His Holiness the Dalai Lama Meets with North American Tibetan Professionals Saturday, 10 October 2009, 1:37 p.m.
New York: The
North American Tibetan Professionals Conference, which concluded
successfully on Wednesday, 7 October, was graced by His Holiness the
Dalai Lama. In his keynote address delivered on Monday, 5
October, His Holiness applauded the initiative of gathering all the
Tibetan professionals together and urged the Tibetan professionals to
come out with the concrete suggestions to improve education and career
development initiatives within the Tibetan community in exile. His
Holiness also urged the professionals to shoulder more responsibilities
within the community. Richard Gere, an ardent supporter and
friend of Tibet, also addressed the conference during the inaugural
session. In his address, Richard Gere urged the Tibetan professionals
to bring a new paradigm to the Tibet movement with their active and
skillful participation. He said that the Tibetan professionals are in
a position to make a real difference in terms of capacity building as
well as in social and economic development within the community both in
and outside of Tibet. During the 3-day conference, the
participants discussed four broad issues: (i) Networking of the Tibetan
professionals; (ii) Establishing a resource base to nurture future
Tibetan professionals; (iii) Role of Tibetan professionals in
strengthening the community and (iv) Connecting the Tibetan
professionals to contemporary Tibet.The speakers at the
conference included Dr. Tsewang Ngodup, a faculty physician at Hennepin
County Medical Center in Minneapolis; Tsewang Namgyal, an investment
banker who graduated from the prestigious Thunderbird School of Global
Management in Arizona; Kaydor Aukatsang, the United States
representative of the Brazilian environmental organisation Instituto
Terra; Yodon Thonden, lawyer and Director of the New York based Isdell
Foundation; Nima Dorjee, a professional engineer based in Canada;
Losang Rabgey, Executive Director of Machik non-profit organisation;
and Dicki Chhoyang, a Montreal based urban planner and a former
representative of Trace Foundation in Amdo (Tibet). Other
speakers and plenary moderators were Professor Nawang Phuntsog of
California State University at Fullerton; Lobsang Sangay, a senior
fellow at Harvard Law School; Sonam Topgyal, a senior financial analyst
at Stanford University; and Tashi Rabgey, Lecturer and Founding
Director of the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program as well as
Co-Director of the Tibet Center at the University of Virginia. Tenzin
Kelsang Choephel said of the conference, “The event really marks a
historical moment in the diaspora community and I’m excited by the
energy and momentum generated the conference.” Another participant,
Thondup Tsering, said, “Personally it was very uplifting to see so many
bright young Tibetan professionals from all over the US and Canada.
Everyone was there because they cared about enriching our community and
being a vital part of our struggle. I was inspired and encouraged by
the quality of the speakers and the participants.”The
conference recommendations included, among others, strengthening the
existing network of the Tibetan professionals in North America,
establishing smaller networks within individual professional fields,
instituting a volunteer corps of the professionals to work in the
Tibetan communities in India and Nepal, and strengthening and sharing
existing databases of Tibetan professionals.The conference also
formed an ad hoc committee to draft a proposal to be submitted to the
Central Tibetan Administration and the Delhi based non-profit
Empowering the Vision to work out a clear structure and mechanism to
coordinate the functioning of various Tibetan professional networks and
their interplay with existing Tibetan community organisations.The
conference was attended by 150 Tibetan professionals belonging to 18
different broad-base professional backgrounds, such as Academic &
Research; Business & Finance; Medicine & Health; Information
Technology; Law & Governance; Philanthropy & International
Development; Architecture & Engineering; Social Policy and
Community Service; Education, Library Science and Museum etc. They
came from 21 states in the United States and 3 provinces in Canada. The conference was organised by the Office of Tibet, New York. –Report filed by Mr Tsewang Phuntsok, Liaison Officer, Latin America
