Danish career diplomat with all that entails in terms of foreign postings. Thomas decided in 2005 to pursue a career as consultant, establishing Innogate Ltd. In consulting Thomas specializes in supporting public and private stakeholders in accelerating the translation of policies, technologies, ideas and inventions into goods and services that create value to companies, consumers and society. Business ecosystem development is an area of excellence – in particular in the area of sustainable development / green economy. Outside work Thomas enjoys spending time with family and friends. With close friends scattered around the World there is never a shortage of the next big holiday plan. Also, Thomas is a wine enthusiast and has for +20 years ventured to numerous wine regions around the world to explore and learn. When not working or enjoying the company of friends, family and a good glass of wine, Thomas enjoys running and swimming and he is always on the look-out for a good hitting partner in tennis. The other part of our meeting will be about our Fund for the Future, the Donor Advised Fund that we have at Rotary International. Our DAF has been growing steadily since its inception, and our diligent DAF committee would like to give us an update along with a few new wrinkles for all of us to ponder. |
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Our Annual White Elephant Holiday Gift Exchange
Dec. 20, 2019
This week’s meeting will reprise PAUR’s joyful holiday gift exchange program. Once again it will allow us the perfect opportunity for the practical application of our beloved 4-Way-Test. It is essential for this to work that each of us brings a wrapped gift to the meeting. It can be something new that costs around $10-15, or something gently used (commonly known as a white elephant) that you may already have at home. Rules of the game will be explained at the meeting with all the brevity that MC Rob Jack can muster, but everyone who arrives with a wrapped gift will leave with an unwrapped new treasure. Come join the festivities certain to be filled with fun and fellowship.
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Submariner
Jan. 17, 2020
Our speaker this Friday morning will be our own Blair Stewart. We have been trying to get Blair to speak to us for a while, but he has always had a fascinating family member that he was able to tap instead. We have heard from his wife Jacqui Widmar Stewart, his son Andy Stewart, and his daughter Julia Stewart Lowndes. Not wanting to start in on his pets, Blair has finally agreed to tell us about his time as a submariner. . . . Long ago and far away . . . Blair was a Midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy. After graduation he received nuclear power and submarine training and served as an officer aboard the USS Sculpin SSN 590, a nuclear powered fast attack submarine. He will talk to us about The Silent Service: How he got there, How we got nuclear subs, Why we have them, Why we keep them, Life aboard them, Who else has them . . . and how we recycle them. |
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Hacking Computers for a Living
Jan. 24, 2020
Please join us this Friday morning when our speaker will be Aisling MacRunnels. Aisling has built a career in Silicon Valley by bringing an alternative mindset and synergistic voice to product development and technology businesses. She believes in the power of coupling emotional intelligence with IQ to enable better life and business decisions. As CMO/Head of Products at Sun Microsystems, Aisling led the initial deployment of Java on mobile clients (the start of the smartphone industry), and was responsible for the Java Developer Community as Java hit a record breaking billion downloads - a huge milestone at that time. She also played a major role in developing the first open source consortiums and licenses, a precursor to the crowdsourcing models we have today. Aisling launched SunGrid, the first Cloud product. In the last few years Aisling has been working with Jay Kaplan and Mark Kuhr as a founding member and Chief Markets Officer of the Synack team. Together they have established a new category in cyber security, a platform that combines the best of human hacker-powered intelligence with artificial intelligence. The world's most elite ethical hackers are deployed to find vulnerabilities and rewarded based on the severity of the vulnerabilities found. Today the Synack hacker-powered platform is used to protect leading global banks, DoD sensitive assets, and close to $1 trillion in Fortune 500 revenue. Last year Aisling started Synack's Courageous Women in Security initiative, and since then has gathered hundreds of senior women in the security space at local events around the country to increase diversity in voice on the podium and support female leadership in the industry. Synack is proud of special programs around recruiting veterans and retraining their hacking skills, as well as a "Secure America" program offering States pro-bono hacking tests to secure election systems. |
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New Member Talks
Jan. 31, 2020
Please join us this Friday for another one of our favorite programs, our new member talks. This week we will get to know a little more about two new outstanding members, Angie Eagan and Jo RoyC. After 23 years living in Asia, Angie returned to the US to take a COO position with a semiconductor service company in SB. She was founding President of Fresh Start Rotary Club Shanghai which focused on supporting social entrepreneurship, and joined PAUR in July. Jyotika, aka Jo, is currently working as an HR & Talent Consultant retained by a couple of her clients. She also coaches young professionals and executives. Previously, she has led HR teams in India and in US worked across the entire gamut of HR in large and small companies across different industries. Jo has an MBA from XLRI in India and an MS in Finance from Walsh College of Business in Michigan. She is a certified Hogan Assessor and a certified MBTI assessor. She is in the process of getting certified as an Executive Coach from Columbia University. Jo lives with her husband of 25 years, Ranajit, in Daly City with Patch, a Shih Poo, and their daughter, Anjali, is away at college. |
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Feb. 04, 2020 7:00 p.m.
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My Journey With the DCI
Feb. 21, 2020
Please join us this Friday morning when we will hear from Aishetu Dozie, who will be talking about how she moved from Nigeria to Palo Alto after a multi decade investment banking career to return to a school environment and challenge every notion that she had previously held as true. It’s a story of personal and professional rebirth and rebuilding enabled by Stanford’s DCI program. The Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute is an opportunity for highly accomplished individuals from all walks of life who are eager to transform themselves for roles with social impact at the local, national, and global levels. A highly personalized curriculum for each fellow includes discussion seminars that highlight both the intellectual richness of Stanford and personal transformation; opportunities to attend classes and participate in intergenerational learning at all levels in departments and interdisciplinary programs; discussions on major societal and intellectual issues; and the construction of a purpose pathway for each fellow. Aishetu’s passion for global finance began in the equities division of Goldman Sachs on the international desk in New York over 20 years ago. She’s since worked with Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered Bank, International Finance Corporation, and Rand Merchant Bank as a senior investment banking executive, having closed $130 billion in M&A, loan financing, and capital markets transactions over her career. Her work experience which began in New York extends to Central and South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and South Asia. Aishetu received her BA from Cornell University, MBA from Harvard Business School, and was a 2018 Distinguished Careers Institute Fellow at Stanford. She is currently the founder and CEO of Bossy Cosmetics, an empowering and mission-driven global beauty company. |
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Voting in the California Presidential Primary: What You Need to Know
Feb. 28, 2020
Please join us this Friday morning when our guest speaker will be Linda Atkinson. Linda is in charge of the Speakers’ Bureau for the League of Women Voters, South San Mateo County. Santa Clara County will be having their first experience with everyone mailing in their ballots for the March 3rd election and Linda will have some insight as to what you are in for. She’s an expert, having given lots of talks about it two years ago when San Mateo County was a pilot county for this new way of voting. For those that may be that many are still holding back their ballots, she will give brief description of how voting in the primary is more complicated than the general election. For example, should a voter be one who declines to state their preference for either a Republican or a Democratic ballot, they will receive a ballot without presidential candidates on it. What then can they do to get a ballot with presidential candidates? Linda has the answers. She can toss in a discussion on the ballot Proposition for good measure. It’s Prop. 13, a new one, not the 1978 Prop. 13 and some believe that the number will cause confusion. Linda Atkinson and her husband, Bob Barrett, have been members of the League of Women Voters, SSMC since January 2018. ‘We had to do something for our democracy!’ Starting out, she presented Voters Choice information during the primary season and led the Ballot Proposition Pros and Cons leading up to the 2018 elections. Linda was born and grew up in a Chicago suburb, Berwyn. Her education included a BS in Biology (Wheaton College, IL) and a PhD in Human Physiology (University of Illinois, College of Medicine, Chicago). After a post-doctoral fellowship in Pittsburgh, PA, Linda held a research position at the Population Council in New York City. Bob and Linda met in NYC then went to San Francisco and were married at the Chateau St. Jean. An opportunity at the Ford Foundation sent the couple to New York where they lived in Larchmont. Meredith and Reid were born in NYC. In 1983 the family moved to Ladera where Linda did consulting and later was a Director of clinical development at ALZA Corporation. After retiring, Linda became a docent at Año Nuevo, raised puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind and tried to improve her bridge game. She has recently added occasional grandkid care to those activities. |
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COVID 19, The Novel Coronavirus, What You Need to Know
Mar. 06, 2020
Please join us Friday for a very timely speaker, Dr. Krutika Kuppalli from Stanford’s School of Medicine. The CDC is closely monitoring an outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel (new) coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Cases of COVID-19 also are being reported in a growing number of countries internationally, including the United States. There are ongoing investigations to learn more. Current understanding about how the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads is largely based on what is known about similar coronaviruses. COVID-19 is a new disease and there is more to learn about how it spreads, the severity of illness it causes, and to what extent it may spread in the United States. Dr. Kuppalli will give us the latest news on this rapidly expanding coronavirus outbreak. She will tell us what we need to know, what we can disregard, and what we can possibly expect. Krutika Kuppalli, M.D. is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine and Faculty Fellow in the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University School of Medicine. She completed her Internal Medicine residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship at Emory University and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Global Public Health at the University of California, San Diego. She currently serves on the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Trainee Committee and Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) Medical Education Community of Practice Mentorship Working Group. She is Vice Chair of the IDSA Global Health Committee and has led the creation of a working group focused on Global Health Security which aims to improve clinical care, outbreak response, preparedness efforts and overall training of healthcare providers as it pertains to high consequence pathogens. She was previously a Fogarty Fellow and conducted research in Southern India to further understand barriers to care in women living with HIV/AIDS, was the medial director of a 70 bed Ebola Treatment Unit in Sierra Leone during the West Africa Ebola outbreak, helped lead the development and implementation of pandemic response preparedness activities in resource limited settings, and consulted on the development of therapeutics for emerging pathogens. Her clinical and research interests focuses on health systems strengthening in resource limited settings, research and clinical care for emerging infections, outbreak preparedness and response, and policy. She has worked in Ethiopia, India, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Haiti. |
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Bulamu Healthcare
Mar. 13, 2020
Please join us Friday when our speaker will be Dick Chandler, Board Chair & Chief Executive Officer for Bulamu Healthcare (www.bulamuhealthcare.org). If that sounds familiar, you may recall that two years ago we heard from Bulamu’s co-founder, Gerald Atwine. Here is an opportunity to see what they have been able to achieve since then. (Spoiler alert: Their August 2019 Supercamp in Kyegagwa treated 15,625 patients, their new one-week record, at a cost of about $5 per patient!) Bulamu, in the local Luganda language, means the health and well-being of the entire person. They operate with the underlying belief that access to professional healthcare is a basic human right. Looking for local solutions, they are building in-country organizational strength in Africa that can ultimately operate independently of foreign help. They want to find the lowest-cost model for providing needed services and deliver them with continuously improving operational excellence. They trust that this will create an organizational culture that puts the patient first, is consistently caring, turns no one in need away, and attracts dedicated employees and volunteers. All this while being information driven, evolving toward sustainability, while providing faith-based counseling as a component in the process of acceptance, treatment, and recovery from disease. Since their first weeklong medical camp in April 2016, Bulamu has tapped into a huge unmet need for primary medical care in rural Uganda. Their early medical camps were held at small, government-operated health centers designed to serve the local population’s needs. They utilized the existing building for their operating room, dental clinic, maternity ward, testing lab, pharmacy, and supply room and then added rented tents, tables and chairs in the surrounding open space. That clinic had been there all along, yet when they announce a new medical camp, 8,000 people came from miles around because they were confident they will see a doctor and receive the treatment and medicines they need. Their mission is to improve the well-being of rural Ugandans by providing affordable, accessible primary healthcare. They know that pop-up medical camps are not a perfect solution. The strategic challenge they face is how to move from a periodic, geographically inconvenient model to one that provides ongoing primary healthcare solution that is available locally whenever the need arises. Their strategy calls for building on their existing platform and organizational strengths as they evolve toward a self-supporting, sustainable model that solves the continuity of care challenge. They are making great progress. They already partner with Uganda’s Ministry of Health and existing community-based institutions, who recognize that their resources and skills can help them accomplish their own healthcare objectives for the population they are serving together. Dick Chandler has been board chair and CEO of Bulamu Healthcare International since May 2017, when Bulamu co-founder and CEO Jim Balassone passed away suddenly and Dick, then a board member, took over as CEO. Throughout his career, Dick has been serving as adjunct professor at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Montana, teaching MBA courses in entrepreneurship, negotiations, and CEO leadership. He has taught 84 MBA courses over the last 15 years. Earlier Dick was CEO of three companies in the healthcare field over a 25-year period: Abbey Medical (1977-1982), which operated a nationwide chain of 100+ home medical equipment stores; Sunrise Medical (1983-1999), a NYSE-listed global manufacturer of wheelchairs, respiratory equipment, and other medical devices, which he founded in 1983; and Freedom Scientific (2000-2002), the global market leader in technology products for the blind, which he founded in 2000. Earlier, he held management positions with Bell & Howell Co. and Sara Lee Corporation. Dick graduated from Princeton University with a BA magna cum laude, earned his MBA with honors from the University of Chicago, and was awarded a License (Masters) in International Economics with distinction from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He was a member of Young Presidents Organization for many years, has served on numerous corporate and non-profit boards, and since 2017 holds the leadership role of Bulamu Healthcare. |