ISCS Opening Keynote

Education for Ethical and Compassionate Leadership

We live in a time of increasingly fragile social institutions: a political system distorted by increases in inequality; financial markets that create unsustainable debt; and an economy that drives a scarcity mentality and ever-escalating consumption, diminishing the quality of time-starved and stress-filled lives. We have crises in health care, education, and in the life-support systems of planet Earth. To address these intertwined problems, we will need a shift in consciousness and a new kind of leadership in every social sector — next-generation leaders who are equal to today’s challenges in all their complexity and who are skillful at leading themselves and others with compassion and equanimity. This talk will synthesize some of the current thinking about the key elements of education for the kind of compassionate and ethical leadership that we sorely need now, and too often lack.