Opportunity and Optimism Ahead: A Conversation with UN Assistant Secretary-General Sanda Ojiambo

By Lindsay Paturalski

The Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership and the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Religious Values in Business were honored to host Sanda Ojiambo, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and CEO & Executive Director of the UN Global Compact. The UN Global Compact is a voluntary program that was launched under UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2000. It is designed to encourage and support businesses to be a part of tackling persistent problems facing the global community. It offers ten principles of consideration organized around human rights, labor, the environment, and anti-corruption. The UN Global Compact encourages businesses to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies and to report on their implementation. It also offers training, peer-networks, and a functional framework for sustainable development.

Assistant-Secretary General Ojiambo is a Kenyan administrator who has worked in business and non-profit organizations in areas of education, maternal support, environmental conservation, gender violence, and investing.  Our NDDCEL Faculty Director Jessica McManus Warnell had a chance to sit down with her, and we appreciate the Assistant Secretary General’s illuminating remarks on the role of ethical leadership in business, the UN Global Compact, and reasons to be optimistic about our shared global future.

Our Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership has a long-time connection to the Global Compact through the work of Faculty Fellow Oliver Williams, C.S.C. Williams, who was a charter member of the Board of Directors at the UN Global Compact Foundation and has written and taught extensively about the Compact and its role as the world’s largest corporate citizenship initiative. Williams currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the UN Global Compact Foundation and this has greatly assisted in researching virtuous leadership. The UN Global Compact’s primary mission is to gain consensus in the global community on the shared values and moral norms that should guide the global economy. The UN Global Compact has over 17,000 companies as members in 160 countries.

The UN Global Compact

Looking Toward the Future

The Global Business Landscape

For more information about the Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership, please visit their website. For more information about the Center for Ethics and Religious Values in Business, please visit their website.