The Sweeney Agency

About Stephen Lewis - Celebrated Humanitarian and Former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa:

Stephen Lewis is Co-Founder and Co-Director of AIDS-Free World, a new international AIDS advocacy organization, based in the United States. He is Chair of the board of the Stephen Lewis Foundation in Canada and he is a Professor in global health in the Faculty of Social Sciences at McMaster University. Mr. Lewis also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Clinton Health Access Initiative and of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). He is an inspiring speaker.

Stephen Lewis' work with the United Nations spanned more than two decades. He was the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from June 2001 until the end of 2006. From 1995 to 1999, Mr. Lewis was Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF at the organization's global headquarters in New York.

In 1997, in addition to his work at UNICEF, Mr. Lewis was appointed by the Organization of African Unity to a Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the Genocide in Rwanda. The 'Rwanda Report' was issued in June of 2000.

In 1993, Mr. Lewis became coordinator for the international study -- known as the Graca Machel study -- on the Consequences of Armed Conflict on Children. The report was tabled in the United Nations in 1996.

From 1984 through 1988, Stephen Lewis was Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations. In this capacity, he chaired the Committee that drafted the Five-Year UN Programme on African Economic Recovery. He also chaired the first International Conference on Climate Change, in 1988, which drew up the first comprehensive policy on global warming.

From 1970-1978, Mr. Lewis was leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party, during which time he became leader of the Official Opposition.

Mr. Lewis holds 30 honorary degrees from Canadian universities. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Mr. Lewis was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest honour for lifetime achievement, in 2003. The same year, Maclean's magazine honoured Mr. Lewis as their inaugural Canadian of the Year. In April 2005, TIME magazine listed Stephen Lewis as one of the '100 most influential people in the world'. In 2007, King Letsie III, monarch of the Kingdom of Lesotho (a small mountainous country in Southern Africa) invested Mr. Lewis as Knight Commander of the Most Dignified Order of Moshoeshoe. The order is named for the founder of Lesotho; the knighthood is the country's highest honour. In 2009, Mr. Lewis was named by Reader's Digest as the fourth most trusted Canadian.

During the course of his tenure as Special Envoy, Mr. Lewis received a number of prestigious awards. Amongst them are the Jonathan Mann Health and Human Rights Award from the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care (2003); the Pearson Peace Medal, awarded by the United Nations Association in Canada to celebrate outstanding achievement in the field of international service and understanding (2004); the International Council of Nurses'Health and Human Rights Award, awarded quadrennially for outstanding contributions to international health and human rights (2005); the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Leadership Award, from the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas (2006); the Harry Jerome President's Award from the Black Business and Professional Association in Toronto (2006); and the William G. Davis Children's Champion Award, Peel Children's Aid Foundation, Mississauga (2006); and the Health and Human Rights Award from the Doctors of the World, USA (2007).

Stephen Lewis' best-selling book, Race Against Time was a finalist for the Writers' Trust Award and the Trillium Book Award. It won the Canadian Booksellers Association's Libris Award for non-fiction book of the year, and Mr. Lewis was named the CBA's Author of the Year for 2005.

What Stephen Lewis Talks About:

Stephen Lewis' topic areas include:

• Education
• Health Care
• Globalization
• Philanthropy
• Human Resources /Human Development
• Community-building / Peace issues
• International issues/World Affairs
• Human Rights
• Leadership
• Ethics

Some sample titles from Stephen Lewis' Presentations:

Education: The World's Greatest Force for Good
Stephen Lewis explores the way in which education, throughout the world, transforms the lives children lead, and is perhaps the greatest, unacknowledged instrument we have for dramatic social change.

Global Issues - Local Impact
Universities are, first and foremost, centers of academic excellence and academic inquiry. But if they are to be relevant to the modern world, they must understand the nature of community, especially the community of which they are a part, and understand, increasingly, that they have obligations to the wider world as well. Stephen Lewis explores both those themes, drawing on personal experience to make his case.

Education at the crossroads: Diversity as the touchstone
Stephen Lewis argues that the nature of society in 2005 requires that diversity be seen as the centerpiece of the educational experience. Anything less than that, and learning is fatally flawed.

Public Health is everywhere under siege
Globalization has succeeded in compromising the social sectors in general and health in particular. Nor is the situation confined to industrial countries alone; the developing world is hurting, and hurting badly. If the principles of public health are to be rescued in this world, radical changes will be required.

Global Health: Hope or Deterioration?
Mr. Lewis addresses the growing disparity in the standard of health between the developed and developing countries. He will take a hard look at the emergence and re-emergence of communicable diseases, the struggle for pharmaceuticals at low cost, the absence of health professionals, the question of resources, and the overall efforts of impoverished societies to reach the admirable levels of health which characterize Canada and the United States.

Human Development, Career Development and Training: Foundations for a Better World
Stephen Lewis draws on his careers in politics, diplomacy and multi-lateralism to demonstrate the principle and practice of self-development. He will attempt to demonstrate that the culture of the work-place is every bit as important to self-development as the capacity of individuals. Mr. Lewis takes a somewhat heretical view, believing that professional development, particularly the qualities of innovation and leadership, are influenced most profoundly by the working environment, and not by numbers of courses taken or training received. The former is fundamental; the latter is peripheral.

Community-Building
The world is falling apart: what role civil society? Mr. Lewis draws upon his extensive international experience to illustrate the importance of an active civil society in creating a safer, more peaceful world.

The Power of Community: Creating Positive Environments
Mr. Lewis speaks on the importance of community in the lives of children, focusing on leadership, accountability, health and education in both a national and international context.

Where in the World is the World Headed?
Mr. Lewis will make a panoramic sweep of international affairs, concentrating, especially, on globalization, conflict, poverty, disease and the place of corporate social responsibility in all of it.

Human Rights Gone Wrong: A pattern of world indifference
Stephen Lewis examines the problem from global and local perspectives, with an emphasis on social and economic rights.