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August 21, 2007
A Voice for Good Is Silenced
Robert Davies died on Saturday in London of cancer after a hard seven month fight. As founder and chief executive of the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF), under the auspices of the Prince of Wales, Robert sought to catalyze the private sector to address societal issues, in partnership with civil society, government and communities. He was well ahead of his time in recognizing the global reach, the marketing expertise, the technological prowess, the supply chain leverage and financial capacity of companies, to do good while doing well. He traveled relentlessly, pushing himself through jet lag, spreading his message of sustainable development to executives, addressing issues as diverse as fair trade commodity pricing, advertising to children and access to credit for low income entrepreneurs. He was pragmatic and visionary, able to bridge between constituencies by power of personality and intellect. He was also one of my closest friends.
Robert believed in the possibility of transformation through the world’s youth. Two of the IBLF initiatives focused on youth careers in the hotel industry and another to get disadvantaged young people job opportunities in the developing world. He was an early supporter of Bunker Roy, whose Barefoot Colleges in India have educated 20,000 young women in English and mathematics, enabling them to break the cycle of poverty. Robert was so proud to take my family out to rural Rajastan over Christmas to show us young girls studying at a Barefoot College under solar lanterns after tending their small herds of goats during the day.
He was a true entrepreneur, with the instincts of a Wall Street trader. When we were having initial reservations about the first IBLF dinner in New York City, he told me that he had started the IBLF from nothing and that we were going to succeed by securing participants one at a time. Of course, as usual, Robert was right; the dinner was a hit. He was a consummate networker. He could enter a social gathering of complete strangers and make himself at home. He had a wide array of friends from the World Economic Forum, his IBLF board, and from civil society. He was respected and admired as a person who could bridge all of these worlds. He was a true citizen of the world, who was as comfortable in Mumbai or rural Jordan as in London and New York City. He took great interest in my business, giving me valuable advice about our work for clients in obesity prevention, environment and technology. He was unafraid of change, embracing blogging avidly last summer.
He loved the outdoors and was especially happy at our home in Long Island. He used to wake up to the “dawn chorus” of birds singing at first light. He would run every day to stay fit and to see his surroundings. I have a particularly vivid image of him after a run in Central Park in New York City, bubbling with enthusiasm about the possibility of a congestion charge similar to London so that traffic could be eased. Even to the end, Robert was committed to physical fitness, walking an hour a day in a park near his home, getting the air into his lungs, never allowing his condition to change his essential optimism.
He was a true friend…in fact, he always began our phone conversations with the descriptor, “Richard, my friend.” We talked about business affairs, our love lives, our ambitions and especially about current events. To pick his brain was a daily treat; he was an omnivore, from mainstream media to insights garnered from his many friends, through the cell phone always in his ear. He was especially devoted to the young daughter of mutual friend Alexis St. James and to my youngest daughter, Amanda, making special calls while globe-trotting to stay in touch with them, not just their parents. On our recent family trip to India with the families of two other IBLF members, Robert took the initiative to put out a daily newspaper, based on the observations of the children on the journey. The gift of traveling with him for those two weeks, rocking up the steep hill on an elephant to see the Amber Palace in Jaipur, to go for drinks at the Maharana’s residence in Udaipur, to go for a bike ride in the hills near Devi Gaur and stop to play cricket with the locals, are memories that will never fade.
The IBLF will go on from strength to strength because it is in a unique position in helping business to cure the ills of the world, the true legacy of this great man. I quote from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, “Social consumption is called wretchedness. People die as well when undermined as when struck by lightning….that to think before all of the disinherited and sorrowful classes, to relieve, ventilate, enlighten and love them, to magnificently enlarge their horizon, to lavish upon them education in every shape, to offer them the example of labor and never that of indolence…to limit poverty without limiting wealth…to create a hundred hands to stretch out to all sides to the crushed and the weak, to employ the collective power in opening workshops for every arm, schools for every aptitude and laboratories for every intellect…to proportion the enjoyment to the effort and the satisfaction to the wants…If nature is called providence, society ought to call itself foresight…The ideal is frightful to look on thus lost in the depths, small, isolated, imperceptible and brilliant, but surrounded by all those great black ménages monstrously collected around it; for all that, though, it is in no more danger than a star in the yawning throat of the clouds.” Robert, we will keep your promises. God speed my good friend.
Posted by Edelman at August 21, 2007 11:46 AM
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Comments
Robert was always a nice person. He was always polite and cheery. Going with him to India was a great pleasure and I'm sure it would not have been the same trip without him. He made the trip unforgettable, not just by taking us to the Taj Mahal, and booking us for the most amazing hotels I have ever been to, but making it fun. On the second day, he called me, and two other girls from different families that were on this trip with us. He said that he wanted to write a newspaper with our help. He would ask us questions about India that made me think. He also asked us about the landmarks and I came up with this well thought up announcement, "green parrots just rock!", for there were green parrots flying around Hymanyanas tomb we had seen that day. I started turning red at the rather stupid statement I had just declared, but he smiled at me and said he would definitely add that in the paper. Later in the trip, he took us to the barefoot college. We saw a puppet show, performed by the staff at the barefoot college, toured around the campus, and later, got to go to a class with the girls. There were about ten girls there, from 7-12 all wanting to have an education. They sung us a song in Hindi and they wanted us to sing a song for them. Me, and two other girls had terrible cases of stage fright. We did not know this was going to happen so we had no idea what to sing. Somehow we came up with the bright idea of twinkle twinkle little star. We sung it, and the girls clapped. After that, thye all wanted to shake our hands. As we were getting in our cars, they would run up to the open car windows and we would shake their hands through that. It was a truly magical experience, and arranged by someone who's kindness, good character, and faith in good, made the whole world seem warmer. Robert Davies, we will miss you.
Posted by: Amanda Edelman at August 22, 2007 9:50 PM
I met Robert most recently at an IBLF event in Kew, when it was quite clear that the cancer was taking hold. But Robert's performance on that night was an astonishing Tour de Force, treating his 'condition' with humor, tinged with great sensitivity - but demonstrating, above all, that he was absolutely determined to carry on. It seemed to me that he felt that his job was still not done - his energy was simply amazing - and that he remained as determined as ever to deliver the vision in which he so passionately believed.
I did not know Robert by any means as well as Richard - but, if that one evening in South West London was anything to go by, he was indeed a remarkable man. His legacy - a firm and unshakable belief in the need for companies to 'do good' and to 'be responsible' - and his vision will, in years to come, be seen as one of those that helped re-shape our business world, and rightly so.
Posted by: Robert Phillips at August 23, 2007 2:52 AM
Robert invited me to speak on a panel of multi-national organizations and companies at Kew Gardens in London on July 5, in furtherance of his passion for increased connectivity between social ills and the potential to smartly address them by partnering business with civil society organizations. He had been working with the Women's Housing & Economic Development Corp (WHEDCo) in the Bronx for two years, reaching the inevitable conclusion that poverty was not confined solely to the developing world. We honored him at our November 2006 benefit in Manhattan where he spoke eloquently about poverty in the United States, and in New York City. At a dinner in New York on July 10, just weeks before his death, Robert sought to launch an IBLF North America Initiative. His goal was to locate it in the Bronx, at WHEDCo. He was convinced that he would be successful in garnering corporate support for partnerships in the Bronx in the same way he had accomplished it around the globe. His enthusiasm was infectious and I began to believe that maybe- just maybe- he might be right. His loss to me, to WHEDCo, and to the possibility of creating sustainable change for thousands of low income families in the Bronx- the poorest urban county in the United States- is immense. I hope that his transatlantic vision will become yet another piece of his remarkable legacy.
Posted by: Nancy Biberman at August 29, 2007 5:53 PM