Jenik radon biography

InRadon co-founded the Afghanistan Relief Committee that sought freedom for Afghanistan and supported refugees displaced during the Afghan-Soviet war. Inhe was the first to officially raise the U. Radon served as Georgia's key foreign advisor and negotiator of the multi-billion dollar and multi-nation oil and gas pipelines from Azerbaijan to Turkey the BTCfeatured in the James Bond movie, The World is Not Enough.

Inhe was awarded Georgia's highest civilian award, the Order of Honor. Radon presently advises public authorities and civil society in number of developing and emerging nations around the world, including Cambodia, Ecuador, Kenya, Mozambique, Nepal, Philippines and Uganda, particularly in respect of the negotiation of extractive industry agreements, especially oil and gas, and sustainable natural resource development, as well as Afghanistan, among other things, in respect of the prospective multi-nation TAPI gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan to Pakistan to India.

JR: I have always been an activist-lawyer, representing and advising, for example, governments that are engaged in negotiations on public interest matters and human rights issues, such as the rights of communities, especially in the natural resource sector and in self-determination, such as was the case with Afghanistan, Poland and Estonia.

My teaching is reflective to a great degree of my work as a lawyer. After my wife passed away, my mentor and jenik radon biography John Barton, himself a former teacher of mine at Stanford, suggested that I start teaching. I was not even sure which subject I should be teaching about in the first place; when John suggested that I teach human rights, I initially claimed to know nothing about it, much to his consternation!

John proceeded to describe my life and told me that since I have been living and practicing human rights, it was time to teach it. I realized that my practice and experience made for a unique contribution to the classroom. My specialty in advising governments allows me to teach very practical lessons in my classes, though of course explained and elaborated in an academic context.

It is a way of giving back, and studying at Columbia College was a very formative and happy period of my life. But teaching also forces me to think more clearly and be more articulate, since students ask questions jenik radon biography having the obvious background and experience I have. As a consequence, I have to make my knowledge, the concepts and issues I take for granted, comprehensible to them.

One of the most important lessons I took from the Columbia Core is to always ask questions. Have you learned to be curious and to not be embarrassed to ask questions, even if you make missteps sometimes? Our backgrounds are our second nature, our DNA. Explaining often what you take to be second nature, effectively what you believe is, in fact, more difficult than explaining what you read in a book, as then you only have to explain chapter and verse.

Our brains store a massive amount of information. One of the initiatives that President Bollinger has taken while at Columbia is setting up the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, which studies neuroscience and nanotechnology, so that we can learn more about how our brains actually work. What I have observed, especially in the classroom, is that articulation, in a way, requires us to retrace our thoughts and explain why and how we drew certain conclusions.

It can take considerable time and effort, especially when much of our thinking is based on values we encountered and experiences we had when we were young—what we learned at home from our parents, for example. How do you approach such law making? This entails that one has to understand why a precedent law was enacted, what the circumstances were, what the motivations of the legislators were, and what the intended effect or impact was.

We have to first understand before we can adapt and adopt. Laws are not created in a vacuum. Even within a given social context, what is fair? Fairness is, by jenik radon biography, a concept that lacks an objective mathematical or clear definition. So I try, as best as possible, to always approach any problem from an ethical and objective point of view; I also examine the costs and benefits of a certain situation.

My upbringing was very important in helping me to understand morals and ethics and to include them as factors. In high school, I was taught by the Jesuits, who are great ethical teachers. But most important for the formation of my ethical standards were my parents, who taught me everything I know. I often say that I learned nothing new at Columbia and Stanford beyond what my parents had already taught me; rather, my education helped me articulate what I had learned from them.

They also taught me that I have only one real asset: my reputation. Earnings from my practice are only short-term assets. Despite sometimes being pressured to not speak up, I am pretty forthright and very open. People have often asked for my services because they know that I try to provide an objective perspective. You have to be comfortable with your goals and ambitions and be true to your ethical standards.

One of my concerns in doing work overseas is the people who have not been taken care of, who are being overlooked. The goal at the end of the day, though, is to make sure that such people can stand on their own two feet so that their voices are heard. This is an important lesson I learned in my student days when I visited the Penny Foundation in Guatemala, a front-runner of a microfinance NGO and an organization that truly believed in people.

And I firmly agree. What do you do in those kinds of cases? JR: I always consider the long-run implications of any action. Once again, articulation is important. I have to articulate to the people I advise and counsel as to why something is in their best interests, even if they are unable to conceive of the long run outcome. As an advisor, I have a wider perspective because I have worked on many projects, have traveled extensively, have had the fortunate opportunity to study at great institutions and learn from great thinkers, etc.

For many people, it is difficult to imagine, realize, or believe that their country can, and will, be better off tomorrow than it is today. Instead, they choose to sacrifice their long-term interests for purely short-term gains, simply because they have no confidence in the future. Such a choice often creates today the problems of tomorrow.

People often ask me to explain how I assess risks. When evaluating a situation, I do a cost-benefit analysis, a combination of considering different scenarios, quantifying costs and benefits to the best extent possible, articulating or specifying those effects that cannot be quantified, and, to me, always considering the long-term impacts.

With these skills, I can outline potential outcomes and implications, risks if you will, using both logic and experience at the same time. Admittedly, risks that we do not understand can also create unfounded fears, but this is another topic. ST: Your work in Nepal, Estonia and Afghanistan are all demonstrations of your passion for contributing to nation-building in developing countries.

This kind of work seems quite different from the international corporate law practice that you run. How and why do you find yourself attracted to two such diverse fields? Business is a normal part of life, and a way to sustain ourselves and fulfill these basic obligations. I use my corporate skills, which are, in essence, drafting and negotiation and even thinking a problem through.

When you write contracts, for example, you have to anticipate issues and accordingly write with precision and clarity. My practice is, in a way, like preventative medicine. I try to prevent a problem before it becomes a problem. I simply apply the corporate skills that I have acquired over a lifetime to the public sector but with a different mindset, that of the public interest or the common good.

There are important distinctions between the public and private sectors, which are too often overlooked or ignored. States are not purely economic actors. A state has two obligations to its citizens: to promote the economy by encouraging local and national businesses but also to protect and advance its citizens. A state has a regulatory function.

Articulation, then, comes into the picture once again: as an advisor, one has to be able to articulate the difference between a purely business-related transaction and a transaction where one also has to be a regulator. That can be challenging at times, especially in developing nations, where the state as an economic actor is very pronounced and is often the main employer.

ST: Your work has been undertaken on a larger-than-life scale; from drafting constitutions in Nepal to writing foreign investment laws in Poland and Estonia, you have helped shape the trajectories of entire countries.

Jenik radon biography

Indeed, Estonia has commonly been regarded as a success story. Was it ever intimidating for you when you were younger to venture into such uncharted territory? JR: The honest answer is no. My father advised me to not accept any job or take on any assignment unless I honestly believed that I had the skills and mindset necessary to complete the task well.

Importantly, I feel comfortable building on my existing knowledge and applying it. And I jenik radon biography talking and listening to people; that helps. In Estonia, in fact in all countries where I work, I work with the people of the country, so I am part of a team and I become part of the community. One is always part of a group or a community, as one cannot accomplish anything of consequence by oneself.

The hard part is when you work outside of your traditional community, which in my case is the United States. In that case you have to become aware and knowledgeable of other ways of doing things, which are often just different. And you have to respect those ways. How do you usually go about gaining an understanding about the specificities of each case?

JR: The most memorable class I took at Columbia was a prerequisite to my anthropological field trip to Brazil. It taught me to observe how people said things, their body language, and how they engaged with one another. If you ask most of my American friends, they would say that I am not very quiet. But I listen first, in order to learn and understand it.

You have to listen to what people's concerns and needs are; therefore, you need to engage with people. Understanding the psychology and the sociology of the people you are working with is important in these situations, and engagement at this level can be quite time-consuming. But there is no doubt that such dialogue is very rewarding and fun. Therefore, it is once again important to articulate.

ST: I find your work in Nepal with the Terai particularly interesting. Evidently, your work was a success. Yet, as an outsider, you helped make the constitution what it is. How did you ensure that all voices were heard and that you were not imposing a Western standard of political structure upon the Nepali people? JR: A whole committee cannot draft an agreement, let alone a constitution, so someone has to take the lead and write the first draft.

Think of it as an essay. But then the engagement, after there is a draft for people to read and comment on, becomes critical. As a drafter, all I did was take the first steps and bring in alternate perspectives and ideas for the parties to consider. Admittedly, putting ideas and concepts in a draft is influential, as they then have to be accepted or reacted against with explanations.

A concept cannot simply be rejected once it is in writing. And I am very proud of what I introduced into the Nepali constitution. I introduced updated human rights principles into the draft constitution in Nepal. The informant is not a spy, as the word might imply, but a person who understands both your culture and the local one and who can translate back and forth in between them and bridge them.

I worked closely with Pravakar Adhikari, a Columbia Law School graduate and a native of Nepal, while drafting the constitution. Pravakar was a super informant. He was able to engage with the government, with the other parties and with the community due to his background and qualifications. He also obviously engaged with me—frequently asking questions about why certain provisions of the constitution were included, what their purpose was and, most importantly, how they helped to create a better Nepal.

He had to engage with the community and explain why certain provisions were there and why some were not. He of course also had to engage with the opposing political forces.