.

Ambassador Stuart Holliday, President & CEO of the Meridian International Center, sat for an interview with the Diplomatic Courier at "Talent Mobility & the Future of Jobs: The World in 2050".

[INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT]

[Diplomatic Courier:] In preparing the next generation workforce, how much emphasis should be placed on teaching ethics and leadership skills versus the “hard” skills of STEM education?

[Ambassador Holliday:] STEM—science, technology, engineering, math—these are tools. What do you use these tools for? We hope that people will use them to create economic growth. To help deal with things like pandemic disease, to help deal with the challenges we deal with as a global society. But because they are tools, they can also be used for other purposes. Knowledge can be used for crime. It can be used to create unrest. It can be used even for terrorism. So it’s important that we instill a sense of ethics and leadership as we develop these capabilities, which are going to be increasingly impactful. One person can have a huge and dramatic impact using technology.

The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.

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Ambassador Stuart Holliday: Teaching Leadership vs. STEM

Global Business or International Corporate as Art
February 13, 2014

Ambassador Stuart Holliday, President & CEO of the Meridian International Center, sat for an interview with the Diplomatic Courier at "Talent Mobility & the Future of Jobs: The World in 2050".

[INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT]

[Diplomatic Courier:] In preparing the next generation workforce, how much emphasis should be placed on teaching ethics and leadership skills versus the “hard” skills of STEM education?

[Ambassador Holliday:] STEM—science, technology, engineering, math—these are tools. What do you use these tools for? We hope that people will use them to create economic growth. To help deal with things like pandemic disease, to help deal with the challenges we deal with as a global society. But because they are tools, they can also be used for other purposes. Knowledge can be used for crime. It can be used to create unrest. It can be used even for terrorism. So it’s important that we instill a sense of ethics and leadership as we develop these capabilities, which are going to be increasingly impactful. One person can have a huge and dramatic impact using technology.

The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.