by contributor Donna Shor
Photos credit: Neshan H. Naltchayan
Increased awareness of the growing interconnection between the United States and Asia and the need for a networking collaboration was the theme emphasized by each of the prestigious speakers at the Asia Society Awards Dinner on Tuesday night at the Four Seasons Hotel. The audience included a score of ambassadors along with members of Congress, senior U.S. government officials and global business leaders.
The energetic dinner chairman, James E. Rogers, bounded onto the stage with a warm and rousing greeting for the audience―perhaps not surprising, he is the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Charlotte-based Duke Energy, and he probably uses a lot of it to handle all those positions. Duke Energy is the largest power holding company in the United States, distributing power to seven million customers. Its founder in 1900 was the tobacco and hydroelectric power tycoon James Buchanan “Buck” Duke, who made his fortune with the consolidated American Tobacco Company, and whose daughter was the legendary heiress Doris Duke, horticulturalist, art collector and philanthropist beloved of the tabloids.
Chairman Rogers presented the Global Business Leadership Award to Marriott International in recognition of the company’s role in aligning its business with what is important in the communities where it operates. Marriott’s “Spirit to Serve Our Communities” and educational and workforce training programs promote sustainable livelihoods, while its water conservation initiative will protect the source of fresh water for over two billion people in Asia. The Bethesda, Maryland company is presently developing 159 new hotels on that continent.
The award was accepted by Arne Sorenson, Marriot International’s President and CEO, who practiced law with a top-ranking Washington firm before becoming head, in March 2012, of Marriott International, the world’s largest publicly traded hotel chain.
Asia Society’s Global Co-Chair Ronnie Chan, of Hang Lung Group, presented the Diplomatic Achievement Award honoring His Excellency Zhang Yesui, Executive Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China for his achievement in policy planning; covering Africa, Europe, North America and Oceania affairs, as well as arms control, disarmament and international treaty and laws. The award was accepted by Ambassador Cui Tiankai, of the People’s Republic of China who serves as ambassador to the U.S.
Henrietta Fore, Asia Society Co-chair, presented the Policy Achievement Award to Tom Donilon, National Security Advisor, who has served in several leading government positions, including as Assistant Secretary of State, and has advised three presidents.
Josette Sheeran
The event introduced the just-appointed new president of the Asia Society, dynamic Josette Sheeran. Before taking up this post as the seventh president and CEO of the global group, she was previously Vice Chair of the World Economic Forum, which hosts the annual gathering of world leaders at Davos and China. Earlier she was executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, where she led the world’s largest humanitarian organization heading a team of 13,000 people in more than 70 countries, with an annual budget of $3 billion, and providing food for 90 million people..
She also served as Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and earlier for five years as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. Forbes Magazine has named her the world’s 30th most powerful woman, and her TED talk on ending world hunger has been viewed more than one million times. She has twice served as a Pulitzer Prize juror.
In attendance were former Lifetime Achievement awardees John D. Negroponte and Thomas R. Pickering, and among the committee members Dr. Prakash Ambegaonkar and Michael Mosettig. Seen: Ina Ginsburg, Lynda Webster, and Ann Nitze. Asia Society trustees include John D. Rockefeller IV, Nicholas Rohatyn and Stephen Schwarzman. Life Trustees include John C.Whitehead.
The Society will launch this fall a new, non-partisan global institute focused on tackling critical political and economic issues facing Asia and the United States, and identify areas of cooperation.
Quite in the spirit of the evening, the dinner menu was a happy collaboration of The East and The West:, opening with greens, goat cheese, kiwi, strawberries and macademia nuts with a coconut-lime vinaigrette. The entrée was roasted halibut with shrimp dumplings ( a little touch of dim sum there) garnished with baby bok choy, enoki mushrooms and crowned with almost translucent barely-green disks of pink-tinged “watermelon radish.” Dessert was mango sticky rice which Americans in Vietnam either loathe or love, and sherbet made with young coconut, a very different story from the dried coconut used here.
