5th Annual Ray Murphy Lecture
Jeff Raikes, Chief Executive Officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, leads the foundation's efforts to promote equity for all people around the world. He sets strategic priorities, monitors results, and facilitates relationships with key partners for all three of our program groups.
Before joining the foundation, Jeff was a member of Microsoft's senior leadership team, which sets overall strategy and direction for the company. Jeff was president of the Microsoft Business Division and oversaw the Information Worker, Server & Tools Business and Microsoft Business Solutions groups. He previously served as group vice president of the Worldwide Sales and Support Group, where he was responsible for providing strategic leadership for Microsoft's sales, marketing, and service initiatives. Before that, he served as senior vice president of Microsoft North America.
Jeff joined Microsoft in 1981 as a product manager and was instrumental in driving Microsoft's applications marketing strategy. Promoted to director of applications marketing in 1984, Raikes was the chief strategist behind the company's success in graphical applications for the Apple Macintosh and the Microsoft Windows operating system and the creation of the Microsoft Office suite of productivity applications. Before joining Microsoft, he was a software development manager at Apple Computer Inc.
Jeff, a Nebraska native, holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University. He and his wife, Tricia, have three children. They are founders of the Raikes Foundation and are active members of the United Way of King County, where they served as co-chairs of the 2006-2007 fundraising campaign. Jeff also serves on the board of directors for Costco Wholesale Corp. and the Microsoft Alumni Foundation, where he is chair of the board.
In June 2008, the Board of Regents at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln renamed the J.D. Edwards Honors Program in Computer Science and Management to the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management. Raikes, a longtime supporter of the highly selective and renowned school, was a part of the initial conceptualization and has served on the board since its inception in 2001.
Jeff will also be a key speaker in the Second Plenary of the conference.
OPENING PLENARY
Geraldine McAteer is CEO of West Belfast Partnership Board which works for the economic, social and physical regeneration of West Belfast and is a member of the Strategic Investment Board, tasked by the N Ireland Assembly with implementing the Investment Strategy for N Ireland. Geraldine is a member of the Belfast District Policing Partnership which promotes community co-operation with the police (PSNI) and holds PSNI to account. She was on the Strategic Review of Parading, chaired by Lord Paddy Ashdown in 2007; and as Chairperson of the North and West Belfast Health and Social Care Trust and a member of the Laganside Corporation.
A community activist, she is a founder member of West Belfast Festival and a key contributor to post conflict reconstruction initiatives including, the West Belfast/ Shankill Jobs Task force. A graduate in Economic and Social Sciences from Trinity College Dublin, Geraldine has been a guest lecturer on community development in Harvard. She has won a prestigious Aisling Award from Belfast Media Group and a Belfast Institute citation in 2005 for outstanding community endeavour and peace building.
Jackie Redpath is a community worker in the Shankill area of Belfast and is presently Chief Executive of the Greater Shankill Partnership; an organisation leading the regeneration of a disadvantaged area in Belfast. From 1989-1996 he was Director of the Greater Shankill Development Agency. During the 1980’s and early 1990’s he published and edited the Shankill People Newspaper.
Jackie Redpath has been a community worker in the Shankill since 1973, working for the Shankill Community Council and the Shankill Education Workshop. He was a founder member of a range of housing, economic and voluntary organisations including Shelter (N.I.), Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations and the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust (now CFNI).
He is presently Chairman of Springboard, and other community organisations and has significant international experience, particularly in the U.S.A. over the past twenty years. In 1995 Jackie was given the American Ireland Fund’s Leadership Award and has subsequently served on the Ireland Fund’s Advisory Panel.
Jackie received the M.B.E. in 1997 in recognition of his contribution to the community.
SECOND PLENARY
Astrid Bonfield was appointed Chief Executive of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund in October 2005. Astrid received a degree in Archaeology at Southampton University and subsequently a Masters and then a Doctorate of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She was Director of the Zimbabwean NGO Inter-Country Peoples' Aid (1997-2001) and then a Programme Development Specialist at the Bernard van Leer Foundation in the Netherlands (2001-2003) focusing on HIV/AIDS and growing up in indigenous societies. She joined the Fund from the Aga Khan Foundation (UK) where she was Director of Policy.
Since 1998, Piero Gastaldo has been associated with the Compagnia di San Paolo in Turin, Italy, one of the largest private law foundations in Europe, first as Director of Programs and currently as Secretary General. Prior to joining the Campagnia di San Paolo, Piero served as Commissioner/Deputy Mayor for the City of Turin, focusing on economic development, public utilities, European projects and International promotion. As a member of the Governing Board of the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam, Chairman of the Fondazione per l'Arte della Compagnia di San Paolo, and member of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, Piero and the Compagnia have played an integral role in creating the Turin International Strategic Plan that is linking and marketing economic specialties and competencies, programming governance and services on a regional basis, and cultivating the Turin metro region’s unique quality of life and place necessary to attract and keep "talent".
CLOSING PLENARY
On turning six, during World War II, Albie Sachs received a card from his father expressing the wish that he would grow up to be a soldier in the fight for liberation.
His career in human rights activism started at the age of seventeen, when as a second year law student at the University of Cape Town, he took part in the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. Three years later he attended the Congress of the People at Kliptown where the Freedom Charter was adopted. He started practice as an advocate at the Cape Bar aged 21. The bulk of his work involved defending people charged under racist statutes and repressive security laws. Many faced the death sentence. He himself was raided by the security police, subjected to banning orders restricting his movement and eventually placed in solitary confinement without trial for two prolonged spells of detention.
In 1966 he went into exile. After spending eleven years studying and teaching law in England he worked for a further eleven years in Mozambique as law professor and legal researcher. In 1988 he was blown up by a bomb placed in his car in Maputo by South African security agents, losing an arm and the sight of an eye.
During the 1980s working closely with Oliver Tambo, leader of the ANC in exile, he helped draft the organisation's Code of Conduct, as well as its statutes. After recovering from the bomb he devoted himself full-time to preparations for a new democratic Constitution for South Africa. In 1990 he returned home and as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the ANC took an active part in the negotiations which led to South Africa becoming a constitutional democracy. After the first democratic election in 1994 he was appointed by President Nelson Mandela to serve on the newly established Constitutional Court.
In addition to his work on the Court, he has travelled to many countries sharing South African experience in healing divided societies. He has also been engaged in the sphere of art and architecture, and played an active role in the development of the Constitutional Court building and its art collection on the site of the Old Fort Prison in Johannesburg. (Source: Constitutional Court of South Africa)