La Ferita (The Wound), 2021, by JR at Palazzo Strozzi

In the sixth part of our Italy art focus series, curated by Umberta Beretta, LUX speaks to Arturo Galansino, director of the public-private Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, which opened an art space in Florence in 2006, and maintains a bold programme of exhibitions from Old Masters to contemporary art, creating a dynamic dialogue

LUX: Did you ever think you would make such an impact in Florence?
Arturo Galansino: It is beyond our expectations. I have been here for eight years and Palazzo Strozzi is the most successful exhibition space in Italy with the shift in 2016 to introduce contemporary art, bring important artists to create work here and create a public to see it. We are happy to have helped change the identity of this city, which is no longer a city of the past, but a protagonist of the present.

Arturo Galansino with artist Yan Pei-Ming

LUX: Would Florence locals Michelangelo and Leonardo approve of Koons and Abramović?
AG: I hope they would be happy to see Florence generating a contemporary art discussion from their legacy. And I believe Bernini would love what Jeff Koons is doing.

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LUX: How was it working with Jeff Koons?
AG: He comes to all the exhibitions, especially the Old Masters – we spent a lot of time at our Donatello, which was the exhibition of 2022 worldwide. Jeff loves so much what he sees, he wants to understand how it works. He told me he’s using a new idea inspired by how Donatello used bronze so economically – leaving the hidden parts without bronze. These discoveries are so exciting for artists who work with matter, and for me it was an unbelievable experience.

The Snake Bag, 2008, by
Ai Weiwei at “Ai Weiwei Libero” at Palazzo Strozzi, 2017

LUX: Are you bringing a new crowd to Florence?
AG: In Florence, we have mass tourism. Tourists race to the Uffizi and maybe the Accademia, visit Botticelli and David and don’t even sleep here. We have fewer visitors than the Uffizi, but they come for longer and often return. They explore Florence – a special perfume shop, a little church they don’t know. So we create a tourism that doesn’t occupy only two spots. It also helps to make a more sustainable economy.

Arturo Galansino

LUX: Can you speak about “Let’s Get Digital!”.
AG: We saw the digital phenomenon in 2020, and wanted to be the first institution to make a significant show with it. We had such a success. Every day we had thousands of people mesmerised by images from the six most successful digital artists of this moment. And we could explain this new art, too.

Read more: Italy Art Focus: Beatrice Trussardi

When we opened, in 2022, there was the collapse of cryptocurrency, which was so associated with NFTs, so it was a critical moment and were part of it.

Bruce Lee, 2007, by Yan Pei-Ming, from “Painting Histories” at Palazzo Strozzi, 2023

LUX: Finally, do Italians still think this is a country of history, not contemporary art?
AG: Artistic history is part of our identity and I am very proud of it. What we should do is try to reinterpret its value towards new directions. We have to conserve, but also be progressive and open. I think if we find a balance, Italy could be the country of the future, because we have everything the world is looking for.

Find out more: palazzostrozzi.org

This article comes from a section of a wider feature originally published in the Autumn/Winter 2023/24 issue of LUX

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

In the first part of our Italy art focus series, curated by Umberta Beretta, LUX speaks to Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo who founded her fondazione in Turin in 1995. Today, the extraordinary initiatives of Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo include transforming an abandoned Venetian island into a beacon for art and ecology

LUX: What was the first artwork you bought?
Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo: Anish Kapoor’s Blood Stone. It was on a trip to London in 1992 that changed my life.

LUX: What drives you to support art education?
PSRR: When we started in the 1990s, contemporary art received little attention in Italy. Education defines the fondazione’s identity and builds awareness of contemporary art in Italy. We offer a rich programme for schools, families and vulnerable people, and we train teachers. Our Young Curators Residency Programme sees three international graduate curators curate a joint exhibition from the work of artists they meet in Italy during a three-month stay. This develops curatorship and places Italian art in a global context. Campo is a similar course we have for Italian graduates.

A view of the Lucas Arruda exhibition at the Ateneo de Madrid

LUX: What are ArtColLab and Verso?
PSRR: ArtColLab is our non-profit project to produce collaborations between artists and designers in order to help widen engagement in art – for example, Nicholas Kirkwood and Paul Kneale created beautiful limited edition shoes. Verso focuses on empowering people aged 15 to 29 in democratic processes. It is an experimental, poetic pedagogical model of exhibitions, workshops and more, on themes of citizenship, inclusion and the collective construction of possible futures.

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LUX: Tell us about your philanthropy in Spain.
PSRR: I love Spain and we established the Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid in 2017. Madrid is a global capital and a bridge to Latin America. The fundación is now nomadic. We presented Lucas Arruda at the Ateneo in Madrid in 2023 and we’ve also brought the Young Curators Residency Programme to Spain.

1000 Pieces, 1983, by Anish Kapoor

LUX: Who are the artists exciting you today?
PSRR: Globally, they include the painters Michael Armitage and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and the work of Josh Kline, Marguerite Humeau, and Klára Hosnedlová. In Italy, works by Giulia Cenci, Giulia Andreani, Guglielmo Castelli and Ludovica Carbotta have joined the collection.

Installation view of Rough Rides, Police States, Broken Windows, 2015, by Josh Kline; Vandal Lust, 2011, and Slavs and Tatars, Mystical Protest, 2011, both by Andra Ursuţa, at the fondazione’s recent show, “Backwards Ahead”

LUX: What is the San Giacomo recovery project?
PSRR: This island, a military site abandoned for more than 60 years, will become an outpost of dreams, a place to produce and show art, and host research and discourse on contemporary culture.

Read more: Italy Art Focus: Umberta Beretta

With its delicate lagoon ecosystem, we will implement principles of sustainability and energy transition there. The fondazione will enable San Giacomo to become a meeting place for artists, environmentalists and the public.

The isola San Giacomo, which has been a pilgrim refuge, a place of quarantine and a military site, is being transformed by the fondazione in the name of art

LUX: What will be your legacy?
PSRR: I hope I am giving back to the community what I have been fortunate to learn during 30 years in contemporary art. Time passes and I think of my two sons, who are also passionate about art, so I am building something that will take on new shapes with future generations.

 fsrr.org

This article comes from a section of a wider feature originally published in the Autumn/Winter 2023/24 issue of LUX

ArtOutreach public sculpture tour for students

Mae Anderson, serves as the chairman of Art Outreach, a non-profit organisation committed to promoting art appreciation and nurturing the connections within Singapore’s art community. Mae’s contributions extend to her role as the Head of Philanthropy Services Asia at BNP Paribas Wealth Management, where she collaborates with clients to bring their philanthropic visions to life

LUX: How has your personal philanthropy informed your corporate role?
Mae Anderson: My experiences in the philanthropic sector have reinforced for me the importance of aligning business values with social responsibility. This is essential to benefit the communities we serve and to enhance the reputation and sustainable values of the organisation. Corporate philanthropy is not just a matter of financial contributions; it is about creating meaningful, sustainable change by strategically leveraging resources and expertise. I prioritise building strong relationships with nonprofits, community leaders, and clients who share our commitment to making a positive difference. This collaborative approach has proven instrumental in developing effective philanthropic strategies that maximise our impact.

Mae Anderson, , posed against a mural by Singaporean artist, Chris Chai

LUX: Why was Art Outreach founded and what were the early successes?
MA: Art Outreach was founded to introduce art appreciation into Singapore’s education system, particularly in elementary schools where the focus was primarily on art making, and where there was a lack of emphasis on art appreciation, compounded by a shortage of trained art teachers and limited exposure to the humanities. 20 years on, there have been significant changes in the education landscape In the early stages, our volunteers were trained to deliver free art lessons to local classrooms and played a crucial role in enriching students’ visual literacy and cultural awareness. These early efforts successfully addressed the need for art appreciation, fostering a greater understanding of cultural diversity and societal dynamics among young learners, addressing a crucial need in the education system while adapting to the changing educational landscape.

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LUX: What is behind the wave of interest in cultural philanthropy in Singapore and the South Asia region?
MA: There are several interconnected factors. First, there is the desire to preserve and celebrate cultural heritage. In an increasingly globalised world, people recognise the importance of safeguarding and promoting their unique traditions, arts, and history, fostering a deeper connection to one’s roots and a sense of cultural pride. The region’s economic growth has played a pivotal role.

Level Up by curator, John Tung, one of a series of professional development workshops run by Art Outreach. In this workshop, participants learned the finer points of art installation

The rise of the middle class with disposable income opens doors, and as people become more financially secure, they seek meaningful ways to give back to their communities and support cultural initiatives that resonate with their values and aspirations, further fuelling the interest in cultural philanthropy. Governments in the region have introduced policies and incentives to drive private investment into cultural projects and institutions. Further, cultural attractions draw tourists , enhancing exchequers and soft power, Finally, the emergence of the mega-wealthy 1%, catalyses support for cultural initiatives and leads collaborations.

Benedict Yu, from 生 Rebirth as part of 醉生夢死 erosion, his solo exhibition at Art Outreach in August 2021

LUX: How has Art Outreach evolved an ecosystem for all stakeholders?
MA: As explained, we began by seeding art education within local elementary schools set about creating an art landscape. We extended our reach to communities through public programmes, discussions, and tours. This made contemporary art more accessible and relatable to local audiences. We support emerging artists through initiatives like the IMPART Art Prize to offer holistic support and foster the development of artists championing Singaporean art.

Artist, Berny Tan (left), and curator, Kirti Upadhyaya, against Berny’s artworks from Along The Lines Of – her solo exhibition at Art Outreach in August 2023

From 2024, our Art Outreach Summit will offer artists mentorship, networking opportunities, and a platform to showcase their work, as well as practical programmes such as installation and lighting. More strategically, we enter into public and private partnerships around events and activations. So we serve the range of stakeholders.

ArtOutreach primary school classroom programme

LUX: What is the role for private collectors of contemporary art in Singapore?
MA: Private collectors are custodians of cultural heritage, preserving and showcasing contemporary artworks that provide insights into the evolution of artistic expression and cultural trends. Through their acquisitions, they are patrons of emerging talents and established names, pushing the boundaries of artistic expression, opening their homes or private exhibition spaces to the public, elevating the profile of Singaporean art on the global stage and fostering educational and cultural exchange. Finally, the donation of artworks or funds to cultural institutions and nonprofit organisations, has a lasting impact on the sustainability of the arts ecosystem.

ArtOutreach Art In Transit Tour, Promenade Station. This is a walking tour of the artworks installed in Singapore subway stations

LUX: How should art philanthropists plan so they give effectively?
MA: Effective art philanthropy begins with a clear mission and values aligned with the art landscape and national priorities. Philanthropists should thoroughly research organisations, projects, or artists that match the mission, and then identify gaps and areas where their contributions can make a difference. Establishing clear, measurable goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) can guide their philanthropic efforts and evaluate impact. Philanthropists can diversify their giving portfolio and consider strategic partnerships with like-minded organisations to amplify their impact and bring diverse perspectives.

Art Outreach children’s art workshop

They should assume longterm commitment to foster lasting change and address evolving needs within the arts community. It is critical to implement systems for measuring impact, remain adaptable, and be responsive to changing circumstances or emerging needs in the arts landscape.

Read more: Aliya and Farouk Khan on the Malaysian contemporary art scene

Actively engaging with artists, cultural institutions, and the broader arts community allows philanthropists to stay connected, and they must adhere to ethical principles, be transparent, and respect artists’ rights. You should consider legacy and tax planning and remember that public engagement can inspire others to support the arts.

Textile Artist,Tiffany Loy, against her artworks from Lines In Space, her solo exhibition at Art Outreach in January 2023

LUX: How can connectivity and data help in scaling the impact regionally?
MA: Data analysis empowers philanthropists to understand specific regional needs and priorities, to identify areas where their contributions can maximise impacts, and to connect with local organisations and initiatives. By collecting and analysing data in real-time, they decide where best to allocate resources. By collaborating, donors leverage their resources more efficiently, engage directly with regional communities, scale effectively, advocate, share experience, measure impact, and together drive long term change.

LUX: What is your personal advice to a client embarking on their philanthropy journey?
MA: Trust in your passion and purpose. Philanthropy is about making a positive impact on the causes that matter most to you. Sustainable change takes time so persevere. Finally, stay humble and open to learning and let that inspire your growth as a philanthropist.

Find out more: artoutreachsingapore.org

Millie Jason Foster, co-founder of Gillian Jason Gallery

Whilst art has often been perceived as a feminine subject, particularly in schools, men are disproportionately more successful than women in the arts. Here, Candice Tucker speaks with  Millie Jason Foster, who along with her mother Elli, founded Gillian Jason Gallery to promote female-identifying artists from across the generations

LUX: What is the role of education in encouraging female artists?
Millie Jason Foster: I think that like most careers, but also like most people who are interested in exploration, education is really important. I think that when it comes to education in the arts, it’s an essential space to experiment and to learn. We have artists that we represent who have been painting for a long time and then have decided to go back and do a Masters and it’s that space of exploration on a residency or doing a Masters that their practice really takes off. They’re not just working in a vacuum in their own studio; they begin to be able to have a dialogue with other artists and see the world in a different way.

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LUX: Despite the fact art is pushed as a feminine subject in schools and most art students are female, the majority of longstanding successful artists are men. Why do you think this is?
MJ: It’s like that across a lot of industries. My background is in finance and investment banking, and you can see the same there. A lot of people at the younger or junior entry levels of the finance industry are women, and then as you get higher and higher up the ranks, there are fewer of us, and it’s really the same in the art world. 65 per cent of women take up art school positions, but in the marketplace, it’s 65 percent of male representation and I’m hoping that that will change over time, but that’s why the gallery exists and what our mission stands for.

I also think that there’s a history of art being a very male-dominated industry, and I think that takes time to change. Even looking at the Royal Academy, they didn’t let women in in the same capacity as men for a very long time, and that is a long-standing British institution for the art world. Only having men means that all those ripple effects go down the line even to today. Only today we had the first all-female retrospective with Marina Abramović. So, the tides are changing, but I think it takes a lot of time to alter such a dense patriarchal system.

Gillian Jason Gallery was founded in 1982 by Gillian Jason and later relaunched by her daughter and granddaughter Elli and Millie Jason Foster

LUX: Do you think the Gillian Jason Gallery, which operates from a feminist perspective, provokes a different kind of collecting?
MJ: I hope that we do but not necessarily a feminist stance on collecting. I think that we showcase the best of art by women, no matter what the theme or the concept of the artist might be. So, although it might be feminist art to do with female issues, it also might be to do with sustainability, other cultural issues, race or gender or anything at all. What we’re really looking for is something that is visually resonant, but also intellectually important and that needs to have some weight to it. What we’re looking at is trying to define the best of art by women in the marketplace. We want to present the best quality art, but also with a sustainable look at careers because we’re looking at creating career longevity for every artist that we work with. We hope that collectors will come back to us time and time again to support those artists.

LUX: How do you bring in issues around sustainability into the gallery?
MJ: That comes in lots of different ways. In our office on, an operational level, which aren’t always that interesting but really are important for us, we have put all our catalogues online and created QR codes, in order to save paper and reduce waste and plastic. In terms of sustainability in our approach, we work with a lot of female artists who tackle ingenious and intellectual themes. For example, we worked with an artist called Julia Bennett at the beginning of this year. She focuses on solely making canvases out of mycelium. She’s looking at how art can be created and then returned to the ground when we’re done with it.

LUX: You have set up a network for young collectors called New Vanguard Collectors. What are the biggest challenges for young collectors?
MJ: I think there are two challenges for young collectors. One is access, and two is understanding. I’ll start with understanding actually, because with understanding, it’s about trying to gauge what you want to buy and why. My background is in a corporate job and I found that I have a lot of corporate friends who are now earning a lot more money but they don’t know where they want to spend it or how. They’re coming to me and asking, “Where do I start?” It’s the same with anyone who doesn’t work in finance, where do I start? What do I invest in? What do I look at? And if you flip it on its head from that perspective, I think it can be really daunting.

Directors of Gillian Jason Gallery, Elli Jason Foster (left) and Millie and Jason Foster (right)

The point of New Vanguard is to help collectors explore the art world more, because collecting can be an investment but also a hobby. I think combining the two today is important for young collectors because we don’t have that much spare cash for anything so if you’re going to invest in something, you have to love it. You have to understand that you want to support the artist and what you’re paying towards it, but you also want to know that in five years time the work is at least going to be what you paid for it, if not more. I think that recognising the need to change collections over time is important, the same way we change our wardrobes, or we develop who we are in a five-year period. I think there has to be a nod to investment and sustainability that way.

Secondly then, access. New collectors don’t get a look in at art fairs or with other large galleries because they haven’t got a roster of other amazing art works that a gallery will say, “Yes, I’ll give you a piece that you love.” So, access is a really big sticking point and with New Vanguard I want to make sure that I help collectors acquire the art that they want to collect, whether it’s with my gallery or another one, because I can assist with access in the art world.

LUX: Gillian Jason Gallery has been around since the 1980s. How has the focus on female artists changed since then?
MJ: My grandmother started the gallery in the 1980s, and her background was a ballet dancer, and my grandfather was an actor, so they came from very theatrical backgrounds. When she stopped dancing, she decided to open a gallery on the ground floor of her townhouse in Camden. At the time, Gillian really became a frontrunner in modern British art, and was a very formidable dealer in that sector, but all along her career championing modern British art, there was always a focus on women. For example, she would always focus on the wife of the famous artist, who was also an artist in her own right. She would do a duo show between David Bomberg and his wife Lillian Holt, and she helped Lillian Holt have one of her pieces acquired by the Tate. Gillian always had this legacy of really focusing on art by women. So, when it came to taking over the gallery a few years ago, in 2019, we decided to take her legacy and found a gallery that solely represents art by women. We were the first to do it.

Works by Berenice Sydney, exhibited at Gillian Jason Gallery

LUX: Have you noticed a drastic change in the representation of female artists since you started?
MJ: No, and it’s been nearly half a decade. I have noticed that more people are waving the flag of supporting art by women, but not necessarily putting their money where their mouth is. At art fairs a third of representation is women and I don’t even want to talk about the prices because it doesn’t even match any of the men. Even at auction, in the top ten, I think there’s two female artists: Georgia O’Keeffe and Jenny Saville, and they don’t make the top five. Those kind of shifts still haven’t moved, and there are extraordinary female artists that just aren’t hitting any of the pricing that male artists are, and I think it’s going to be a long struggle to try and change that outlook.

Read more: Francis Sultana: The life of a leader in design

LUX: What’s the benefit of being a purely female or all female identifying gallery?
MJ: I love having an identifiable mission, and it really helps focus on the best of art by women. It shows collectors that we’re looking for the best of art by women, and it shows artists that we’re looking for the best of art by women. Having that strong network is really important to us, because it means that we’ve founded a community where everyone talks to each other about how they can best support one another. There’s no competition. It’s all about collaboration. We get calls from collectors sometimes saying, “I found this new, incredible female artist, I think you should work with her.” And the same with our artists. We put them all in touch to try and understand best practices. I think that community and safe space is really important, and there have always been safe spaces for art by women and I think that GJG allows that to continue.

LUX: Do you think there will be a point where it won’t be necessary for Gillian Jason Gallery to exist and do you hope that this will be the case?
MJ: I hope that there will be a time where it’s not necessary for Gillian Jason Gallery to only support art by women, and that time will exist when there is a minimum of 50/50 in the art market in terms of representation and pricing for women and men, but I don’t think I’ll see that in my lifetime.

Find out more: gillianjason.com

Florence Kasumba. Photo by Diane Betties

The multilingual martial-arts expert and star of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Florence Kasumba, speaks to LUX about growing up Ugandan German and championing strong women

LUX: What inspired you to act?
Florence Kasumba: I grew up in Essen, Germany, in an all-white area. The only black people I knew were my mother and siblings. One day, my music teacher took our class to see Starlight Express. I was overwhelmed seeing people who looked like me on a stage and being celebrated by the audience. In the show, artists sing, act, dance and do acrobatics – on roller skates. I’d never seen anything like it. In that moment, I wanted to be a performer.

LUX: How do you navigate acting in three languages?
FK: I grew up in Germany, learnt English from age ten and studied in the Netherlands. I have done a lot of global productions and the common language tends to be English. But speaking three languages is one reason I have an international career.

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LUX: Is your Ugandan German identity important to you?
FK: I was socialised in Germany in a Ugandan household, but I am more familiar with the German way of living. When it comes to identity, I walk through life as a black woman. I am aware of my appearance and have learnt how to navigate in different situations. Some are safe, some not. That is just part of my life.

LUX: How does a director get the best out of you?
FK: I perform 100 per cent. That is my duty. It helps when the director does not scream at me.

LUX: How do you get the best out of you?
FK: For everything that does not come naturally, I ask for help. If I have to speak with an accent, I work with a language coach. If I have to work with weapons, I train with experts. I will always give my best effort, but give me time and training and you will get my absolute best.

Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong’o and Florence Kasumba in a scene from Black Panther © Matt Kennedy/Disney/Marvel Studios via AP

LUX: What are the joys and pains of you job?
FK: I enjoy roles that need a certain physicality. Ayo in the Marvel films is one of my favourites as I get to train with the Marvel stunt team, which is fun – but sometimes painful. Like most people, I can feel insecure out of my comfort zone – when I need a skill that is not yet developed, or when dialogue has been changed just before I go on set. It used to bother me when people were rude, but now I know how to steer my focus to what is important for the scene. I am grateful I chose this path to become a performer.

LUX: Tell us about your character in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
FK: I play Ayo, one of the Dora Milaje, an elite troop of Wakandan female warriors. Ayo and her team are responsible for the safety of the King and Queen of Wakanda, and the royal family.

LUX: Are martial arts good for body and soul?
FK: I am not an expert on the effects of martial arts on the human body, but from my experience in Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi Chen, Tai Chi Yang and Qigong, my body has become stronger, I focus better and I am mentally stronger. Regular training has improved my coordination, flexibility, endurance and accuracy. I am more balanced and have less tension in my body.

Read more: Carolina Bucci on creating her own brand vision

LUX: What’s your favourite memory from the German TV series Deutschland 86/89?
FK: Working with the creative team was fun. We mainly filmed 86 in South Africa and working with actors who had experienced apartheid was educational. I enjoyed Cape Town. My favourite time was the scene in the safe house, when ANC members plan their next move. We were a lot of actors in one room and had time to chat between takes. This is how you get to know about people’s lives and culture.

LUX: How would you advise young people?
FK: I would say: work hard, stay focused, do not compare yourself to others, know you will make mistakes and learn from them. Surround yourself with people who have the same passion you do. Once you have found them, support each other.

Interview by Isabella Sheherazade Sanai

Black Panther: Wakande Forever is available to stream on Disney+

This article was first published in the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of LUX

This finalist team from Kibera came up with a waste recycling system in the largest urban slum in Africa

The Earth Prize is one of the many initiatives run by The Earth Foundation. It is a competition open to all institutions from leading schools in London to the poorest slums in Africa. The Prize  encourages schools, students, researchers and young entrepreneurs to educate themselves and be mentored in order to find innovative solutions to  solve the planet’s environmental challenges. With the winner of The Earth Prize being announced on Friday 25th March 2022, Candice Tucker speaks to Angela McCarthy, CEO of The Earth Foundation, about the importance and impact of this Prize.

Angela McCarthy

1. Why do you think teenagers might have the solutions to some of our greatest environmental issues?

They have the ability to still think out of the box. They are in touch with their creative minds and they care deeply about the planet. This emotional intelligence is key in finding solutions. The older we get, the more we are blinded by outside belief patterns blocking our imaginations and causing us to lose touch with nature and ourselves.

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2. How important is education versus action in schools with regards to the fight against climate change?

With education, action comes naturally. Once you have opened the eyes and ears of teenagers to what is happening, how and why, they can then take steps to make a change. Once they care about their planet’s crises through education, they will want to make different choices. Those choices create a ripple effect. As we know, there are many factors that contribute to climate change. If they can start to live differently or come up with new solutions, they will help the fight against climate change.

The adjudicating panel for the Earth Prize consists of leaders in sustainability, science and entrepreneurship

3. The Earth Prize is open to leading private schools in the wealthiest countries to those with the most basic education in refugee camps and slums. How do you ensure a level playing field?

Once they have registered online for free, everyone receives the same support to participate in The Earth Prize competition. This includes online video learning content and access to our 30 university mentors whom the students can ask for help at any point. I and The Earth Foundation team are available for any further advice or to answer questions that any teacher, supervisor or student may have at any time. We found that everyone was able to get access to the internet, and that is what made it all work! Our students in Lebanon had the internet go down and they would have to wait until it was rebooted, and the same happened in South Africa, but they all managed. The amazing teachers made it their mission to support their students while they came up with their own solutions. Finally, equality was guaranteed because each submission carried only a number, thus eliminating any risk of bias in the judging.

4. What was the original intention of The Earth Prize?

To inspire, educate, mentor, and empower students, schools, researchers, and young entrepreneurs with innovative ideas to tackle environmental challenges. Through this process we strive to build our very own ecosystem. Peter McGarry, the founder, and I believe in the voices of the youth being heard and bringing their solutions to life, and how everyone can be part of the solution to solving today’s most pressing sustainability issues.

The Earth Foundation was founded in 2020, in Geneva, Switzerland by Pete McGarry to encourage young people to find solutions to the Earth’s environmental challenges.

5. Apart from The Earth Prize, can you tell us about other projects within The Earth Foundation?

The Earth Prize is our first initiative. The second will be The Earth Foundation Awards that will support research endeavours in the environmental sustainability field with grants and scholarships by distributing $300,000 every year to university students and researchers. We are also in the process of creating our Alumni Association, a platform for networking and encouragement amongst our community of passionate and inspiring individuals.

Read more: Unilever’s Rebecca Marmot On The Sustainable Everyday

6. How do you ensure a long term effect and results from the prize?

Through The Earth Prize Alumni we will strengthen ties among its members, offering them access to educational content, mentorship, social events, and professional opportunities. We will be helping them bring their solutions to life, and invite them back to share their impact, successes and their challenging times to the next year’s participants. We believe this will become a very powerful way to accelerate change and showcase the leaders and change-makers of today and tomorrow.

Find out more: www.earth-foundation.org

Lindblad Expeditions travellers explore Booth Island, Antarctica

Sven-Olof Lindblad is an influential Ocean Elder whose work combines marine conservation, education and eco-tourism. He speaks to Sophie Marie Atkinson

In late January 1966, 57 travellers arrived at Smith and Melchior Islands on the Antarctic Peninsula aboard a chartered Argentine navy ship. Pioneer Lars-Eric Lindblad was the man behind this voyage, one which had previously only ever been undertaken by professional explorers and scientists. This event marked the beginning of commercial travel to parts of the world that, until then, most could have only dreamt of visiting, as well as the birth of a whole new industry.

Exploration, discovery and an innate desire to immerse oneself in nature clearly run in the Lindblad blood. Lars-Eric’s son, Sven-Olof, spent part of his life in east Africa, where he photographed elephants and wildlife and assisted filmmakers on a documentary about the destruction of rainforests. This experience, coupled with the many trips he joined his father on, ignited a passion that lives with him today.

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By 1979, Sven-Olof had founded Special Expeditions (now Lindblad Expeditions), an innovative travel company that today offers oceanic expeditions aboard small ships. Like his late father (who died in 1994), Sven-Olof’s mission is to enable people to explore hidden corners of the world. Destinations include the coast of Alaska, Baja California, Patagonia, Russia, and even the islands around Scotland. But visiting these regions is only a fraction of the company’s story.

Lindblad Expeditions seeks to take what we currently call ‘sustainable travel’ a step further. “Sustainable travel basically means that you can just continue what you’re doing without causing a negative impact, so essentially ‘do no harm’,” Sven-Olof explains. “I think what we need to do is figure out how to use our energy and our imagination to think more in restorative rather than just sustainable terms. We’ve done so much damage to our environment that we need to shift gears fast.”

Sven-Olof Lindblad on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic, 2014

This is why planetary stewardship and meaningful change are at the heart of the Lindblad Expeditions offerings. They are facilitated in a number of ways. Firstly, the company is carbon-neutral, offsetting all its operations and making it easy for travellers to do the same with their flights. The ships are entirely free of single-use plastic, and all food provided on board is responsibly sourced.

The company has formed a partnership establishing the Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic Fund, with donations often coming from inspired passengers, with each of the 15 ships raising finance for different programmes. “We have a hugely successful project called Pristine Seas,” explains Sven-Olof, “the objective of which is to create large marine protected areas. We raise a minimum of $500,000 a year for that programme, often up to $800,000.

Read more: How Science is Harnessing the Power of the Sea

“In the Galápagos, we put hundreds of thousands of dollars into a local school that we believe will educate the future leaders of the islands.” They also help local fisheries implement better technology for their work.

Motivating people to care is another piece of the Lindblad puzzle. “One of the things I love about having this fund is its action, which we often see in the most surprising ways,” he says. “One individual had travelled with us at first to Alaska then to Baja California and then to the Galápagos. He called me one day and said, ‘I’m a trustee of The Helmsley Trust and I’m fascinated with what you do.’ Over a number of years, he became the trust’s most significant conservation investor. He was pumping $9 million a year into the Galápagos and about $6 million into Baja. He had never thought about this field before and these trips just opened his eyes.”

Sven-Olof doesn’t see any of his efforts as philanthropic. “I’ve made a point, in relation to our industry, never to use the word ‘philanthropy’,” he says. “If we gave $100,000 to the children’s hospital in New York, I would view that as philanthropy, but when it comes to anything related to travel, I view it as investment. At the end of the day, natural resources, cultural resources, historic resources – these are what the travel industry depends upon. So why wouldn’t we naturally want to invest in the maintenance of these, our core assets?”

On top of these myriad achievements and endeavours, Sven-Olof is one of 23 global leaders – including Jean-Michel Cousteau (son of Jacques) and James Cameron – who use their power and influence to protect our marine worlds. These are Ocean Elders. Sven-Olof explains that their primary purpose is to try to sway political decisions, or lobby governments or certain businesses. “There are a lot of scientific resources behind Ocean Elders owing to the fact that members include the likes of Richard Branson, which means we can produce weapons that we can put on desks of prime ministers, weapons signed by all of these people.”

It would appear that Sven-Olof Lindblad, with a fleet of 15 ships and the backing of some heavyweight peers, is more than armed and ready for the war against the destruction of our precious oceans. His role at the helm of eco-travel looks set to continue.

Find out more: world.expeditions.com

This article was originally published in the Autumn/Winter Issue.

Helga Piaget, Founder of Passion Sea

Helga Piaget is the founder of the Monaco-based non-profit organisation Passion Sea, which reaches out to schools around the world with educational and artistic initiatives around ocean conservation.  Here, Piaget speaks to LUX about pushing ocean conservation to the top of the youth agenda and the role of art

If passion could save the oceans, Helga Piaget would have done the job already. An engaging mix of fire and focus, she is sitting with LUX at the Yacht Club de Monaco, speaking about her programme to bring awareness of ocean issues to the younger generation through her art programmes at her non-profit organisation Passion Sea. Born in Germany and based in Monaco, Piaget spends much of her time engaging with schools to try to create a new generation who understand the issues facing the oceans, and the routes to resolution.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

Our location is not a coincidence: Monaco’s Prince Albert is one of the most significant high-profile supporters of ocean causes, something in the DNA of the principality with the celebrated Oceanographic Museum and Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, as well as being the President of the Yacht Club itself.

LUX: Passion Sea strives to engage young children in the conservation debate. Why?
Helga Piaget: Education is huge. Children are the future – the next adults, and the next leaders. So, if you educate them in the right way, they might be able to make a change. I specialise with younger children because they are sponges. They educate others: when they play, they ask the other kids, ‘Why did you throw that [litter] on the ground?’ Then, they often go home and realise how much trash and plastic is in their households, and the parents learn, too. I think they know even more than us sometimes.

Passion Sea runs educational programs across the globe

LUX: Explain the role of art in Passion Sea’s efforts.
Helga Piaget: We educate through art, because when children paint something, or they have to do poetry, it stays in their brain. You have to get it anchored in their brain, and [the best way to do] that is through art. It makes them happy, too, learning in a happy way. We did a book with artworks from around the world [in 2017], but for the last two years we have been working on [producing] big flags with schools worldwide, with one from each country. It’s really something to be proud of. I’m waiting to do an exhibition on it, but for the moment it’s not the right time. We already have 25 countries, and beautiful works which are all related to the topic of water. A whole class of children [produces] each work: that’s what’s beautiful. When it’s ready, I often go to the school and have a wonderful event with the mayor and the parents. Normally the schools do other programmes afterwards for conservation in their area. It never stops with us.

Read more: James Chen on providing vision for all

LUX: So, for Passion Sea, creativity is a form of activism?
Helga Piaget: Yes. It’s a snowball system, from one [project] to the other. We find one school, and we meet with the directors and teachers who are willing to participate. Then, through the locals, we find the next connection to the next school. If you start in one good point, you get the connections afterwards, and they start working with you. I am very lucky because I have travelled nearly the whole world with Piaget, so I have good connections in most countries. Now I live in Monaco, which I am a citizen of, so I am very well-connected there. Our prince [Albert of Monaco] does a lot there. It’s very important to have people like him, who have a name, in my book. If you don’t have names, people are less interested. They like heroes, someone they can follow. It makes them listen more.

Piaget with Paris Baloumis, Oceanco’s marketing director

LUX: How difficult has it been to incentivise those in the high net worth community to care about the oceans? Does it ever feel like you like you are fighting a losing battle?
Helga Piaget: Some days it does feel like that. It’s very difficult, but if you have one or two people who understand, it gives you the energy to continue. Two years ago, I was at the Monaco Yacht Show and I was the only one who was speaking about sustainability; everyone [else] was just thinking about money. But the biggest luxury is water, and fresh air. If the water is not clean, who can sell boats? People won’t go to dirty lakes or seas. Everyone has to work together. So I said, ‘The money is in the water.’ Ever since, we have been contacting marinas and boat owners to give them flags for the boats. The flag means they are respecting and protecting the waters. [It’s a way of getting people to] think about how they live, to not to buy too much throwaway material, and to use better products when they clean their boats. A year later there were four, five, six events in construction technology, and everyone was cleaning with these new products. I was delighted. I am really just trying to make people aware. When people see me now, they always ask questions about the topics of nature. They say I am the mother of the oceans!

LUX: What is the nature of philanthropy?
Helga Piaget: Giving the time and energy to make something positive happen. It doesn’t need to be worldwide. Even if it’s small – it can be next door, in the community – it is amazing to see something happen. For me, it’s water and the environment. There is so much being done, but there is still so much to do. Water connects us all, with our body, with our whole planet. It’s important. You must feel where your heart goes – for you need a big passion and you need a lot of time – then think as big as you want.

Find out more: passionsea.com

As with all of our philanthropists, readers who have their own foundations and philanthropic interests are encouraged to reach out to our interview subjects and their institutions directly.

Ebinehita Iyere, founder of charitable youth organisation Milk Honey Bees

Milk Honey Bees celebrates and empowers Black girls and young women by providing a safe space for creative expression and healing. Here, the organisation’s 28-year-old founder Ebinehita Iyere discusses her personal journey, the impact of violence on women and the importance of putting ‘HER’ first

LUX: What’s your earliest memory of wanting to be involved in youth work?
Ebinehita Iyere: Youth work has always been a significant part of my life. My earliest memory of wanting to be involved was at the latchkey after school club I attended in primary school, supported by some amazing youth workers. I naturally started applying those skills to other young people around me.

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As I got older I really realised the impact that those youth workers had on me. When I left home aged 15, I became a youth worker without even knowing it, providing peer support to other young people like me. I was living in a hostel, so I created a youth work space in my small hostel room and everyone would come to my place. The community always had an impact on me and how I viewed society because people didn’t understand us, but the community did, the youth workers in the community understood us.

LUX: What inspired you to set up Milk Honey Bees?
Ebinehita Iyere: The work I was doing centred around young men. I was raised to believe that most issues in the community predominantly affect young Black men. That’s all I knew. Then, after a very tragic event affected me deeply, I realised that there weren’t any spaces for girls and young women to process the things they had experienced. I thought, when an incident happens in the community, where do the girls go?

Milk Honey Bees started with me, working on myself. My traumas had forced me to grow up far too quickly. So, there was a long process I had to go through to heal my own inner child, and through that important work I saw what I could do with other Black girls.

I had always used reading as an escape and when I read Milk & Honey by Rupi Kaur it was the first book that I felt in a long time really connected with me, so I shared it with a few girls, and essentially, with and for them Milk Honey Bees was created. ​​​​​​​

No one had ever asked these girls what they needed. My whole view on the needs of girls changed. Through creativity and putting ‘HER’ (Healing, Empowerment, Resilience) first, we were able to create a safe space for girls, where they could finally put themselves first, celebrate themselves and be visible.

LUX: How has the organisation evolved since its inception?
Ebinehita Iyere: The organisation has evolved in many ways and continues to do so. Milk Honey Bees began as a project that sat under my full-time job at Juvenis, where I work as a Therapeutic Diversion Practitioner. Through Juvenis we quickly found that the intersection of race and gender is incredibly important, and as a result Milk Honey Bees has evolved into something far bigger than we ever thought it would be – a space for Black and Mixed Girls to be themselves – which means we’ve been able to reach and support more girls than I could have imagined.

We’ve been able to take our time to develop our presence: who we are, what we want to achieve. Black girls are forever evolving so as an organisation we must grow with and for them. We have built and sustained more relationships with the community, schools, parents, and professionals. Some of the girls came to me at 17 now they’re in their early twenties – we’ve all been growing and evolving together.

Read more: The artistic legacy of Valmont’s Didier Guillon

Before the pandemic, we were doing creative projects and most of our work was done face-to-face. So, we set up online spaces where the girls could just chill and be still, feel empowered and vent about things. We also used creativity to stay connected which has led to us being able to reach and impact many more young lives.

Through the pandemic we actually evolved to become more sustainable and more visible, and are emerging with enormous energy and exciting plans for the future, both on and offline which led to being supported by the likes of major brands like Barbie, Sony Music, PR agency DH-PR and Adwoa Aboah’s media platform the ‘Gurls Talk’ podcast.

Milk Honey Bees’ partnership with Barbie aims to instil Black girls with the belief that they can do anything

LUX: Can you tell us more about the concept of H.E.R and how it works in practice?
Ebinehita Iyere: The concept is about putting ‘H.E.R’ first because Black and mixed race girls typically have to wear an armour. They have to mobilise in their families and communities and tend to be denied the time and space for healing themselves.

H.E.R stands for Healing, Empowerment and Resilience. It works in practice through helping the girls learn how to navigate themselves, and in turn, how they can navigate within the sisterhood and the wider world. Essentially, it teaches them to understand whilst being understood.

Healing comes first, and we use creative expression to do much of this work because people need to feel safe and comfortable to express how they feel. We use tools like play, art and healing circles, which allow the girls to be vulnerable in a supportive expressive environment.

Empowerment is about the reclaiming of power. So, taking back the power they felt they’d lost through their negative experiences. We do this by doing things the girls were told they couldn’t do. Black girls are often told they can’t or shouldn’t do certain things, but we empower them to do whatever they want, through raising aspirations through giving them amazing opportunities, such as new educational opportunities, writing for magazines like Grazia, and working with exciting brands like Barbie and Sony Music. It’s important to show the world the power the girls have, so they in turn feel self-empowered.

Resilience is about building on what the girls already naturally possess – and they possess a lot of it – especially with this generation dealing with the pandemic and social media pressures for example. Milk Honey Bees shine a light on various forms of resilience and support our girls to build it within and beyond the community. We also focus heavily on the fact that it’s OK not to be OK, and even just articulating this is a form of resilience. We show ourselves that we don’t always have to be strong or present a certain way. You have put HER first!

LUX: Why is it so important to enable and support creative expression amongst young Black women?
Ebinehita Iyere: As I mentioned before, creative expression is really important for healing. You can feel a sense of both strength and vulnerability through creativity in all its forms. It comes from within – plus, creative potential is limitless.

It’s particularly important for Black girls, who have long been the pioneers of creativity – yet are rarely credited for it. We support them to take ownership of it. Creative expression also determines how your internal feelings are shown and embraced by the world. For Black girls and young women, it’s so important, so that the world doesn’t continue to only see one side of them. Our one-to-one and group sessions often lead into social action projects. Their creativity fuels their voice and visibility.

LUX: Are the girls you work with referred or do they tend to reach out directly?
Ebinehita Iyere: Both! We have a referral system in place through Juvenis, which is our parent charity. We also get referrals from social care, education, mental health partners and sometimes local institutions like the police.

We are really strong on encouraging and facilitating peer-to-peer support, which means that girls can reach out to us directly – they often refer their friends or refer themselves. We even have boys referring girls to Milk Honey Bees! Young men who see the work we do sometimes refer their sisters or girlfriends to us, which is great. We also get a lot of parents coming to us.

LUX: How do you ensure you’re meeting the needs of the individual within the collective?
Ebinehita Iyere: Before anyone is put in a group, our work always begins with a one-to-one session. I always start by asking the girls how they are, who they want to be and what they need, and we co-design an individual support plan.

The next step is the group process. We spend time getting to know each other and ourselves as individuals. Within the group, everyone has a role, or ownership/leadership of something. Everyone is individually celebrated, even within a group.

We create a space free of judgement and rooted in the celebration of Black girlhood. We work to the ethos of: “I am my sister’s keeper, while I’m keeping myself.”

Milk Honey Bees organises creative workshops and projects based on what the girls want to do, see and learn

LUX: You’ve said before that “people need to start seeing Black girls and stop putting them in the same category as women”. Can you explain what you mean by that?
Ebinehita Iyere: A lot of the time Black girls are judged as adults when they are still children. One of the key barriers to the intersecting needs of Black girls and young women being centred by services is the manifestation of adultification bias, where notions of innocence and vulnerability are not afforded to certain children due to racial prejudgement. They are held to greater levels of responsibility due to being treated as though they are more mature, with their rights often being diminished or overlooked.

For example, research has found that adultification contributed to the perceptions amongst those in authoritative positions view Black girls and young women are less innocent, which influences a greater use of force, harsher punishments, and decreased protection and support from services in comparison to white girls. This can have further damaging impacts on how they view themselves, their mental health, as well as negative experiences and interactions with various professionals across so many systems, including education, justice, health, and social care.

If society views Black girls as Black women they are essentially taking away their childhood. There’s an erasure of innocence because of this assumption. We need to allow Black girls to thrive and fail in their girlhood, in order to become the best women they can be.

It’s easy for others to try and write you off and label you as an “angry Black woman” without even knowing who you really are or based on your expressions. I know this stigma first-hand from teachers, to social workers and even previous managers. It affected me deeply. I don’t want any more girls to have to go through that as girls or women.

LUX: As a young founder, what challenges did you face in setting up the organisation and how did you overcome them?
Ebinehita Iyere: Initially, my biggest challenge was me and not being able to process myself. I realised very early on that I had to work on myself first before I could really help anyone else. So, I learned to look after myself while trying to look after others. Now I allow myself to process my feelings and sit with my emotions. They are valid.

You’re allowed to cry, rest, be happy, feel confused – you’re allowed to ask for help. There is amazing strength and power in helping others, but you have to love and take care of yourself first before you can do that for anyone else. I’ve learned how to embrace my vulnerability and turn it into great strength, by speaking up for myself when it matters and allowing myself to be vulnerable with others, knowing it’s more than OK.

Your experiences do not define you; they will only allow you to learn, grow and become the best version of yourself for you. My experiences have not allowed me to grow personally and professionally.

Read more: Juanita Ingram on empowering women in the workplace

Outside of my personal life, my transition to a founder was as a result of most of my work being with boys in the community, but I started to realise that there was a real lack of understanding when it came to creating safe spaces for Black girls to express themselves in the community after incidents happened, or even spaces that celebrated Black girl joy. Creating safe spaces for girls is something I assumed people would understand, but they didn’t. People couldn’t understand what I was doing.

Being supported by my passion, family and a core group of people in the youth sector who understood my vision (Jenni Steele, Winston Goode and Whitney Iles), and receiving funding and recognition through awards and press also helped my journey to ensure that no matter the challenge I could overcome it.

LUX: How do you think education systems can better support young people? Are there any skills, for example, which you think schools should be teaching?
Ebinehita Iyere: I think education systems can provide better support by allowing young people to be creative. Life, career, and success – none of these are linear. Thinking creatively helps young people navigate these things.

I also think schools should be teaching more life skills – processing emotions, managing money, and mindfulness for example – to prepare young people for the highs and lows of the working world.
Schools should have a four-day teaching week with one day set aside for play, mental health, life skills, pastoral care etc – for both staff and students – plus engaging with families. Showing that it’s OK for them to express themselves because without expression you can’t function. We saw it in the pandemic – imagine if adults had had the personal tools to have been able to support kids more during the pandemic?

LUX: What impact does the exclusion of women from conversations around violence have on individuals and communities?
Ebinehita Iyere: For every experience of violence whether it’s structural violence, domestic violence or youth violence, there’s always a woman on the end of it – whether that’s on the side of the perpetrator or victim. Violence is not just the act itself. It’s the aftermath. Instead of grieving and healing, girls have to wear this armour and protect boys and men. In other words, girls are spending more time mobilising for others than healing themselves.

Excluding women from these conversations leads to overwhelming feelings of invisibility, not feeling like our voices are heard, and erasure from our experiences. We are more than just a hashtag, we should not only be visible when being mourned but also while living. We should not be excluded from conversations about our safety in fact we should be safe.

Even when we are included in these conversations we aren’t leading them. The impact is really bad. Giving the women of tomorrow the skills, language and tools to be able to have these conversations in their spaces and beyond is essential in my opinion.

Iyere at the Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman of the Year Awards 2021 in London. Photo by David M. Benett/Getty Images for Veuve Clicquot

LUX: What upcoming projects are you looking forward to?
Ebinehita Iyere: We have so much coming up for us and essentially everything is led and developed by the girls. We are developing a new schools based project for teen girls and have just launched our project with Barbie for 5-10 year olds.

We are super excited for the launch of Creative Connection, our a brand-new project in partnership with Sony Music UK. I’m really looking forward to this because it’s an incredible chance for young women to navigate the industry they want to be in – and an amazing chance for the inspirational businesses and creatives they engage with to learn from the girls.

Creative Connection is a 8-week mentoring project purposed with empowering Black/Mixed Black young women, who have an interest in getting into the music and wider creative industry, through a series of introductory workshops and sessions. In collaboration with Sony Music UK, Milk Honey Bees have curated a unique curriculum supporting a selected group of 10 Black/Mixed Black female creatives aged 18-23, by offering them creative mentoring and work placements. Being able to fuse creativity, work and wellbeing together to all work hand in hand is really exciting, and the ten young women who are selected will be the first of their kind.

LUX: And finally, you were recently nominated for the Veuve Clicquot Bold Future award. What does that mean to you personally and to your organisation?
Ebinehita Iyere: It was so amazing to be recognised by Veuve Clicquot, mainly because it’s so rare to see that kind of visibility for people like me. Even though I didn’t win the actual award, I am still a winner!

My name, Ebinehita, means ‘my destiny’. My journey fluctuated from not feeling like I had a destiny to fulfilling my density. I’ve worked so hard to create one for myself through hard work and self love, so to be recognised by such a prestigious brand made me so proud. For every woman who fought to get where you are: continue to be bold because you are the future.

Find out more: milkhoneybees.co.uk
Follow Ebineita Iyere on Instagram: @ebinehitaiyere_

Lady Edwina Grosvenor. Photograph by Roo Kendall at Pencil Agency

Lady Edwina Grosvenor is the daughter of Britain’s richest landowner, the Duke of Westminster, and a passionate advocate for prison reform. She is the founder and chair of One Small Thing, an organisation that works with prisoners and staff in both male and female prisons, and a founding investor and ambassador of the Clink Restaurant chain, which trains prisoners for work in the catering industry. As part of our ongoing philanthropy series, she speaks to Samantha Welsh about her early work with prisons across the globe, the importance of training officers and her vision for the future

LUX: What are your earliest memories of wanting to give to make a difference?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: I was about 12 when my mother and father decided to take me and my older sister to a drug-rehabilitation centre on Hope Street in Liverpool to meet two heroin addicts, to understand about drugs and addiction. It was a pivotal moment. I remember realising there are reasons why people become addicts, and so my interest in human behaviour began. Years later, I realised I had money to give and there was a big internal wrestle with what that meant, what I was going to do with it, how I was going to do it, what would be the appropriate way. Then, at 15, I worked in a homeless shelter called Save the Family where mothers went with their children as a last-ditch attempt to prevent the children from being removed into care. The mothers were taught how to be parents. If you’ve never been parented yourself, how could you be expected to do it? I found that really hard-hitting as some fathers were either in prison, others had left, or they were dead. The mothers all had trauma-histories. I was the same age as some of the children that were there, they knew who I was and they challenged my family background. It made me think.

Working with Save the Family and visiting the two heroin addicts on Hope Street are the two really big moments in my life and both those happened before I was 16. From then on, I was always thinking, how is that fair, why have I got all this when others have so little?

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

LUX: When were you drawn to advocate for justice through prison reform?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: I travelled alone to Nepal when I was 18 to work as a prison’s assistant missionary in Central Jail, Kathmandu. I was going into prison to remove innocent children serving time alongside their parents. I remember the first four boys were all under the age of five. They’d never seen a white person, and they’d never been in a car. They were violently sick throughout the five hour trip from high in the remote Himalayas down to the flatlands of Nepal. It was just utter chaos, but wonderful chaos and I was doing something that other people don’t do.

LUX: So from the start, you knew you had go into prisons to be sure of making a difference?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: Yes. It only became obvious when I went into women’s prisons in the UK. The case studies were part of my graduate dissertation on children growing up in prisons. I found that government legislation and the prison system were not responding to the reality of what was happening in prisons. After graduating in Criminology and Sociology & Criminal Behaviour, I started working with women offenders and their children. I also started to understand how the law works by working in the House of Lords. So with this, my passion and resources, I could hopefully approach this problem from every angle and be effective.

Lady Edwina Grosvenor speaking at a conference

LUX: What characteristics are shared by the worst prisons you have visited?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: Overcrowding is a big problem, infections spread faster, it’s harder to manage prisoners effectively, it’s harder for staff to do their jobs well and its harder to run a good, clean, safe regime. Also, bad leadership. You can go to prisons that look grim but the leadership is outstanding, there’s great staff morale from the governor down to the officers on the wing and the prisoners have a sense of hope. As in business, there has to be good leadership top down through every pay grade.

LUX: How does understanding offenders’ past trauma help in reforming behaviour?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: I set up One Small Thing to understand trauma through a gender-lens. My organisation provides training for prison officers and at the end of the course, we emphasise one small thing: it’s about changing the question from ‘what’s wrong with you?’ to ‘what’s happened to you?’ The way men generally tend to deal with their violence is to externalise it whereas women often internalise it. For example, women are usually abused by the person to whom they say, “I love you” which is why they suffer more with mental health problems. If a prisoner tells you what happened to them, you stand a chance of understanding who they are, why they are behaving the way they are and then you can work with them more effectively.

Read more: New residences at hot selling Andermatt Swiss Alps

LUX: Is it possible to change the way that correctional institutions approach rehabilitation?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: It absolutely is – that is why I never get too downbeat about things because it is entirely possible. Negative culture can become very strong in some prisons and you can feel it. With One Small Thing, over six years we have been working across all the women’s prisons and the long-term high secure male estate, which is 17 prisons. We have been training the officers, putting interventions in for the prisoners and working with the leadership down through the ranks to bring about that cultural shift.

LUX: So changing the culture ‘inside’ increases the probability prisoners who have served their sentences do not reoffend once they are ‘outside’; the press has reported widely on the success of the Clink restaurants here. Can you tell us more?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: We have a five-step integrated approach at the Clink: recruitment to the programme, training, support, employment, mentoring. A lot of organisations can do one thing really well, but to be successful you have to do it all for someone not to reoffend. The mentoring is critical as it supports the hard work done whilst the person has been inside the prison training. Do you have a suit to go to your interview? Do you have a flat? Is it furnished? Do you have anyone to talk to? Maybe they can’t see their friends and family because they are part of their old life and they do not want to reoffend. It is painful.

LUX: How do you think academics and other professionals draw on your experience here?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: Our trauma work was adopted into policy and written into the Female Offender Strategy, published in July 2018 by the Secretary of State for Justice. The Clink restaurant chain has just announced its expansion in partnership with the MOJ across 70 more prisons.

LUX: Why have you had to contribute financial resources alongside your professional work?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: I think this is an interesting thing when it comes to the role of philanthropy, and the public sector. I decided not to set up a foundation so that I could give to things that weren’t registered charities. When you’re trying to bring about a system change, and do things that have never been done before, you have to do things entirely differently from the beginning. For example, the training that we put across the prisons came from California, and the author of the work is a lady called Dr Stephanie Covington. I was able to bring her from California over to England to start training the prison officers. We were then able to put her curriculum into the prisons, but none of that could have been done if I had a foundation because she’s not a registered charity; she’s a professional expert, consultant and author. The conversation I had with the head of the prison service was along the lines of “I’ve seen this amazing thing in California, we really need this across our women’s prisons.” He said, “Edwina, there’s no money.” So I said that I would pay for it and he said, “Edwina, there’s no one to organise it’. So I said that I would organise and he agreed. It worked so well that it has now gone into the male estate.

LUX: What upcoming projects are you looking forward to?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: I am working on a big five year pilot project called Hope Street. I am redesigning the justice system for women and their children in the community in the hope that we will prove concept and then it will be rolled out nationally across England and Wales. Hope Street is about offering a safe space for women to serve their sentences in the community alongside their children. There are fewer than 4,000 women in prison in this country in12 women’s prisons, many of whom are perversely sent there for their own safety. Most women are inside for non-violent crimes, the large majority are in for very short sentences. Their children get removed from them, this is about 17,000 children per year. Hope Street will sit across the county of Hampshire. The county boundary is relevant because you have the local police, the local probation, the local services and commissioning routes. We’ve designed Hope Street to fit into that local landscape. It’s designed to be replicable and scalable so that it could be rolled out nationally.

An imagined render of Hope Street. Photograph by EnAim

LUX: How does Hope Street work?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: Hope Street will reduce the number of women being sentenced to prison in Hampshire by being the safe and healing community alternative. Women and their children will be able to access holistic, wrap around support in one place. At Hope Street there will be flats for the women and children, intervention rooms, workshops and training facilities where the women will do the work the courts prescribe. It’s a real life, open community with a café for the public as well as the women themselves, a crèche, and a garden. When it’s time for individuals to move on to a less supported environment, Hope Street will provide move on accommodation and continued support through outreach workers. It’s been four years’ in the planning and development, construction has begun and we open in Q2 2022.

Read more: Tasting with sustainable Napa wine producer Beth Novak Milliken

LUX: What advice would you offer someone else with personal resources who wants to make an impactful difference?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: I think people who have a lot should be conscious of it, and think about what they might or might not like to do with it. Wealth can be an incredibly powerful and amazing thing but it can become toxic to manage. I’ve managed to think about my philanthropy firstly, as a career and secondly, as a hobby to be enjoyed. Even on holiday in Sri Lanka last year, I found a prison opposite our hotel and managed to get in. Dan, my husband said: “Have you noticed the prison’s there?” and I said, “Of course I’ve noticed the prison’s there!”

LUX: What is the most memorable moment of your philanthropic journey?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: A big impactful one for me was visiting twelve prisoners in the Secure Housing Unit (segregation) within Pelican Bay prison, a State Male Supermax prison in northern California. In this prison the officers had guns, riots were common place, alarm bells rang; it was a chaotic, violent place. I needed to see and understand the work that the men were doing to address the trauma that they had suffered and to see how it may fit back in our English system. These men were never going to see the light of day again, however, I heard them describe their compulsion for violence as a physical fire in the stomach that they could not stop “but what I can do now is recognise it, breathe through it, and I know I can control it now.” For the first time they were being given words to be able to articulate and therefore address and process some of the horrific things they had been through. The only two things the prisoners felt were wrong with the programme were that it should be expanded to the whole prison and the teaching should be in a classroom not a cage.

LUX: What are your next big challenges?
Lady Edwina Grosvenor: Getting Hope Street fully funded and open. We have £6 million left to raise of £26.2m in order to fully fund the five year Hope Street pilot. I would love to hear from people who would like to support us.

Find out more: onesmallthing.org.uk/hopestreet

Samantha Welsh is a contributing editor of LUX with a special focus on philanthropy.

Philanthropist and businessman Etienne d’Arenberg

Etienne d’Arenberg hails from one of Europe’s oldest families and is treasurer of the Arenberg Foundation, whose mission is the promotion of the understanding of European history and culture. He is a partner of family-owned Swiss private bank Mirabaud. He is also President of the Menuhin Competition Trust, and Trustee of several Swiss and UK charities. He speaks to LUX about European values, and the evolving perspectives and expectations of the next generation

LUX: Has the nature of philanthropy changed in the last two decades?
Etienne d’Arenberg: Both from my private banking experience at Mirabaud as well as from various circle of donors I belong to, I feel that there is a clear evolution in philanthropic practices. Firstly, there is an increasing involvement in philanthropic areas outside the traditional non-profit sector with growing interest from both governments and companies to partner with individual donors on specific issues. Secondly, and this is probably the consequence of the first point, there is an increasing focus on systemic change and transformative grant-making approaches that achieve greater leverage. Lastly, and this can become challenging for smaller institutions, there is a growing expectation for impact measurement and focus on KPIs.

Another trend that I see emerging in large donors’ circles – often business-owning families – is the need to align business and family platforms. The time where your company was polluting the rivers while at the same time your family foundation was giving to the WWF is over. There is a search for coherence between the different activities with a growing alignment between the business, the investment vehicle(s) and the philanthropic foundation. Interestingly, private banks in Geneva such as Mirabaud have been at the forefront of this trend with their founding families being very active in local communities, while at the same time promoting a company’s approach to addressing the most pressing social and environmental issues.

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LUX: Tell us more about your last point – are people being judged by different criteria?
Etienne d’Arenberg: We are faced with issues of huge magnitude, both on the societal and environmental front and this is especially true in times of COVID-19. If you combine this with growing access to information, I do feel that there is a real demand from the public for more sustainable business practices and generally speaking pressure for accountability. I see this pressure mounting, especially from a new generation of customers and employees.

If you run a company that is active in socially or environmentally damaging activities, the issue is that you will not be able to shift your business focus overnight. Our role as investors – and this is what we do at Mirabaud – is to accept companies that may not yet be there, but which are able to demonstrate a forward-looking vision including a clear strategy to transition to clean, circular and inclusive business models. For a family-owned or family-controlled company such as Mirabaud, this is also a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with purpose and long-holding family values.

The Arenberg Foundation organises concerts in the remote village of Lauenen, in central Switzerland.

LUX: Is inclusion and bringing people together an important element of philanthropy?
Etienne d’Arenberg: Inclusion is about embracing people irrespective of their difference, whether that’s race, ethnicity gender, sexual orientation or identification, religion or economic circumstances, and providing them with equal opportunities. This is where philanthropy plays an important role as inclusion often starts with access to education, healthcare or basic needs.

But inclusion is also about getting rid of bias, the “us versus them” old way thinking, and embracing the fact that our difference is something positive: this goes far beyond the tropic of philanthropy. I come from quite a traditional background, but I am proud to say that I do not feel threatened by a society that changes. Quite to the contrary and under the impulsion of my daughters, we have been revisiting family values and behaviours, making sure not to pigeon-hole people and being particularly mindful not to impose suffering by raw reflexes of exclusion.

Mirabaud has also committed itself to diversity and inclusion, making sure, for example, that we create an optimal workplace for women. The fact that we were one of the first Geneva private bank to welcome a female managing partner helped us to develop a solid framework for gender equality practices. This has nothing to do with tokenism as it is based on the strong conviction that a forward-looking institution needs different perspectives and experiences.

Read more: Sophie Neuendorf on building a more sustainable art world

LUX: With the demands that are ever growing on the state sector, does the private sector need to step in more to support the cultural and charitable activities that were previously more supported by the state?
Etienne d’Arenberg: I don’t want to be a judge of the private sector being ‘not enough’, because whatever comes is already something and some individual donors are immensely generous. As I was mentioning before, there is an increasing need for approaches that achieve greater leverage and I believe that public-private partnership will play a greater role in addressing the need for systemic change.

The private sector can also act as a catalyst for change, raising awareness on specific issue and campaigning direct governmental support. I have been following the work of a UK charity which focuses on children food poverty: this is a very good example of an initially privately funded charity, who is actively campaigning for legislative change and working in close collaboration with government on food delivery. I am sure that we will see more on this in the future.

The Bol d’Or Mirabaud regatta on Lake Geneva

LUX: Does the next generation of wealth owners have different priorities for philanthropy?
Etienne d’Arenberg: Traditionally, family businesses or wealth owners have been quite active in their communities, and Mirabaud is no exception, both at the bank and at the partners’ level. Ask many Geneva-based NGOs, charities, cultural or sport institutions and they will tell you about its commitment.

I feel that the type of issues Generation Z cares about are a little bit different and I see this with my daughters. Their preoccupations are centred around inclusion, mental health, environment and racial equity. They will tell you bluntly that they are not prepared to work for a company that does not match their ethics or values, even if that means foregoing a number of lucrative jobs. To my view, this is quite representative of a generation that is much open to a new set of issues.

What is also changing is the active role they are ready to take. I think that the generation of philanthropists who will just sign a check is slowly over, and we will see a new generation of individuals who will want to take a much active role, starting earlier in life as volunteers, advocates or activists, and using a wider range of engagement tools.

As I said, Mirabaud has demonstrated a 200-year-old interest in the communities in which it operates and I sense that as a bank we are particularly interested in understanding this new generation, not only because they are our future clients and employees, but also because they are shaping the future we will be operating in, as a company.

Read more: Lamberto Frescobaldi on 1000 years of tradition and wine

LUX: Do Mirabaud’s philanthropic contributions focus on culture and the arts?
Etienne d’Arenberg: First and foremost, concerning contemporary art, in recent years we’ve been sponsors of FIAC in Paris among various other renowned institutions. We’ve also sponsored the Zurich Art weekend, which is, in a way, the pre-Art Basel event, in a more intimate setting. Even if we are an institution that celebrated its 200th birthday in 2019 (so we are 202 years old now) our motto is always “to be prepared for now”. As in, immediately at your service, to sponsor and to be interested in today’s world and that’s why we are interested in contemporary art. We know the value of looking into the past, and taking lessons into the future.

The second thing to remember is that culture is not something which always pertains to art. If you look at the enthusiasm of the public, art is not always the biggest thing, sports, for example, are part of the culture of a nation. We are sponsors of the largest inland regatta competition in the world, the Bol d’Or Mirabaud on Lake Geneva, and it’s a fascinating competition, because the lake has very particular wind conditions that are ever-changing, it is not a one-sided Caribbean type wind that comes constantly from one side and doesn’t change that often. Here again our motto “prepared for now” completely makes sense.

LUX: The concept of Europe is an important one for your family foundation. Why?
Etienne d’Arenberg: When we think about Europe, our family thinks of the continent which includes Switzerland and the United Kingdom, not only the European Union. The concept of Europe is indeed very important for our family, as it includes a set of value that are dear to our heart: human dignity, rule of law, equality and democracy to name a few. This sounds wonderful and noble, but the truth is that it is quite vague in practice.

What we have been trying to do with our family foundation is to revisit these values in the light of today’s challenges and explore new ways to shape our common future.

I am personally convinced that Europe has a key role to play in shaping the post-COVID recovery, and building a new social contract based on these long-lasting European values and at a very modest level, we are trying to be part of this conversation.

Etienne d’Arenberg is limited partner of family-owned Swiss private bank Mirabaud and is Head Wealth Management United Kingdom.

Find out more: arenbergfoundation.eu, mirabaud.com

Jewellery designer and philanthropist Tessa Packard

Tessa Packard is the founder of her eponymous fine jewellery brand, and a business mentor for several youth and education-focused charities. As part of our ongoing philanthropy series, she speaks to Samantha Welsh about charitable giving amongst younger generations, the influence of social media and why successful philanthropy requires creative thinking

LUX: How did you first get involved in philanthropy?
Tessa Packard: I grew up in a very philanthropically orientated family. Charity was a forward theme in our household, and because my parents were so passionate about it, my sister and I adopted an interest in the concept of ‘giving back’ at quite a young age.

It wasn’t until I was eighteen, however, that I really understood what charity work actually meant. At my father’s suggestion, I agreed to a three-month volunteer placement at the Amelia Trust Farm in Wales, which is a grassroots charity supporting youngsters who have largely been excluded from mainstream education at the hands of abuse, neglect or neurodevelopment disorders. It was a complete baptism of fire. Despite everything I had been taught by my parents about the ‘real world’, experiencing it first hand was somewhat different. True reality was infinitely more gritty, unfair, shocking, brutal and humbling all in one mouthful. I still consider this experience to be one of my most formative.

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LUX: Who has been your greatest influence?
Tessa Packard: With regards to philanthropy, my father and my great-grandfather (who I never met, but was instrumental in shaping my own father’s beliefs in charitable giving).

LUX: What sector are you passionate about?
Tessa Packard: Most of my philanthropic involvement to date has revolved around the theme of education and systemic change. Education has always seemed to me to be a sensible place to invest my energy, whatever the end goal. Whether you are looking to eliminate polio or save the rainforest, all roads tend to lead back to education.

Here and above: In collaboration with Lyndsey Ingram Gallery, Tessa Packard and her team created a mural based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book The Secret Garden which was later installed in Honeypot House, a children’s charitable home in Hampshire

LUX: Do you think there are any parallels in being a creative and being a philanthropist?
Tessa Packard: Interesting question. I think that successful philanthropy requires creative thinking. It can be a challenge to communicate successfully with your audience, and more often than not, the answer to solving any human-socio-economic problem on a long-term, systemic level is complex. The philanthropist must be willing to take risks in order to bridge the void between sectors – a task that is far too frequently overlooked – and this requires out-of-the-box tactics and a fertile imagination. You have to believe that even the most impossible outcome is possible, and generally speaking creatives are quite good at doing that because their job is to always think about the ‘new’.

Read more: An interview with Brazilian artist Maxwell Alexandre

LUX: At what stage of someone’s life have you seen intervention make the most difference?
Tessa Packard: If you were to approach philanthropy like a business deal, then investing in people at an early age generally yields better results in the long term. In practice, however, it isn’t quite so simplistic. Creating systemic change in any sector requires all the wheels of progress to turn at the same time, and that means transforming everyone and everything connected to the supply chain in unison.

Tessa Packard’s crab earrings from her Secret Garden collection

LUX: What success story has made you particularly happy?
Tessa Packard: I’m extremely excited about the work of Emmanuel Akpan-Inwang, who is currently building a new generation of children care homes in the UK. The existing model is embarrassingly inadequate and I really think Emmanuel is about to revolutionise a very important sector.

LUX: How do generations Y/Z give compared with generations X and the Baby Boomers?
Tessa Packard: I am by no means an expert here, but Baby Boomers generally tend to have much more prescriptive attitudes to philanthropy. They might begin to think about ‘giving back’ only when they are comfortably installed in steady, well-paid jobs and / or with a little more time on their hands. Baby Boomers also like to be able to justify their philanthropic investments – if you look closely, most of them tend to donate to causes that they personally understand or have experience of. They also tend to be less hands on and more cheque book-forward.

Read more: How women artists are reshaping art history

Generation X philanthropists are a mix of the old and the new. Whilst they also see philanthropy as something to enjoy in their more settled or mature years, they are often less partisan or dogmatic in outlook, meaning the manner in which they look at philanthropy is often more creative than the Baby Boomers. This generation can be credited as the originators of a number of entrepreneurial social programmes, and although Generation X are more hands on, they are generally so in two specific ways. The first is in a visionary capacity, as the founder, trustee or leader of a charity or charitable programme; or physically, by raising money organising or taking part in fundraising challenges, such as marathon running or mountain climbing.

Generation Y or Z philanthropists are probably the most hands on of the groups to date. They tend to be the more likely of the three to actually volunteer or spend time with grassroots organisations. There is often a desire to have a direct, personal relationship with the charities or individuals they support, as this direct line to the charity is integral to the experience of authentic ‘giving’. Giving back, for them, needs to be itself an experience – handing over a cheque is not fulfilling enough. Generation Y / Z philanthropists also tend to be concerned with, or involved with, charities and organisations that deal with large, macro-level problems such as global deforestation, ocean plastics or refugees. Unlike the Baby Boomers, these themes are not chosen as a result of lived experience – they are a reflection of the concerns of the here and now.

‘Forest Glade’ earrings by Tessa Packard

LUX: What issues come up most frequently in conversations about giving that you are having with your network?
Tessa Packard: There are a large number of adults in their 20s and 30s who have the means and energy to fund or support grassroots charities across the globe, yet have no idea where to start or who to fund. They want to be authentically connected to these charities (they like the idea of working with smaller organisations as they can track the impact of their donations or expertise more easily), but also want to feel part of something bigger. Time and time again the question we ask ourselves is how to best connect these dots.

LUX: Does the impact of social media change how things are done or how well they are done?
Tessa Packard: In general, I think charitable organisations have a lot to learn when it comes to making the most of social media. It’s not surprising to be honest – I can barely keep up to speed with it myself when it comes to my own business, and imagine if you are a grassroots charity with limited funding and even less free time… I certainly think a few free branding or marketing tutorials by big agencies for small charities would be a helpful start. The exchange of knowledge and expertise is often one of the most valuable donations a larger organisation can make to those in the charity sector.

LUX: Social impact entrepreneurialism or outsourcing to a third party manager – how do you choose?
Tessa Packard: The best kind of philanthropy is the one that is considered, and encourages the philanthropist to keep giving. Whichever route you choose, I would always start with the same question: what do I want to fix, and what is preventing this problem being fixed now? From there you can do a deep dive to identify where you need to go in the sector to create systemic change, and how best to do it. Sometimes the answer is to create your own vehicle to combat change, and sometimes it is best to support an existing vehicle that knows the ropes and is ready to expand.

LUX: Can you offer some ideas to a teenager wanting to start on their lifetime journey of giving?
Tessa Packard: Do a three-month volunteer placement at a grassroots charity. You might question your sanity at points, but you’ll never regret it.

LUX: What is one thing they should not forget?
Tessa Packard: My great-grandfather used to say: ‘Don’t carve your name in dark and gloomy places; carve your name with pride for all the world to see.’ I think that’s a pretty important lesson: whatever you decide to do with your life, make sure it’s something that you are proud to be remembered by.

Find out more: tessapackard.com, @tessapackardlondon

Samantha Welsh is a contributing editor of LUX with a special focus on philanthropy.

Wendy Yu on her trip to Rwanda with Women For Women International charity

Fashion entrepreneur Wendy Yu is the founder and CEO of Yu Holdings, an international ambassador for the French Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, and a supporter of The Metropolitan Museum of Arts, BAFTA and numerous other charitable foundations. As part of our ongoing philanthropy series, LUX speaks to Yu about her long-standing commitment to the arts, female empowerment and children’s education

LUX: As well as supporting the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when did you first have the idea to set up a China program and why?
Wendy Yu: Having spent many years residing in London, travelling for business and working with international organisations, upon returning to Shanghai to live a few years ago, I felt an immediate sense of responsibility to my country in terms of helping to shape the creative and cultural space and provide a bridge between East and West.

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This is why conversations about China with The Met were initiated. Having been fortunate enough to spend some time with Andrew Bolton, I wanted to give the design community in China the opportunity to meet him and understand more about his work at The Costume Institute. The Met has such a big following in China, but mostly because of the Met Gala, and yet there is so much more to know and learn.

I invited Andrew to China in 2017, where he and Angelica Cheung co-hosted an event to meet emerging Chinese designers. I’m passionate about providing a platform for creative and cultural exchange.

Wendy Yu at The Met Gala

LUX: Have you always been passionate about costume?
Wendy Yu: I’ve always been passionate about fashion as part of the wider creative industry. Fashion and costume are so intrinsically linked to a sense of identity, emotion, stories, a moment in time and culture. It’s also provides us with an opportunity to dream, and further nowadays, share our voice as our wardrobe is beginning to say something about our values.

LUX: Is there anyone the philanthropy world who particularly inspires you?
Wendy Yu: Amal Clooney, and Queen Rania.

LUX: What exactly does the Women For Women International charity do, and how do you ensure your support is optimal?
Wendy Yu: Supporting women is one of my priorities and I have loved to support Women For Women International as they are a wonderful charity dedicated to helping women, who are living in areas of conflict and are often marginalised. I travelled with Women For Women to Rwanda a few years ago to meet some of these women, and it was one of the most enlightening and heartfelt experiences of my life. It was incredible to see how these women had benefited from Women For Women’s training program, which provides them with the necessary skills to become financially independent and support their families.

Wendy with some of the women helped by the Women For Women International charity in Rwanda

LUX: Do you think that the role of private philanthropy is becoming more important, with increasing limitations on government funding?
Wendy Yu: Absolutely, particularly for the creative industry and especially at the moment, where much of government funding is having to be redirected due towards the pandemic. With philanthropy comes a true personal passion and commitment, often deriving from a special relationship that goes beyond financial support and can be truly game-changing for the people and organisations on the receiving end.

Read more: Why The Alpina Gstaad is top of our travel wish list

LUX: In terms of your support for the educational prospects of China’s children, is there anything that concerns you about the path ahead for Teach for China, and what made you decide to launch an art fund?
Wendy Yu: I believe in the importance of creativity in enhancing our lives and particularly that of children. Teach For China does an incredible job at providing education and facilities for children living in rural areas of China. What I felt I could bring to the table as one of their committee members was to provide the means for them to integrate art in their program, a subject that can often get sidelined when there is a lack of funding. Together we established an art fund, which would see the funding of art teachers and the necessary materials for schools in rural areas.

Wendy working in one of Teach For China’s classrooms

LUX: Do you enjoy collaborating with Teach for China?
Wendy Yu: Very much so. Working with Teach For China has given me the opportunity to meet and spend time with the children who are benefiting from the art fund, as well as integrate their artwork in some of my own projects, including a clutch for a collaboration I did with Olympia Le-Tan where we used an artwork created by one of the students.

LUX: How will COVID-19 affect what do you do?
Wendy Yu: Covid hasn’t impacted my interests and what kind of initiatives I am directing my energy to; the causes I am committed to continue to be the arts, female empowerment and children’s education. That said not being able to travel means that at the moment any activity is by default mostly China centric.

Read more: Montegrappa’s CEO Giuseppe Aquila on personalised luxury

We have just launched the Yu Prize, which is an annual award and incubator program to support promising emerging fashion designers from China. The CFDA, the BFC, Camera Moda and FHCM are so good at championing creativity and providing a support system for their rising stars; this is something that is lacking in China and yet we have a burgeoning fashion community of very talented designers. I’m excited and want to nurture this generation of designers, who compared with their predecessors, have mostly studied abroad (CSM, LCF, Parsons) and so are more globally minded. They marry this with a sense of pride of their cultural roots, and from this a new wave of creativity and confidence is born, which serves to reposition “Made in China”. Huishan Zhang, Guo Pei and Caroline Hu craft many, if not all, of their demi-couture pieces locally in China to an international standard.

Wendy Yu (middle) with Anna Wintour and Andrew Bolton

LUX: Do you often get to personally experience the difference you have made to a foundation or group?
Wendy Yu: My philanthropy has always stemmed from a personal relationship and a special connection that I have felt with a cause and therefore my involvement tends to be hands-on. It’s incredibly grounding and rewarding to be close to the people whose lives and/or careers are being transformed. Equally working with organisations that are specialised, and have the power and platform to make a difference is very inspiring. In today’s world and coming from a position of privilege, I believe in the importance of doing good as part of a wider definition of success.

LUX: Any other advice for our readers who might be considering going into the sector?
Wendy Yu: Follow your passion. Have in mind a wider sense of impact that you would like to make to a particular sector or area of interest, and then cultivate specific objectives and tangible projects that can be brought to fruition. Work closely with professional organisations that align with your vision and from whom you can learn more and gain access, however don’t be afraid also to champion people on a more personal level.

Find out more about Wendy Yu’s work: wendy-yu.com

Nadya Abela is the founder and CEO of the Nadezda Foundation in the Russia and the UK

Philanthropist Nadya Abela established the Nadezda Foundation in her hometown of Tver in Russia in 2015 to provide disadvantaged children with much needed medical care and educational support. In 2019, a sister foundation was registered in the UK. In the first of our new philanthropy series, she speaks to Samantha Welsh about her motivations, the process of setting up a children’s charity and the challenges presented by the global pandemic

Nadya Abela

LUX: When did you first have the idea to set up your Nadezda charity fund in Russia and why? What prompted you to also to launch the foundation in UK? ​
Nadya Abela: When my youngest son was born here in London, I start realising more and more that being a parent is enormous responsibility and hard work. I felt lucky that my boys had good medical and educational infrastructure available for them here in UK. When I start comparing that to what was available back then for children in Tver, Russia, I realised there was a huge gap between the two.

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I flew home in the summer of 2015  and visited a few children’s hospitals, orphanages and educational centres for underprivileged children. Right there and then I decided to set up a foundation that would concentrate on children’s health and education issues in my hometown and other cities in Russia.

A few of my dear girlfriends (who are now on the committee at Nadezda Foundation) and I had been discussing similar issues here in United Kingdom for a long time and so we decided to set up the UK foundation in 2019, which also helps children who also find themselves in difficult life situations.

LUX: Is there anybody in the world of philanthropy and fund raising who inspired you?​
Nadya Abela: Regular people, who give their time and money to support causes that are dear to their hearts or families, always inspire me.

LUX: What exactly does Nadezda Foundation do and how do you ensure you get optimum results? ​
Nadya Abela: Our foundations concentrate on children’s health and education. I believe those two factors are most important in creating positive future for them and for society in general.

LUX: How much of your time does it take?​
Nadya Abela: Quite a lot, especially prior to important fundraising events.

LUX: Have you always been passionate about the welfare of underprivileged children and young people?
Nadya Abela:  Ever since I started my modelling career at the age of 18, I always wanted to adopt a little boy or a girl, to take them away from life in orphanage and create a safe and healthy environment for them to live in. I have not done it yet, but hope that one day it will be possible. For now our charity foundation and I directly help lots of children, and we know that we change some of their lives for the better.

Some of the children the Nadezda Foundation helps (above), and one of the playgrounds built in Tver, Russia for children with autism.

LUX: Do you think that the role of private philanthropy is becoming more important, with increasing limitations on government funding?​
Nadya Abela:  Absolutely. It is always very direct because it involves less bureaucracy.

LUX: What are the biggest obstacles and challenges you have faced?​
Nadya Abela: In Russia at the beginning, it was difficult to get people and big companies on board with fundraising. People were skeptical, or too busy with their own problems. Now, five years later, the situation has changed completely. I have people calling me directly and asking how and where they can help, which is an achievement on its own.

In UK, the hardest part was legally registering the foundation. It was a lengthy and costly affair, but now everything is fairly straight forward.

Read more: British artist Petroc Sesti on his nature-inspired artworks

LUX: Is there anything that concerns you about the path ahead for your foundation?​
Nadya Abela: With Covid and current restrictions it is nearly impossible to do any fundraising so our work and the help we can provide is very limited. It is absolutely devastating and takes us back to square one so many children are not getting help they so urgently need.

LUX: What are your proudest achievements?
Nadya Abela: ​Seeing my two sons want to help with my charity work and support other boys and girls who are currently living in difficult situations.

Nadya outside EACH (East Anglia Children’s Hospices) for the whom the foundation raised £25,000 in 2019.

LUX: How will Covid-19 affect what you do?​
Nadya Abela: Covid does not affect what I do. The ministers who make wrong decisions, kill economy and therefore, affect the wellbeing of whole nation and future of our children.

LUX: Do you enjoy running your foundation?​
Nadya Abela: It keeps me grounded and yes, when we see how our work has changed children’s and their families’ lives, it does feel good.

LUX: Do you have specific examples of children or young people who have benefited?
Nadya Abela: ​There are lots of stories and projects from both of our foundations, which you can see on our websites. They all important, no matter how big or small so I wouldn’t want to single one out.

LUX: How would you encourage people to get more involved in supporting vulnerable children and young people?
​Nadya Abela: You can go and visit schools and share your knowledge and experience. All children love to learn and they also love it when they feel that grown ups are interested in what they have to say. Find out what their biggest dream is, and help them to achieve it. We do not always have to raise lots of money to help change a child’s life.

LUX: What would you warn people about who are interested in setting up a charitable foundation?​
Nadya Abela: Depending on the cause, it can be very emotional and take up lots of your time especially if it’s something you’re really passionate about, but it’s all worth it!

LUX: Have you any advice for LUX readers who might want to get involved in philanthropy?
​Nadya Abela: Just do it and don’t look back!

Find out more: nadezdafoundation.org.uk; fondnadezda.com

The Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, located off the coast of California. Image by NOAA/Mark Norder

Douglas McCauley directs the Benioff Ocean Initiative, the philanthropic organisation created by billionaire Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne. McCauley, a marine biologist, says that philanthropists can do much more to save the oceans than simply write a cheque

DEUTSCHE BANK WEALTH MANAGEMENT x LUX

Douglas McCauley. Image by Jonathan Little.

We all have an opportunity and responsibility to do something for ocean health, whatever walk of life we are from. The ocean has paid us some service – and this service can be reciprocated.

I grew up in Los Angeles and if you’ve passed through the Greater Los Angeles area you get a sense that there is a whole lot of concrete and man-made change on land. And then you hit the coast and you have this big, beautiful uninterrupted space. So, for me the first debt of gratitude that I have to the oceans is that they were my escape to a world where I could find wilderness and immerse myself in the beauty of the ocean. And there was the practical side: the ocean provided me with my dinner – it gave me employment and income.

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For most people, the debt that they owe the ocean is different. For some people, such as Marc and Lynne Benioff, their identity has been shaped by ocean places such as San Francisco and Hawaii where they’ve lived and raised kids. The ocean has given them a lot of inspiration and beauty and knowledge. To be in a place that is so ancient and to be part of the majesty of the ocean and to experience such a mindful reset, and then to jump back into life on land and manage it successfully, means that you as an individual have drawn some value from the solitude and exaltation felt when by the ocean.

In the arrangement that we forged, Marc and I are each trying to repay some portion of that debt. As an ocean scientist, I can use the tools, our networks and our laboratories to try to be helpful, and Marc uses his resources, his influence, his network, to help create change. These two worlds together are really powerful.

For many people, the oceans feel very remote from us, making it a harder environment as a philanthropic domain to connect with. But there are some very practical ways that the oceans, even if they are remote, do provide benefits to all of us. The most universal of these is that the ocean, as it lives and breathes, as it aspires and photosynthesizes, produces half of the oxygen on the planet.

That means that whether you’re in seaside Miami or in landlocked Geneva, every other breath that you take comes from the oceans. It is a life-support system and certainly enough reason for us to connect to make sure that it continues to be fully functioning and healthy. When you do actually recognise that you have a debt to repay to the oceans, it is important to return the favour to the sea, to repay that debt.

The numbers of people who have made that reconnection to the oceans and have become champions for the seas are relatively few in the world of philanthropy. Statistics estimate that approximately one per cent of philanthropy is dedicated to the oceans. There are so many important causes on the planet that deserve our attention and investment but for a living place that encompasses two-thirds of our planet and provides us with half of our breaths, perhaps it deserves more from us. Each individual’s philanthropic portfolio matters, because each one incrementally will help us move a little bit further north of that one per cent.

Building partnerships with scientists and science can be powerful and create some symbiotic opportunities. Almost all of us have a relationship with a university, and we might be surprised that there are centres and hubs of ocean excellence in many universities, and not just places on the coast. For example, ETH in Zurich, Switzerland is one such hub of excellence.

Read more: How ethical blue economy investments support ocean conservation

Unfortunately, the problems facing ocean health are so large that there has to be a critical mass. No one single university is going to be able to change things. So a lot of what we are trying to do is create a template by which we can activate our colleagues and peers to demonstrate that we can actually make a difference.

For example, when you’re looking at an issue such as plastic pollution, in which you have more than five trillion pieces of plastic in the global oceans, that is too big an issue for any one organisation to solve. So we are trying to create this model to facilitate change by creating open tools that will not only help and but also become replicable in other places.

That is one reason why working with Marc Benioff has been so successful. He is a problem solver who has built a globally successful company. There is much that we have learned from him about the general mechanics of problem solving, and about the many tools that cross that boundary, such as the ones we use in ocean problem solving that originally were designed for industry and technology.

When we started working with the Benioffs, I had the incorrect assumption that we would have a few starter conversations, they would send us a cheque, and we would be off on our own to try to figure this out. But the most valuable thing that they did for us was not send us the cheque. Instead, the most valuable thing that they did for us was to open up their networks and to share their expertise, and to very usefully help match us with people that could have a part of a solution that we needed.

Find out more: boi.ucsb.edu; labs.eemb.ucsb.edu/mccauley/doug/

This article originally appeared in the LUX x Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Blue Economy Special in the Autumn/Winter 2020/2021 Issue. 

From David Eustace’s series ‘Mar a Bha’, which translates from Gaelic to ‘As It Was’

The investment community is waking up to the opportunities in our oceans. Impactful ethical investments in the blue economy can involve plastic waste prevention, sustainable seafood, maritime transport, eco-tourism and more

Photography by David Eustace

DEUTSCHE BANK WEALTH MANAGEMENT x LUX 

Robert Goodwin was on a mission to solve Haiti’s cholera problem. For nine years after the island nation’s devastating 2010 earthquake, periodic cholera outbreaks started hurting communities, doing the most damage to people with limited access to clean water and sanitation. The country’s clogged water canals were to blame for spreading the disease. Goodwin, the former CEO of Executives Without Borders, started looking at why the canals were so clogged. “I’m a root-cause guy,” says Goodwin. “I knew that cholera was a water-borne disease and saw that flooding was causing all the transmission. When I looked at the canals and what was causing the flooding, I saw that it was a lot of plastic trash that could have been recycled.”

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Haitian communities could recycle materials such as metal and aluminium, but there was little in the way of plastic recycling infrastructure. So, Goodwin started a business, paying local people to pick up plastic trash and then sort it by colour, weight and type. They were paid cash on the spot. Goodwin’s efforts eventually grew into a new company, OceanCycle, a New York-based social enterprise aiming to help businesses integrate ocean-bound plastics into their products and improve traceability across the supply chain. (Ocean-bound plastic is the waste from areas in close proximity to the coast, where cutting off streams of plastic before they reach the ocean is most critical.) Companies such as OceanCycle are part of the growing blue economy, which the World Bank defines as the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, while preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem”.

“We want to turn off the tap,” says Goodwin. “Once the plastic has been in the water for too long it breaks down and it’s harder to recycle. If we want to stop the flow of any new plastic into the ocean by 2030 we have to put a value on recycling ocean-bound plastic.” Consumers around the world are more interested in ridding the ocean of plastic than they have ever been. More than 90 countries have placed some kind of ban on plastic bags, straws or other single-use plastics. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation predicted in 2017 that unless things changed the ocean could contain more plastics than fish by 2050. Consumers wanting to protect the ocean are becoming an incentive to create a now fast-growing market for cleaning up ocean trash. Sportswear company Adidas has teamed up with non-profit Parley for the Oceans to sell trail-running shoes made with ocean plastic, Method makes dish-soap containers from plastic picked up on the beaches of Hawaii, and Patagonia is making jackets from yarn derived in part from fishing nets. But plastic is only part of the new blue economy.

Approximately 70 per cent of our planet is covered by water and the ocean is a critical resource providing food for three billion people around the world. Seaweeds and miniscule ocean plants known as phytoplankton provide more than half of the oxygen we breathe, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are approximately 680 million people around the world living in low-lying ocean areas, and the blue economy, which includes tourism, fishing and shipping, generates $3 trillion of economic output each year, according to the United Nations. All told, the services provided to humanity by the oceans are valued at $24 trillion and create a value of more than $2.5 trillion each year.

Read more: Deutsche Bank’s Claudio de Sanctis on investing in the ocean

But we don’t own the oceans or pay them for their services. “The ocean is not just a provider of value. It also helps us to digest the negative results of industrialisation,” says Markus Mueller, Global Head of the Chief Investment Office at Deutsche Bank Wealth Management. “There’s also a deep human attachment to our coastal regions. The ocean gives an emotional connection,” Mueller says. “People are divers and go on vacation at the beach. They’ve seen all this plastic in the sea.”

Beyond ocean plastic, the oceans have seen fish stocks depleted, coral reefs die and beaches recede as a consequence of human activity. It’s not a case of the tragedy of the commons, in which people who act in their self-interest spoil a shared resource. But, Mueller explains, the oceans “are more or less a tragedy of laissez-faire because they’re not governed. We need some governance around this to prevent tragedy and right now there is no incentive system that gives us the direction on what to do.” Some countries, including small island nations such as Seychelles, are issuing blue bonds that prioritise ocean health, and the Maldives is working to vastly reduce plastic waste. But governance is much needed.

A report published in September 2019 by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated the world’s oceans are experiencing drastic changes. And these changes are not only impacting people and the planet but also placing the global economy at risk. The report highlighted the troubling changes occurring across oceans as a result of increased emissions from greenhouse gases. Oceans are absorbing 30 per cent of carbon emissions, making them a crucial resource in the fight against climate change. The report predicted that sea levels will rise by up to a metre by 2100, there will be markedly fewer fish in the oceans and stronger, more intense hurricanes will cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage.

From David Eustace’s ‘Highland Heart’ series

Investing in the blue economy is just beginning, but it’s expected to grow at a faster rate than traditional investments. In 2018, the World Bank announced PROBLUE, an umbrella multi-donor trust fund (MDTF), with the goal of supporting healthy and productive oceans. PROBLUE is part of the World Bank’s overall blue economy programme, which takes a co-ordinated approach to ensure sustainable oceans and coastal resources. Focused on four key themes, the fund was created out of client demand, and to aid the bank towards a better understanding of the current and emerging threats facing the world’s oceans.

Most investments in ocean-related assets at this stage are privately held venture-capital or private-equity firms, and opportunities reach far beyond plastic-waste prevention, to sustainable seafood, maritime transport, eco-tourism and coastal adaptation.

“Oceans have played a critical role in mitigating climate change – they have stored 93 per cent of the planet’s carbon, and produce over 50 per cent of the oxygen,” says impact investor Shally Shanker of AiiM Partners Fund, based in Palo Alto, California. “Every second breath we take comes from the oceans. Ocean ecosystems are deeply interconnected with land and air. Yet, oceans remain a very underinvested sector.”

Read more: Kering’s Marie-Claire Daveu on benefits of the blue economy

Some of the blue economy-based investments Shanker is focusing on include sustainable replacements for plastic and Styrofoam, reducing antibiotics in farmed seafood and cost-effective data collection. Since three billion people depend upon the oceans for their primary source of protein, food security and growing protein demand are other areas of her work’s focus. Sixty per cent of new seafood demand is coming from India and China – two emerging economies each with populations of more than one billion. To identify viable replacements, Shanker says she is investing in plant-based and cell-based seafood alternatives. “Most of the problems in the ocean start on land,” she says.

Redesigning humanity’s relationship with the ocean is no easy task. There’s no choice but to start taking better care of the seas, because our economy has changed them. Coral reefs worldwide, for example, continue to be ravaged by bleaching. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands saw the worst bleaching on record for three years in a row. “The Red Sea, where I grew up, is the most luscious sea on Earth because it is the newest sea,” says Ibrahim AlHusseini, an entrepreneur and environmentalist who has founded impact investing firm FullCycle. AlHusseini, a lifelong scuba diver, became an environmental investor 15 years ago when he noticed the sea was changing. “I would go back and go scuba diving and year after year there were fewer fish, less coral, less vibrancy and more plastic,” he says. “I just remember thinking, what is the point of accumulating all of this financial success if the things that I enjoy are fading away?” He spent a year studying ‘carbon math’, ocean toxicity and climate change, before deciding to invest in companies such as Synova Power, a waste-to-energy business that can create synthetic gas from plastic waste heated to high temperatures, and then harness it for power.

The ocean’s great resources could also hold a key to the best materials of the future. Seaweed, kelp and algae production was valued as a $55 billion market in 2018, but the market could expand to $95 billion by 2025. In Amsterdam, a start-up called Seamore is turning seaweed into bacon and pasta equivalents, while biofuel producers also use it. US-based start-up Loliware is creating compostable alternatives to plastic out of seaweed. “It’s plentiful and highly regenerative and sequesters carbon 20 times faster than trees,” says Chelsea ‘Sea’ Briganti, the founder of Loliware, which is developing nine products that use seaweed instead of plastic packaging material.

Investors who want to put money to work in service of the oceans should push companies to provide better data about their impacts, and also think creatively about what they do and don’t want in their portfolios, says Mueller. “All companies thinking about using natural resources are the profiteers from it. So, transparency is a key factor – if the impact of cruise liners and shipping companies becomes more transparent, investors can adjust.” There are new rules in effect in 2020, for example, from the International Maritime Organization to prevent atmospheric pollution from ships. Shippers are investing in scrubber technology and cleaner fuel, but data for investors about the impact of the changes is lacking.

The key to sustaining the oceans in the future is to rethink how humanity extracts resources from it. “We have to protect the value the ocean is providing rather than overusing it”, Mueller says. To make the blue economy work we have to replace old business models with more sustainable ones, then we have to put a lid on it.”

Ocean Learning

As sustainable development in a blue economy develops, the first step is awareness: to think beyond the traditional extractive economy to a regenerative one. A blue economy improves biodiversity as well as food and job security for local communities, while limiting pollution and preserving the ocean’s role as a carbon sink. Here are some private organisations focused on blue economy education.

Lisbon Oceanarium

With its almost 1,800km of coastline, Portugal is using its historic relationship with the sea to show how the blue economy can aid economic growth. The Oceano Azul Foundation, led by José Soares dos Santos, is working with the Lisbon Oceanarium to teach future generations about ocean conservation and promoting the ethical values of using marine resources sustainably.

oceanario.pt

Monterey Bay Aquarium

The Monterey Bay Aquarium runs programmes on topics from cleaning up ocean plastic to how to restore the Pacific blue-fin tuna population. The aquarium, founded in the 1970s and supported by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, has become a centre of various blue economy initiatives. Its Center for Ocean Solutions is searching for ways, such as protecting kelp forests, to fight climate change.

montereybayaquarium.org

Musée Océanographique de Monaco

The museum, located on the Rock of Monaco, highlights hundreds of species that live in the Mediterranean. The Monaco Blue Initiative, launched by H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco in 2010, is focused on marine protected areas that can help conserve unique ocean species and habitats.

musee.oceano.org

Find out more: deutschewealth.com

This article originally appeared in the LUX x Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Blue Economy Special in the Summer 2020 Issue.

Nur-Sultan, the capital city of Kazakhstan with landmark Baiterek tower. Image by cosmopol.

Dynamic leadership and entrepreneurial thinking are required to help the global economy recover. We speak to seven leaders in the Kazakhstan chapter of one of the world’s most respected business organisations about mutual support among entrepreneurs, and their country being a touchpoint between east and west. Curated by Gauhar Kapparova

LUX’s Editor-at-Large Gauhar Kapparova

A first-time business visit to Kazakhstan is likely to end up with two overarching impressions. Firstly, of the sheer size of the country. The distance from the biggest city, Almaty, to the centres of oil production on the Caspian sea is an astonishing 3,000 kilometres. Even the short hop from Almaty to the shiny new(-ish) capital Nur-Sultan is an hour and a half on a plane.

The second impression is likely to be one of the openness and dynamism of a new entrepreneurial community. Kazakhstan often speaks of itself as a key country between east and west, with China to the east and Russia and the Caspian sea border of Europe to the west. It is also focussing on moving beyond its oil and gas-based 20th-century economy, with the majority of growth coming from other sectors.

To this end, the country teems with spirited, can-do entrepreneurs, unfazed by the distances they have to travel to get to the world’s financial centres and proud of their country’s potential. A new generation of largely western-educated business people add to the cosmopolitan feel.

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At the heart of this enterprising business community is the Kazakh chapter of YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization), a global members group for chief executives and owners of significant businesses. Entry is by invitation only and open to those who own or run substantial businesses. Benefits are notable: an instant network of the highest level of contacts in your country and around the world, gatherings, conventions and seminars, and a highly sophisticated support network.

True to the country’s buccaneering business spirit, the Kazakh division of the YPO is known as one of the world’s most dynamic. There is no better insight into the opportunities in the central Asian country or into the minds of its prominent business leaders than from the YPO Kazakhstan chapter leaders we interview here.

ALINA ALDAMBERGEN

Chair of the Management Board, member of the Board of Directors of Kazakhstan Stock Exchange

Aldambergen’s career in the finance industry began in 1997 as an analyst and manager at ABN AMRO bank in Kazakhstan, then as a senior rating advisor in the global finance markets for the same bank in London before returning to Kazakhstan to chair the bank’s management board. After a series of senior posts at various financial institutions, she moved to the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange in 2016.

Alina Aldambergen. Image by Sergey Belousov.

LUX: Tell us about yourself and your experience. What distinguishes you from other YPO members?
Alina Aldambergen: I’ve been working at the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange since February 2016. In the 17 years since I was first appointed as chairperson of ABN AMRO Pension Funds Asset Management Company in Kazakhstan back in 2003, I have held a number of different management positions at private and state-owned companies.

My key expertise is in being a senior manager. Unlike other YPO members, I’ve never been an owner of a company. It is possible, of course, that one day I might decide to set up my own company, but I haven’t come to that decision yet.

I like to manage large-scale companies. It is important for me that I work for institutions that make an impact, which is why during the past ten years I have worked for companies in Kazakhstan that are owned by the state.

Read more: Deutsche Bank’s Claudio de Sanctis on investing in the ocean

LUX: How did you became the manager you wanted to be? How did you train and did you have any formal business education?
Alina Aldambergen: I happened to develop my career when the country was changing from the Soviet planned economy to a market economy. This was a significant transformation for the whole country, economically and mentally.

The country’s president was a visionary, he knew that this would require a new mindset and people with new sets of skills. That’s why the government set up a scholarship programme to send students to study abroad. I was awarded one of these scholarships and studied for an MBA at the Simon School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester, one of the top 25 business schools in the world at that time. I studied corporate finance and accounting, essential for doing business and setting up the financial system in Kazakhstan. Another major influence on my career has been working for the country’s first international bank.

Even though now I would think that doing an MBA straight from undergraduate school is a bit too soon, in my case it gave me all the essential skills to do business and manage business in Kazakhstan. I am still using all the concepts that I studied at business school in my everyday life.

Of course, I took various courses in different subjects later on, but still, the fundamentals are what keep you going. I am a strong advocate of keeping up your business education throughout one’s lifetime.

LUX: What motivated you then and what motivates you now?
Alina Aldambergen: I am motivated by excellence. However, that has to be adjusted for the environment that you are working in. At any job I have always tried to come up with the best business model, get support from the stakeholders, and follow it through. I will leave a company if my values do not coincide with those of the company.

I am a strong believer in not wasting time – why do so if you could be doing something more valuable and interesting elsewhere? It is important for me to bring worth to a company, its employees and shareholders, and to society. I want to see the results of my work make an impact.

Courtesy KASE

LUX: Why did you decide to become member of the YPO? Why it is important for you?
Alina Aldambergen: I joined YPO in Kazakhstan in 2018. For me, it was an exclusive members club of business people – true, self-made achievers. To become a member was prestigious for me. Another point is that YPO is an international organisation, so in that regard I considered it as another step forward for myself. I also recognised that it is an influential organisation that can make an impact on various issues concerning society.

LUX: What else does YPO bring to you?
Alina Aldambergen: I think I discovered even more value once I had become a YPO member. There is a wealth of knowledge, significant networking opportunities and an exchange of opinions that you can draw on.

I like the YPO concept of oneself, family and business all together. I think it is important that YPO encourages this amongst its members. Your spouse or child can become a member of the organisation and it provides access to the same education as you can get elsewhere. It really enables generations of business people to grow.

I also like the forum meetings. I found that they are a place where you can receive and share professional advice with your peers on dealing with different situations. I think this is the most valuable experience of the YPO membership.

ARMANZHAN BAITASSOV
Chairman of the Tan Media Group and publisher of Forbes Kazakhstan magazine

Baitassov is a Kazakhstan media manager, professional TV journalist and businessman. He has founded multiple media outlets, including his first TV channel, Channel 31, in 1992 the Megapolis newspaper in 2000, the Business FM radio station in 2018, and in 1994 the Radio 31 radio station. In 2017 he was elected chairman of the board of the Kazakhstan Media Alliance.

Armanzhan Baitassov. Image by Andrey Lunin

LUX: What age were you when you thought you might go into business as a career?
Armanzhan Baitassov: I was 19 years old when I decided to go into business. The first time we thought about business was in the late 1980s, when it became possible to engage in private entrepreneurial activity.

LUX: Who were your inspirations in business and how and why did they inspire you?
Armanzhan Baitassov: We were inspired by the guys who were able to earn a lot of money back then in Soviet roubles, guys as young as us who were also searching for opportunities to make money.

LUX: What were your first steps? Did you have any formal business education?
Armanzhan Baitassov: We started in advertising, reselling the advertising slots in newspapers. At that time, there were no textbooks about business, so we learned everything along the way.

Read more: Sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld on the power of public art

LUX: What were the most important parts of this learning phase of your business life?
Armanzhan Baitassov: I graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Kazakh State University and immediately went into the media industry, where I still work. Of course, in the early 90s there were problems with funding, there was not enough equipment or it was incredibly expensive, and legislation in Kazakhstan was not fully regulated. But we had enough advertising in the first year and big contracts with Procter & Gamble and Unilever.

LUX: What motivated you then and what motivates you now?
Armanzhan Baitassov: At first, the big motivation for us was creative work. We were young, we worked day and night to make our media more and more popular. Now, of course, we are more mature, but the main motivation remains to do something new to make our world better.

LUX: What are the unique challenges of business and enterprise in Kazakhstan?
Armanzhan Baitassov: There is the powerful influence of the state on the economy. It hinders entrepreneurship and corruption has penetrated all levels of power and the economy. Doing business in Kazakhstan can be simply unsafe, but there are also development institutions that are helping small and medium-sized businesses thrive. All systems work well, but look carefully at your segment, especially if it contains any state-owned companies and corporations.

The Forbes building in Almaty, Kazakhstan

LUX: What’s the secret of success in business?
Armanzhan Baitassov: For me it’s that I am interested in doing business, in watching companies develop and doing it myself, and not just being a shareholder and observing. When you are immersed, then you’ll succeed. And what probably helps is my belief that everything will get better every year.

LUX: What are your plans for the future?
Armanzhan Baitassov: The pandemic has changed all my plans for 2020 but I really want to develop media abroad in Russia, Uzbekistan and Georgia.

LUX: Who are your business heroes now?
Armanzhan Baitassov: Of course, there are people I admire such as Jeff Bezos, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin. There are also people here who inspire me, such as Vyacheslav Kim and Mikhail Lomtadze at Kaspi Bank. But today my business heroes are the young entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan.

LUX: The media business is going through unique challenges now. What do you think these are and where do opportunities lie?
Armanzhan Baitassov: The main thing is a sharp drop in income from advertising. Many media companies have begun to work remotely from home, which is a great opportunity because of the high office costs. There may also be greater digitalisation – print newspapers are living their last days.

LUX: When did you first hear about YPO?
Armanzhan Baitassov: I learned about YPO in 2010 from Nurlan Kapparov. A year or so later we went with him to the USA, where we were invited to an event held by the YPO chapter in Washington DC.

LUX: Emotional support in business and other matters seems to be an important part of being a YPO member – is that correct?
Armanzhan Baitassov: Yes. In Kazakhstan, most entrepreneurs encounter some difficulties, maybe even injustice, and we can openly discuss these within the chapter. It is an incredible support.

LUX: How does YPO support your business?
Armanzhan Baitassov: The biggest support that I get is when we hold events at Tan Media Group, almost all members are happy to come. I am especially pleased that they support the youth forum and are happy to speak to young entrepreneurs.

LUX: What does running the Kazakhstan YPO chapter mean to you?
Armanzhan Baitassov: It has become very influential. We want as many members as possible, but getting in is difficult. We have a committee that reviews all applications and only then sends them for consideration to the YPO members. We all feel a great responsibility, because each YPO member is one of our team.

AIGUL DJAILAUBEKOVA
Partner at InnoVision Management Consultancy

Djailaubekova began her career in banking 1996 in Amsterdam at MeesPierson and then ING Bank. In 2004, she returned to Kazakhstan to continue working for ING. Since 2007, her work in banking has included senior management roles at Citibank and HSBC in Kazakhstan and at large regional banks. At InnoVision she focuses on management consultancy, financial services and education.

Aigul Djailaubekova

LUX: What age were you when you thought you might go into business as a career?
Aigul Djailaubekova: I started my career about 25 years ago. Prior to then, being an ambitious straight-As student, I was set on an academic career but after a short teaching tenure, I decided to explore new opportunities in commercial and international business.

LUX: What were your first steps? Did you have any formal business education or training? Which companies did you work for?
Aigul Djailaubekova: I won a British Council scholarship to study at Lancaster University in the UK. After graduation, I landed a job in the Trade & Commodity Finance department of the Dutch bank MeesPierson in Amsterdam. I moved to ING Bank N.V., where for several years I covered financial institutions in various countries as a senior regional manager. Then I joined ING’s office in Kazakhstan as an expatriate manager.

LUX: What have you learned in your business life in recent years?
Aigul Djailaubekova: Over the past decade, I have been deputy chairman of the management board at Citibank and HSBC in Kazakhstan and in a few large local banks. Those were vastly different experiences for me in terms of their corporate cultures. All the successes and disappointments made me a stronger and perceptive manager as well as a more resilient and, hopefully, wiser person.

LUX: What are your business plans?
Aigul Djailaubekova: A few years ago I started thinking about setting up my own bank with a team of like-minded investors and banking professionals. In view of the multimillion investment required, it’s ambitious but most successful businesses at their early stages dare to dream big.

LUX: What are the unique challenges of business and enterprise in Kazakhstan?
Aigul Djailaubekova: It is important that foreign investors have a strong local partner who will be on the same page in terms of their business vision to help them navigate through the local bureaucracy.

LUX: Who were your inspirations in business and how and why did they inspire you?
Aigul Djailaubekova: My main inspiration in life is my family. I’ve always been driven by a desire to do something meaningful, to contribute to financial prosperity of our family, to be a good example for my children and to be a source of pride for my parents. Thanks to them and my husband, I have never had to face the choice of being a mother and wife or a being a banking executive.

Aigul Djailaubekova with her husband

LUX: What advice would you give anyone starting out in business?
Aigul Djailaubekova: I would say three things. Firstly, dream big and dare to have it all. One might not achieve each and every goal along the way, but it’s worth trying. Secondly, dare to follow your dreams, especially when you’re young. And thirdly, when you feel that the current trajectory is no longer satisfying, or that there are other opportunities opening up, dare to change to a new path.

LUX: How did you first hear about YPO?
Aigul Djailaubekova:Several years ago from some of my friends and business acquaintances. The Kazakhstan chapter was founded by Nurlan Kapparov, a highly respected businessman and visionary. It was very flattering when two of the long-standing members suggested I join, which I did more than five years ago. I was the first female YPO member in Kazakhstan.

LUX: Has being a woman member made a difference to the local chapter?
Aigul Djailaubekova: One of my missions was to break the image of our chapter as a closed, all male club. Later, I heard that initially some members had been cautious about a woman joining the chapter, but knowing several members before I joined and the fresh perspective and insights I brought helped me to gain the trust of other members.

LUX: How does YPO Kazakhstan benefit wider society?
Aigul Djailaubekova: Kazakhstan’s chapter has evolved from an elite business club to an organisation that strives to make differences in society. Some initiatives between the government and local businesses were introduced at the instigation of YPO. The charity balls supporting good causes are regular events now. And there are charity projects, such as the Ana Yui (Mother’s House) founded by one our members, which has become a nationwide movement saving thousands of babies from being sent to orphanages.

LUX: In what way does being a YPO member support and help you personally?
Aigul Djailaubekova: For me, YPO brings great value through business advices and insights and as a platform for personal development through the forums, training and special events. I have become good friends with most YPO members and their families, socialising outside official chapter events. When making a radical career shift, I took comfort from the forum and some closer friends at YPO to whom I could turn for advice.

SIDDIQUE KHAN
Founder and CEO of Globalink Logistics Ltd

Khan has worked in transportation since 1990. He established Globalink Logistics in 1994. In 2011 he was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the American Chamber of Commerce. As well as chairing multiple committees relating to his sector, he also advises Kazakhstan’s government on the development of transportation and has a particular expertise in the Belt & Road Initiative.

Siddique Khan

LUX: What age were you when you thought you might go into business as a career?
Siddique Khan: I started part-time work while I was studying to gain practical experience and to earn some extra money. It turned out to be one of the best opportunities of my life. I was able to learn how small businesses work, and the hands-on experience helped me turn my visions into practical business ideas.

LUX: Who were your inspirations in business, and how and why did they inspire you?
Siddique Khan: I was always fascinated with the ancient Silk Road and became particularly aware of it when I started a job in transportation and logistics in 1990 while supervising the distribution of humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. I saw the Silk Road’s heritage everywhere. In 1994, following the collapse of the USSR three years earlier, I set up a new business in Almaty to build a world-class transportation and logistics business that would eventually revive the ancient Silk Road.

Read more: Gaggenau launches initiative to support innovative artisans

LUX: How did you go about setting up this business venture?
Siddique Khan: Fundraising for a start-up to revive the Silk Road was anything but easy. After months of struggle, I managed to raise the seed capital, helping me launch Globalink Logistics on a shoestring budget. Choosing Almaty as a base was not a popular decision in those days, as most foreign investors were entering the former USSR market through Russia. Looking back, it was the right decision. It has helped Globalink gain recognition as the first international logistics company in Kazakhstan. Today, it has operations in nine locations in this country, more than 32 service centres in the former USSR and with representation in 55 countries.

LUX: What were the most important parts of this learning phase of your business life?
Siddique Khan: Companies have to re-invent themselves frequently, adapt to ever-changing market conditions, manage risk effectively, develop a competent workforce and invest in new technologies to be able to compete on a global stage. We must learn to overcome the uncertainty of the future and continuously educate ourselves to be able to stay ahead.

One of Siddique Khan’s company’s containers on the move

LUX: What motivated you then, and what motivates you now?
Siddique Khan: Giving financial success a purpose is still the most incredible motivation for me and gives me an enormous satisfaction in my work. My real thrill in life is not accumulating wealth, but to seek ways to use financial resources to create life-changing opportunities for others.

LUX: What are the unique challenges of business and enterprise in Kazakhstan?
Siddique Khan: Kazakhstan is a typical frontier market, offering high risk and higher reward. Overall, it and the Central Asian Republics are resource-rich economies with limited service sectors and infrastructures. There are viable business opportunities if one can cope with the numerous challenges of these emerging markets.

LUX: What advice would you give to foreign companies coming to Kazakhstan?
Siddique Khan: It is essential to learn and appreciate the cultural differences when you are doing business in this region.

LUX: YPO seems to be a unique business organisation. Is this true?
Siddique Khan: YPO is a unique group of exceptional executives that provides a network with a common aim: to become better leaders through lifelong learning. Every member seeks the knowledge and principles of success not only for their businesses but also for their families, friends and, most importantly, for themselves.

LUX: In what way does being a YPO member support and help you personally?
Siddique Khan:  Much of the YPO member experience comes from the local chapter, where you meet other business executives in your area. Although the organisation attracts high-achievers who are very competitive, the chapter also offers a sense of openness. Chapter life is full of action, ranging from family retreats and business events to executive education, counselling, healthcare and much more.

Depending on the size of the chapter, there are several forums. A forum is a group of about eight to ten people who meet frequently to discuss business and personal issues in a judgment-free and confidential environment. Forums become the sounding board for topics that you wouldn’t like to discuss anywhere else. I can confidently say that my forum has become my family. We trust and support each other – no matter what.

The professional, educational, spiritual and networking support that I got from the organisation helped me not only to transform myself but my business and family life as well. Thanks to YPO, I have become a better executive, spouse, father and friend.

RAMIL MUKHORYAPOV
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Chocofamily Holding

After early enterprises in Moscow, Mukhoryapov returned to Kazakhstan in 2011 to work in e-commerce, founding Chocolife.me, the country’s first online marketplace. This has since expanded to become Chocofamily Holding, Kazakhstan’s leading internet company with eight brands covering services such as online payments, health, travel and food delivery.

Ramil Mukhoryapov

LUX: What age were you when you thought you might go into business as a career?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: I was 19 years old when I started my first business. It was a club for parties for students. My first idea was for a comfortable and fun student life.

LUX: Who were your inspirations in business and how and why did they inspire you?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: I was inspired by a few Russian and international entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Oleg Tinkov, Sergey Galitsky and Evgeny Chichvarkin. I was inspired by their energy and their desire to change the world.

LUX: What were your first steps – which companies did you work for, how did you train and did you do formal business education?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: I studied at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation in Moscow. I used to read interviews with various entrepreneurs in the business newspaper Vedomosti, in which they described all sorts of business situations and how they dealt with them. Reading newspapers was my main training. I had no formal business education, just my basic finance education at the university.

LUX: What were the most important parts of this learning phase of your business life?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: I loved reading the biographies of top entrepreneurs such as Howard Schultz of Starbucks, Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, Steve Jobs, John Rockefeller, Feodor Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, and Richard and Maurice McDonald. I was inspired by their lives and their decision making.

LUX: What motivated you then and what motivates you now?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: At first I was motivated by money and the photos I saw in magazines that depicted businessmen like happy guys with beautiful lives. Now, my main motivation is to change the world. I would like to change the relationships between companies and employees, to change the service in our country and to create new possibilities in economics. I think that business people are sort of engineers of the world.

LUX: What are the unique challenges of business and enterprise in Kazakhstan?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: I don’t think that Kazakhstan offers any particularly unique challenges in business but it does have great potential for entrepreneurs, because of the very low levels of competition.

LUX: What advice would you give to foreign companies coming to Kazakhstan?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: First of all, welcome to our country! There are many great possibilities to start a business here. We are growing very fast, have a stable economy and political regime. Also, we have potential in retail, e-commerce and so on.

LUX: What is the secret of success in business and what keeps you going?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: I think that it depends on two things. Firstly, you should work a lot and very hard. And secondly, ambition. If you are not satisfied with the results, they have to push you to go further. It’s important not to say “enough” – that’s a very dangerous word in business.

LUX: What are your business plans?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: Our plan is to build the biggest e-commerce company in the region and to become the first tech company from Kazakhstan to be known worldwide. To keep pace with Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple and others – that’s our goal and I believe that everything is possible.

LUX: Who are your business heroes now?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: My business hero now is Elon Musk. He is a person who makes crazy things. He does not just dream about something, he does it. He inspires me to think the same way. We shouldn’t build barriers in our minds.

LUX: When did you first hear about YPO?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: The first time was when I was a student. I read a book by Artyom Tarasov, one of the first Russian millionaires and the first YPO member from Russia. That was about 19 years ago and I knew then that I wanted to join YPO.

LUX: What were your perceptions of YPO before you joined?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: YPO is a unique business organisation. It consists of the best entrepreneurs from Kazakhstan and enables you to communicate with others from different countries.

LUX: How does YPO support your business?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: I have two examples. First, two of the YPO members in our chapter became investors in my company: Timur Turlov and Aidyn Rakhimbayev. Second, when I need to speak with the managers of the big Russian e-commerce companies, I can get their contacts through YPO Connect and they answer quickly.

LUX: How often are chapter meetings held?
Ramil Mukhoryapov: Formal meetings happen on average 10 times a year. They take priority in my schedule. I appreciate the ideas and advice I get from them – they are like a personal board of directors.

ELDAR SARSENOV
Chairman of the Management Board of JSC Nurbank

Before his banking career, Sarsenov led the marketing at TAG Heuer in the US and worked his way up to being deputy director of sales and marketing at Helios LLP, the Kazakhstan petrol station company. He was the managing director of JSC Nurbank for three years, during which he managed the credit card department, IT and marketing, before he became the bank’s chairman in 2015.

Eldar Sarsenov. Image by Valery Ayapov

LUX: What age were you when you thought you might go into business as a career?
Eldar Sarsenov: I started thinking of myself as some kind of business person when I was maybe six or seven years old. At the time, I was in the US living near tennis courts where I worked as a ball boy. It was then that I understood the value of being paid for your services.

LUX: Your family was prominent in business already – you took a very international route when starting your career. Why?
Eldar Sarsenov:My career started early, helping out in my family’s business when I was still in school. When in college, I did some internships and later on I was working in a few businesses in Kazakhstan, so my career started locally. My first international work was in New Jersey, at TAG Heuer, as part of my MBA.

LUX: Who were your inspirations in business?
Eldar Sarsenov: I was inspired first by my parents’ enterprise in the early 1990s. When I was in college, a few professors who were also successful business people also influenced me.

Read more: Kering’s Marie-Claire Daveu on benefits of the blue economy

LUX: What business education do you have?
Eldar Sarsenov: My bachelor degree in science and business administration was from Suffolk University in Boston, and my MBA is from Northeastern University. Formal education helped my decision making and my ability to assess business practices in all sorts of situations.

LUX: What motivates you now?
Eldar Sarsenov: That’s easy. I am motivated by problem solving, by overcoming crises. I look at the person I was prior to certain events and can see how they transformed and improved me.

LUX: What are the unique challenges of business and enterprise in Kazakhstan?
Eldar Sarsenov: It’s a great place to conduct business, but one of the biggest challenges is its population size. It is a little below 20 million and no matter how efficient or effective you are, technologically and otherwise, at some point you will hit the ceiling of what market you can get.

The flag of Nurbank, of which Eldar Sarsenov is chairman

LUX: What’s the secret of success in business?
Eldar Sarsenov: There’s no big secret. Work hard, be kind to people, be a good person, and stay motivated. That’s harder than it sounds. You’ll be motivated at first but, later, obstacles might slow you down. The trick is to keep moving.

LUX: What are your business plans?
Eldar Sarsenov: Going international is in the plan for me. As a company, you need to cover as many countries as you can. It is healthy and financially sound.

LUX: Who are your business heroes now?
Eldar Sarsenov: The ones who surround me, such as those who survived the break-up of the Soviet Union and prospered for the benefit of the country. Also my YPO friends, who are people of high ethical standards and great business acumen.

LUX: When did you first hear about YPO?
Eldar Sarsenov: I first heard about it through friends and business acquaintances. My friend and mentor Armanzhan Baitassov, who is a YPO member of some stature, suggested I join.

LUX: What were your perceptions of YPO before you joined?
Eldar Sarsenov: I thought it was something along the lines of a fraternity of some sort. But when I saw a meeting, which was informal, I was impressed by the comradeship.

LUX: In what way does being a YPO member support and help you personally?
Eldar Sarsenov: It’s put into perspective what I am today as a business person. It has shown me how my strengths could be furthered, and how my weaknesses can be minimised.

LUX: YPO seems to be a unique business organisation, especially in its forums.
Eldar Sarsenov: Yes, the forums are what make YPO so sought after. Chapters consist of five to eight people. They are designed to be part of the YPO experience, where people can meet regularly within their own groups and discuss problems with work, family, or personal development.

LUX: Does YPO help with international contacts also?
Eldar Sarsenov: International contacts are what YPO bring to the table once you become a member. It provides a platform called YPO Connect that enables you to connect with YPO people round the world. I have helped members from Latin America, Europe and Australia who were interested in financial services in Kazakhstan.

LUX: What does being a YPO chapter member involve and what do you need to do?
Eldar Sarsenov: You get from YPO what you invest. If you make time, reach out to people, follow guidelines at meetings and participate in forums, then YPO gives back a lot. Since I joined in 2019 I have tried to be at every event and reach out to every member. YPO has been great for me. I look forward to meeting new people after the pandemic, and I urge everyone to consider joining this great organisation.

TIMUR TURLOV
Founder and owner of Freedom Holding Corp.

Turlov is an entrepreneur and financial expert who established Freedom Finance in 2008. Becoming part of Freedom Holding Corp. in 2015, the company is a leading retail brokerage and investment bank in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Turlov is a specialist in the US stock market and regularly comments, reports and lectures on financial and economic matters in business publications.

Timur Turlov, CEO of the Freedom Holding Corp.

LUX: What age were you when you thought you might go into business as a career?
Timur Turlov: I was hungry to earn money when I was at least 13. At 15 or 16 I had my first more or less serious job (as a junior media analyst) with an ‘adult’ salary.

LUX: Who were your inspirations in business and how and why did they inspire you?
Timur Turlov: I am not sure that I really can name any. I started my own business not because of my ambitions, but because my employer closed its investments arm.

LUX: What were your first steps? Which companies did you work for, how did you train and did you do any formal business education?
Timur Turlov: I have no formal business education. I started my career in the stock market industry in Moscow at a small proprietary trading firm founded by American who was a former Soviet Union citizen. Then I switched to a retail brokerage firm that was part of a medium-sized commercial bank, and became the youngest TOM manager by my third year. Then the investment arm closed after the 2008–09 crisis.

Read more: Prince Robert de Luxembourg on wine, gastronomy & storytelling

LUX: What were the most important parts of this learning phase of your business life?
Timur Turlov: I always was very practical. I learned a lot from my colleagues and partners, from googling and reading the necessary information to solve specific tasks.

LUX: What motivated you then and what motivates you now?
Timur Turlov: We live in a world where the winner takes it all and you need to be the best in the industry just to survive.

LUX: What are the unique challenges of business and enterprise in Kazakhstan?
Timur Turlov: The main challenge is being almost alone in your industry. A weak competitive landscape can be a problem when you eat your bread alone. And that’s an opportunity as well, of course.

LUX: What advice would you give to foreign companies coming to Kazakhstan?
Timur Turlov: Kazakhstan is a country of open doors. It’s very easy to get here and you will be warmly welcomed, but you have to manage expectations extremely carefully.

LUX: What is the secret of success in business and what keeps you going?
Timur Turlov: My ability to build relationships, to sense the direction the wind is blowing in and to create products that are in demand. And, of course, luck.

LUX: What are your plans and business dreams?
Timur Turlov: We need to expand more actively into the EU and from there, globally. Competition in my industry is already global and we need to grow to be competitive enough tomorrow, to be attractive enough to become a target for acquisition, or to acquire our competitors worldwide.

LUX: Who are your business heroes now?
Timur Turlov: My team, my competitors… No stars.

LUX: When did you first hear about YPO and from whom?
Timur Turlov: From my friend and client, Marat Shotbaev, three or four years ago.

LUX: What were your perceptions of YPO before you joined and what made you want to join?
Timur Turlov: I knew it to be a club of successful people from the business elite in our country.

LUX: YPO seems to be a unique business organisation. Is this true, and if so, how and why?
Timur Turlov: The spread across medium and large enterprises in Kazakhstan seems to be wider than usually found elsewhere in the world. So here, YPO is a club for large businesses.

LUX: In what way does being a YPO member support and help you personally?
Timur Turlov: Through the unique experience of the forum meetings, which unfortunately have been less frequent over the past year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

LUX: How does being a YPO member support your business?
Timur Turlov: Business is always about the development of relationships, and YPO helps to develop it much further.

LUX: Does YPO membership help you with international contacts as well?
Timur Turlov: I have never tried to use the international power of YPO.

LUX: What does being a YPO chapter member involve? How frequently do you have formal meetings, and international meetings?
Timur Turlov: Unfortunately, I have never participated in any of the international meetings, but this is only my second year of membership and international travel has been restricted, of course, for most of 2020.

Find out more: ypo.org

This article features in the Autumn Issue, which will be published later this month.

L’École, School of Jewellery Arts, is housed within the Van Cleef & Arpels headquarters in Paris

L’École is a school of jewellery arts based in Paris and supported by Van Cleef & Arpels, offering a luxurious learning experience led by industry experts. Digital Editor Millie Walton signs up for a class

Based one floor of Van Cleef & Arpels‘ headquarters in Place Vendôme in Paris, L’École was established in 2012 with the aim of introducing the wider audience to the world of high jewellery and its significance through the ages. Whilst the school was founded and is supported by Van Cleef & Arpels, it is not, as one might assume, an elaborate marketing stunt (during my class, for example, the only mention of Van Cleef & Arpels is via small-print on the slideshow), but rather a genuine centre of learning albeit a luxurious one. Classes take place in a palatial room which was once the office of Van Cleef’s President and CEO Nicolas Bos, with a break for tea, coffee and Parisian pastries in a stylish lounge filled up with glossy coffee table-books, whilst the teachers themselves are leading industry experts, which allows the classes to cater to every ability.

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The classes fall into four main categories: ‘Introductory’ (which offers a general overview), ‘The Universe of Gemstones’ (with two classes exploring diamonds), ‘Savoir Faire’ (featuring hands on workshops in which you get to actually try out various jewellery making techniques such as Japanese Urushi Lacquer) and ‘Art History of Jewellery’ (which investigates jewellery aesthetics of different time periods). On this trip, I’m signed up for an art history class on ‘Gold and Jewellery, from Antiquity to the Renaissance Princes’, which begins with Ancient Egypt and ends with examining portraits of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

Classes take place in the original office of Van Cleef’s President and CEO Nicolas Bos

Whilst the prospect of four hour lecture on jewellery is daunting, our teachers Inezita Gay-Eckel and Léonard Pouy are energetic and brilliantly knowledgable with infectious enthusiasm for their subject matter. The class itself mainly follows a standard lecture format, but we are encouraged to jump in with questions, and specialist terms are noted down on the whiteboard for us to copy into our L’École branded notebooks.

Read more: Founder of Nila House Lady Carole Bamford’s guide to Jaipur

Halfway through, Léonard appears, gloved and bearing a tray of delicate jewellery pieces. We’re encouraged to apply our new found knowledge to locate each piece to its time period, and whilst it’s still largely mystifying, it’s satisfying to even know what kinds of things we should be noticing.

The point of these classes, Inezita tells us, to provoke curiosity so that students feel compelled to take their learning further. At the end of the class, we’re each given a tote bag with a certificate and reading list of books, websites and museums across the globe.

Find out more: lecolevancleefarpels.com

One of the panel discussions at the YPO Edge global leadership conference in Singapore in 2018, an annual event that brings together nearly 3,000 business leaders

The YPO may just be the most influential organisation in the world that most people haven’t heard of. An association of major business owners and chief executives spanning Asia, the US, Europe, Africa, South America, Australasia and the former Soviet Union, it is part high-end networking forum, part extended family. It is notoriously difficult to join, and those who are in say its discussion groups, events and networks have transformed their business and, sometimes, their personal lives. LUX Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai hears some insights from YPO members in Asia

Joelle Goudsmit

Joelle Goudsmit, CEO of Dimension-all Group, Philippines

YPO member since June 2012

LUX: How did you first come across the YPO in the context of your business?
Joelle Goudsmit: I took over the family company when I was 24, because my mother passed away quite suddenly. I had a liberal arts degree that I enjoyed but it did not really prepare me for working in construction and scaffolding, the family business in the Philippines. A degree in economics and Japanese literature does not prepare you for negotiating with contractors.

I was talking to someone in Hong Kong, who asked whether I’ve ever heard of this group called YPO and said that I really should join. I was a bit suspicious, as she was a random
person in my yoga class, so I answered that I was a bit overwhelmed just then and that I didn’t have room for anything else. Then YPO came up in a business context with several other people across Asia. So, I joined when I was 30, when there was critical mass with lots of people who were around my age, and it was wonderful.

Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine

Leading a company is really quite lonely. You don’t necessarily have peers at work, you have colleagues who work for you. That’s a very different dynamic. When you work in a family business, there can be complications because the work tends to come home and your family then becomes stakeholders first, not necessarily family.

Your YPO forum does not have a vested interest in your business, they just listen, they are peers, and tend to be willing to share. Looking across the organisation, the common denominator is that the people come in with a willingness and a desire to constantly learn throughout their lives. I personally think that it doesn’t matter how challenging work gets, there is a point at which one gets a little stupid doing the same thing over and over. It’s much better t go to a YPO event to unplug, get inspired, and get new energy in order to bring that drive and inspiration back to work, and to maybe look at problems in a different way.

LUX: When you joined, did being a member help your business in specific ways?
Joelle Goudsmit: Yes, I have a number of examples of where I received unbelievable business support. When I purchased my first company, I was trying to find out about the business as quickly as possible. I decided I’d be doing business development straight away, not to be the CEO, just to go out, meet with potential clients and see whether the business was truly viable.

YPO has chapters and networks. The networks deal with your current interests , whether they be business or personal/social. I joined the deal network, I was quite active with them, and they organised these sessions around the world where you went in and met with a group. You were open about what your company needed at this point and whoever was in the room would volunteer leads for you or they could suggest someone they know or a chapter mate or someone in your realm. I remember I was in Dubai at that point and was looking for potential strategic partners. I put my need out to the table and really wasn’t expecting anything. Someone at the table goes, “come speak to me at work tomorrow”. They became my first client I acquired on my own for the company, and it was a wonderful “Phew! This company is viable” moment. It gave me a lot of confidence and hope for that company. That came out of YPO and has repeated a lot of times ever since.

I recently had breakfast yesterday with someone I met through YPO. Previously, he had a work colleague he had sent to the Philippines who needed emergency medical care. He didn’t know what to do, so he had sent a message out to the network. We responded and we were able to make a phone call to someone who owned a hospital close to where the man was, and was able to get him the right care.

So, at breakfast recently, he mentioned he was going to Kazakhstan, and I mentioned I’d like to explore potential business opportunities in Kazakhstan. So, he is phoning people to make introductions. You never know where these will lead, but it saves you having to go into a country that is very foreign, where you don’t know anyone. It’s a huge deal.

Delegates at the YPO Edge conference in Singapore, 2018

Jennifer Liu

Jennifer Liu, Hong Kong-based owner of The Coffee Academics and founder of HABITŪ, Asia

YPO member since May 2017

LUX: Why did you join the YPO?
Jennifer Liu: When your entrepreneurial businesses reach a certain international scale, the YPO makes great sense, in terms of forming an alliance with other business friends and understanding the business environment.

I have not been a member for long, and I am getting active; for example, there is a very interesting event where YPO members in Hong Kong and the region visit the Greater Bay Area of China [the region connecting Hong Kong with mainland cities such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou]. YPO has a very selective process for its members. The calibre and the sophisticated mindsets of the people set it apart. I believe there are fewer than 100 members in Hong Kong. I went through three interviews.

LUX: What kind of questions were you asked?
Jennifer Liu: They want to know if you really are the person who makes all the important decisions in your company. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a top manager. And whether or not you can impact your company and the city or the world, one way or another both in the business world or the charities space.

Read more: Tips for a successful application to one of London’s most exclusive members’ clubs

LUX: You have been a member for less than two years ; how has it been?
Jennifer Liu: I love it. There are the very senior members who have seen it, done it, and they have all the words of wisdom. They have so much to share and for us, coming into this point in time where you’re no longer a young business person and you’re quite big, but you still have a lot to work on and to learn about, YPO has that resource of some of the best talents in town and also in the region or in the world, to openly and safely provide suggestions or networks. So, I think, in a way, when we come out and we say we are YPOers, it immediately means a certain standard, in terms of trust, respect and confidentiality. And in YPO, there is no specific hierarchy. Everyone is equal, and we all share . When it comes to confidentiality, it very clear what is level one, what is level two, and you feel very comfortable to share things you can’t even share with your family or your spouse or your co-workers.

LUX: In what way is it useful for your business?
Jennifer Liu: It’s very useful for me as person to have a safe environment to open up and to know people and to know what’s going on in Hong Kong or elsewhere in the world. It has a well-built system where we are not soliciting business between each other, but it’s a platform where we share useful and trusted information, both for business and personal matters.

Mathew Boylan

Matthew Boylan, President and CEO of Matador Systems, Singapore

YPO member since October 2010

LUX: How has YPO helped your business?
Matthew Boylan: YPO has done two incredible things . Number one, it is an amazing security blanket because for a company like mine the only way that we can survive is to be able to support clients in more than one location. Our clients need to work with one supplier for their entire IT support strategy whether that is in Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, Korea or Japan. That means we need to have operations in all of those countries, meaning we have to incorporate a legal entity in those countries, meaning we have to navigate the rules and regulations that apply to employing permanent staff in those countries.

Before I joined YPO, one of the experiences that we had when we wanted to set up an office and incorporate a legal entity in China, we started talking to corporate consultants in Singapore who provided that service. The frustrating thing was that we would receive a quote from one corporate consultant for US$30,000 to incorporate in Shanghai, we would receive another quote for US$300,000 for exactly the same service. You are going into a market that you don’t have much knowledge about or experience in, you have to put a certain amount of trust in third party suppliers, but it is very difficult if you have not been recommended to those third-party suppliers, you have to do your own diligence, your own research.

You completely bypass the entire process by being a YPO member. All you need to do is pick up the phone or send an email, in this case it was to a YPO member who is based in Shanghai, and ask, “Can you please provide me with a recommendation to a corporate consultant who you have done business with, who you can trust, who you know will be able to support our needs in Shanghai?”. You know straight away that you can trust whoever they recommend. No matter where you are doing business you know that through the YPO network you can receive trustworthy and credible recommendations to third parties you need to rely on.

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Number two – and this is so important in today’s business world – YPO allows you to conduct business at hyper speed.

I have been able to leverage off Matador’s expertise and infrastructure and resources to incubate and accelerate a lot of other different businesses. So, if you are looking for a manufacturing partner in a certain market, you’re looking for a distribution partner in a certain market, again you can leverage off the YPO network to actually source those.

One of my new businesses for 2018 was releasing a new product into the Japan market, we needed to source a manufacturer either in China or Vietnam, and through the YPO network I was able to source potential manufacturing partners within 24 to 48 hours. The two business partners who I am working with are based in Tokyo, who are not in the YPO, they have been struggling with this for twelve months with no progress, and they just said, “Matt, how did you do this?” I said it was through YPO and they were fascinated. Basically, within a 48-hour period I was able to source a manufacturer in Vietnam and also a manufacturer in China and in both cases, they were recommendations from YPO members in those respected countries. So, you can really work at speed, which is critical.

A speaker at the YPO Edge conference in Singapore, 2018

Noni Purnomo

Noni Purnamo, President Director of Blue Bird Group Holding, Indonesia

YPO member since November 2003

LUX: You were one of the first female YPO members in your region.
Noni Purnamo: Yes, I was first introduced to YPO about 15 years ago by a good friend who is a very successful businesswoman, Shinta Kamdani. When I joined there about only like three female members in Indonesia, including her and myself.

LUX: How has the YPO helped you?
Noni Purnamo: YPO has help me grow all sides of my life. I went through the ups and downs of various challenges. When I was in my mid thirties I was faced with this challenge of how do you balance being a mother and being a business person at the same time. It was the busiest time of my business life, when you have the most energy and so many things to do, you have so many things to handle and yet you have to handle young children because that’s normally what happens when you’re in your early thirties . So, during those times I was really relying on the YPO network, YPO experiences and YPO learnings. I have really relied on the forum [where up to ten members get together and talk confidentially], I have been in the same forum for the almost 15 years now, and they know more about me than I do myself! They have been through all the ups and downs of my life and the good thing about sharing this in a forum is because of the forum’s rules – it’s strictly confidential and there is no judgement, you can only share.

That structure really helped. At one point I faced what was almost a depression, and I went to the YPO Life, which is a five- day course for members in Mumbai, and doing it I learned a lot about myself. It saved me from that depression.

I then initiated the mother/daughter retreat in Indonesia. YPO is one of the organisations where you can get help in all aspects of your life. Some organisations are purely commercial, some organisation are purely networking, with this you can have a family, you can grow with it. That’s what I have gained from YPO.

Dimitri Goutenmacher

Dimitri Gouten, CEO Asia, Buccellati

YPO member since 2012

LUX: Why did you join the YPO?
Dimitri Gouten: In my previous company [the luxury goods conglomerate Richemont], we were doing an entrepreneurship award with a similar organisation. Some members went on to join the YPO and they recommended it. For many reasons. The first reason being the networking; with the YPO you are not seven degrees of important people, you are one or two degrees because you can really access entrepreneurs, bankers, investors, in a very quick manner. And then once you join, you have a lot of expertise available to you, and there are events where there are presentations on different subjects, so it’s like a university . You can be talking about the US economy one afternoon, then the singularity another afternoon, and AI. There are many subjects that are discussed at a high level and that are very interesting for all the members.

There are also events related to family, also events with children, because the whole point is about learning something – so you can learn something with your children, or you can learn something with your spouse, there are different kinds of events that are organised to promote business, family and personal life. That’s the holistic approach that it offers.

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It’s a later stage the YPO forum comes, which is when you have this group of people that we gather every month to talk about personal, business and family subjects which are shared in an environment that’s 100% confidential, where you have trust with the different people. And the idea is really for everyone to really express themselves, share their emotions, share their values, and you know, tell you stories, memories that happened to them in a similar case to what’s happening to you or friends of theirs.

The idea is never to judge you, never to give you advice, but to just give you some relevant information that they see could help you make your own decisions. So, it’s not about “Oh you should do this, you should do that”, it’s really an open forum, where everybody can share and everybody can take the most out of what they want. It’s never about “Oh, I have this problem, what are the solutions?”, it’s “I have this problem, I’m going to do a small presentation to my forum mates, my forum brothers, and we will see and they all share”.

One of them can be in a family business, one of them can be an architect, one of them can be in the printing business, or finance.

LUX: It sounds like the forum is something that doesn’t really exist elsewhere?
Dimitri Gouten: Yes, and it’s true that you don’t really find it outside this forum because it’s ruled by confidentiality and trust, and the other aspect is the quality of the people, because the people who are also recruited join the YPO because of certain criteria that are fixed by the YPO itself.

LUX: And you found it useful in terms of business and personal support?
Dimitri Gouten: Very useful. As well as the forum, you also have all the rest of the YPO network, that you can also contact for certain things. For example, I can ask if there is anybody who has experience in importing jewellery into China? You will find somebody, and then you will have some sharing of information if the person wants . That’s the whole idea of the organisation, that you share with others and you benefit from that.

For example, a few years ago, we went to Taiwan with a member of my forum and we met other, different companies that belong to YPO and studied their business models . So, you mix that with excellent food on the trip, and it’s a very interesting experience. We also went to Japan at one time where we saw a company making electric cars. In Asia the YPO is very powerful, you can quickly touch some entrepreneurs, and most of the time we share because we know what YPO is and we are willing to share.

LUX: Is there a mechanism by which contact happens?
Dimitri Gouten: Yes, there is a website where you have access to all the members worldwide. It doesn’t accept solicitation, so it means a member can’t call me and say, “Do you want to buy this?” But they can send me a message and say “I’m in this type of business and I’m in Hong Kong next week, could we meet for a drink?” And you trust them, you know that they are in the same organisation and they also follow the same standards.

For more information visit: ypo.org

By Greg Williams

A LUX x ROSEWOOD COLLABORATION

Greg Williams

In recent years, ambitious parents have added a further endeavour to the list of educational activities they believe will enhance the character of their children. Along with music lessons, chess and languages, coding has become a must for any child whois to compete in the global economy of the future. No longer is it acceptable to master the Suzuki violin method or be proficient with an épée, no, the corporate titans of the future must also be armed with a fully developed grasp of the programming language Python. Tiger mothers from Cupertino to Chelsea compete to secure Imperial College computer science graduates as tutors, fearful that their children will be left behind by the merciless advancement of AI and quantum computing.

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There is some truth to large numbers of young people needing to be proficient in STEM skills. But it isn’t the whole picture. As it has floundered from one recent catastrophe to another, Facebook has demonstrated at in ear to deficiencies in its business, from culpability in undermining the democratic process to data privacy. Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s response that he would ‘fix’ Facebook demonstrated his engineer’s mindset. Having leadership capable of empathy and creative engagement would have served it much better than the obfuscation and platitudes that have become its hallmark.

Technical, scientific and engineering skills are crucial for economies, but so too is the underpinning of all discovery: language. Many in the technology industry believe that coding will soon be done by machines themselves, making much of what humans do today obsolete. What will remain crucial for our advancement are the skills that existed long before the concept of the programmable computer: human creativity and ingenuity. It’s what will determine our destiny.

Six ways to get technical:

1. Realise that it’s not just you; everyone else is also trying to understand what digital transformation means.
2. Ignore jargon. If it can’t be explained simply,you probably don’t need to know about it.
3. Don’t be afraid of the new.
4. Assume big tech is not your friend.
5. Stay curious. You have access to every piece of information ever, why follow Kylie Jenner?
6. It’s not really about technology, it’s about human beings.

Greg Williams is editor in chief of WIRED

This article was originally published in the Winter 2019 issue.

A scene from the performance piece ‘Alone Together’ at the Whitechapel Gallery with artist Seth Pimlott

As the world’s leading contemporary art galleries come together for this year’s Frieze London in Regent’s Park, Iwona Blazwick, director of Whitechapel Gallery, discusses the challenges and successes of working to enrich communities through outreach programmes

Iwona Blazwick

What is the ultimate objective of a public learning programme? For anybody who’s struggled to find recognition, has a difficult home life or doesn’t see what prospects there are for them, art holds the key. Perhaps this kind of experience might help somebody realise they’re an artist, but I don’t think it has to limit itself to that. We’ve had programme alumni go on to do everything from forensics to fashion design, psychology to filmmaking.

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I think the real asset of a good youth programme is that it can teach transferrable skills that take you in different directions. By encouraging participation and decision-making, we hope to bridge social, cultural and religious differences and instil some sort of epiphany in people that will help them for the rest of their lives, whether in a professional capacity, or as members of different communities. However, I don’t want to instrumentalise art. I also believe that it should be free to not do any of the above! But that very freedom too, I hope, can be found in our programmes.

In recent years there has been a shift from traditional media such as painting and sculpture towards moving-image work, performance and of course social media and digital. And yet, at the same time, artists working in the digital realms are also being drawn to ceramics and other tactile ways of making art. As a medium-sized institution, we can be quite nimble and offer a wide portfolio of activities to reflect this interdisciplinary time. For example, when we hosted Thick Time, our exhibition of work by the great South African artist William Kentridge, members of our youth forum, Duchamp & Sons, collaborated with the English National Opera, and our youth participants very unselfconsciously made extraordinary costumes, animations and even worked on a libretto.

A live street-art performance curated by artist Justyna Fedec

However, perhaps the bigger philosophical issue is: are we teaching people, or do we have something to learn from them? I believe our strength lies in reciprocity. Situated in East London as we are, we are uniquely placed to access rich and culturally diverse communities, and have one of the youngest populations of any borough of London. So many artists and creatives live in the area, and it is incredibly cosmopolitan, which gives everything a tremendous energy.

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One challenge (and success) has been the fact that some communities here are fairly inward-looking, and are not engaging with the gallery. Perhaps this is because they are first-generation immigrants, or because they haven’t felt confident speaking English, or because of different religious backgrounds. To create a dialogue, it was important to recognise that each party had something to bring to the table. For example, in 2015, we launched a project in Stepney Green called Art Already Made: Skills Exchange and worked with a group of Bengali and Somalian women. For various cultural reasons, they had been a little bit isolated, and this project sought to recognise the tremendous skill sets they had and create an exchange of skills between the women and artist Rebecca Davies, ranging from engraving and bookbinding to embroidery and illustration. Having worked with them in a community centre, the next step was: how do we persuade them to come here, to the Whitechapel Gallery? That was the ultimate goal. And they did come, and they brought their families, and that was a great victory in that sense, to have convinced them to cross the threshold, to build up their confidence and work to keep them coming back and maintain that relationship.

A Duchamp & Sons performance in collaboration with artist Ian Giles

Another example would be our efforts to counteract the gang culture that is sadly on the rise in East London. For a lot of youth, the issue is that there is nowhere to go that you don’t have to spend money. In our latest programme, we worked with artist Seth Pimlott, who ran yoga sessions and performance workshops, ultimately culminating in the performance piece Alone Together, all about physical release. To provide somewhere to go and something to do, hopefully it can help children who would otherwise end up in a spiral of violence. Working across so many communities, of course, one has to bear in mind various cultural sensitivities, but having said that, we would never tolerate someone being intolerant. If somebody was critical because of somebody else’s sexuality or whatever, that’s something that I think one would confront. What we hope is that through their networks the kids who are exposed to our programmes will reach out to those kids who aren’t – those kids who do feel much more alienated or hermetic.

Ultimately, in any programme, what’s most important is to share. All of our initiatives serve as case studies. The reasons why entities such as the Swarovski Foundation, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation before them, support our programmes is they want to learn from them. We’re moving into a post-industrial economy and have a generation facing changes and job shortages because of automation. Industry is changing, which is good, but it’s also a scary prospect and if you haven’t got the education and the confidence to deal with that, you are going to be lost.

Learn more about the Whitechapel Gallery and the gallery’s upcoming exhibitions: whitechapelgallery.org

Westminster School, London

Westminster School in London is probably the best school in the world. From Beijing to Buenos Aires, the global elite crave a place at the institution, dating back to 12th century, for their children. At the school’s heart is the pursuit of knowledge and the fuelling of intellectual curiosity for its own sake. Its headmaster Patrick Derham talks to Darius Sanai about educational challenges in an internet-dominated world, and how to stay on top.

LUX: The big debate right now is about how the internet is affecting learning. Is rote learning over because the sum of human knowledge is available on your iPhone? And are all schools outdated (which some pioneers are saying in Silicon Valley)?
Patrick Derham: It’s a fascinating question that isn’t new; and whenever you talk to educationalists and people in education there are different opinions. However, we all agree that what really impacts on young people, wherever they are in the world, is the quality of the teaching. No matter what technological advances there are, I passionately believe that what happens in a classroom – the interaction between teacher and pupil – is crucial to the life chances, the success, and the educational journey that young people are embarking upon.

The internet is a fantastic resource when used properly. I’m unusual as a Head in that I teach an A-level history set. I believe in varying the material I present to the class: not just traditional text books or biographies, but also online materials and access to online articles. It is a great bonus for them to have a much greater breadth of potential resources than I had at their age. So, I think it is very exciting.

In terms of rote learning, I’m afraid education is tough and there are no shortcuts. And there is nothing wrong with a bit of old fashioned rote learning as part of that educational journey. The information may be out there, but you have to have the skills to detect its bias and to understand its reliability and validity. Rote learning provides a foundation of knowledge from which to make those judgements.

But you also need to be able to think, and to realise that learning is, by nature, difficult. When learning a language, for example, before you can speak fluently, you have to learn the grammar and vocabulary; there is no other way around it. It is a helpful discipline; but learning is not just that. The best educational offerings are inculcating in young people a radical, questioning, liberal tradition: an encouragement to entertain, to challenge and to scrutinise. The greatest teaching encourages interaction: that discussion, the challenge that gently steers the pupils without necessarily giving them the answers, encouraging them to find their own solutions and to deepen their inquiry, as Westminster has done for generations.

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LUX: You mentioned style of teaching, which I think is a key distinction. I will call them the new educationalists: people who are saying that facts are there, you can learn remotely and you don’t have to be in one room with a person telling you things. But what you’re saying is that good teaching is not just telling people what facts are?
Patrick Derham: The best teacher isn’t the one who points out the facts and just dictates. This is because good teachers are not constrained by syllabus requirements; they are not teaching to a test. They have the confidence in their subject knowledge and relationship with their pupils to be risk takers, prepared to go off on tangents. They will, whatever their subject, draw examples from the modern world, the past and from other disciplines so that young people realise that just because they are studying Physics, for example, doesn’t mean their learning is compartmentalised: they are led to understand how it interacts with the rest of society and the rest of life. It’s the same with the humanities and the arts. The best teachers need to be risk takers to push beyond the boundaries of the syllabus, to be seeking out connections. To understand the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, you need to have a full appreciation of cultural influences. It’s not just about learning the facts of who was king and who was the prime minister.

Patrick Derham

LUX: Interesting. Recently, I found some work from when I was at Westminster. I did Chemistry, Biology and and English for A Level, and I found a science essay on molecular biology where I had brought in some of the metaphysical poets’ perspectives on love and how that related to molecular interaction. What struck me was that the teacher was fascinated and encouraged me to talk about it more. And that’s a Westminster thing!
Patrick Derham: That’s what I think the best education systems, wherever they are in the world, should be aspiring to do. I think there is something very distinctive about Westminster. It’s an extraordinary institution – very modest, we wear our traditions very lightly – but actually we are at the cutting edge of the finest teaching and developing the finest minds. I edited a book of essays, ‘Loyal Dissent’, which I think encapsulated Westminster well. The pupils are very loyal, but they are very dissenting; they are very radical and challenging. One of the most interesting parts of the book is Nick Clegg’s introduction [the former UK deputy prime minister] because he reflects on what he learnt at school.

We are, arguably, the leading academic school in the world. When I arrived, we took the international PISA-based test for schools and gratifyingly we came top in the three measurements. But, much more interesting and exciting was the fact that the study connected us with leading research across the world on pedagogy. The lessons we learn from PISA, the work we are doing with Cambridge and major educational studies, is all about getting the best out of our pupils and to prepare them for challenges ahead, many of which, as yet, are unknown. More than ever, we must give young people, wherever they are in the world, a skill set that means they have the ability and flexibility to move from job to job in the workplace as it evolves.

The new generation at work, the twentysomethings, are having to demonstrate much greater versatility. The best education is about giving them resilience, too – the ability to cope with disappointing setbacks: not just to throw their hands up and say, “This is unfair!” but rather, “What am I going to do about it?” We are living in very interesting times nationally and internationally. But the young people today are much more prepared to engage with big questions; they are much more interested and positive and much less selfish. This makes me hugely optimistic. When I look back to my early days of teaching it felt very different.

LUX: How do you find your teachers?
Patrick Derham: We look for the primacy of the subject, the love of subject, that infectious enthusiasm that really makes a difference and excites people. That’s what I want to see. So, we need to reduce the administrative load on teachers, and, in this, we can learn from each other. What’s happening in China is very interesting.

LUX: What exactly?
Patrick Derham: That they are given more time to focus on teaching rather than administration.

LUX: A school like Westminster, for many hundreds of years, catered to the British intelligentsia. Now it’s the international high flying set who have settled in London. Has that changed the school?
Patrick Derham: No, I think it’s exciting that London is such a cosmopolitan city. Westminster has a cosmopolitan,

Westminster School with view of the London Eye

international feel and this makes it very outward facing. We don’t need to talk about the importance of the global economy because it is very much here and it gives our community a real buzz. A related question for me is the issue of the affordability of fees and I worry about schools like ours becoming too exclusive. So we work extremely hard in all sorts of ways to make a Westminster education possible for those who would benefit most from it: bursary provision, for example, and we’ve appointed a director of outreach and widening access working with local primary schools to identify the right people whom we can support.

Really excitingly, we are in the third year of the Harris Westminster Sixth Form, which is our collaboration with the Harris Federation to replicate a Westminster Sixth Form education in the state system. It has been a stunning success and the admissions criteria there are for underprivileged children. We are thrilled that in the second cohort they have got 23 offers at Oxford and Cambridge, which is remarkable. This eclipses a huge number of independent schools that have not achieved that number this year.

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And again, the successful partnership with Harris, helps remove any air of public school arrogance, which I can’t stand. There is no place for it and there never was. The world owes no favour to pupils from schools like Westminster. They have got to demonstrate from their own merits, their own talents, their own skills that they are the best person – a Westminster education doesn’t give them a head start or a privilege.

LUX: You mentioned preparing people for a world where they will have multiple jobs in series or in parallel. The risk of artificial intelligence replacing many traditional careers seems to me to encourage a bias towards the creative industries where artificial intelligence is less likely to take over. Do you think that’s true? And how do you prepare people who might be studying sciences for a world where creativity (whether it’s entrepreneurial or traditional) is what might save them from being taken over by machines?
Patrick Derham: I think it goes back to the ethos of the school, and the education you’re trying to provide. If you teach science in the ways we do – predominantly experimental – it’s a much more creative approach. We want our pupils to experience scientific understanding and to gain knowledge through ‘doing’. And, you used that brilliant example of the cross fertilisation of Biology and English. In a sense that is creativity in action. Specialists need to be working alongside each other and with an open mind, in the world we are moving into. I think the best people from schools and universities are those who can demonstrate that ability to move quickly from one thing to another, making connections both within disciplines and between them. That sort of fearless intellectual curiosity comes from the best schooling

westminster.org.uk

The elite British education system has never been more in demand. Yet some wonder whether educating boys and girls separately is an anachronism in a 21st century environment where they will work together in their business lives. Our columnist outlines her views on why sending your child to a top single-sex school could still be the best move you ever make Helen Pike

A businessman told me recently that in his native China, two British luxury brands are well-known: Harrods and Eton. It seems that elite single-sex schools not only dominate the cultural landscape and the league tables in the UK, they are part of what makes Britain distinctive globally. Some elite single-sex schools have moved into international education, an export market which amounts to £17.5bn annually, by opening in Asia and the former Soviet Union, markets hungry for top-quality education. For parents of boys, Eton, Harrow and the like are brands with resonance around the world.

That said, elite single-sex schools are a minority, even in the UK. Only 7 per cent of UK pupils are educated in the private sector, of which 20.9 per cent comprises single-sex schools: just over 250 schools in total. So what gives them their resonance internationally — what drives ambitious parents to steer their children towards schools like the above (or the school I am fortunate enough to head)?

I have spent my professional life thus far in five highly academic single-sex schools, three of which are within spitting distance of the River Thames. (Not that any pupils of these schools would do anything so vulgar as to spit, of course.) If anything, single-sex education has become more controversial globally since I did my teaching practice in a single-sex girls’ inner London state school. Elite single-sex schools in the UK are indeed cosmopolitan, exciting places in which to work and learn, the envy of the world, as witnessed by the stiff competition for entry; but in 2013, can we justify that so many of the UK’s finest schools continue to segregate girls and boys?

The most obvious answer is history. The oldest and most famous schools were for boys only; schools for girls came centuries later. So we can contrast the foundation of Eton in 1440 and St Paul’s School in 1509 with that of The Cheltenham Ladies’ College in 1853 or South Hampstead High School (full disclosure: my employer) in 1876. A serendipitous combination of grand tradition, location, favourable education policies since 1945, and dynamic school leadership has meant that some — but by no means all — of the oldest schools have remained at the top of an ever-growing pile and become vanguardists in education across the sector.

Elite single-sex education can provoke the glorious British cultural schizophrenia which defends tradition with a sword in one hand, while threatening to take a hatchet to it with the other. Surely the British should not continue to champion segregated hothouses, when all but those who join enclosed holy orders will live and work in a resolutely coeducational world?

Single-sex schools have responded to this in a number of ways. On one side, the Girls’ Schools Association in the UK has been more vociferous, in part because some of its members are defending a market share in the face of boys’ schools which have recently become fully or partly coeducational, and in part because girls’ schools have always been more focused on righting the inequalities which women can encounter — which was why they were founded in the first place.

Meanwhile the International Boys’ School Coalition does what its name suggests, and organises research and an annual conference which brings together schools from the UK, USA and Australia. It argues that it is single-sex boys’ schools which are the endangered species, while girls-only institutions are more numerous and surer of their niche.

And they are right to be: there is much evidence that boys and girls — and particularly girls — make greater progress in single-sex schools and have better life chances than their counterparts in coeducational schools.

I make this point when parents of both boys and girls ask me why they should choose single-sex education. High-achieving single-sex schools are the intellectual and emotional equivalent of elite training for athletes. Crucially, children are not adults. There is so much to be said for an education which, in preparing them for the world they will inherit, does more than simply allow boys to be boys and girls to be girls: it consciously plays to their strengths and needs. Some might regard the idea that children are being sexualised at an ever-younger age is a species of moral panic, but the commodification of girls in particular continues apace. To put it more simply, there is less fuss about dress in single-sex schools.

Single-sex schools also avoid helpmeet syndrome: in boys-only schools which admit girls, for example into the Sixth Form at 16, the girls can become the facilitators of the boys’ progress in the classroom, deferring to the boys rather than testing out ideas of their own. In single-sex schools, gender roles are less marked; there is no opportunity for boys to dominate the brass section of the orchestra while girls tootle fragrantly in woodwind.

If we take the 26 schools of the Girls’ Day School Trust, of which my school is one, we find that GDST girls are over twice more likely to study A-Level Physics or Chemistry than girls nationally, and overall nearly half the students in GDST Sixth Forms take at least one science A-Level (the highest level of school qualification in the UK). This carries forward into university choices, where again over 40 per cent of GDST students do Science, Medicine or Mathematics as part of their degrees. If girls in the UK as a whole sat as many Physics, Chemistry or Maths A-Levels as girls at these 26 GDST schools, there would be nearly 9,000 more school-leavers with A-Level Physics, 20,000 with A-Level Chemistry and 21,000 with A-Level Maths in the population every year. By way of comparison, a recent study by the Institute of Physics found that in nearly half of co-ed schools there were no girls studying A-Level Physics at all.

None of this comes cheap. Annual boarding fees at Eton are now over £32,000 (and Eton is by no means the most expensive), while more competitively-priced day schools charge between £10,000 and £15,000 per year. Is it worth it in a world where a woman can be Chancellor of Germany or head of the International Monetary Fund (although this is not to say workplace equality is with us)? My view is that parents and pupils recognise that it is precisely because the rest of the world is so overwhelmingly co-ed that a single-sex education has such value.

Helen Pike is Headmistress of South Hampstead High School, London, which is ranked among the top five girls’ schools in Britain by the Financial Times; shhs.gdst.net