Speaker, NoVES member Govind Nair
SYNOPSIS
This presentation will offer a humanist interpretation of what challenges and opportunities exist in various social networks, within and across local, national, and global levels. We will briefly review some core concepts in social network theory and draw on recent social science research using these concepts. Partly based on the presenter's experience in teaching a college course on social network theory, it will focus on the ethical implications of voluntarily and involuntarily being part of different networks. It will specifically consider these issues in the light of four moral imperatives discussed in a previous platform by the same presenter: managing our bounded rationality; reclaiming science as a dominant mode of public discourse; enforcing the protection of our global commons; and averting the politics of despair.
SPEAKER BIO:
Govind is a Board member of the Northern Virginia Ethical Society and is also active in the Platform, Adult Enrichment And Civic Action, and Communications committees. A dual USA/Australia national, Govind was born in Singapore, and, outside the USA, has lived in Asia, Australia, France, and Panama, and traveled in more than 80 countries on five continents. He is fluent in French, Spanish, and Malay/Indonesian, and has a working knowledge of Russian, Hindi, and Portuguese.
Govind took an early retirement in 2010 as Lead Economist from the World Bank where his 25-year career spanned financial development, telecommunications policy, decentralization, public-private partnerships and capacity building. He subsequently established a global private training and consultancy practice based in Fairfax, Virginia. In parallel with these engagements, he has remained for fifteen years an adjunct faculty at The George Washington University where he mainly teaches economics in a graduate program in organizational sciences, and occasional courses in social network theory and in organizational change management.
Govind studied economics in the USA as an undergraduate and graduate at Reed College and Princeton University, and in Paris, France at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (political economy) and Sorbonne (French literature and civilization). He teaches economics in a masters program at The George Washington University and has also taught in MBA and public policy graduate programs at universities in Australia and Malaysia. Govind has been a speaker at more than two dozen international conferences and corporate trainer in several dozen executive and policy maker workshops worldwide.
