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Yale World Fellows Program
The Yale World Fellows Program is a program run out of Yale University that seeks to create a global network of emerging leaders and broaden international understanding at Yale. Every year, the program brings to Yale 14-18 highly accomplished men and women from a diverse set of countries around the world.

The Fellows spend an intensive semester exploring critical global issues and undergoing leadership training, with the full resources of Yale University at their disposal. Selected from outside the United States at an early mid-career point (generally five to fifteen years into their professional development), the World Fellows come from a range of fields and disciplines, including government, business, nongovernmental organizations, religion, the military, media, and the arts. Guided by faculty advisors, the Fellows deepen their resource bases, advance their breadth of understanding, and augment their skills. Building on access to the students, faculty, alumni, and Yale visitors, the Fellows prepare for greater roles of leadership, expand their professional and personal horizons, and contribute to a deepening of international awareness and dialogue within the Yale community. They guest lecture in classes, meet with student groups, deliver campus-wide lectures, and contribute to informal dialogue and learning across the campus. The Program runs each Fall, from mid-August through Mid-December.

History
On the occasion of Yale's tercentenary, in 2001, University President Richard C. Levin launched a number of internationalization initiatives aimed at enhancing Yale's global footprint. The Yale World Fellows Program was among these, and it has since emerged as the University's signature international leadership training program – with a steadily growing global reputation for excellence – as well as a popular, broadly participatory program for the entire Yale community. Yale welcomed the first class of World Fellows to New Haven in the fall of 2002, and now boasts more than 100 emerging leaders world wide. These include a diversity of committed innovators, from top government officials and members of parliament to on-the-ground activists and investigative journalists to ground-breaking artists and next-generation business executives.

Core Goals
The Yale World Fellows Program has three core goals:
 * Broadening the knowledge foundations and strengthening the leadership skills of a set of emerging leaders from around the world
 * Deepening the international dialogue across the Yale campus by having the World Fellows play a role as catalysts for conversations and as a source of perspectives, both formal and informal, on global issues and challenges
 * Creating a network of international decision makers from a range of disciplines who are connected to Yale and to each other

Activities
The program sponsors a variety of events every year, including global conferences, multimedia exhibitions, and panel discussions on current events. World Fellows often initiate their own collaborative projects while at Yale, such as the Seven Billionth Person Project, an international multimedia effort that invites people to share through writings and art what they would say to the world’s seven billionth baby, expected to be born sometime in 2011. The Return to Yale Forum is held every other year, and brings together current and former World Fellows to meet and engage in debates about contemporary issues. The most recent Forum was held in October 2009 and included discussions on global governance, energy and environmental sustainability, development and poverty, corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, human rights and civil society, as well as small-group breakout sessions by region and interest area. In 2011, the Yale World Fellows will host Yale University's first TEDx event TEDx Yale World Fellows.

The World Fellows Program also sponsors an annual Global Leadership Series conference. At these conferences held in cities around the world, World Fellows alumni, leaders in the region, prospective World Fellows nominees, and other experts debate selected international topics and provide input into solutions to critical problems. Past conferences have addressed issues such as the United Nations Global Compact's contribution for addressing corporate social responsibility.
 * 2010: The Global Compact at 10: Holding Ourselves Accountable, Istanbul, Turkey
 * 2009: The Middle East in Transition: Leadership in Challenging Times, Cairo, Egypt
 * 2008: Post-Modern News: Cacophony and Chaos in a 24/7 Multi-Media World, Paris, France

World Fellows in the Media

 * In remarks delivered at the tercentennial of Yale University, former U.S. President Bill Clinton acknowledged that, "I said I would like to be a world fellow, and I was informed that I no longer qualify as a young world leader. So today you are stuck with my opinions without the benefit of further Yale study."
 * 2010 World Fellow Alexey Navalny, a Moscow-based lawyer and a crusader against corruption in Russian state-owned companies, faced criminal investigation after returning to Moscow following his semester in New Haven. Navalny dismissed the accusations, calling them an attempt by the government to keep him from returning home and continuing his investigations against corporate corruption.
 * 2009 World Fellow Muna AbuSulayman was named one of the 100 most powerful Arab women of 2011.
 * 2007 World Fellow Gidon Bromberg was named one of Time Magazine's Environmental Heroes of the Year in 2008, for his work on using environmental activism to foster peace processes in the Middle East.
 * 2004 World Fellow Aboubakr Jamai, a journalist from Morocco, was featured in the New Yorker for his confrontational weekly newspaper, Le Journal Hebdomadaire.

List of World Fellows 2002-2010
The biographies of all fellows can be found on the Yale World Fellows website.