An Intimate Evening with Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams

Jody Williams returned to Vancouver on March 19, 2010. Hosted by the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education, she gave a talk about how she and her colleagues around the world worked together to ban landmines, work recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize, and her tireless efforts to promote human rights through the work of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

In 1997, Jody Williams became the tenth woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She was the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and oversaw ICBL’s growth to more than 1,300 organizations in 95 countries working to eliminate antipersonnel landmines.

In the talk held at the Segal School of Business, Williams sat down with moderator Maria LeRose and discussed her roots as an activist during the Vietnam war, her work in Latin America and her struggles in finding employment in "mainstream" America.

Williams, whose Nobel Women's Initiative consists of her and five other Nobel Peace Laureates, also talked about how important it is for people to come together to make change happen.

"If I had started out and no one had joined me, there would be no treaty," she said of ICBL. "No one person changes anything."

If you’d like to hear more from this talk, check out the video below and the complete audio podcast.