(audience applauds)
- Hello again.
I am not Sally Osberg.
(audience laughs)
- Nor am I Stephan Chambers.
- Diligent students of our program will have spotted
that we're not supposed to be here.
We started five minutes of this evening
to say a couple things about the evening's host,
Sally Osberg.
(audience cheers and applauds)
Sally spends her time honoring others.
(audience laughs)
Deflecting praise and attention.
And we snuck out here to change that
and to say why we think she's amazing.
And we decided that what Sally really,
really needed was men with matching hair
(audience laughs)
telling her stuff she already knows.
(audience laughs)
(audience applauds)
Sally is a remarkable host of this amazing event.
And you've known her for a long time,
some of you have known her for as long as I have.
And there's a lot of talk in our world
about changing the world.
But I just want to say a few things
about how Sally has changed the world.
15 years of this forum,
106 Skoll awardees,
thousands of people working in this system at this forum.
Millions of people who's lives have been changed.
I could go on, I could go on and list the numerous ways
in which she's extraordinary professionally.
But instead, I'm going to list a few reasons
why I think I love Sally.
I love Sally because I know smart people
who can't get it right emotionally.
And I know emotional people,
you can't get it right rationally.
I don't know very many people
who are as emotionally atuned
and as smart and who's judgment I value
as much as I value Sally's.
(audience applauds)
I love her for her fierce compression.
I love her even though she once moved my notes
from that podium over there.
And I walked out to find absolutely nothing.
(audience laughs)
Except all of you in front of me.
And me supposed to be making sense.
I love her because she knows how to laugh
and why to cry.
I know these things about Sally.
And I now risk becoming excessively emotional.
And this is by the way what we look like
in this our country when we're excessively emotional.
(audience laughs and applauds)
So thank you Sally,
I love you.
And I'm gonna hand over now to one
of Jeff and Sally's closest friends.
Foundation board member and possessor of very,
very fine hair,
Jim DeMartini. (audience laughs and applauds)
- Well better that we have the hair we do than not.
(audience laughs)
I'm honored to be here tonight representing Jeff,
the Foundation Board and the Jeff Skoll group family
of organizations of which there are many.
And my first responsibility is
to read to you a letter from Jeff.
A letter by the way, he was editing last night.
So if i get a word wrong here and there you'll know why.
And it says, "Dear friends,
greetings to all of you in Oxford.
I'm sad that I cannot be with you
but I had a serious back surgery last week
and I've added to the medal collection in my back.
One day some future Tomb Raider will stumble
across what is left of me and make a fortune.
(audience laughs)
Titanium is the new gold.
(audience laughs)
This is the first Skoll World Forum that I have missed.
And I'm doubly sad as this is the final forum
with Sally at the helm.
I hope you would agree with me
that Sally has done an incredible job
at the forum all these years.
And it is hard to imagine this forum without her.
I recall when Sally agreed to become the leader
of the Skoll Foundation in 2001.
Who knew what these past 17 years would bring?
Sally started with was then called The Skoll Community Fund,
a donor advised fund housed
at the Community Foundation Silicon Valley.
Sally had a giant staff of one person, Cristina Yoon
who we're all happy to tell you is still with us.
(audience cheers and applauds)
One of the first things Sally did was take me
to meet her mentor, John Gardener,
the man who had introduced the Great Society Programs
in America when he served under president Lyndon Johnson.
I asked John what he felt we could do and John said,
"Bet on good people doing good things."
We took that as our marching orders
and eventually decided that good people
doing good things was a very apt description
of the nays in field of social entrepreneurship.
We work with our team and our early board
and emerged with a new name, The Skoll Foundation.
And a new mission was social entrepreneurship at it's core.
Since then Sally has been an unstoppable driving force
in the world of social change.
As well as an incredible partner to me
as I began my road into philantrophy.
What has Sally accomplished?
All of you for starters.
She helped build a community that punches above it's weight.
And put's the entrepreneur into social entrepreneurship.
Sally walks fast, she really walks fast by the way.
(audience laughs)
She credits her father, a New Yorker,
for encouraging a brisk pace, no waste to time.
Sally is impatient for social change.
She sees out there on the horizon.
Not only does Sally walk fast but she also sings loud.
Over the years, Sally and I have adopted Imagine
as our go to karaoke song sung together
at pub nights here in Oxford.
Imagine is the perfect soundtrack
for Sally's leadership of the Skoll Foundation.
She imagined a world if you could,
a world that was systematically recognize,
lift up, connect and celebrate social entrepreneurs.
I could go on and on as Sally's contributions are vast.
But time is precious and I promise Sally
I would not embarrass her by going overboard too much.
But let me say clearly, I'm deeply grateful
to have had Sally as a pillar
for good in my life all these years.
Social entrepreneurship will simply
not be the same without her tireless devotion
to improving the lives of the vulnerable.
Her ability to imagine and act
has served as all remarkably well.
Don Henley, who co-wrote Hotel California,
was at last year's forum as many of you know.
And as he says in that song,
"You can check out anytime you like
but you can never leave."
(audience laughs)
Really like that song by the way.
Sally maybe preparing to checkout
as the CEO of the Skoll Foundation
but as our friend and treasured member of this community,
she is thankfully not going very far.
With all that is going on in the world today,
we need to strengthen all bonds and forge new ones.
Titanium maybe the new gold
but Sally is stronger and more precious
than either one of them.
Much love, Jeff."
(audience applauds)
And so I would just like to add a couple
of brief comments to that.
When you think about John Gardener's advice
of betting on people doing good things,
it's clear that the foundation's very first bet
on good people doing good things was Sally.
And when you think back on the last 17 years
of amazing accomplishments under Sally's leadership,
clearly they followed John Gardener's advice to the letter.
On a personal level,
I'm deeply grateful to Sally and treasure the partnership
that we've had for 17 or 18 years.
And the friendship that we have
and is gonna continue a long time on into the future.
She's very, very special to me.
As you all know, Sally's favorite salutation,
whenever you get a letter, email,
whatever it happens to be is the word onward.
So in true Sally fashion, I scoured the internet
looking for some appropriate and clever quote
that I could use here today.
And it's hard by the way.
Didn't really find anything that was very good
but then I thought about it for a while
and I thought that when you think about Sally
and you think about proximity which is the theme
for this year's Skoll Word Forum,
I didn't need to look on the internet.
What I needed to do was look at John Lennon's refrain
in the song Imagine and what that refrain says is,
"You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one."
Does that not describe Sally?
Sally, we all love you.
We thank you for your vision,
your leadership and your friendship.
And we're so happy that you're gonna remain proximate
and continue to be a guiding light for our community.
Sally can you join us now on stage?
(audience cheers and applauds)
- I love you.
(audience cheers)
(hosts laughing)
- We're now gonna take a couple minute break for Sally.
(audience laughs)
It's not on the program either,
don't leave your seats. - Thank you.
It's hard to be thanked.
And it's I who wants to do the thanking
to Jeff for trusting me all those years ago.
To Stephan who's been my partner-in-crime all these years.
To Jim who's always been there.
To my daughter, Trubercia who's here.
(audience applauds)
To our wonderful team at The Skoll Foundation.
To all our partners and to our wonderful community
of people who are building a better world.
And I also wanna thank John Lennon.
(Stephan and audience laughs)
As I was a Beatles fan.
(audience laughs)
Went to my first concert at 13 I think.
- That's about right, that's what I did.
(audience laughs)
- And it is that world.
Thank you.
- Thank you. (audience applauds and cheers)