Food, Fuel and Fire at Skoll World Forum

Let me begin this newsletter with an acknowledgment of my privilege to serve as a trustee of the Skoll Foundation which was founded by Jeff Skoll in 1999 with a mission to connect, celebrate and support the social entrepreneurs and innovators addressing some of the world’s biggest challenges. A few years after the Skoll Foundation’s founding, Jeff, a social entrepreneur himself, and Sally Osberg, the foundation’s CEO for the first 16 years, launched the Skoll World Forum to elevate awareness of the field of social entrepreneurship and to support the committed individuals doing the frontline work.

Each year at the Skoll World Forum, the Foundation presents the Skoll Awards for Social Innovation to a select group of social innovators whose work targets the root causes of societal problems that are ripe for transformational social change.

The Skoll World Forum (SWF) is an annual convening of the Skoll awardees and partners at Oxford University. This year, under the new leadership of Skoll Foundation CEO Don Gips and President/COO Marla Blow, we convened the 20th SWF, a celebration shared with the largest Skoll community ever — more than 1,400 entrepreneurs, innovators, partners, investors and funders attended in person and thousands more participated virtually.

It was an extraordinary experience that I am privileged to be invited to share each year as a Trustee…and now to share, in part, with this community of readers and followers.

“In order to solve the climate crisis, we’re going to have to solve the democracy crisis.”

- Former US Vice President Al Gore

I’m going to try to frame this inspiring week of sessions which featured plenaries focused on everything from climate action to equitable health to digital threats to democracy, including Vice President (should have been President) Al Gore in an encore appearance. He’s graced the stage at SWF at least three times since the 2006 premiere of An Inconvenient Truth, the breakthrough documentary on the climate crisis produced by Jeff Skoll and Participant Media, the company Jeff founded to support storytelling that would compel social change.

This time, wearing the same signature black boots, Gore reminded us that we cannot solve the climate crisis without solving the democracy crisis and that we cannot move forward with social change of any kind without an inclusive, diverse community of advocates and activists.

Amen, Al! …and thanks for your sustained leadership towards the better future that you (and my friend, Jade Begay, a Skoll awardee from NDN Collective) remind us could be our ‘best times’ if we restore our ecosystems, shift our investments to clean energy, and adapt our behaviors and priorities to the realities of the ‘inconvenient truth’ that we are on the edge of losing a habitable home and a livable future for ourselves and our children.

The truth, however, about anything, including the climate crisis, is harder to find when lies spread six times faster than facts.

That fact was delivered to the Skoll community by journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Ressa. What she uncovered in her research about the information and news ecosystem was downright scary — surely, another ‘inconvenient truth' — but she gave us hope that there are ways we can be more aware and more prepared to recognize the manipulations. She urged us to join journalists, with her leadership, who are calling for new regulations and reforms before algorithms become as deadly as dirty water and unhealthy air.

Food, fuel and fire were identified in my interview with groundbreaking, award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay as the value proposition of this unique convening. SWF gives us the food, fuel, and fire needed by all innovators leading for change: The hard truths are the FOOD we need to inform our work, and there were plenty of those shared in this community of frontline warriors. We also need the FUEL — the ideas, creativity and inspiration that activate change. Last but not least, the collective passion for change felt by all those in attendance that stokes the essential FIRE that ignites hearts and minds, and sustains our work.

Before we walked on stage together, Ava confessed concern that her work might not relate to this community of global entrepreneurs and innovators. But from her first words to her last, the community was totally engaged in the learning she shared about her journey to find what she called “liberated territory,” the place where she finds the ‘food’ for the journey as an artist willing to take risks and disrupt systems. She also talked about the ‘fuel’ that comes from a deep commitment to bringing others along, and the ‘fire’ that drives all her choices about the stories she tells and the way she leads Array (the nonprofit she founded that has, literally, changed the film industry), and the many ways she finds to connect, to champion, and to lead for change.

Food. Fuel. Fire. I heard those words again and again throughout the SWF as this community of individuals and organizations embraced Ava’s reminder that we need all three, and we must strive to be connected as a community committed to making the changes needed to get us to a future of shared peace and prosperity — Jeff’s vision for the foundation.

In the coming days and weeks, the Skoll Foundation will be sharing a lot of this remarkable experience at SkollFoundation.org and I’ve received permission from Ava and the SWF to share our entire interview in the link above.

With gratitude to Jeff and with enormous admiration for the SWF community and all who contributed to this 20th annual convening for the food, fuel and fire!

Onward!

- Pat