487: Saying Yes to Big Challenges, with Elizabeth Cousens

Coaching for Leaders

Dave Stachowiak

Management, Careers, Business

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Elizabeth Cousens: UN Foundation

Elizabeth is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the United Nations Foundation, leading the Foundation’s next generation of work to support the United Nations. She is a diplomat and thought leader who has worked on the frontlines of peace processes, played an influential role in UN policy innovations from peacebuilding to the Sustainable Development Goals, and helped build public-private partnerships to solve global challenges at scale.

Before joining the Foundation, Elizabeth served for several years at the U.S. Mission to the UN in New York. She was Principal Policy Advisor and Counselor to the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations and later served as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council and Alternate Representative to the UN General Assembly.

In this conversation, Elizabeth and I discuss the short and long term goals of the UN Foundation. In addition, we explore how Elizabeth’s team raised $200 million in the face of COVID-19, how she works with impatient optimists, and the importance of leading with kindness.

Key Points

The COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund has raised over $200 million for relief efforts.
Leaders should work to lead with kindness in every sector.
Many high-performing leaders are natural impatient optimists, always pushing for change.
COVID-19 is front of mind for most of us, but we cannot let it override our organization’s strategic goals.

Resources Mentioned

Related Episodes

Leadership in the Midst of Chaos, with Jim Mattis (episode 440)
How to be Diplomatic, with Susan Rice (episode 456)
How Great Teams Find Purpose, with David Burkus (episode 481)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What if it was your job to support the largest intergovernmental organization in the world,
0:05.0	and then to help countries meet or exceed the sustainable development goals for climate change?
0:10.0	And then also just throw in raising funding to address a global pandemic.
0:14.5	Today's guest is doing all of that and more and has some thoughts for us on saying yes to big challenges.
0:20.7	This is coaching for, episode 487.
0:25.0	Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is coaching for leaders and I'm your
0:39.2	host Dave Stachovia. Leaders aren't born.
0:43.3	They're made.
0:44.2	And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom
0:47.2	through insightful conversations.
0:50.1	One of the calls that we have as leaders is to say yes to big challenges.
0:55.6	Sometimes those challenges are the ones that we anticipate.
0:58.8	Oftentimes they are the challenges that we can't necessarily anticipate or even if we did we don't
1:04.9	necessarily expect they're going to show up in this particular day. Today a
1:08.9	guest who has had a career of handling and saying yes to big challenges,
1:15.0	especially in the last few months, has done it with grace and success.
1:19.5	And I know is going to help us to learn how to navigate handling big challenges more effectively.
1:24.6	I'm so glad to welcome to the show today Elizabeth Cousins.
1:28.0	Elizabeth is the president and chief executive officer of the United Nations Foundation, leading the Foundation's next generation of work to support the United Nations.
1:37.0	She has been at the forefront of global policymaking and innovation for over 20 years.
1:42.0	She's a diplomat and thought leader who has worked on the front lines of peace processes,
1:47.0	played an influential role in UN policy innovations from peace building to the sustainable development goals, and help to build public-private
	...

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