The 20th anniversary of the Young Leaders Conference program was featured in the prestigious Swiss daily, Neue Zurcher Zeitung.
Click here for the original article in German: Diplomatie auf Privatinitiative
Private Initiative Diplomacy
Dialogue Between Future Leaders
Washington [9/26/09]. Former top diplomats recently lamented that Switzerland had not been well prepared for the UBS case and suggested that a large-scale public relations campaign might be needed in the U.S. Although not well known, for 20 years the American Swiss Foundation has been bringing together future leaders from the U.S. and Switzerland on a regular basis. To observe the anniversary of this program, a reception was held at the Swiss Embassy in Washington DC, last Wednesday. Ambassador Urs Ziswiler noted that even diplomats like to make use of this network.
U.S. Leaders Are Bipartisan
To date 800 individuals have participated in the Young Leaders Conference which was initiated in 1990 by Faith Whittlesey who served as U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland under Ronald Reagan. Every year since it began, 20 to 30 Americans have flown to Switzerland for a week. Patricia Schramm, President of the American Swiss Foundation in New York, emphasized that the U.S. group is politically balanced and consists of young state and local officials, people from think tanks, professors, and journalists. The Americans meet with a group of Swiss of similar age, a majority of whom are drawn from the middle management of the Swiss companies that support the Conference. These are pharmaceutical, banking and insurance companies as well as industrialists. The costs are, therefore, privately funded, although in 2009, the Swiss National Bank, in which the Swiss government holds a majority stake, is participating as Conference host.
Continuity Not Activism
The U.S. participants become more familiar with Switzerland during the intensive week. And, let it be noted, they sometimes even speak up on bilateral issues of interest to Swiss, such as Switzerland’s right to make its own laws -- or to remind their countrymen of the need to honor treaties made with Switzerland in the past. In the end, a measure of the Conference’s success is the willingness of the sponsoring corporations to give substantial support to the Young Leaders Conference every year, which has been the case for 20 years. Given this continuity, the program is different from agitated public relations campaigns, which are not credible and which, moreover, often are discontinued the moment bilateral tensions ease.