Goalmakers

Today we are excited to share with you a conversation with Kathleen Morris, the newly elected executive director of International Rescue Committee, Washington. Kristen Dailey, executive director of GlobalWA, and Kathleen had a wonderful and revealing conversation about the refugee crisis facing us today, the path to settlement in Washington State, the refugee experience, including the inspiring resilience and resourcefulness of refugees, and so much more. Special thanks to the Seattle Foundation who supplied us a room for this conversation.

Formed in 1933, IRC helps people affected by humanitarian crises—including the climate crisis—to survive, recover, and rebuild their lives. IRC is an incredible organization with very impressive results. In 2022 alone, the IRC and their partners reached over 32.9 million people in countries affected by crises.

Here are a few stats from 2022:

• They’ve supported 3,137 health facilities
• Provided 8,013,515 primary health care consultations
• Treated 222,278 children under 5 for severe acute malnutrition
• Admitted 453,344 children and 106,722 pregnant and lactating women to nutrition programs
• Built or rehabilitated water supplies serving 3,490,159 people
• Reached 1,421,270 people with cash assistance

And the list goes on. I encourage you to visit their website at www.rescue.org to find out more.

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In this episode we hear from Jennifer Jones – at the time of this recording in September 2022, Jennifer was just about to take office as the first ever woman President of Rotary International . Yes, a first in its 115-year history.

This is an amazing accomplishment, so you can imagine how excited we were to be able to interview her, initially for an article we wrote which highlights incredible individuals we call Goalmakers.

Jennifer was interviewed by Amber Cortes, one of Global Washington’s writers.

We hope you enjoy this episode as Jennifer takes us on her journey from attending Rotary meetings as a reporter in the late 1980’s to becoming the 2022-2023 President, and quite a bit more...

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Next up, I was able to grab some time with Tim Prewitt, the President and CEO of The Hunger Project, while he was passing through Seattle in April of 2023.

We were able to find a space in a WeWork conference room and had a deep and inciteful conversation about food systems, food security, the challenge of addressing extreme hunger around the world, how living, working and visiting international locations helps adjust one's perspective, and slow down, and much, much more.

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Refugees and internally displaced persons do not choose to leave their homes – they are forced to, due to natural and man-made disasters, conflict and persecution, and of course, climate change. Forced displacement continues to surge past historic levels, topping at an alarming 120 million in 2024.

For this episode of Goalmakers, it was a great honor to be able to sit and have a conversation with Kelly T. Clements, United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees. She graciously took a break from the UN General Assembly in New York to join me over Zoom.

Kelly and I were able to dive into the factors causing forced displacement, as well as the challenges of resettlement, how host countries are assisting, how UNHCR is leveraging technology, and examples of hope and perseverance.

Kelly has been working on refugee and displacement issues throughout her 25-year career, including a secondment from the US Government to UNHCR in Bangladesh in the 1990s.

In fact, she was previously Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, or PRM, from 2010 to 2015, with responsibility for humanitarian issues in Asia and the Middle East. She previously led PRM's Office of Policy and Resource Planning, where she oversaw the Bureau's strategic planning, policy development and financial resources to protect and assist refugees, conflict victims, and vulnerable migrants worldwide. She also served as Acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon during 2014.

Suffice it to say, she has a wealth of understanding and knowledge about refugees and IDPs.

Any one of us could be forcibly displaced.

I invite you to take a moment to image that you are just forced from your home, your town or city, what would you do – where would you go?

...I hope you enjoy this episode, and remember, to bring about positive change and assist refugees, think globally and act locally.

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This is a very special episode of Goalmakers – well, all episodes of Goalmakers are special, of course, because of the incredible people we get to interview – yet this one stands apart.

Let me explain. This session chronicles a very important chapter in our history books because it narrates the heroic efforts of a team of passionate individuals that came together to conquer a huge challenge – how to get key persons out of Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in the summer of 2021.

For this episode, I was privileged to be able to sit with the founders of Operation Snow Leopard, and an organizational consultant and veteran who are also part of the OSL team.

This is a story of David and Goliath, goliath being the incredible challenge of how to extricate persons from the grips of the Taliban state.

Data, paperwork, physical extraction routes, safehouses, secrecy, resettlement, more data, more paperwork, more challenges of where to settle persons...

This is a story of passion and perseverance. This is a story about the love of freedom and doing what’s right.

This is also a narrative of how myriads of disparate data needs were centralized and a professional-grade manifest database was created by Salesforce and Google to set a new standard that can be used for future evacuation efforts for a variety of situations.

And OSL’s mission is not complete, and they need more partnerships and support.

And I was very happy to hear how their membership with Global Washington helped facilitate several important connections and collaborations.

I hope you enjoy hearing about Operation Snow Leopard as much as I enjoyed interviewing this diverse, warm, smart, and welcoming group.

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Welcome to episode 7 of our Goalmakers Podcast. Today, Kristen Dailey, ED of Global Washington, interviews Lance Pierce, CEO of NetHope.

Tune in to hear about how NetHope is working on cybersecurity and new strategic initiatives, the origins of NetHope, and much more.

For those of you unfamiliar with NetHope, they are a consortium of global nonprofits working across geographies and missions to solve some of the world’s greatest development, humanitarian, and conservation challenges.

NetHope’s 65 nonprofit Members and 70 technology partners collaborate to leverage digital solutions for exponential impact. Collectively, NetHope members deliver more than 60% of all annual international non-governmental aid, serving over 1.2 billion people in 190 countries.

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