The World Fellows

Thoughts by Sascha Müller-Kraenner

2005 Yale World Fellow

 

 

As a 2005 Yale World Fellow, let me testify as to the value and uniqueness of the program. I was nominated when I still chaired the foreign policy department of one of Germany’s major philanthropic institutions, the Heinrich Böll Foundation. I am also a partner of Ecologic, Germany’s biggest independently funded policy think tank. In January 2007, I will join The Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s important environmental NGOs, to establish the organisation’s new program in Europe.

Yale itself provides a nearly perfect environment for academic research and for interaction with some of the most important intellectual leaders of our times. The World Fellows Program however, is not an academic program but a special kind of leadership training program for mid-career professionals from different backgrounds and regions of the world. For those of us who have chosen not to follow an academic path, it was good to come back to a university campus – to buttress the practical experience we had gained over time with theoretical knowledge and “higher education” in the purest sense.

The program’s core, the World Fellows Seminar, includes lectures on everything from Plato to John Maynard Keynes, from business school professors to Yale’s top experts in sustainable development, from the inspiring Divinity School to the university’s world-famous Law School. Yale’s philosophy seems to be that future leaders – whether in business, politics or civil society – need profound knowledge in a wide range of fields. They should be broadly informed and not narrow minded.

The World Fellows Program also offers high-quality leadership seminars, starting with training in rhetoric, media, and negotiation, and, last but not least, discussions on the elusive concept of leadership itself. I most enjoyed taking classes on game theory, applying a concept developed by the military but now mostly used in the business world to today’s politics and the world of international negotiations.

The time at Yale accords otherwise busy professionals like me time for reflection and writing as well as invaluable opportunities to interact with similarly talented people from other walks of life. At Yale, I gathered ideas for a book on the pressing issue of energy security which I started writing immediately after I came back to Berlin and which will be published in March 2007. I have high hopes that the book will be translated into one or more languages so that I can, in turn, promote some of the ideas I became acquainted with in the international environment provided by the program.

The true value of the Yale World Fellows Program lies, however, in the strength of the network of world leaders it helps create. There have been numerous situations in which I have called upon other World Fellows or faculty I met at Yale to fill gaps in my knowledge, to gain access to leaders and elites in other communities and countries, or sometimes just to ask for advice.

The Yale World Fellows Program offers a truly unique opportunity for mid-career leaders from all over the world to take a break from the fast-paced lives they normally lead. At that stage of their careers, a moment of reflection might lead to either a recharging of batteries or a change of course toward even higher purposes. A lot of my colleagues returned home from Yale and moved on to even more important positions in their specific environments.

Sascha Müller-Kraenner