Hong Kong

I had a brief visit to a rain-soaked & rather dreary Hong Kong…. to participate, however, in a rather nice UBS Asset Management Viewpoints Summit 2016, held at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center. Professor Robert Falkner of the London School of Economics was keynote speaker, and I appeared on a panel immediately after his presentation to further discuss the important climate change/environmental topics he raised.

The trip to HK was a brief one, but it did give me a chance to meet up & have dinner with Doug Woodring, a former Wharton-SAIS grad I’ve known for many years. Doug set up one of my previous talks at the American Chamber of Commerce in HK almost a decade ago, and in recent years he has been very active addressing the problem of plastics in the ocean. He runs an NGO called Ocean Recovery Alliance, and was getting ready for the big annual ‘Plasticity’ meeting they hold every year – this time in Shanghai. Since we cover that same topic in my ‘Challenges in the Global Environment’ course at HNC, our ERE students were very interested — & Doug was extremely generous, providing five complimentary tickets for all aspects of the event (covering three days). I know from talking to them afterwards that it was an eye-opening agenda, for both the Chinese and international students.