past jack p blaney award recipients

Liz Lerman

Founding artistic director of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange
2009 blaney award recipient

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, educator, and speaker. Described by the Washington Post as “the source of an epochal revolution in the scope and purposes of dance art,” her dance/theatre works have been seen throughout the United States and abroad. She founded Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976 and has cultivated the company’s unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance. An interdisciplinary artist, dialogue-maker and visionary, Liz Lerman continues to influence and enrich the ways we think about the role of art in our lives.

Videos
Conversations, Questions and Freefall Dialogue, October 19, 2009

Mary Robinson

former president of ireland
2005 blaney award recipient

As Ireland’s first woman president, Mary Robinson famously put a symbolic light in her kitchen window, an old Irish custom to guide the way of strangers. It was her way of remembering millions of Irish emigrants, but it also symbolizes her personal international diplomacy, whether a courtesy meeting with a Sinn Féin MP or state visits to Rwanda and Somalia that brought world attention to the suffering in those countries.

Outstanding courage, leadership and commitment to dialogue characterized Mary Robinson’s Presidency of Ireland, her work as UN High Commissioner on Human Rights and currently, her work as Executive Director of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative in which she is successfully challenging nations to see—and act on—the human face of HIV/Aids and other serious human rights concerns.

Videos
Slideshow presentation narrated by Kevin Evans
Corporate Responsibility and the Right to Health: A Dialogue with Mary Robinson
The Power of Dialogue: Award Luncheon Address by Mary Robinson

Articles on Mary Robinson's Work
Business Skills are needed to beat Aids in Africa, Financial Times, March 9, 2005
Working with Business Leaders to Strengthen the Right to Health and Combat HIV/AIDS, Realizing Rights, November 4, 2004

Maurice Strong

leading international environmentalist
2002 blaney award recipient

Canadian Maurice Strong, special advisor to the secretary-general of the United Nations, has made extraordinary contributions to the world of public affairs and business. His work for the first United Nations conference on The Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, of which he was secretary-general, provided the foundation for all subsequent international environmental negotiations. For three decades, he has challenged all nations to work together to overcome global environmental threats. The complexity of creating this world dialogue on the survival of the Earth and the search to find practical solutions cannot be underestimated. It is a tribute to Maurice Strong’s insight and consummate skill and to his persistence and faith in humanity that the dialogue continues today.

Peace, Security and Sustainability
There is a growing body of evidence as to the relationship of sustainable development, persistent poverty and sustainable peace and security.

The horrendous attacks of September 11, 2001 on the Pentagon in Washington and the World Trade Center in New York, shocked us into realizing the profound gaps in understanding, knowledge and mutual trust which exist between peoples of different cultures, races and religions. These gaps are, in many cases, reinforced by economic disparities, historical enmities, territorial rivalries and competition for scarce land resources. They are exacerbated, too, by the perception by developing countries that the current global power structure and processes of globalization disproportionately benefit the more industrialized countries to the detriment of developing countries’ interests.

This underscores the need to give new impetus to the processes of international co-operation, which offer the only means of dealing effectively with the whole complex of issues through which we are shaping the human future.

—MAURICE STRONG

Maurice Strong's acceptance speech