Rich and Oliver here, we’re all very good friends and colleagues. Back when I led the youth participation council in the executive here, there have been a lot of that.

They are our closest collaborators and best representatives and partners on the ground here for the Obama Foundation.

I see.

And we’re so grateful for Oliver’s introduction to you last year as well. So, thank you again for taking the time. I know you spoke to us over Zoom, but it’s a really special honor to be here in person.

For how long are you here?

Just about five or six days.

Okay.

Yeah, we’re leaving on the 2nd.

I see. I see.

Yeah, so… But it’s the Foundation’s first trip to Taiwan…

The first official trip.

Official first trip, yes. Tyler spent a year living here with Fulbright. And then I have family here. So, when I lived in Hong Kong, I used to just hop over to Taipei and spend time here. Close to both of our hearts.

Yes. When I was teaching English, actually, I was based in Kaohsiung.

So, I have to admit, I have a little bit of a bias towards Kaohsiung, but it’s always very heartwarming to be back here in Taiwan.

Our office is in Shalun, which is very close to Kaohsiung. It’s on the Tainan-Kaohsiung border. So, on average, every week I spend two days there because the weather and the food are both better. Like, much better.

Well, I know our time is short today, so we were just hoping to share more about what the Obama Foundation is continuing to do with our Asia-Pacific program. And we love your session. Was it two years ago now? Last year?

Last year.

Time flies. Yeah, it was so popular. I was telling them we have an impact report every year, and the Obama leaders will tell us which sessions were their favorite. And they have a session with President Obama. And usually, sessions like yours will outrank them and they’re far more popular. Not because President Obama is not popular, I know that’s going on record.

But his session is so special and very popular. But our leaders really value listening to leaders like you from the region that they look up to and admire and feel like your leadership holds a lot of lessons and inspiration for them. So, you’re a very special speaker for them. And I know leaders keep asking if you will come back and speak to future cohorts.

Yeah. So, it will be the same format as last time?

Yeah, so our program still remains fully on Zoom. And then at the end, we bring the leaders together for an in-person convening. This year, they gathered in Greece for the first time so we’re finally, post-COVID, moving back a little bit to in-person, but our programming is still online.

And we are trying to focus more on specific kind of case studies and topics, like good examples in the region versus broader discussions. And so, one of them that is a key topic for our program, as well as President Obama and his upcoming democracy forum, is AI and democracy and the interplay between the two.

And so, we think that you are a great example of leadership in that space, leading with curiosity and confidence rather than fear. I think a lot of leaders are feeling a lot of fear around that at the moment. So, topics like AI and democracy, radical transparency, looking at what you’re doing with bringing… Oliver was telling us more about the social innovation committee that really facilitating dialogue across ministries is we’re looking, our leaders are trying to become better at facilitating dialogue across different parties, different perspectives, different agendas.

And so, I think those are three topics that we would love to come have you speak to, if your time allows.

And is it determined next year where the gathering will be? Will it still be in Greece, because you know, origin of democracy? Or can it be like in Kaohsiung or Shalun?

Yeah, I personally would love to bring it to Taiwan in my personal opinion. So, it was just Greece for last year. And we are still, we’re looking at our convening model and whether we will keep it a global model, so we brought our Asia Pacific leaders to Greece with the Europe and Africa leaders. So, if it were to be in Asia next year, again, the two cohorts might come here. I would love to, if we can, bring a future meeting.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s our goal.

And you know, the place we host programming is very important, right?

Grounding in place. And Athens being the birthplace of democracy, obviously very important. But we want to make sure that the place we’re hosting the program in, both virtually, like our speaker sessions, as well as in person, it’s tied to place. Our leaders are grounded in that place, and that place is holding a lesson in an environment for them to learn in.

Yeah, we did very large hybrid events together.

Yeah.

More than one, actually.

Yeah, more than one.

Everyone I meet here has done an event with us.

OK, yeah. So yeah, if you’re coming physically for the town gathering, I’m committed to be here. If it is over the internet, then our Democracy Network department is kind of set up for this kind of engagement. So, if I’m available, I can talk. But also, the DN has connections also to many AI democratization leaders.

In fact, this coming Saturday, the science minister and I will both be in Shalun on a deliberative workshop to collectively align AI, emerging AI. We listened from a lot of very young people, actually, many people, because we don’t have an 18-year-old limit for the online participation. So, we’ve got actually many junior high school students and their teachers and so on. And they’re all very interested in aligning AI together. So, we did a wiki survey and using that as agenda, a whole day of deliberative workshop. And a whole transcript is then used.

We share with OpenAI and Anthropic and other AI labs for them to align the AI to the communal norms. So, this kind of democratic alignment can solve a lot of bias, monoculture, linguistic injustice, and so on issues. So, it’s called alignment assemblies.

So, if it’s around alignment assemblies, I’m happy to talk. But also, DN has now many experts on alignment assemblies. And they are also willing to share with you.

Yeah, that’s great. We were just reading about the use of AI here to help find consensus and common ground. And particularly in the US, this fear around it being a dividing force. And so, using it around consensus building. I mean, our whole Obama Leaders program focuses on finding common ground and then managing dialogue and community on that common ground. Easier said than done, but really, the example that I feel like Taiwan is setting and in leveraging AI for good in that direction is really great.

Yeah, I think it’s thanks to both the academic, like the National Academy, but also the grassroots, like in the hub, that are credibly neutral. And that you will not imagine them not working with the mayor simply because the mayor belongs to a certain political party. It’s impossible.

Right.

It’s not working.

It’s not like green or blue or yellow or whatever. We’re all seventeen colors.

Yeah.

Right? And then, yeah. And I think the US really, in some state level, we’ve seen like librarians or consumer report or public radio and so on playing that role. But I think on the federal level, this kind of credibly neutral ground is very much needed.

Yeah. Yeah, no, completely. And a space that we’re trying to move more leaders into as well as we’ve… And we’re looking at actually… we’re taking a pause in our program, a strategic pause to look at the curriculum that we’ve designed internally. And it’s all based on, you know, a core set of values and using values to find common ground. And then different topics on top of that, right? AI, finding disinformation, communicating across difference, trust building.

And so, in that pause, we… this trip being a part of that, are looking to really elevate leaders, examples, movements that really illustrate those lessons and then weave them into the program next year. So, the program doesn’t start until next September. So, it is quite a long strategic pause, but that also allows us to realign our program with the academic term, which was the goal we’ve had. So, all programs, Obama leader programs in Europe, Africa, and Asia-Pacific will align with the academic term and kind of begin next September again.

Excellent. Great.

Yeah. And last but not least, we’re looking for more leaders. Oliver was our inaugural leader. We only have two…

Back in 2019.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. And we are really hoping to have more Obama leaders from Taiwan. It’s a critical priority for, I mean, I head the program so, for me personally and professionally, to make sure we have voices from Taiwan, both at the participant level, but also at the speaker level.

I felt that it was a gap in the last few years as we bring Asia-Pacific leaders together to not have a voice from Taiwan in that space. So, it’s a priority, it’s why we’re here. And so, if there are any other emerging leaders, ages 24 to 45. That’s why I don’t… So that’s young. That’s how we are… I guess how we’re defining young.

I feel young now. I’m 42.

But yeah, just spreading the news about the program and encouraging them to look into it. I’m more than happy… I’m reachable on WhatsApp or Line to answer any questions about it as well. But we’re hoping to grow our community here to really connect the Obama leaders in Taiwan with the rest of the region and then vice versa.

That’s excellent. The youth participation network that we have built together over the past few years did really produce a lot of very good young talent. And they are all very connected. Unlikely that I have connections that they don’t know.

But if you want an extra recommendation and extra person to talk to, then I’m happy to help as well.

Yeah, that would be great. Thank you. We really appreciate that. So, we’re excited to expand and bring more Taiwanese people in next year. But yeah, I just have to say, we ask at the front of the program leaders, who would you bring in as a speaker? And your name is always at the top of the list.

And we agree. So, it really is a special privilege for them to hear from you. And your lessons resonate with them. I just was in Hong Kong and I was meeting with a leader who sat in the New York session last year. And he was still quoting the session, like direct quotes in his brain. And so, the impact is really high, even though that hour that you give up from your schedule, it means a lot to them and to us.

Yeah, so looking forward to… you said next September?

Yeah, next September. And that gives us more time to try and squeeze into your schedule.

Definitely. No, I don’t even know where I’ll be.

Because we have an election.

I know. I know.

Somewhere on this planet.

The ideas we talked about last time, plurality, within the Democracy Network, there’s now an entire section called Plurality Section. And they focus on bridge-making mechanisms to build cooperation across differences. Basically, the thing we just talked about.

And recently, there’s also the Plurality Research Network. And the work that we did with OpenAI and Anthropic that I just talked to was also part of the plurality. It’s called GETTING-Plurality Research Network. So, it’s now becoming a movement of sorts.

And so, within that movement, there’s a lot of speakers also that you can consider advising.

Yeah, that would be great. That would be really great. And we’re also in to turning our sessions into more panels and bringing more speakers in, too. And so, if that’s a direction you prefer to take, we’d be more than happy to do that.

Sure.

Excellent. I also wanted to offer to answer any questions that you might have about the foundation. I know you were able to engage with us last year, and we continue to evolve very quickly as an organization. So…

Are there new programs aside from the ones that we just talked about?

Yeah, so for the Obama Leaders Program, they just launched a brand new one in the US. It’s taking a slightly different form. The Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific are regional programs, so we focus on bringing… I mean, for us, Asia Pacific is 44 nations and territories. So, it’s bringing leaders together. And then the US program is a national program, so it’s a bit of a different kind of mandate. It’s also in our home country.

But that program, they just selected 100 Obama leaders, and they’re really focused on democracy. So, their curriculum is more centered around democracy and within the context of the US, too. So, very different from our program but we are trying to move forward with them on the topic and bring a pillar of democracy into our programming with the understanding that that looks very different in our part of the world, particularly in the way we talk about it, the way we approach it, the vehicles for which we accelerate that, and of course, keeping the safety and security of our Obama leaders at the forefront of our minds and design.

I see. Okay.

Yeah. But I mean, I know our Asia Pacific leaders love to hear from you. But it would be great for the US leaders as well, because I think the US has a lot to learn from looking out on these topics, too, and bringing it back in.

And in that same light, we also launched a college scholarship called the Obama-Chesky Voyager Program. And they fund… these are just for college students interested in public service. Notoriously very difficult to get into public service if you don’t come from a lot of money in the US. Cap Hill internships aren’t paid. And so, it’s very difficult. So this is helping them to get through and help talent get through that pipeline. But they also are, they receive support from Airbnb to travel around the world and study best models and practices.

And so, I think we’d love to elevate Taiwan as a place that folks should consider to learn from and bring some of that back and have that learning exchange with the US, too.

Yeah, I think Minerva, which is an American university, that select half a year in each city as a campus. I think they specifically selected Taiwan. I was there when they came to Taiwan and met with President Tsai Ing-wen… Professor Tsai Ing-wen. I’m not a lecturer.

And I think really Taiwan, not just semiconductor chips or cybersecurity industry, but actually, democracy was the thing that Minerva students was most interested in. So, I think we can actually have a dialogue around digital democracy or the digitalization of democracy so that it can expand the people’s minds, so that it’s not just about the outside.

Because mostly like the alignment assemblies, the participatory budgeting and things like that, people get to participate literally every day. And that is the sort of thing that the young people, if they engage with that before they turn 18, then they are much more likely to become informed citizens by the time they turn 18. So, that was the main idea that we are happy to share.

Yeah, that would be great. Thank you so much. It’s a special privilege for us.

Yeah, and I think other than the programs, there’s also like democracy forums that might be a leverage for Audrey as well. So, it’s kind of like an annual gathering where the foundations will invite leaders or speakers from across the world to address the democracy topics.

Yeah, it’s quite new. We launched last year, and I think we gauged if you were interested. And so, this year, we’re looking to have the second iteration of the democracy forum. And again, we’re looking at specific topics, so inclusive capitalism, fighting disinformation, but again, AI as well as a key topic.

And it’s still in the planning stages. I don’t know how much I can share, but it will be this fall. And we’re looking for that forum to be an annual event. So similar to how other foundations do a certain summit on a topic every year, we’re hoping this is one that the foundation owns and really leads on moving forward. So, I think that would be a great platform to invite you to speak at as well.

Great.

Once I get more information, I will pass it to you. That one doesn’t fall under our team.

But no, that would be really great.

Okay. Anything from you?

No, I think it’s just such a privilege to be here and have the opportunity to invite you to speak to our program. So, nothing more from me.

OK, great. If it’s in Taiwan, of course. If it’s pre-recording, I can accept now. If it’s live, depending on my schedule, but we have the plurality network. And a lot of people are actually in UK or in the US, so it’s very broadly multi-time zone coalition of folks.

And we’re writing a book also, kind of serving as the manifesto of the movement. Some of the chapters can already be seen at plurality.net. So, feel free to just reach out, and then we can connect you to more folks.

Yeah. Wow. When do you expect the whole book to be done?

Probably by the end of the year.

OK. We’ll have to read that. Yeah, leaders… they tend to, I don’t know, there’s the Venn diagram of Obama leaders and love to read. So…

But they’re always looking for books to read after they get exposed to a speaker or a topic, kind of extend their learning. So, I think that’s one that they would probably be keen to read as well.

And it’s free of copyright. And anybody can remix it. So, it’s being remixed as we speak.

Wow.

There’s many people in Taiwan now contributing to specific narratives and section. Because we have a chapter called View from Yushan that talks about the path of democratization. Because Taiwan, you know, 16 indigenous nations, 4 different ethnic cultures, and many more actually. And each has a different narrative toward democratization.

But notably, Taiwan did so without any very violent events. So, each perspective deserves their own narrative, not just my narrative. So, we’re now also working with the community so that they can also contribute their stories.

Wow. That’s incredible. I’ll definitely give that a read. Plurality.net. OK. I can remember that. It’s actually short and sweet.

That’s great. Thank you. I will share that with our community as well. But I’m not wearing my watch, so I don’t want to take up too much of your time.

Does Rich and Oliver have anything…

Not really. It’s kind of like supporting them to organize some trips or meetups with some important stakeholders like you. Because we really want to highlight the whole development of the nation or social innovation or something that will be possible to be presented to the world.

Because from my personal experience at the program, it was really beneficial for me. But also, we’re in the program that you can really have a peer or the whole corps to support you. And you can also learn from each other. So, I think that will be really awesome if we can have more leaders or more speakers from Taiwan to speak and to voice out.

Excellent.

Yeah, they’ve organized amazing… We have another event this evening, but we had a dinner yesterday. And it was great for us to meet… I mean, when we travel on these trips, too, it’s also a listening and learning opportunity. And so, we obviously have our biases like I lived in Hong Kong and am Japanese. And so, I’m still listening and learning about other contexts in the Asia Pacific, too. And so, it’s really great to hear from their network and a range of ages, voices, backgrounds, public sector, private sector, from Asia. So, it was incredibly helpful and really inspiring, actually, to meet them all.

Tomorrow, they’re going to have a tour around the parliament and also the youth development agency.

Yeah, because youth development agency has been doing a lot to support the youth in Taiwan. So, that will be really important and a stakeholder for them. And then tomorrow morning, we’re going to meet the legislator in Beijing for the whole women development or the women in the Congress, which is a really outstanding thing from Taiwan.

OK, that’s excellent.

Yeah, and we were sharing with many of these folks that we met that within the Asia Pacific program, over the past few years, it’s not an easy time to be a leader, I think, in this part of the world. With a lot of recent events compounded with COVID, just a lot of hope was lost. I think it was extinguished in many places and many places at once.

And then we hear over and over, and we feel that Taiwan is a beacon of hope for leaders, not just here or near here, but across the region and around the world. And so, to really help reignite a lot of that hope, too, I think it’d be great to bring some more voices in. And just wanted to elevate that. Yeah, a lot of us look here as that beacon of hope, especially over the past few years that have been quite tough, so…

Yeah, so I did a personal trip to Japan, and earlier also to Lithuania, and also to UK, also to Israel, and so on. And there is a very strong sense of solidarity now that was not there before the pandemic, frankly speaking.

So really, during the pandemic, we have seen that many democracies thought that they need to trade off a little bit of democracy in order to survive, to take care of public health. And that speaks to the decimation of civil society and grassroots organizations you just talked about.

On the other hand, Taiwan has been able to counter the COVID almost entirely because of grassroots mobilization. So, the CSO was enhanced, and because the economy was good, so CSO got more donations.

In a sense, this solidarity then fueled the Taiwan perspective to be a very strong counter-narrative to the old only autocracy can combat virus narrative that we’re also very familiar with.

Yeah, no, absolutely. In my last job in Hong Kong, I was looking at policies around civil society spaces. And Taiwan always tops the charts relative to other countries in the region.

And I was in Hong Kong during COVID, and so watching the news and then the response in Taiwan, every day we would read it and be like, wow. I have family in the US, so hearing what’s happening it was so inspiring actually to see the different initiatives and the inclusion of voices, the civil society organization, even just the government officials wearing the pink masks.

And so, yeah, it just remains an utmost inspiration.

Yeah, just some updates from us. It’s that we’ve just been having this discussion and conversation with Stanford University for the PACS summit.

OK.

It’s like we’ve been in conversation with them on getting the official license for the traditional Chinese version for the Stanford Social Innovation Review. So, possibly we’ll get the license by the end of the year. So just some updates, because I think that will be really important for the whole ecosystem, especially for Taiwan, because we’ve been working a lot on social innovation, but we still need some more theories or some more methodological readings to ground everything that we do. And then SSI definitely will be something that will be really helpful and propel the whole development for our social innovation. So just some updates for you.

That’s great. That’s great, yeah.

Definitely might invite you to be part of the committee to kind of review the articles or something.

Actually, it was like three years.

Having lots of conversations and emails.

Fortunately, we now have a dedicated administration for digital industries in charge of digital transformation of specifically social innovation organizations. So, it’s very interesting, because they used to be part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. And so, all their programs, like the T-Investor, the T-Cloud marketplace, used to require company registration.

But the thing in Taiwan is that, unlike in US, in which nonprofits have a different tax code, but it’s still a corporation, in Taiwan, these are not companies. They’re not registered to the Economic Affairs. So, they would register to the Ministry of Interior, of Health and Welfare, and so on, which means that the MOEA, the economic programs, did not even know them. They didn’t even acknowledge their existence.

So, one of the main lobby points that we did back when I was minister without portfolio, was that such programs need to consider, actually, not just micro-enterprises as defined in APEC and other places, because our micro-enterprises are not companies. They’re associations. They’re co-ops, right?

And so, they’re personal workshops, even… So, this year, we switched all the way, so that the T-Com, marketplace, and everything, not just take care of co-ops and SIOs and local long-term care facilities, or whatever, clinics, but actually spend most of their business development budget to help digital transformation, to connect the digital gap.

Because we saw that with generative AI and things like that, the larger, even medium-sized companies, they have no problem adjusting. But micro-ones and the social innovation organizations have a lot of problems adapting, just that their data quality is not there. So, now we have the ADI and also the moda to help them. So yeah, if you need someone on the committee, we have many people now.

That would be very helpful, yeah.

I will text Betty Hu about it.

Yeah, that’s right. Because Betty used to run a social innovation program. So, Betty now has all the connections.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That’s great. SSIR is really great. Yeah. They have such a wide readership. I mean, I read them all the time. Yeah, we read all the subscriptions. Expensive.

But we pay it because it’s so important.

But also, for the licensing.

Yeah. That’s really exciting. We’re lucky to have partners like them on the ground.

Happy to.

Truly natural allies.

If you will, see for the article from Obama Foundation in the future…

Yeah.

Even from the leaders, it will be really great. Like from the leaders’ perspective on how exactly they work on innovation. Because SSIR is not really centered on social innovation only. So, from the non-profits, but even from the enterprise perspective.

Yeah.

Exactly.

That’s very exciting.

Oliver tried really hard to connect with Stanford.

Yeah. I think that’s it. And I’m not really sure if you have any other things…

We just wanted to share… it’s a small flyer, but it just has more information about the program. And then this is about the Asia Pacific program. And then now, with Oliver’s program, they graduated and they were our first cohort. And now that we’ve had three cohorts, Asia Pacific leaders, and a few of Europe and Africa, we have the Obama Leadership Network. So, it’s a global network where they all connect.

So, the Asia Pacific leaders will talk about leadership in the region, and then when they join, they graduate into the larger network. They actually can connect on specific topics, whether they are climate change leaders, whether they’re journalists or academics. That’s when they kind of find their communities of practice.

So, we just hired a new team to manage that. So, that’s more of an official kind of growth on our end. But that’s where we’re at as a foundation. We’re 270 APAC leaders strong now. I think over 1,000 around the world, and hoping to grow and bring more of Taiwan into that in the next year.

This is not just about the community, but also, it’s a physical online community where everyone can be there. And then right now, on the community, there’s a couple of community of practice, like COPs. For example, there’s a social enterprise COP, or educational COP, or even climate action COP. We’re kind of being part of the COP to discuss and find synergies to collaborate with each other from across the world. which is really helpful.

The democracy COP maybe could do… they meet up at certain events around the world, so maybe there’s a future opportunity here, whereas the climate COP has a lot of events, climate week, COP, to center around. It’s still new, but as it grows, we’ll keep you updated and see if there’s any opportunity for gatherings out here.

Excellent. Great. Do you have any…

No.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, and thank you again for all this time.

Yeah, thank you. I know your time is very valuable.

How about a photo?

We’ve got a logo outside.

Okay.

We usually take a photo there.