Covering the Clinton Global Initiative

Guest post by Ana Tellez, a Senior Health Writer atCommunicateHealth.  She is currently pursuing her M.A. in Communication & Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College where she is researching the intersection of technology design and health literacy. 

Greetings, Pulse + Signalers!  This week the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) is hosting its annual meeting in New York City with numerous heads of state, CEOs, global leaders, and Hollywood stars wearing their nonprofit leadership hats (see the featured list of attendees here).  President Bill Clinton established CGI in 2005 with the mission “to inspire, connect, and empower a community of global leaders to forge solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.”  CGI does this by facilitating cross-sector partnerships through its Member Meetings – like the one this week – and its Commitments to Action by Members. 

The focus of this year’s meeting is threefold: jobs and generating employment, sustainable consumption, and girls/women.  Each of these topics is in its own way tethered to issues of public healthand social justice – with certain breakout sessions explicitly focusing on these issues.  To give you a taste of what’s in store, here are a few sessions I’m looking forward to:

The World at 7 Billion: A Member Conversation with President Clintonwith the one and only Bill

Form and Function: Designing for Humanity with participants such as Jocelyn Wyatt, Executive Director of IDEO.org

Reproducing Success: Game-changing Interventions in Women’s Health with remarks by Elizabeth Maguire, President and CEO of Ipas and others

Designing Technologies for Economic Empowerment with participants such as Geena Davis, Founder of The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media

Follow me on Twitter at @AnaTellezwhere I’ll be live-tweeting Tuesday through Thursday using the event’s hashtag of #cgi2011,and tune into the Pulse + Signal blog for a full-length post of the event in the coming days!