The Sweeney Agency

About Stephen Lewis - Veteran Canadian Diplomat and Inspirational Speaker:

The former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis is the inaugural Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York.

Lewis is co-chair of the Leadership Programme Committee for the XVII International AIDS Conference, which will be held in Mexico City in August 2008. Mr. Lewis also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), and is the chair of the board of the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

Stephen Lewis’ work with the United Nations spans 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 Graça 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, 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 24 honorary degrees from Canadian universities. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and is a Senior Fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto.

Mr. Lewis was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest honor for lifetime achievement, in 2003. The same year, Maclean’s magazine honored 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.

During the course of his tenure as Special Envoy, Mr. Lewis received a number of prestigious awards. Amongst them are 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).

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.