 Nadira, thank you very much. Welcome to what I think is a very exciting announcement. It's a project that we call Uplink, and in a week when we've seen calls for actions rather than words, this is a real action aimed at engaging the global public in what we think will be a very exciting platform. I'm delighted to introduce a stellar panel. We're joined by the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Amina Muhammad. We are joined by the founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, Professor Klaus Schwab, the Global Chief Executive Officer of Deloitte, Puneet Renjen, Mark Hawkins, Chief Financial Officer at Salesforce, Kate Benken, Vice President and lead of Microsoft Philanthropies, and also by my colleague Dominic Waray, who heads our Center for Global Public Goods at the World Economic Forum. We will be hearing from all of them on what they think this platform can deliver, and then we'll have a chance for questions at the end. It's being live-streamed, so welcome to everyone joining us online. I'm going to start by asking the Deputy Secretary General to come to the podium and share her vision and expectation for Uplink. Thank you very much, Professor Schwab, our partners, ladies and gentlemen and many friends in the room, welcome. This is going to be really exciting, and I've been waiting for this since Professor Schwab told me about it in South Africa a few weeks ago. It's been four years since we had the groundbreaking adoption of the SDGs and a few meters away right here in our halls, so this really is, for us, a memorable stock-taking event as well as we go four years into the SDGs, look at what we're birthing still after the goals. The past two days we've gathered again to take stock of the SDGs, and although we know we're not where we ought to be, we are in fact off track. With some of the more tragic news of global hunger being on the rise just when we thought that we had been able to do something about it, and almost half a billion people remaining in extreme poverty by 2030, we somehow just don't change the way that we are addressing some of these issues to get back on track. We've also heard, as we had the climate change summit, the greenhouse gas emissions continuing to increase. One thing that's abundantly clear is that a just globalisation that's really inclusive will need technology. The accelerating emergence of new technologies offers the potential to advance our SDGs and to meet the needs of a fast-changing world, but there are also risks on the horizon, and that must be navigated, particularly around labour dislocation and the exacerbation of existing inequalities. We're already seeing that many new technologies and services based on artificial intelligence mainly benefit those who have the most, leaving behind many who are already worse off and even putting them at more risk. With this in mind, the SG and I both echo the call from the UN High-Level Panel on Digital Corporation for innovations that are people-centred and aligned with the SDGs. So it's heartening to see that many young entrepreneurs are already finding new solutions to help address the world's increasingly complex challenges, going beyond borders into some of the exacerbating situations we have with conflict, migration, and climate change. Indeed, the world has got no shortage of creative ideas. In fact, in the last week, its young people have not only advocated for climate action, but they've also bought the solutions to the table. We still lack pathways that would enable us to go to scale and that would include youth in a really meaningful way as we scale up. The value of platforms that connects companies and citizens, young entrepreneurs, and technical partners, students, and venture firms, startups, and universities is now greater than ever. There's a huge momentum and a deep thirst for it. Initiatives as GenU, the UN Global Compact for Young, SDG Innovators Programme, Saps Next Gen, and now Uplink are particularly critical to support innovation for the SDGs, including leveraging our youth initiative and the private sector investment that we need so much of. With an initial pilot of Uplink to be ready in time for the United Nations Oceans Conference in 2020, your initiative offers a huge opportunity to support young people's engagement and it has been. Everybody speaks to the COP, the Ocean COP, nature-based solutions, a lot of excitement around this, more than a thousand four hundred voluntary commitments on ocean action that have been made since our 2017 conference. So innovation can further support this. We will need more initiatives like this, but today let's just celebrate that this is happening in GA Week to give us greater inspiration to do the things that we need to do at scale, more in local areas, and in people's lives, particularly the young ones. We look forward to that reality starting yesterday. Thank you. Deputy Secretary General, thank you very much. Now a chance to hear from Professor Klaus Schwab, the Founding Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. Deputy Secretary General, first I want to express our appreciation for the trust you are giving us and the confidence we all have that with this project we can make a real significant contribution with having two objectives in mind. So first what we have seen this week, multi-fold activities. We are walking the talk now, but maybe we walk not fast enough. So there are multiple initiatives and the question comes up, how can we integrate all those initiatives? How can we create a factor of aggregation and amplification and acceleration? But second, as you mentioned, how can we integrate all those young people who have great ideas, see startups, innovative universities and so on? How can we create a mass movement? So the project we present today, and I want to thank our technology partners, the project which we present today has actually as an objective. To be an instrument for mass integration, for crowd engagement. As you know the World Economic Forum is a multi-stakeholder corporation. For us this project is so significant because it integrates the missing dimension into the multi-stakeholder concept. The people on the ground who have great ideas, who would like to be not only enthusiastic, but to be co-owners and to be co-operators in the realization of sustainable development goals. So the idea is first to build such a platform and it will be operational in a first version in the next year and then during the next year to replicate this platform for all the other STGs. Thank you and I can tell you in the whole history of the forum, which is celebrating its 50th year next in 2020, I never felt so excited and I never was engaged so much into a project like this one. Thank you very much and bringing this initiative to life and powering it partners. One of which is Deloitte and lucky to be joined by Pinnip Rinjen, who is the Chief Executive Officer. Secretary General Professor Klaus, as you said it's really exciting to be here with you on this project and Deloitte is very honored to collaborate with you. Deloitte believes as an organization that business exists to do more than just earn a profit. In fact we believe passionately that business is a force of good and every day 300,000 Deloitte professionals do that in two ways. They uphold the public trust and they contribute their skills and capabilities to try and address some of the most difficult societal and client issues and we've learned a number of lessons along the way. One of the key lessons that we've learned particularly in recent times is that we can't do this alone. That is why a project like this is so important. And a great example of that in terms of collaborating, connecting for impact is the work that we do for the UN. We've been associated with the UN for about 25 years and we're very proud of it and it is a whole host of projects that we do for the UN both pro bono as well as paid and it has taught us the power of collaboration. That's why I'm so excited to be here to collaborate with WEF, to collaborate with Salesforce. Salesforce is a great partner of ours and also with Microsoft and others. To bring this to life as Professor Klaus said, this will be a great enabler to get the SDGs to come to fruit. And as has been said, we are committed as an organization to enable the SDGs to come to fruit but the path that we are on will take us to 2073. I'll be long retired and it will be my son's children probably that will take advantage of that. So to try and get it done quickly is where this project comes in, is to try and get in one technological solution the ability to get entrepreneurs, to get individuals working on some of the most vexing problems in society together to address them in a collaborative way. Deloitte is honored to be part of this team and I look forward to getting this done by WEF in January of this year. Thank you. Thank you for that. Also helping to make this happen, Salesforce. Very glad to be joined by Mark Hawkins, the Chief Financial Officer. Thank you Mark. It's such a pleasure here to be here today and talk on this very, very important and exciting topic, Deputy Secretary General, Professor Bruneet, it's an honor to be on stage with you and to talk on a topic I have tremendous passion for as does Salesforce. You know one of the things I have to say at Salesforce is we've always believed that business is one of the greatest platforms for change. It's always been at the beginning and the root of our thoughts of our company and this is a great opportunity today to begin this continued partnership in that way. The world needs action now, not someday, but now and the business leaders we have, we have this responsibility to the future to really take action and make traction and help reshape and rethink things in a way that will be more sustainable. We're excited to be a part of that and we're honored to be a part of that as well I must say. Salesforce has viewed the environment as a key stakeholder from the very beginning and we focused on creating a low-carbon future, we have a low-carbon product, we have a low-carbon orientation and this is one more opportunity to contribute and partner in a way that is so critical. And for example we just announced a sustainability cloud to help in another way where we bring technology to really help solve this equation and this incredibly important topic. I want to say that we're very aligned with the UK or this overall uplink vision which is to create a very globally impactful platform for action and for engagement for really engaging some of the new leaders, the new entrepreneurs, the new activists that really want to make a powerful difference and really help to address these 17 SDGs. We're very excited about that and to be partnering with them. I was talking to professor and we thought about how engagement is so important we've had the opportunity to engage but we've gone from an exclusive engagement with this capability to really an inclusive engagement around the world at a global global stage level and so that's super super exciting. It gives us a chance all of us to activate not just to contemplate but to activate in terms of making progress on these critical critical functionalities. So that is one of the things that I think is really really important. I also want to address a couple other comments. People ask like how does this fit into our strategy at Salesforce? Well the answer is sustainability and SDG topics have always been a part of our mindset as a company from the onset of the company in some form or another and this just feels so aligned to our strategy as a company and so we're very very excited to help on that. We expect uplink to help us make tangible progress and really clearing roadblocks that have been out there in terms of the ability to achieve these SDG goals and I always think about this the UN has put forward this amazing vision with these SDG goals and the vision is part way there but I think a pathway to the vision is when you really make traction and I feel like uplink is part of that pathway and I think that's exciting from my standpoint. So at the end of the day we think about this opportunity to partner we think about you know how we can support and what we can do because I I've been thinking a lot about this in terms of the topic of sustainability. I think everybody everywhere can walk out of every room and decide to activate and do something to help with sustainability. This happens to be something that we want to do and have passion for because it has so much global scale and leverage and it's so exciting and that way but I hope we're all making those choices to get the flywheel of progress going at the rate that we need to. We're you know we're incredibly inspired to watch this next generation of leaders entrepreneurs and activists really mobilize to save the world that is powerful and that's why we're proud to be a partner with the world economic forum we're proud to participate in this and to help develop a more inclusive vision of stakeholder engagement and generate impact on these SDGs. We at Salesforce our leadership team is committed we have a development team dedicated and that way to the uplink mission for achieving the SDG goals. It's exciting to have this opportunity to help design this platform that will help global digital communities scale and on that note I'd just like to thank you for being a part of it. And uplink also wouldn't be helping be happening without the help and collaboration of LinkedIn Microsoft very grateful for the presence of Kate Benkin. Kate could you come and join us she's vice president and lead of Microsoft Philanthropies. Thank you very much it is a pleasure to be here and Microsoft is really honored to be part of this initiative being launched today. Our partnership with the world economic forum and partners on uplink represents an incredible opportunity for Microsoft to participate in co-creating a platform that can really serve as a catalyst for engaging entrepreneurs around the world community leaders and most importantly the next generation of leaders to all help build solutions to support the sustainable development goals. We are excited to partner with the world economic forum and partners to bring the full digital capabilities of Microsoft to help expand the global engagement and awareness of the sustainable development goals and solutions. The sustainable development goals represent an effort to create a better and more sustainable future for us all and this is something that speaks directly to the mission of Microsoft to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. So we at Microsoft are committed to helping empower countries UN agencies and other organizations that are also focused on the SDGs. We believe in the powerful role that technology can play to transform the world transform the world and help create better opportunities in a more sustainable future for us all. So thanks very much for the opportunity. Lastly I'd like to invite my colleague Dominic Waray to come and say a few words on behalf of the forum on the unique aspects of this project. Thank you Adrian. Thank you esteemed panel members audience. How many of you out there are kind of interested in working on those solutions for the SDGs? You kind of got an idea. Think it's going to be pretty good. Very good. Lots of you are very good. And how many of you think God if only I could find a direct connection to those people with power and influence who can really change the gearing because my idea could really make something happen out there. There we go. You see that's why it's called uplink because it will connect you to those who actually are at the moment in charge of these big issues across those SDG topics whether it's food or forests or climate action or indeed the first one that we're going to start with oceans. Oceans has captured the public imagination of many and yet those who have the power and the influence know all about the problem. As you know you've read lots of reports you've seen lots of podcasts and videos and such and they will say things like this is what we need to do to stop illegal fishing. If only we could do this to make sure that marine protected areas are properly protected. If only we could scale up aquaculture in a sustainable way. Imagine if we could create those as use cases from those who can make those decisions but need solutions and push them out there globally through the great partnerships that we've just seen here. And you could reply and say this is how you would do it. This is how you would do it in my region. This is how you would do it in my country. This is how you would do it in my neighborhood. The connection is collapsed. Suddenly you can connect right up to those people who say that is a really good idea. And in this uplink network not only are those who have decision making capabilities across all of the organizations that we know and love who would love those new ideas but also people who are not so expert about the issue but do have a lot of money. Which is also a very, very interesting and attractive arena because there's lots of people who have a very strong desire to solve these problems and are fortunate to work in an organization or to personally have created some wealth but need your ideas. And how do you get those? You hang around in a tent like this. You hope to meet people. You'll go to conferences. Imagine a digital platform that can collapse that gap and allow you that access. That is the vision of uplink and we will be starting with the ocean agenda. We will have a first product of this at our annual meeting in Davos. If you want to go to the June ocean summit which the United Nations is putting on in Lisbon be there with your ideas because that is where the full uplink version for ocean will be launched. And about this time next year we hope to have five or six other SDGs up and running. So if this tent exists this time next year, SDG action, we will be delighted to kind of see how far we get with this project. So thank you very much indeed and thank you for all of the great partners on the panel and we're very, very excited about how this can open up the networks and delivery and solutions and effort of you and many others who can't even be here in New York today. Thank you. We started a delay. We have a very, very brief window for questions I'm afraid. I saw lots of hands go up when Dominic asked about ideas for what they'd like to see from uplink. One of those hands was from someone I recognize, Milati Wiesen who was also the co-chair of the World Economic Forum's Sustainable Development Impact Summit earlier this week. Milati, you lead a youth activist network aiming to ban plastic bags. Can you tell us what you'd like to see from uplink? Hi, everyone. My name is Milati. I'm 18 years old and I had the honor of being one of the co-chairs at the World Economic Forum's event the past two days but also for the last six years I've worked on banning single-use plastic bags in Bali and finally this summer we saw the ban come into play. So I'm very excited to see uplink up and coming but I think also one of the key things here is with our next project, Youth Topia, you know, really seeing how we can empower young people further having access to a platform like uplink would be super helpful because it opens doors to a larger network but also financial opportunities and also allows us to tap into this unplugged wealth of knowledge. So I think that that's my three expectations especially living in a world where you know it's becoming smaller with Wi-Fi and smartphone accesses but the urgency for action is happening at a much faster rate and so there is a huge need where we need to connect the dots and I think young people when we are at the forefront can really have this incredible momentum to create change happening. I think what my takeaway and my last comment would be it's been mentioned in Professor Schwab, you said it as well. This platform I really think needs to be done not for us but with us and I think that that's where you can count me and Youth Topia and the younger generation to really be the first ones to sign up and partner and collaborate as best as we can. Thank you. Manasi, thank you very much. I'm looking at my watch and seeing that the time has come to return the room to the UN SDG folks. I'm very sorry to cut people off if they had opportunities to ask questions. I know each of our panelists will want to speak to you individually if they're able after this panel but I hope you'll join me in thanking all of them for introducing uplink and be as excited as we are about the opportunity to see it in action in Davos next year and then at the Oceans Summit in June. So please join me in thanking all of our panelists and I hope you get a chance to follow up with them each individually after this session. Thank you very much.