Bruce Lowry

Bruce Lowry

Interim President and Director, Policy and Advocacy at Skoll Global Threats Fund

TED Attendee
TED Translator
San Francisco, California, United States
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About Bruce

I am a…

Brainstormer, Change Agent, Concerned citizen, Connector, Environmentalist, Idea generator, Marketer, Musician, Philanthropist, World traveler

Bio

Bruce serves as Interim President and Director, Policy and Advocacy, for the Skoll Global Threats Fund, helping shape the organization's strategy, its approach to engagement with government and its communications and advocacy efforts. Prior to joining the Skoll Global Threats Fund, Bruce served as Communications Director for the Skoll Foundation, working with media, the Skoll social entrepreneurs, and Skoll’s partners to broadly promote the Foundation’s message around the power of social entrepreneurship. Bruce brings both private and public sector experience to the Skoll Global Threats Fund, with an international perspective built from working and living in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. He joined the Skoll Foundation from Novell, where he led the company’s global public relations team. He oversaw the company’s media and communications efforts as Novell underwent a major reinvention, moving from a traditional proprietary enterprise software player to a leader in Linux and open source. Prior to Novell, Bruce spent nearly 14 years at the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Service Officer. An economic specialist, he served overseas tours of duty in Saudi Arabia, Swaziland and Italy. His domestic assignments included stints in the Department’s Economic and Business Affairs Bureau, the European regional economic office, the office of the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, and the Ukraine Desk. As a diplomat, Bruce worked on a wide range of issues, including, among others, the G-7 summit process, the Middle East peace process, Chernobyl/nuclear safety, human rights, democratization, and economic development. Bruce earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations from Pomona College and a Master of Arts in international affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He’s a member of the Pacific Council for International Policy, a Founding Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research, and a board member for the Cazadero Performing Arts Camp.

I'm passionate about

Tackling collective impact, collective action problems in novel ways.

An idea worth spreading

Big global threats- climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, pandemics and more - share common challenges that make them hard to tackle, including risk literacy, governance, insufficient constituencies, and failure to apply data and tech in novel ways. By getting good at these in one sector we can potentially get good across the category of global threats.

Areas of expertise

Advocacy, Climate engagement, Communications, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Governance, Nuclear nonproliferation

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