Transatlantic Network 2020

By Michael Boyajian

The British Council’s Transatlantic Network 2020 is a network of young emerging leaders from Europe and North America who are interested in establishing transatlantic and global links.

The group includes people like Anabel Knight who works in London for Lisbon’s Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and who believes communications are the key to success.  As a global citizen she has spent 9 months in Portugal and has traveled to the U.S. and Chile.

Then there is Noel Hidalgo of the United States who is working with the New York Senate to help the public understand the power of an open transparent government through the senate’s technology infrastructure.  He has done work exposing China’s treatment of Tibet and even did a lifecast of becoming a New York City cab driver.  Noel likes to ask “Why.”  Why do we have discord, why do we have war?  He finds that TN2020 helps to find the answers to these questions on an international scale but also for domestic issues which are often the same world round.  He believes TN2020 brings down the obstacles that divide us.

There is also Errol Lawson of Birmingham England who is the operations manager and youth pastor for the Mt. Zion Community Church.  He had a troubled youth but became spiritual and changed his life.  He studies leadership management and theology.  He is helping to develop the next generation of leaders.  Later this year his first book, Do Something!, will be published.

The age range for the group is 25 to 35 and includes professionals from business, civil society, the arts, science and the media they include a member of the European Parliament and even a LAPD sergeant and the British journalist who coined the phrase “podcast.”

The group recently held a conference in Chicago where they learned about the city’s work preventing violence, conserving water, and constructing sustainable buildings.  They also identified opportunities to forge new group initiatives, such as creating a web site for Muslim women and helping empower the civil society of Kosovo.  The British Council is the United Kingdom’s international nonprofit organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities.

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