Renjie Butalid

Opening Keynote, Global Young Leaders Conference
Washington, DC  - July 12, 2010

Check against delivery

Thank you very much for the kind introduction, I appreciate it.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, most especially to the delegates of the Global Young Leaders Conference. My name is Renjie Butalid and I am from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, a city that is home to one of the most famous and recognizable products in the world: the Blackberry smartphone produced by Canadian company Research In Motion. Now for my own curiosity, how many of you own a Blackberry? Well then, I actually own an Apple iPhone myself, but please don’t let that information leave this room, since I do have to go back to Waterloo after all.

It is my sincere pleasure to be with all of you here in Washington, DC this evening.

On a personal level, my presence on this stage is extremely humbling. You see, back in 2002, I was a 17-year old teenager who had just graduated from high school in the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East. That summer soon after finishing high school and before I went off to the University of Waterloo in Canada to eventually earn a degree in Economics and Political Science, I found myself here at the Global Young Leaders Conference as a delegate. At the opening keynote, we were in a room much similar to the one we are in now and I was in the audience surrounded by a group of exceptional young people from all over the world, just like all of you today. Many of the people I met back at the GYLC, I still call friends to this very day.

And just so everyone knows, when I was a delegate at the GYLC eight years ago, I was a delegate representing India. Where are the Team India delegates in the audience this evening? Namaste.

And I remember all I could think of when I sat quietly and reflected, after having traveled thousands of miles to get to this conference, which was also my first visit to the United States of America, was,

“What am I really doing here?”

“Am I really a leader?”

“I don’t even know what it takes to lead, let alone, know what it takes to be a ‘global young leader’.”

Now, if you find yourself asking these very same questions at this particular moment in time, I will let you in on a secret that has taken me a while to discover.

That it is OK to be scared and uncertain, not knowing what to expect and to not have all of the answers all the time. At times, it is ok to even question whether you have the capacity and makings of a leader. I know that I’ve certainly questioned myself in the past, especially when I was a highly involved student leader at the University of Waterloo, where at one point, I had the responsibility of overseeing a budget of over $1.2 million dollars on behalf of 24,000 undergraduate students when I was on student government. I’ve also questioned myself on numerous occasions, most recently as a community organizer involved with a number of local community events back in Waterloo. But I prevailed.

What I have learned throughout my own leadership experience is to let that feeling of self-doubt and uncertainty motivate me and I would encourage all of you to do the same; there is after all, only a very small difference between excitement and fear of uncertainty. Instead of being scared, tell yourself that you’re excited to be here and open yourself up to the possibilities that exist out there in the world. There is a reason why you are all here in Washington, DC and will be in New York City, attending this global conference on youth leadership over the next ten days. This is an opportunity of a lifetime and I really hope that you make the most of it.
Read the rest of this entry »

I am excited to share that I have been invited to give the opening keynote at the Global Young Leaders Conference (GYLC) in Washington DC this coming July 12, organized by the Congressional Youth Leadership Council.

As an alumnus of the GYLC, I am extremely excited and humbled at the very same time, to have been asked to give the opening keynote. I attended this very same youth leadership conference back in July 2002. The difference is, back then, I was a young and naive 17 year old teenager who had just graduated from the International School of Choueifat in Al Ain, with a world of possibilities before him. Given my work with Social Innovation Generation these past few years and my keen interest in social entrepreneurship, I still feel that there is a world of possibilities out there, it is certainly an exciting time to be a part of this growing social innovation movement.

I was asked to write up a reflections piece by the CYLC discussing my journey beyond the conference in 2002, to be featured in their newsletter to parents and students thinking about attending the GYLC. If you are one of those students and you are reading this, I would highly recommend you attend.

I have shared my reflection piece below, feedback welcome.

With this in mind, I will be in Washington DC July 10-14, 2010 and then in New York City from July 14-18, 2010. So if you are in town and would like to get together, please feel free to drop me a line.

Reflections of a GYLC Alumnus (2002) – by Renjie Butalid

I attended the Global Young Leaders Conference in July 2002 after I was nominated and encouraged to attend by my high-school teacher during senior year. I did not realize the extent to which the conference would have an impact on me until now, when I was asked to submit a reflection piece by the Congressional Youth Leadership Council on my journey after the GYLC. Looking back over the past eight years, I can say with utmost certainty that it was a transformative experience for me and I would not be the person I am today if it had not been for the days spent in Washington DC and New York City that summer. The lessons that I learned and the people I met from all over the world, many of whom I call close friends and still keep in touch with, have had a profound impact on me even to this day.

Making the decision to attend the GYLC was not an easy one as it required a much bigger personal and financial commitment coming from the United Arab Emirates, a country situated in the Middle East and halfway around the world from the United States of America. I lived and grew up in a small oasis desert city called Al Ain in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, with parents who decided to move to the UAE from the Philippines in 1990. Growing up, I was your average teenager, not quite shy, and yet, not too sure what my identity was and where my place was in this world given my cultural background and heritage living in a foreign country. I also never considered myself to be a leader, even though it seemed I was highly involved in high school through playing on a number of sports teams and competing with other schools in the local area.

Attending the GYLC changed all that and I was able to see myself in a different light from then on. There is something very powerful in the notion that someone out there believes in you and sees your leadership potential and capabilities. You ultimately begin to believe it yourself and it eventually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. More than anything, the GYLC allowed me to find the courage within myself as I embarked on my leadership journey moving forward.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is only the first week of the new year and I am already looking forward to what lies ahead! So many exciting events, projects and initiatives taking place in the near and not-so-distant future that I can tell that 2010 is going to be a transformative year.

That said, I will be speaking at the upcoming EpCon 2010 student technology conference to be held in Waterloo, Ontario next week on January 15-16, hosted by the up and coming student organization, EPIC Technology Organization founded at the University of Waterloo.

EPIC (which stands for Educate, Promote, Inspire & Connect) promises to bring together North America’s leading tech gurus and 300 student tech enthusiasts from schools all over Canada to imagine where the future of technology is headed. With tech heavyweights such as Google, Facebook, EA, Rogers, CISCO, RIM and IBM present at the conference, I am sincerely humbled to have been asked to deliver one of only three so-called ‘Power Talks‘ on a topic that I am extremely passionate about: social entrepreneurship, more specifically technology in social enterprise.

Given the context of the conference, I will be speaking on how an emerging generation of leaders and changemakers from all over the world, are harnessing the power of online and mobile technology to bring about significant positive social change, most especially to the world’s poor with limited or no access to such technology. Examples abound such as Kiva, where in just over four years, have managed to raise $100 million in the form of microloans for entrepreneurs in developing countries (and most recently, to entrepreneurs based in the US); to organizations such as Cell-Life and SIMpill in South Africa leveraging mobile SMS technology to revolutionize healthcare delivery for patients with HIV/AIDS and TB respectively.

These are only a few of the examples that I hope to showcase at EpCon 2010 next week. As I have said before and will say again, young people have the power and opportunities like never before to affect positive social change in this world, and this will become even more apparent in the decade to come.

If you are interested in attending EpCon 2010, there are still spaces available but you will have to register very soon in order to guarantee your spot. See you next week!