Claire Chiang is an entrepreneur, social activist and an author. Senior Vice President of Banyan Tree Holdings and a co-founder of Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts, Ms. Chiang is also chairperson of Banyan Tree Global Foundation. A former Nominated Member of Parliament, she has been recognized by numerous establishments for her contributions to business and society with awards such as Woman of the Year, the Public Service Medal as well as the Hospitality Lifetime Achievement Award, which she and her husband Ho Kwon Ping received at the 2009 annual China Hotel Investment Summit.
Dr. Judith Rodin, the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, begins the Resilience Dividend (2014) with a chilling warning: “we live in a world defined by disruption”. Disruption is inevitable, she writes, because of rapid urbanization, which increases disaster vulnerability and ecological decline; climate change, which increases risks to livelihoods, water, and the frequency of extreme weather; and globalization, which has created an increasingly interconnected economy that puts strains on individuals, families, enterprises, and governments. We live in a fragile world in which a disruption to one system can lead to a chain reaction of other failures.’
the chrysanthemums faint
after the rains
– Matsuo Basho
7.8 on the Richter Scale
50 seconds of devastation
8,800 lives lost and 23,000 injured
30 million people affected in the aftermath
$10 billion required to rebuild Nepal after the Gorkha earthquake
A few weeks ago, we asked our readers to send us images that captures the meaning of “resilience”. We were moved by the response, with over 50 entries that evoked aspects of resilience that we hadn’t even anticipated! The following five photos were selected for the moments of resilience captured in the lives of people and the spaces they live in.
