{
  "title": "Global Connections and Global Citizens—an Address to the Kennedy School By Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund",
  "publication": "IMF News, May 23, 2012",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp052312",
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  "summary": "The present era is characterized by unprecedented interconnections across people, goods, ideas, and communications.",
  "authors": [
    "Christine Lagarde"
  ],
  "publishDate": "2012-05-23",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "The “new” world of interconnections: a world in progress",
      "content": "- The present era is characterized by unprecedented interconnections across people, goods, ideas, and communications.\n- Key statistics and illustrative facts cited:\n  - Since 1980, the volume of world trade has quintupled.\n  - About 900 million tourists traveled between countries in 2010, up from a mere 25 million in 1950.\n  - The world has over 200 million migrant workers, up from 78 million in 1965.\n  - Foreigners make up between a fifth and a quarter of the professional workforce in countries like Australia, Canada, and Switzerland.\n  - Global multinationals often earn only a small share of sales from their home countries: Nokia, Nestle and Philips earn only 1-2 percent of total sales from their home countries.\n  - Indian information technology companies regularly generate up to 95 percent of their sales in Europe and the United States.\n  - Communications examples:\n    - When the first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858, it took more than two minutes to transmit a single character.\n    - Last year, the world clocked up 438 billion minutes of international long-distance telephone calls; Skype clocked up 145 billion minutes.\n    - Facebook connects 845 million people across the world.\n  - International organization membership comparisons:\n    - United Nations original membership in 1945 was 50 member states; today there are 193 member states.\n    - IMF original membership was 40; membership has increased to 188.\n- Core challenge identified:\n  - Reconciling the growing web of interconnections with fragmented global governance and ensuring cooperative governance to “make it better.”"
    },
    {
      "heading": "The importance of being good global citizens",
      "content": "- Central claim: the interconnected age imposes a core responsibility to act as global citizens and consider how actions affect others worldwide.\n- Major economic and social challenges highlighted:\n  - The inability of 75 million young people across the globe to find meaningful work.\n  - Rising inequality that strains societal compacts.\n  - A fear that the global economic engine will no longer deliver as it has in the past.\n- Practical obligations and priorities for global citizenship:\n  - Seek better living standards for all and an economic system where the fruits of growth are shared fairly among peoples and countries.\n  - Work to put extreme poverty behind us so the world’s poorest can join prosperity.\n  - Take urgent action to preserve the planet from self-induced destruction and address a rapidly warming climate.\n  - Strive for greater equity and equality of opportunity between men and women, rich and poor, young and old.\n  - Work for peace—globally, nationally, and personally.\n- Role of education:\n  - Education is presented as the first stepping stone to a better world, a bridge between peoples and generations, and the best investment in children everywhere.\n  - Kennedy School-specific fact: forty-three percent of graduates here today are non-U.S. nationals, hailing from 81 countries.\n- Role of the private sector and finance:\n  - Private enterprise has a vital role—investing, innovating, creating jobs and value—but must be imbued with civic duty and consider a broader spectrum of stakeholders (workers, suppliers, customers, the public, the environment).\n  - The financial sector’s pre-crisis pursuit of narrow gains is criticized for contributing to the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression; a localized bad decision can have globalized catastrophic consequences (example: Lehman Brothers).\n  - Increasing women’s participation at senior levels is offered as a cultural corrective: “having more women at the upper echelons of business and finance can go a long way toward changing this culture.”"
    },
    {
      "heading": "Personal story and leadership lessons",
      "content": "- Career path and experience highlights:\n  - Early transformative year at age 17 as an American Field Service scholar at Holton Arms in suburban Washington; motto: Inveniam viam aut faciam (“I shall find a way or make one”).\n  - Joined Baker and McKenzie in 1981; became chairman of the firm in 1999.\n  - Entered French public service in 2005 at the request of the Prime Minister; served as Minister of Trade, briefly in charge of Agriculture and Fisheries, then French Treasury Secretary and Finance Minister for a little over four years.\n  - “In May last year campaigned to be elected Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.”\n- Two major personal lessons passed to graduates:\n  - Be prepared for change, don’t take anything for granted, be willing to take risks; seek and fulfill your destiny.\n  - Always stand up for your values, principles, and ideals; let personal destiny overlap with the common destiny of humanity."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Calls to action and concluding exhortation",
      "content": "- Explicit calls to graduates and the global generation:\n  - Embrace global citizenship; reconnect interconnections with better cooperative governance.\n  - Apply talents, determination, and idealism to overcome economic insecurity and seize opportunities.\n  - When facing obstacles, persist—“when the world says ‘give up,’ don’t forget that hope whispers: ‘try one more time…’”\n- Final confidence: the speaker expresses full confidence in the graduating generation as the “first truly global generation” with a global challenge and opportunity to make the world a better place.\n\nGlobal Connections and Global Citizens—an Address to the Kennedy School. By Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund. Cambridge, May 23, 2012.\n\n---\n\n\n References\n\n- France and the IMF\n- United States and the IMF\n- Speeches\n- Christine Lagarde\n- PRESS CENTER\n- Webcast\n- https://www.imf.org/en/home\n\nSource: https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp052312"
    }
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    "Authors: Christine Lagarde",
    "Published: May 23, 2012",
    "The present era is characterized by unprecedented interconnections across people, goods, ideas, and communications.",
    "Key statistics and illustrative facts cited:",
    "Core challenge identified:",
    "Central claim: the interconnected age imposes a core responsibility to act as global citizens and consider how actions affect others worldwide.",
    "Major economic and social challenges highlighted:",
    "Practical obligations and priorities for global citizenship:",
    "Role of education:",
    "Role of the private sector and finance:",
    "Career path and experience highlights:",
    "Two major personal lessons passed to graduates:",
    "Explicit calls to graduates and the global generation:",
    "Final confidence: the speaker expresses full confidence in the graduating generation as the “first truly global generation” with a global challenge and opportunity to make the world a better place.",
    "[France and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/FRA/index.htm)",
    "[United States and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/USA/index.htm)",
    "[Speeches](https://www.imf.org/en/news/searchnews)",
    "[Christine Lagarde](https://www.imf.org/external/np/omd/bios/cl.htm)",
    "[PRESS CENTER](http://presscenter.imf.org/)",
    "[Webcast](https://www.imf.org/external/mmedia/view.aspx?vid=1653478576001)",
    "[https://www.imf.org/en/home](https://www.imf.org/en/home)"
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