CEC Chair Distinguished Leadership Award

During the CEC members meeting at the WCC in Barcelona, I was awarded by Keith Wheeler, the CEC Chair the newly instituted CEC Chair Distinguished Leadership Award. If I had known it in advance I would have prepared a few words of thanks. They could have been about Leadership in CEC over the last 15 years. Mine was that of re-pioneering the Commission in a time CEC was seen as as completely irrelevant to IUCN. The characteristics of my leadership were: autocratic, direct communication, personal relations, improvising, 'marketing and family-building throughout the IUCN regions'. When I stepped down Denise Hamú brought to CEC a leadership of differentiation: specialist groups, more formality, better planning, better external relations, a focus on WCLN, CEPA and ESD. The current CEC leadership by Keith Wheeler is focused on integration, coordinating and motivating members and secretariat, improving internal and external communication and bringing out the best in people: driving change. It feels good to see the stages of improvement of the CEC knowledge network and still being tolerated and allowed to contribute: "Keith, CEC - Thanks!"