 Hi, everybody. Welcome to what is going to be a really exciting and fascinating session. We have a really, really exciting event plan today on there's so many important topics at Davos, but this is perhaps one of the most important, which is how do we tackle the urban and rural divide? Pressing question that a lot of us are thinking about. We have an amazing set of guests and as well as people calling in all over the world. The objective of this session, shaping Davos, is to really get to some of the solutions and talk to people who are practitioners and doing this work in their communities in a variety of different capacities. So we're going to use a unique format where we'll hear from our panelists here in the room, as well as some of our guests remotely and switch back and forth. We have people calling in from all over the world. And we're going to take your questions at the end. So please use the hashtag shaping Davos on Twitter. I'll try to take those as well as we have an intimate room, so feel free to just raise your hand and take questions as well. So with that, we'll get going. And I'm very excited about this. So let me introduce our panelists to get going. Starting on my left, we have Governor John Hickenlooper, who's the governor of Colorado. And we just had a great conversation about the fact that he's also a brewer. Started his career as an entrepreneur, mayor of Denver before becoming the governor of Colorado. We're excited to have him here. We have Lindyway Mazubucco, who is an amazing political figure from South Africa who's been doing amazing work to try to get more women elected to office. So we're excited to hear more about that today. And then let's turn to our guests all over the world. Hopefully our technology will hold out. First off, I want to introduce from Abuja, Dr. Ayuad Alakija. Hi, how are you? And she's based in Abuja. She's a social justice activist, the chief humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria. Very excited to hear from her. Second, we're going to introduce Nathan Davos, who's based in Portland, Maine. Hi, Nathan. Hello. How are you? He's 24 years old, went to Bates, and he's part of the Maine Global Shapers Club. And he's been doing a lot to promote diversity in Maine. So we're excited to get him into the conversation. Third, Lumiere Le Pré, who's based in Paris. Lumiere? Hi. How are you? Good, how are you? She grew up in a rural community, and she's been working on advocacy for young people in rural areas in France and as a filmmaker. And then finally, Joanna Hayek, who's based in Beirut. Joanna? Hello? Hi, how are you? Good, how are you? And Joanna is the co-founder of Vanina, a fashion company in Lebanon that tries to use fashion for community development. And she's been very, very active on the refugee crisis. So we're excited to have a really robust group. And I want to get this going, Governor, with you. You are the governor of Colorado, which is probably very emblematic of the urban rural divide. You have areas like Denver, which are very liberal-leaning and millennial-friendly cities, and then the rest of the state, which there's areas which are exactly the opposite, which lean conservative. So talk about how you, as governor, have bridged that divide in your own strategy to speak to everybody in your state. Well, certainly that divide is real, and it's been growing for probably better than 20 or 30 years. And part of it is just the changing economy, the increasing use of technology, accelerating urbanization people attracted to cities. There's an awful lot of people in rural Colorado and rural America, I think, many parts of the world that feel they're being left behind, and not getting the same opportunities and chances. And they feel they're not respected. And so when I first got elected in 2010 as governor, we went around the state. We called it the bottom-up economic development process. We went to all 64 counties. And really, listen, said, what do you imagine for your economy? What kinds of skills will you need? How can we help you with education or tax incentives? What are the things we can do so that you can have a future that you imagine and desire? And that was a great step in really, A, showing respect, and really trying to listen, not telling them what we thought was good for them, but really to listen. And now, the last several years, we're really beginning to map out how do we get the gigabit economy? How do we get high-speed, redundant internet into every one of these rural communities in every single home, similar to what, in the United States, we had the rural electrification program of the late 1930s, where it was decided as a nation that everyone needed to have electricity. So that effort of getting technology out there, we're doing tax incentives. We have a thing called Jumpstart that if small entrepreneurs, small businesses, instead of just like everyone else, starting their business in the big city, if they're willing to go out to one of our rural areas and they work with one of the local community colleges or schools out there, they don't pay taxes for five years. And I mean, no taxes to the state, no payroll, no property taxes, no sales tax, nothing. And we're beginning to see that we're attracting some really talented entrepreneurs who, lo and behold, once you have internet and you have some financial incentive, they actually like living in a smaller town. I wanna get to our other panelists, but a quick question to follow up. Mike did a survey after the election and we found that 25% of folks in rural areas don't have Wi-Fi access, so exactly speaking to the problem that you talked about. But we've also heard a lot here in Davis about how the internet is pulling us apart and social media feeds are maybe not necessarily bringing us together and bridging the divide, but making us sort of more entrenched in our liberal or conservative ideological viewpoints. Any response to that? Well, I think the media is exaggerating and amplifying the social divides that are happening anyway for oftentimes for different reasons. And I think that in many cases, there were conversations that never got fixed, finished. In the United States, as we became much more liberal and urban areas, welcomed people from all nationalities, all kinds of backgrounds, every skin color you could imagine. Some people who were part of the previous, you know, the system of responsibility who were mostly white males were resentful and we kind of went past that without finishing the conversation. And I think social media and the technology, I mean, the amplification of that takes those, you know, I'd say resentments for many people. It's not that big a deal. They just bothers them a little bit and suddenly now they're hearing hate and they're hearing about that other side is awful and there's all these reasons. Again, I think the most important thing, social media can be used to listen as well as to broadcast. And I think we've got to do a little more listening. So we'll get more into that and I'm sure we'll have questions from the audience on that topic. But first, let's hear a little bit from a few folks who are remote. Lumiere, why don't we start with you? You know, you're working on developing a new political understanding. Would love to hear about your research. Tell folks about what you're learning. Sure. So what we've been doing is mostly just asking youth, what does it feel like to grow up in a rural community in 2016 and now 17? And we've had really interesting responses. What we've heard is not surprisingly that economic capital is at the core of it. A lot of hardships come from lack of economic capital and if people had more money, they might be happier in the community. There's also a lot of talk about inclusion. These people want to feel included. They don't want to feel left behind. And they have a lot of ideas about their own communities. They know what would be better and they really want to change it. They just need a little help from the States and also from private enterprise. And I think overall what we're seeing is very, it's very positive. It's very encouraging. It's a lot of people who feel frustrated at the moment but have a lot to offer and have a lot of value and we need to remind them that there is value in those spaces and that they're worthy and they can do stuff if they get a little extra help. Nathan, you're working in Portland to bridge racial discrimination and bring people together. Talk a little bit about your own learnings and how it plays into the urban rural divide question. Yeah, so here with the Portland Hub, we've been working on a project called High Neighbor. And it's been focused around bringing people together around shared experience and self-work. And a big part of that is sharing a space that's not predominantly the majority space within our own community. So we focused on minority businesses and creating an environment where people would feel welcome. And at the base of that is sharing a family style meal because who doesn't like to eat? And so we wanted to bring people together to bring story and how they interact within our own community. And a lot of folks don't know that. It's locked in imagination and assumption and people need to know what types of interactions are happening on a day-to-day basis. And so that's how we kind of attacked it here. And it's been very successful. Great, thank you. Lynn Dewey, we were talking backstage. I mean, you have done just incredible work in South Africa as a member of parliament and beyond trying to get more diversity and representation in government. One of the debates we were having backstage is whether or not social change is happening so quickly that part of this divide between rural and urban spaces is because folks are having a hard time keeping up and in particular white men. Talk a little bit about that. Do you agree with that? And what have you seen in your own work, working on diversity issues and how that speaks to this divide? Yeah, I come from an interesting country where we experience some of the racial tensions that you experience in the United States as well as the rural urban tensions that exist throughout the rest of the African continent. And all of those things are boiled down to the political debate and the sense that people have that they have a voice or that they're a herd and so on. What's interesting in Africa is that urban voters and rural voters, as is the case in the global north, vote very differently. Urban voters have been at the forefront of actually bringing change, changing governments from the parties of liberation in countries like Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria to opposition parties, new modern political parties that address issues around corruption, maladministration, job creation and so forth. And that transformation is being driven by the cities where we found that rural voters have kept to their traditional support of the parties of liberation. And so there is an incredible difference in the way that voters in the rural and urban space in Africa perceive politics, engage with politicians and think about their roles in terms of electing government. What I worry about is that that division will increasingly intensify and over time, urban voters who have access to media, who have access to platforms that can amplify their voices will eventually become a priority and will leave rural voters behind and we will start to experience some of the backlash that you are experiencing up here in the global north. And so we actually have a responsibility to try and feature proof ourselves against that very thing, leaving people behind, leaving them out of the debate, not giving them platforms to say how they feel and express their own frustrations about the slow pace of development, lack of access to economic opportunities and so forth. Which I think are some of the very real rural challenges, I think, that are faced in countries like the United States and parts of Europe, especially in the UK. So I think the duty of any public leader who wants to foster diversity and openness and a sense of tolerance, these liberal values that we all subscribe to, has to be to allow space for people we don't agree with and people we don't really understand in an open and open-hearted way to engage in the public discourse, to have their say, to have platforms and to be able to engage and tell us their own story in their own way rather than dictating from the cities, which are places of rapid transformation, places of rapid prosperity building and mechanization and so forth, education, all the tools of prosperity are in cities and cities are growing exponentially. But that doesn't mean we must leave the rural people and our countries behind because we may face a backlash likewise over time. Powerful. So we'll get into that in just a minute, but I want to now turn to the remaining two people that we have abroad. So let's turn to Abuja. Dr. Ayuad, you've done a lot to prevent radicalization in Nigeria and share a little bit about your own experience and learnings doing so. Well, I think, thank you. I think we've been able to understand the effects of radicalization and a lot of the problems of government that they were just set to us here as we deal with the direct consequences of this search. I want to say to the government that in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, I would say that the social development is created by social media and by technology is very real and deep. I don't think it's exactly... Hey, Dr. Ayuad, I don't want to cut you off, but I think the feed is cutting a little bit in and out, so it's hard to hear you. Maybe I'll turn to somebody else and then turn back to you. I can. Okay, sorry about that. Why don't we go to Beirut? Joanna, you're at the epicenter of the refugee crisis, another big issue when it comes to thinking about this divide and polarization and talk a little bit about what lessons you've learned in integrating communities in Beirut that can apply globally. Yes, definitely. Currently, the country was the highest ratio of refugee per capita, and that started over the past century, we've had three major waves of migrations, the Armenian, the Palestinian, and now, more recently, the Syrian, at a larger scope, of course, and each was dealt with in a different way. So this, in a way, has forged the Lebanese identity as a mix of culture, of communities, with territory in constant flux as an agglomeration of neighborhoods and enclaves. And now, considering the scope of the current situation, you know, with the one to four refugee per inhabitant, the situation is more difficult to deal with at the micro level, but at the same time, the civic society is being very engaged in dealing with that, maybe because of our past history, we've been learning a lot in the past, and what we've noticed is happening is that instead of looking at it as a burden added to the series of issues that we're having, the situation is being turned, and the question is reversed. What if, you know, how can this actually benefit the local society and community? And how can we look at this as a resource or as, you know, new possibilities to happen? And we've been looking at a lot of projects and pilot initiatives that are being done by NGOs, organizations, and social enterprises that deal with this issue by pairing it with another one that the country is having, like, for example, waste management. And I've been involved in a project, for example, called Conserved through Vanina, that we've done in collaboration with two NGOs, SAWA, which is an NGO that aims at helping Syrian refugees here in Lebanon, and another one, Arkansas, which is one of the leading NGOs in the country who has different programs, one of which is the environment. And so in this project, we've actually looked at, we've been upcycling tin cans through the help of Arc-en-Ciel and then transformed them into luxury through handcraft. And so it's been a training and, you know, it's a pilot project, but it tests how, you know, by printing these two issues, we're actually providing training and work opportunities for the young, let's say, unfortunate, you know, people who are displaced. Another issue that has been tackled is the lack of urban, of green urban space in the city, particularly in Beirut and, for example, in the area of Bishamud. So an NGO called the Near East Foundation has done a pilot project that's called Urban Agriculture, and what they've done is that they've provided gardening kits to families, displaced families, Syrians. And the idea was to allow them, provide them the kits to plant, you know, on rooftops and on surfaces of buildings within the city for urban agriculture. And this has proved to be very, you know, very promising for the beneficiary itself, but at the same time for the city in a way, you know, bringing back the rural into the city and creating new possibilities there. Great, thank you. And let's try Abuja again. Let's see how our feet is doing. Yeah, we got you. Fantastic. What I was saying was that in response to the governor's statement earlier about the social divide and perhaps some exaggeration, I think here in the global south to use the NDOA's term, and particularly in Nigeria, the social divide as created by social media is real. We are dealing with the serious effect of the urban rural divide radicalization. And I don't even know that we're quite in the stage of de-radicalization as we deal very real time with what Boko Haram has caused in the northeast of the country. The Abuja hub of the local shapers have been working with young people at security agencies with the Amana initiative, incidentally funded by the U.S. government. So thank you, governor, to bring trust between young people and the peace and society. But what we have to understand in this part of the world is social media and technology and mobile phones is bringing the two unimaginable worlds into people's hands through phones. And they're beginning to be able to imagine a life that they have never aspired to because of the social of injustices, because of the lack of education, because of the lack of access. And this is a dangerous, as we heard today, an explosive combination because by learning that radicalization that we're experiencing is a process of rejecting the state's, the state's work. So, I mean, I think the world would really benefit a great deal from the Quaker philosophy of the right now, Mr. Governor. And I really think that, as we all will shape this world that we live in, we need to begin to go back to some fundamental of trust, of education, of access, and of inclusion, particularly in these parts that we live in. Thank you, that's great. So I wanna pick up on two different points that we heard. One being trust, the word trust, and the second being storytelling, which is something that came through in a lot of the comments. We have Jeff Jarvis, if he's still in the room. He's been talking all Davos long about trust in media and the polarization that we're seeing in media. I hate to say this, but I think media, I might be the least trusted person on this stage. Media is now at the bottom of trust. But Governor, let's turn to you. This is obviously a pretty exceptional moment when it comes to trust in politicians. And what we've also seen from the president-elect is an ability to use social media, speak to his followers, go around traditional sources of media, build coalition amongst his followers, and have remarkable success doing that. So there's a certain group of people who really trust him and there's a lot of other people who probably don't trust him. How do you think about as a politician using the new digital tools that we have at our disposal? And again, getting back to this question of you're speaking to all of Colorado, how do you use these tools and who are you speaking to when you're using them? Well, certainly trust is at the core of so much of what we're seeing everywhere. And I think politicians are right at the bottom. I think politicians might be a little below journalists, I think, although that's in flux these days. But I think, you know, we have a program for, you know, we legalized recreational marijuana. I'm surprised I haven't gotten, that's usually the first question anyone from Colorado gets. You're saving it. You're saving it for later. But we wanted to make sure our teenagers recognized that the high THC marijuana could, when their brains were growing rapidly still, poses a threat to diminishing permanently little slivers of their long-term memory when they use it. So our ad campaign was oriented specifically to their parents and trusted adults. And we spent a lot of time looking at who is trusted, right? And it's clergy, it's coaches on sporting teams, both within school, without, and I think that when we start trying to look at how do we talk to the citizens of Colorado, in my case, and using different media, the media, I mean, I think one key attribute is to make sure it's consistent so that you're transparent and that you're always telling the truth and that you are accountable. In other words, when you say you're gonna do something, you provide some metrics by which you can be measured. We're gonna roll out next month a dashboard called the Governor's Dashboard where pretty much every agency in the state government is gonna be completely transparent and is gonna have one-month goals, one-year goals, five-year goals of what their intentions are. To go get a driver's license instead of waiting in line an average of 42 minutes, we're gonna get down under 10 minutes. I mean, those kinds of things, and then we use those depending on who we're trying to get to will either tweet or use mainstream media or social media because they do have very widely different audiences. And if I might press on that, why do that? Because it's not something you rarely see from politicians to be so transparent. I mean, what drives you to think about accountability in that way? Well, I mean, I was, as you mentioned, I was in the restaurant business. I had these little restaurants with breweries in them and had a bunch of them. And I loved it, but every one of my customers hated every elected official. And in the end, no government will survive if people don't trust and believe, have some belief in it. So I ran for mayor in 2003. I mean, I'd never run for student council or a class president. I wasn't a young political leader like some people up here, but it was really just to try and get people to believe in government. And I think that's a key is, A, to try and be as truthful as you can and to be transparent, but also to communicate, to give people the opportunity. I've now, Colorado has 64 counties, and some of them are pretty far away from Denver. I've been in every single county at least three times and many of the counties four times. And I think that's part of the job is to make sure everyone doesn't feel left out and that you are out there telling them what is information you think they should know. But more importantly, listening in every way you can to what their real comments are. Too often when you run for re-election, you go out and I'm a Democrat, so you end up talking to Democrats all the time. It's always fundraisers. It's hard sometimes to figure out how to get into a safe place where people really tell you what they think when the room is filled by much more conservative people or people from a difference, maybe it's a narrow self-interest, but have a different perspective than you do. And Nathan, you mentioned storytelling too, so I'll ask you this question. I mean, how have you talked about messaged, broadcasted the work that you're doing to engender trust in the population that you're working with? Yeah, well I think a really big part of that is the human-to-human aspect. And we've been really trying to push to have people share experience. And within that, it's being very intentional about the opinions that you're looking for. And so within the outreach of our event, we wanted to get a wide net of folks within our own community to help build that trust. And trust is a really big part of that. And how you get to that is sharing experience with other folks. And so that's where you have a couple of different aspects there. You have sharing meals, having shared experience, the ability to connect with somebody in a space that's not just safe, but also brave. And being able to express yourself because you're only gonna have growth if you share your true self. And within that narrative, sharing true stories from your own experience and having folks hear it, ask questions about it, and come to a space where you're not just building a bridge to know where you have a place you're trying to get to. And so I think trust is a really big part of that. And you don't really get that from talking to somebody on a computer. You really have to sit down and look into their eyes and really come to a shared understanding. I'll share an anecdote with the room, which is that in the few days after the election, one of the things I heard was that Starbucks had some of their most foot-trafficked days ever in the company's history. Because people were craving human connection and human experience in a way that Starbucks had never seen. And no matter where you felt about the election, people just wanted to connect with other people and share stories in person. And they were so trapped by our devices that people wanted to talk to other people. So it's an interesting anecdote. Lindy Way, I wanna ask you a question about millennials. You talked a little bit about the growing divide that you're seeing in the country. If you look at Brexit, millennials by and large were in favor of staying but didn't vote enough to make a difference. US by and large in favor of Hillary Clinton didn't vote enough to make a difference. How do we fix that? How do we get millennials to not just talk about things but engage and really go deeper into the political process? Yeah, a really great question. I mean, it's really hard to be in this political moment and not recognize that transforming societies into places that are more liberal and tolerant comes with a backlash. People struggle with change. But that doesn't mean we must arrest the change. We must still press ahead and encourage millennials to vote, encourage women to run for public office, encourage societies to become more open, while at the same time respecting the views of others. So I've always been an incredibly avowed muscular feminist. I've worked very hard to try and get more women to run for office, more young people to engage in politics and to feel that they have a place in the political leadership platforms that we have in South African and African politics. I was a very young politician who often in parliament had to go up against a much older president who's from the same tribe as me. And we had to go toe-to-toe in a country in which patriarchy is still a very strong impulse in a lot of cultural groups and in a lot of parts of our society. And I always felt that those of us who were feminists, who favored equality, who wanted to press ahead and move towards a future that was more equal and more tolerant were the underdogs who were always fighting. It never occurred to me until this moment that we're in right now that there would be people, perhaps, who are more conservative in their values, who come from rural communities, who have been raised through cultural traditional practices that do not look favorably upon women taking on leadership roles and being argumentative in public spaces with men who are old enough to be their fathers. That that could create a kind of anger that could materialize politically. I think that's what you guys are seeing in the global north. So I think as we're here in Davos, we have to think about two things at the same time. We have to think about getting millennials, young people, who believe in the values that I believe a lot of us believe in and which a lot of us believe will bring prosperity and happiness and success for the vast majority of the world's people and countries that we must keep fighting to get those people into public spaces, get them into the debate and give them platforms in which to feel as though that they have a contribution to make, but that we do not leave people with whom we disagree behind. And that's so counterintuitive in the age of heated debate and your position versus my position, red states and blue states and liberation movement and opposition party. But unless we show that kind of responsible leadership and responsive leadership, we're just gonna repeat the mistakes of the global north. So at the same time as I feel the work of getting millennials more involved is incredibly important. And the absence of their involvement reflects, I think, a disillusionment with politics that we have to deal with. They mustn't be our only focus. We must also provide spaces for and platforms for people with perhaps more traditional, more conservative, perhaps slightly more backwards looking views, in my opinion, to be able to share those views on a platform that doesn't drive their views underground, doesn't make them feel that they feel ashamed to say that they're Trump supporters or Nigel Farage supporters and so on and so forth. But that we can have an open and honest dialogue with our people driving their views underground and secretly campaigning against the process of transforming our societies into more tolerant and more open places. I wanna share another anecdote and then ask you a follow-up. So after the election, my company, Mike, did a survey of our audience and found that after the infamous Trump videotape, there was an uptick of searches in rural America and in Wisconsin in particular for what does misogyny mean? And there was also an uptick in searches for what is a massage? Because people confused massage with misogyny, which I thought was fascinating for a lot of reasons, but one of them, because from my vantage point in media, I think a lot of times we say things like this is misogynist or this is racist or this is homophobic without showing why these things are such. So specifically in your context, when talking about diversity and getting people in rural America and white men to embrace diversity, how do you message and how do you tell those stories in a way that breaks through? Yeah, I mean that's incredibly important, right? And it's got as much to do with showing as it has to do with talking, as much to do with doing as it does to have to do with saying. Because it's also true that people may bulk at words like social justice and feminism and liberalism and capitalism and multiculturalism without necessarily having an opportunity to drill down to what those mean in their everyday context. One of the most fascinating anecdotes I've heard is about the number of people in the United States who want to repeal Obamacare, but they're quite like the Affordable Care Act. Their objection is the association with President Obama for whatever reason, many of which are probably race, right? But people understand one thing and they hear another. They hear one thing and they understand another. So we have to be able to, those of us who advance liberal democratic values in societies that perhaps are resistant to them, have to be able to show the benefits, show that people don't have to be left behind, show that tolerance, diversity, equality can take place in a context of growth and provide opportunities for everybody, that it isn't a zero sum game, that if there are more women CEOs in Fortune 500 companies, it doesn't mean that men are being driven out of business. It means there are more companies for people to lead, that there are more leadership positions. And so once we can demonstrate that my success isn't a threat to yours or the growth or the prosperity of one group isn't a threat to another, we can start to push past these reflex ideas that people have about each other and about policies and ideas and principles that feed the echo chamber. You know, I often hear, I've started to read right wing media in the United States and I often see the word social justice warrior, which if you called me that, I'd be like, okay, but it's pejorative, right? And it's all about a certain perception of what something I see as perfectly legitimate thing to be. And so we have to break past these labels and break past these sort of dogmatic positions we have about each other and give people platforms, spaces in which to talk openly and honestly, rather than driving one class of opinion underground while elevating the other. I wanna turn to one more point on this. Joanna, the refugee crisis strikes me as an instance in which storytelling is particularly important. I feel like I've seen so many of those heart-wrenching videos, stories of refugees that really touch at your sense of humanity. In fact, I've gone and reported on the story and been to these places. And yet still, you see public opinion toward refugees in the West hasn't really shifted and in fact, it's moved the other way in a lot of cases. How do we do a better job of telling the refugee story? Yes, thank you for the question. I think from our perspective here in Beirut, when we look at what has been happening and how the civic society has been dealing with that, I think, you know, when there is a framework of collaboration, some kind of partnership that could happen with like one common vision, you know, instead of looking at it as a, you know, from the humanitarian kind of crisis response mode, but instead looking at some kind of sustainable development strategy, you know, this is the situation. We're all in the same, you know, problem and how to turn it into something that is sustainable, something that is positive and that could become a catalyst. And really, these have been shown to be a resource even in countries in the West. You know, when you really look at there is a warfare and maybe what their heritage or their, you know, story has to offer and how this could be added to the local society where they're moving. And in a way, I think we live in a country in a time where we're all moving around and I wonder how much, you know, that division can still happen. I think it's very important to look at it from a positive point of view and try to build upon that through synergies, through partnerships that are actually on the ground. And there are many projects that we've been looking at here at still at the micro level some, some bigger, that show that there is a lot of hope and promising thing that can happen. But I think what we're lacking maybe is a legislative kind of, you know, framework or policy at a national and global level that fosters and encourages these kinds of partnerships, you know, compared to something else because I think this is the way to sustain a village. Great, thank you. So we're gonna turn to questions in just a second so everyone get them ready. I wanna ask one last question before we do that, Governor. Is there, do you have hope that this is gonna happen on a national level in the U.S.? You know, I feel like I've seen lots of movements sort of third party and or moderation movements that have been launched in the last five years. And yet, as we've been saying in this conversation, social media actually feels like it's pulling us further apart, not toward the center. I think offline conversations are a really interesting idea, but how do you scale that on a state level or on a national level? And have you seen in your own work or in other states examples of this work happening that should give people confidence? Well, we've seen isolated examples, but I think, I mean, underlying this, a lot of the chasms are based on economics and I think on jobs. I think the world, everywhere in the world right now, really for one of the first times in history, everyone, biggest concern almost everyone has is jobs. And the unequal opportunity and all the technology and how rapidly it's making whole professions and careers disappear and how slow we've been to figure out ways to rapidly, rapidly retrain people at all ages and make sure that even the kids coming out of high school who maybe aren't gonna go to college or even community college, that they get some useful training. I think that's part of the, I don't see any, until we begin addressing that at a scale, I think it's gonna be hard to bring everyone back together again. Although we do see wonderful examples of especially in rural parts of the state where communities come together. We have a small town called Meeker and they decided they were gonna be one of the first Meeker and Rangeley together. They're very close, a couple thousand people and that they're gonna be one of the first gigabit small communities in the world. And so they've done that. And the way the whole community came together to do it in partnership, I mean, that is exactly what's gotta happen. In all rural parts of not just America but the world. And just one follow, because backstage you told me what you're doing to retrain workers. Talk a little bit about that. I thought it was a really great example. Well, we're looking, we're in a partnership now. The Markle Foundation has helped fund this at its partnership with LinkedIn and creating a platform, we call it Skillful, but it's how you assess all the skills that a person gets in their old career and we can begin looking at it as careers disappear. LinkedIn knows an awful lot of those employees where they are, let's say bank tellers. And all of a sudden we realize we're gonna have less and less bank tellers. Well, what are the skills a bank teller has? They're numerate, they have a high sense of precision, they have a sense of urgency, they collaborate. Well, with a little bit of training they can be writing code for the cybersecurity industry. And I think those kinds of where we begin to distill and as a brewer I like to use alcohol related metaphors but distill down to what are the essential skills that people have from their lives and how do we begin to aggregate and be able to measure their competencies so that we can at scale, hopefully sometime at scale, this is still in its embryonic state, but at some point be able to go and take whole groups of people from a whole profession and begin training them and moving them into a new profession not in two years or three years or four years but in a matter of months. Great, well let's open it up to the audience and before your question just say who you are, announce yourself and it can be for anybody. Yeah, in the front. I'm Nicolás Mariscal from Mexico. And it's a great panel and having all these people from different countries and the people here in front of us here. Technology is doing great things and this is one of the great things that we could do it here. Coming from Mexico, as you could imagine, the question is you've been posing all the time and back and back and again what's happening in the U.S. with elections, really this worries us very much what's going on. The reasons you were mentioning, Governor, a while ago about jobs, creation of jobs. The creation of jobs, it's a very important. In Mexico, the immigrants that have been going and I know very well your state have been going there for years since in how much it has grown, the Mexicans. What will happen in a country like yours as a movie was shown one day without Mexicans? This is something that really worries us. When you receive all these, we're trying to build bridges between countries and look what's happening here. Building a wall instead of putting all this together. A while ago, you were also mentioning corruption. This is a very big issue in all our countries and that's something there is a big initiative here at the World Economic Forum. It's called PACHI, Partnership Against Corruption. In all our countries, we have, especially in the developed countries also, that's a big issue. Do I think we'll leave it there just to give the Governor a chance to respond? But not even on the drugs, that's another thing that worries us because we have all the people that die in Mexico and in the US is where all consumption goes and also all the arms are coming to our country. So there are a lot of big issues. Governor, we'll let you address the immigration piece, immigration from Mexico, globalization. How does that tie into your commentary around jobs? Sure, and you have to go from the small local scale up to the national scale, which is what I think Davos does so well and the World Economic Forum has helped us. We put on every two years, we call the Biennial de las Americas, but a biennial that brings together thought leaders similar like it's a little miniature Davos, but it's from South America and Mexico, Canada and the United States and we address some of these issues very specifically and successful economy in Mexico is very beneficial to the United States. The United States doesn't talk about that, but most people in business recognize that and same in Canada. So we are trying to get beyond some of the rhetoric of this election. We were a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday yesterday, there was a celebration and a former mayor, Wellington Webb, great mayor, African American, big six foot six, very funny and very close to the Mexican community in Colorado. And he was saying, well, they're talking about building a wall. Mexicans aren't bothered by wall, Mexicans build tunnels. They're good at it. They're good at building tunnels. Trust me, that wall is just gonna be, I'm not sure who's gonna pay for it, but it's not gonna make any difference. I mean, he was making light of the fact that his metaphor is the relationship between Mexico and the United States is already so close. There are so many families from Mexico that are now Americans, but they are still connected with their families in Mexico. I don't think you could build a wall. I think it's, we are becoming one family in that entire hemisphere. And the dream obviously is to become one world. That's the ultimate goal. And I think what most people with a longer vision, not everyone, most people see that we get to a place of equality and opportunity for everybody. Let's take another question. Yeah. Hi, I'm Robin Hickenlooper. I'm the governor's wife. And I also, I work at a major media company, a holding company. We invest in media assets. So sort of two questions in one. So the title of this panel is about the rural urban divide. And we as people tend to wanna bridge divides. So the question is, is that a divide, especially when you think about it from a millennial perspective, that actually needs to be bridged? Or, which I heard so many people talk about differently, was sort of the digital divide not between the haves and have nots, between people of different ideologies and the impact that's having on the generation and our country and our world. Is that the more important divide that people need to be thinking about bridging? Great question. Lendeewa, you wanna handle that or somebody remotely wanna chime in? There we go. I think it's a really good question. At least for us, what we're saying is that, in order to bridge the rural and urban divide, you need to bridge the economic divide and that a lot of it goes through just having more money in rural areas. And that if people, I think the divide rule always exists, there are different ways of lives, just like there are different ways of lives in different communities, whether it be racial or other, or immigrant communities. But I think, and I think they're all valid. And people need to be reminded of that. What people need to have those equal access to public services, but also just all kinds of services. And I think if we manage to bridge that divide, the divide of access, then we'll have succeeded and then people can decide to keep up with their ways of lives if they want to, but they need to have a choice. Yeah, I'm very conscious of the title of this panel, being bridging the rural urban divide. And in my view, it's not about bridging our opinions or bridging our political views or bridging even our experiences of the world, our backgrounds, our cultural assumptions. It's about providing equal access to platforms that allow us to express ourselves. It's about bridging the inequality gap. It's the inequality of voice, of economic prospects, of access that is something that should occupy us. Because if we preoccupy ourselves with homogenizing politics and making everybody feel the same way about everything, we will start to fall victim to the tyranny of the majority. We need to have people challenging each other's ideas. We need to have people's assumptions challenged. We need politicians to be kept on their toes. We need opposition, dissent and so forth. So this is not so much about making everybody hold hands and have the same view about the way the world should be moving or what the role of different people in society is. It is about providing equal access to opportunities to express yourself, to make a living for yourself, to hope for a future in which your children will be better off than you are. And I think that's the thing that should occupy our minds. And in doing so, we must remember not to leave people behind because when we do, we drive them underground, the anger festers. And before we know it, populism and anger become the means by which dangerous politics make it into the mainstream. I want to ask one variation of that question. I'm going to take the moderator's privilege. Governor, after the election, there's been a lot of people who have debated in the United States, what's the right way to read the election result? Should the Democratic Party move forward by appealing and reaching out to rural America? Or doubling down on diversity and doubling down with a better candidate to sort of tap into the coalition and the demographics that are pointing all in the direction of Hillary Clinton? So it's the same way of asking the same question. Is that the goal? Should we be bridging the urban rural divide? You know, and that's a part of it. I mean, in so many of these states that Hillary Clinton lost, it wasn't just the rural vote. But I do think it's emblematic of a divide that does need to be bridged. You ask 50 Democrats, you're going to get 50 different answers. But I think that we've got to continue to talk about inclusivity and one world and people of all different backgrounds and ethnic histories that should all have, I mean, each life matters, right? That should all have as much as possible equal opportunity. I think the problem with, and it was really not just in the presidential campaign, but over the last 20 years, Democrats have been losing all over in the local in the states. There are now 34 different states in the United States, 34 out of 50 that have both their Senate and their House are controlled by Republicans. And I personally think that we continue to talk about civil rights. We continue to talk about protecting the planet, but we've got to talk about jobs. Because I think that's the kind of, that's the real traction of what people really care more than, it's amazing. You know, these folks that allegedly aren't detail-oriented or aren't deep and you get talking to them about sports, they know every detail at a level of complexity, you can't imagine, they're just not interested in the politics the way we're talking about it. But I think that if we talked about politics in terms of jobs and got into it about how this wave of jobs or this bit of training could really change the lives of whole communities, I think you'd see a lot more people paying attention and being more respectful. Let's go to the audience. Hi, my name is Oluwashir and I'm a global shipper from the Abuja Hub. And I'm a software developer, so I see technology as a tool. Isn't that good or bad? It's just something you use to achieve an aim. And one of the problems I see is actually narrative. Because when you came to describe people as you're from X and I'm from Y, so you're different, it's a problem. But when you bring them together, those assumptions feed away. So my question is specifically to the Portland Hub. How do you feel like and use technology to bridge that gap to bring people together to meet so that they can actually connect one-on-one? Portland, you wanna take that? We ended up, am I on there? Okay. We ended up using Facebook. And we use social media to get the word out about the event. And we actually in the beginning thought there wouldn't be that many people. And through this, we all of a sudden end up with 150 people at a small restaurant in downtown Portland. So I think technology is definitely a tool. And it's facilitating human to human interaction through using that tool. And it gives you a larger net to grasp from with many different opinions in our own community. So not only using it as a tool, but also connecting with other folks who are connected to other folks. So yeah, some folks are connected to this certain group of friends on Facebook and they put a post on there and we have more and more folks. We had one woman from, I believe it was from Montana who had moved to Portland and lived about two hours outside of the city who showed up because she saw a Facebook event. So I think it's definitely a tool. We're gonna do one here, then one here. Or sorry, we'll go this way and this way. Gentlemen over here, I will do you third. We have time for all. I'm Arvind Singh. I work with a lot of urban poor in India. And when I, I mean, many years back I was in a family with a family in San Diego and there was this Mexican debate going on. And I could feel I was in an Indian city in a middle class home. There wasn't much difference. So instead of Mexican, I could imagine being discussed in a middle class family about the rural people coming to cities. And in India, they typically camouflage that with a regional divide or a religious divide. So it's easier for you cannot tell that the poor to go away but you can say that the people from east are trying to come and dominate the cities from west. So they'll bring in policies which will hinder people from outside to come and settle. To give you a recent example, Mumbai for example has brought in a policy that street vending the licenses will only be given to a street vendor who has been here since last 15 years. So that kind of things happen. And I myself work with a lot of urban poor and with policy makers. So many times you go to a building company builders office and they'll say, why don't you ask people to go to rural areas? I said, why don't you go and live in rural areas? Why you want others? People have all moved from rural to urban areas in any countries like us where there is no infrastructure, where no doctor wants to go, where there is no roads, where there are no good schools. So I really love the way the governor said that how he goes around and he develops the villages. So nobody takes that pain of developing a village and everybody wants the cities to be protected. Thank you. Let's do here and here, we'll take them both then we'll address them appropriately. So hi everybody. My name is Eyal. I'm a global shaper from the Tel Aviv Hub and I'm an urban planner. And I would like to differentiate between two different discussions that were kind of rolled up into one into this panel. One discussion is about, and that was most of the attention, is about inequality, about differences between people and about social cohesion. And no doubt that we need to address inequality and limited options for different peoples and also to address how we can stay together as a society and remain united even in the face of different opinions. But another discussion that was hinted in the name of the panel was the literal urban rural divide. And governor, some of what you've mentioned was about investing a lot of resources in rural areas. And I want to challenge that a little bit because we're living in an urbanizing world and from my perspective, for good reasons. Today we think we know that cities are more sustainable. We know that there are more opportunities in cities. We know that infrastructure costs for developing cities are much lower and each dollar that goes into investing in rural community comes in somewhat from a zero sum game. It comes instead of investing that dollar in urban infrastructure, in services in the city and things like that. So if it's okay, I would like to challenge a little bit this assumption that investing in rural areas is something that we should be celebrating and something that we should be promoting when we're looking 10, 15, 20 years ahead. Should we be building gigabit internet infrastructures for 500 people rural areas or should we be trying to maybe think of another more sustainable, more affordable model if we're thinking about communication about public transit, about many services these people will need in order to get access to those opportunities that keep developing inside the major cities. Thank you for that. And Governor, we'll give you a chance to respond but I want to take the question in the back and then we'll do it together. Okay, but I'm ready. Bring it on. Thank you very much. Feeling the challenge. My name is Mikayla. I'm a global shaper from the Kigeli hub in Rwanda. My question goes to Masiboko. You ran very early on for office as a parliamentarian. Which advice can you give to other African youth who have the same ambition? But knowing our context when you are young, when you are assertive, it's sometimes interpreted as being arrogant in our African context. So what is your experience and which advice can you give us and how can the global shapers community present here can help you spread the message across? Thank you. What a nice question. Thank you. Governor, we'll start with the challenge. I want to hear that. Okay, we'll start with that. That's a very... It'll be more positive. You're still right about how challenging an environment it is to be in public office, to be a woman, to be young. In South Africa, we call these things triple challenges, where you have a whole lot of expectations rolled up into one about how you can be in a society where you belong, what your place is. And I lived with enormous sexism, racism, you know, and any other kind of ism, ageism, associated with my time in public office. From my political opponents, from the media who analyzed my term of office through a lens that was really distorted in terms of gender, age, race, et cetera. And on top of that, I was in the opposition. So, you know, I was challenging the party of President Nelson Mandela, you know, our national hero, our icon. And all of these things were just too much modernity and too much newness for a lot of people to deal with. So I've experienced the sharp end of society's inability to cope with change, especially when you are perfectly comfortable with it and understand what benefits that society can enjoy from change. A society in which women are more educated, have, you know, more economic opportunities, have equal place in leadership with men is a prosperous society. There is no downside. But change, you know, it makes people feel threatened. And one of the things I've learned as I've aged, and it's not going to be much longer that I can be called a young leader, so I'm going to bask in it while I can. But one of the things I've learned as I've gotten older is that it's important in some context to be forceful and robust in a way that shows people that sometimes you must be unafraid. And in other contexts, it's important to build bridges. And it's important to choose your battles that you cannot always be, you cannot always be, you know, armed and ready to go with your lance forward and your shield and, you know, sometimes you've got to find ways to demonstrate to people that you don't pose a threat, that changes in society will not undermine the role of men or traditional leaders or the two-parent household or whatever traditional structures between men and women, young people and older people, black and white, religious groups, people cling to in their fear of change. You have to be able to demonstrate that you can be you and I can be me, I can be a leader, I can be opinionated and outspoken, and that doesn't represent a threat to you. So if you'd asked me this question five years ago, I would have said, go out there, you know, blaze a trail, be loud and opinionated and, you know, make sure that the world becomes used to the sight of a woman in a leadership position. My position now is a little bit more nuanced and it's driven by what I'm seeing happening in the global north, where people who feel their way of life under threat don't necessarily move to change. They simply become more hardened, you know, more angry and more disillusioned and eventually can, you know, propel, you know, repressive regimes or people who promise repressive policies into power. So I think we've got to find that, you know, that, you know, that nuance between, you know, the carrot and stick. Sometimes you have to, you know, be forceful and be, you know, who you are and at other times you have to, you know, have meetings with traditional leaders, cover your head when you go to a religious ceremony, et cetera, et cetera. And do the things that make people feel as though you are coming to them on their terms as well. I think respect is an important part of leadership. Wow. So, and I thought this would happen. I want to be able to tie into that. So I have in my cabinet a young man named Joe Ngoose who was born within a year after his parents came from Ethiopia. He grew up in a refugee community, watched his family grow, how hard they had to work to build a place. And he was, I think first or second in his class at the University of Colorado, a huge school. He was the top of his class in law school. He ran to be his secretary of state for Colorado when he was 28 and he almost won. Anyway, so he's now the head of the Office of Regulatory Reform and he describes in vivid detail how often he has to lower his head, especially within his family and his community. They're also proud of him, but boy, he can't show it. And it's a big part of that, the cultural, a reflection of his culture from where he came from. But he is also one of the most, because of that reference, he brings a valuable perspective when we're trying to wrestle with a difficult problem. And I think a big part of why it's in our best interest to strengthen and invest in our rural communities is that in the same way that diverse opinion, you don't get any other way. You compare the sustainability of big cities with the skyscrapers and subways and they are greener than places at sprawl. But a small town, most of them in disappearing, you don't need to put in sewage or that infrastructure's already there for them to grow by 10 or 20 or even 50%. It's very inexpensive and it's quite sustainable and we've been careful to have rural people in my cabinet as well. And they come up with different solutions than people that have always been in urban communities. And it is just a different background or a different life that I think is very powerful. And in Israel, the value of the kibbutz and that people that are working with their hands and in small, intense communities, I think is rightfully valued as well. Great. So we have a little bit less than five minutes before we close. The spirit of this panel is really about action and about taking away something in your community from this panel to go back and work in your community. So I wanna end on an optimistic note and give everybody a chance for 30 seconds to just talk a little bit about one thing they'll take away from this panel and continue to work on in their own context. And let's start with the folks who are remote and get them in. Abuja, tell us what you're gonna be doing from here. 30 seconds. Thank you. Well, could you hear me? Yeah. Fantastic. Well, it's been fascinating to hear just how different this conversation has been around the same topic. And I must say that a lot of the conversation has not really reflected our reality here in Abuja or here in Nigeria. And it was interesting also to hear about the rural, urban divide discussion from the gentlemen from, I believe, Tel Aviv question to the governor. For us, we're dealing with very real and present dangers of radicalization and terrorism. We're dealing with people who don't have any food to eat. So talking about gigabyte intranet infrastructure versus feeding somebody who hasn't eaten for three weeks is a bit of a sort of real bad. Our rural, urban divide problem has shown how bad it can get and how terrible it can be when people are isolated with the inclusion that we all like to throw out as a word. What happened? Make Hungary in Southeast Nigeria helped in the past two years about one billion refugees eternally dyslexical. More than the entire population of Europe is struggling, except at the moment. So what we're showing is that Canada is here in the South. Canada is here in the South of this world. The Abuja global shape is very involved, both as a strategic and operation of a dealing with the big humanitarian crisis in the African continent. For us, the real action point comes away from urban rural. It is a real action that comes away from the fact that people have no education, people have no people have no... So with the initiatives here, we provide backpacks for kids and for education for kids across the country. What this conversation tells us is that we need to put our story back, that we need to come out to the world, we need to educate the world about how to come back yet when this urban rural divide is... So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Thank you. Let's turn to Paris. Your takeaways and 30 seconds, please. Sure. So I think two things. First, we want to keep providing an apolitical and neutral platform for people who stayed in rural communities to express what it is to be them and to educate the world about what it is to be us. And second, we want to keep providing a safe space for people who, like us, come from rural communities and have gone into the more elite urban societies and to give them the opportunity to be a new them and to remain rural and to really talk about what it is to be a rural youth in the urban world and to be unapologetic and afraid to be rural. Adam Crabb. Great. Portland? It's to continue creating space for people to be together and bring our community closer together. I think our action step will be to grow our own initiative to not only be our urban area, but the rural areas within Maine. Maine is a very large state. Past year is the first time we've ever split our electoral votes and we want to figure out a way to have shared understanding and show what the face of a manor actually is. And it's one of many faces. Great. And last but not least, Beirut? Yes. I think what I would take from this session, I think, to talk about inequality and how we could look at it as something that could actually provide, you know, like turning it, you know, into a synergy, into something that could move from, you know, that disparity to actually complementarity. And so, how to bridge, by bridging, actually creating partnerships and creating collaboration instead of, you know, forging that divide on a ethnic and territorial level and cultural level and economic. Thank you very much. Thank you all for participating abroad. We'll turn here just for the last two words. Linda, what are you going to take away from this? I'm going to take away the importance of the meaning of tolerance being about hearing other people's side in a way that is open, non-judgmental and it is actually to the values that we claim to subscribe to as liberals, right? That, you know, of valuing, you know, the other side's opinion even if it is unsavory to you. Because we're learning increasingly over time the dangers of, of, you know, driving people away by acting as though we have no time or, you know, interest in their particular views on the state of the world or the pace of change which many people are struggling with. I'm also going to take away an interesting discussion we had about whether or not the urban and rural divide needs to be bridged so much as it needs to be given sort of equal space, you know, to be expressed and to be heard and to be understood. You know, the importance of not seeking to create a world in which everybody's ideas are the same, you know, not seeking to create a polity where everybody's ideas are heterogeneous but, you know, a difference of ideas and a difference of positions and allowing people to express who they are in a manner that's respectful and doesn't make them feel ignored. So as, you know, to enable us to experience what the real meaning of tolerance is. Great. And last but not least, Governor? Well, first, thank you. Would you have beer summits? Yeah, beer summits. No, I'm going to take away, first I'm going to take away what a great job you did in moderating this discussion, right? Thank you. Jacob Horowitz, Mike M. I.C. so you can check it out. I didn't pay him for that. But I think that your help do, I mean, I think I learned again. You have to learn these again and again, never to think you know what someone's going to say to you, and never to prejudge a comment that each person actually, at one point or another, said something that really ago, I was speaking to the National Restaurant Association in Washington, from every state they had 20 restaurant owners. So they had 1,000 people, almost all of them were Republicans, small business people, very conservative. And I just had a pre-judge. I pre-judged them and I asked them, I went up to tell my story. They bring in a few restaurateurs. At that time I was a mayor. They let you tell the story. I said, well, can I talk about anything? And they said, sure. So I just kind of went up there and I told my story and everyone's smiling and nodding. You know, he had nothing. He succeeded. And then I said, but all you restaurateurs, when we're in the restaurant and it's really busy, you're in the weeds, everyone's a family. And yet why aren't we all standing up for the gay and lesbian members of our community that work with us every day? And why aren't we studying and saying they should have eagle rights? And there was this kind of long pause. And then a person in the back clapped. And then it was pretty broad applause. And then I just stepped in and I said about undocumented workers and immigrants from all over the world that work with us and work so hard. And we're not willing to go out and publicly stand beside them and say there needs to be immigrant reform at a national scale. And I got a standing ovation from a room full of Republicans. And I think that's the, you forget those things, but I love so much that shearing people's, you know, surprising me and enlightening and illuminating me. Thank you all. What a nice way to end. Well, thank you. Please join me in thanking all of our panelists and our guests. And thank you, everybody, for coming. Really appreciate it. Thank you.