IAF Talk FNF - International Academy for Leadership (IAF)

In today's episode of IAF TALK Bettina Solinger has gathered the experts from our seminar "The Future of Market Economy" around a big table in the Academy to have an intensive talk about markets and the environment, and to tackle some important questions: why property rights are important for innovation, why some ideas that are brilliant on the paper but won't work in reality, how developing countries are dealing with climate change and, of course, if the economy is actually able to protect the environment.

In this talk we are meeting Arpita Nepal, Rainer Heufers, Dr Tom G. Palmer and Prof. Dr Andrew Morriss who are not only bringing lots of expertise to the table but also present different perspectives from their experiences. We are learning from many practical examples from around the world why the protection of the environment and fighting climate change is such a complex task - and why we are still optimistic.

After finishing a 12 day seminar at the IAF that has looked into entrepreneurship with more than 25 participants from all around the world and we will discuss why entrepreneurship in general matters, what we have learned throughout the seminar about entrepreneurship in specific countries. And then thirdly, what policymakers can do to boost and accelerate entrepreneurship in their respective countries.

In this episode of IAF TALK we going to meet Jyoti Sachavirawong and Julian Kirchherr.

Julian works as a manager in the consulting industry. He is also associated with Utrecht University in the Netherlands where he works as a researcher, and in both of these jobs he does a lot of work together with start-ups but also with policymakers to boost entrepreneurship. So this is very much a topic he is very passionate about.

Jyoti is a business consultant, and I has been working on advising companies on how they can enter a market. She provides advice on marketing and communication strategy. But prior to that, she was fortunate enough to have had spent several years in the liberal family working with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation office initially in Malaysia, working on women empowerment issues, and subsequently moving on to work at the regional level on economic freedom and human rights.

Today’s episode is very special – not only because Education is a tremendously important aspect for every person’s development towards self-determination, prosperity and happiness in live but also because we would like to commemorate the late Dr Stefan Melnik who has contributed immensely to IAF, in fact he helped build and develop IAF to where it is today. Education has always been a theme very close to his heart. And this is why we would like to share with you a talk of four wonderful experts on Education that we recorded a few years back:

In this episode we are meeting Professor James Tooley, who is best known for his work on low cost private education. He has worked in various parts of the world bringing together insights from his research and has published on low cost private education in – amongst others - the book “The beautiful tree”. Ekta Sodha actually is an entrepreneur who is active in the field of education, an edu-preneur perhaps, who runs a number of low-cost private schools in India. Manali Shah, who is also a facilitator at IAF and has worked for the CCS, the Center for Civil Society, in Delhi, who actually pioneered in India the idea of voucherizing the school system. And of course Dr. Stefan Melnik who has been an independent consultant specialising in training programmes for executives. He designed and directed workshops on human rights, the market economy, environmental issues, basics of liberalism, secularism and of course education reform – often but not exclusively at IAF. Stefan also moderated this discussion.

“All politics is local” is a prevailing phrase – not only in U.S. politics. Apart from the strategic meaning it implies a liberal view of politics – starting off from the individual, who should be instrumental in all decisions that affect their life. Looking for solutions at the local level, involving responsible individuals and making use of decentralised local competences and knowledge are important principles to get local government politics close to citizens, encourage their participation, communicate with them more effectively and make government more efficient. However, in reality local politicians around the world are facing huge challenges to implement such principles due to administrative, legal, financial, political and practical problems. 

In this episode of IAF TALK we are meeting Petra Franke and Kylie Hatton who facilitated our seminar on "Local Politics and Citizen's Participation" and share the insights and key learnings from the seminar.

For liberals private property is a defining characteristic of a free society. In our seminar "Liberal, Property and the Environment" we explored how the concept of private property might conceivably be a solution to problems as diverse as pollution, land degradation, overfishing, deforestation, species extinction and waste. Can enforcement of robust property rights help to protect the environment, rehabilitate areas that have suffered considerable damage, and promote the aim of achieving sustainability in the use of natural resources? Would the poor and disadvantaged sections of society stand to benefit? To what extent would successful “green” and “blue” growth policies benefit from efforts to apply and foster a property rights-based approach to economic growth and well-being?

In this episode we will meet Dr. Emmanuel Martin, an Economist from France, and Sven Gerst, a PhD Student in Political Philosophy at the Department of Political Economy at King's College London, who facilitated this seminar and who will not only give us an insight into this important topic but also share their impressions of a very special excursion with eye-opening experiences and the key learnings from this seminar.

In a world dominated by competing messages, brands and ideas - how will your message resonate with your voters or supporters? Why is it so important to have a clear communication strategy and how can you actually prepare for communication in a crisis?

In this episode we are meeting Kylie Hatton from South Africa and Wulf Pabst from Germany, both long standing experts on communication and strategy as well as politics, who facilitate our seminar on “Communication: Strategy and Skills” and share their key take-aways and main learnings from the seminar.