Holidays in Sweden

On December 30, 2011, in Mark, by Ambassador Brzezinski
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Ambassador Brzezinski on his skates in Kungsträdgården

My wife, daughter and I celebrated the holidays this year in Stockholm.  It was a lovely, low key time with family, a glorious moment of relaxation where we were able to focus on each other and explore this city aglow with Christmas lights.

 
One of our first stops was going to see the wonderful window displays in the front of the NK Store – our daughter got a particular kick out of Santa on a bicycle, the wily octopus and grinning Snowman. After this visit, we could not stop her from squealing “Jingle Bells” at the top of her lungs and endlessly asking questions about Santa and his funny hat.  Even better, she’s beginning to pick up a bit of Swedish, yelling out every once in a while “Hej då Mommy” and “Hej då Daddy.”

 
The highlight for me was the morning my wife and I went ice skating at Kungsträdgården, at a public rink in the center of the city.  There is something so relaxing skating around the rink, dodging laughing children and aspiring hockey stars, and just getting into your own world. Skating hand in hand with my wife and watching her do her impressive skating tricks put a huge smile on my face for the rest of the weekend.

 

We also took our daughter to the historic Vasa Museum, a maritime museum in Stockholm, located on the island of Djurgården.  The museum displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged; the 64-gun warship Vasa that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628.  The Vasa Museum is reportedly the most visited museum in Scandinavia, but the day we visited it attendance was sparse. The magnitude of the ship cast eery shadows across the large space, and one could not help imagining it filled with people laboring on its sails, manning its oars, more than 400 hundred years before us.  Our daughter had a wonderful time running round and round a replica of the ship’s mast, chasing other little toddlers and playing peek-a-boo with me.

 
Whether it was peeping into toy shops in Gamla Stan (Stockholm’s Old Town) or pushing my daughter down the wide avenues on Strandvägen, this weekend Stockholm really began to feel like home.

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Women tackling the challenges of today

On December 23, 2011, in Natalia, by Ambassador Brzezinski
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Secretary Clinton Delivers the Keynote Address at Inaugural Women in Public Service Colloquium

Despite the Christmas lights twinkling across the darkened city, my mind could not be more removed from the holiday season. Instead of frantic thoughts about last-minute gifts, I’ve been firmly fixated on questions of women’s equality and empowerment.

Perhaps it is the underlying legacy of egalitarianism and emphasis (and record) on women’s rights in Sweden, but everywhere I go—from jovial holiday parties at the American Club or in conversations with Swedish businesswomen and financiers— I encounter dynamic women excelling in their fields but also struggling with balancing work and family, or their personal expectations and creativity with the occasionally harsh and even sometimes unfair reality of the workplace.

As the post-Feminist generation, we often expect so much of ourselves—to break the glass ceiling, while simultaneously baking perfect blueberry scones for our happy husband and leading our 2.5 children in their respective Boy or Girl Scouts group— without having the resources, infrastructure or societal support to “have it all.”

Strategizing with women on how to solve, or at least ameliorate, these  issues is my singular passion. Unfortunately, I believe women still occupy what I call “symbolic status” in various realms. How many times have you heard the phrase: “she only got that position, scholarship or spot on the board because they needed a woman”. There remains a prevalent thought that each board or scholarship program has room for the ‘token’ female or two, like a quota system. This pits women against each other, and breeds competition between us rather than camaraderie and a sense of responsibility to each other. We need to lift each other as we climb in order to break that interminable glass ceiling.

 
Professionally successful, happy women help and mentor other women. A prime example is our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Secretary Clinton is making female empowerment a major tenet of foreign policy and diplomacy – not least through her economic statecraft policy directive, which emphasizes the inextricable overlay between the business context and foreign policy.

In today’s globalized world, our economic policies and futures are interwoven and we need female leaders in business and politics shepherding change.

“Until women around the world are accorded their rights – and afforded the opportunities of education, health care, and gainful employment – global progress and prosperity will have its own glass ceiling,” Secretary Clinton said July 15, 2009 at the Council on Foreign Relations.

 
Economic statecraft is about leveling the playing field, and the necessity to tackle the incredibly complicated challenges of our time with a more balanced, dynamic approach.   Ultimately, it is not a question of which gender is better or smarter. It is a question of creating a more humanitarian, more efficient world. And for this challenge, women must be included.

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Women for Peace

On December 20, 2011, in Mark, by Ambassador Brzezinski
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Ambassador and Mrs. Brzezinski together with Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karmen.

On Monday December 12, I was delighted to attend with my wife a terrific panel discussion with the three powerful women who were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize:  Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Liberia; Leymah Gbowee, Peace Activist from Liberia; Tawakkol Karmen of Yemen, a Journalist and Human Rights Activist.  The event was hosted by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and the discussion focused on peace, security and democratization.  These remarkable women have become Nobel Peace Prize Laureates “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.” In front of a packed room, these three champions of human dignity shared their stories of speaking truth to power and improvising to compel change.   Their strength and sheer will could be felt by everyone in the room.  Their determination to be included, and to be inclusive, has had an enormous impact on the future of their nations and of women’s rights.

 
The panel was both inspirational, and practical.  The inspirational was present before the Laureates even began to speak.  President Sirleaf was first, but before she uttered a word a photo of personal triumph appeared on the large video screen above her.  It was a photo of President Sirleaf soon after she had been released from jail, incarcerated for speaking out against oppression.  It was a picture of personal triumph, fist in the air waved in solidarity with her supporters filling the streets and celebrating her freedom, and theirs.  Without any words, we could all feel intangibly the strength of this woman.  The image captures everything about personal sacrifice and leadership credibility – she had suffered and sacrificed for her cause.

 
Laureate Gbowee’s description of how a “sex boycott” was a catalyst for getting men to join the cause is an example of thinking creatively to expand a constituency for change.  While she joked a bit about this tactic, it underscores how grass roots and authentic her campaign and struggle was.  It was not a campaign organized using modern technology, but by forcing men and society to listen in any way she could be heard.  This Nobel Laureate’s gut instincts about people and the power of her voice compelled change.  Her advice to foreign donors was instructive, to come and listen and learn about local conditions, before deploying well-intentioned foreign development programs.  How she organized is also revealing in this age of the benefits of internet connectivity.  Gbowee went from church to church, house to house to organize, her powerful voice and personality a catalyst for popular mobilization.  Change is about the people leading it, and shoe leather had been a catalyst her highly effective grass roots campaign.

 
Tawakkol Karmen of Yemen  said “women’s issues have no boundaries.”  Her point was that women’s rights as human rights is a global challenge – not unique to any region but a universal challenge – with a global opportunity associated with positive change.  The peace processes that each of these women is associated with were advanced by their participation and leadership.  The involvement of women had made an enormous difference.  By extension, how many other challenges do we face today that could radically benefit from greater inclusion of women in leadership.  With more women in business and economic leadership, might we be able to be in a better place at this time of global economic interdependence?  With more women in political leadership, might we have a more inclusive dialogue regarding the direction of our humanity?

Laureate Karmen made another point:  “the young are going to own their countries from now on.”  An important point from a woman from the Middle East, where much of the population is under age of thirty.

 
Important questions were asked at this symposium, and it was an honor to be in the presence of courageous leadership.  It is a mission of US Embassy Stockholm to make gender equality and women’s empowerment a part of our efforts pertaining to democracy, opportunity, internet freedom, and other challenges.  As Secretary Clinton has stated:  “If you’re trying to solve a problem, whether it is fighting corruption or strengthening the rule of law or sparking economic growth, you are more likely to succeed if you widen the circle to include a broader range of expertise, experience, and ideas.  So as we work to solve our problems, we need more women at the table and in the halls of parliament and government ministries where these debates are occurring.”

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Nobel Reflections

On December 12, 2011, in Natalia, by Ambassador Brzezinski
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Ready for the Nobel dinner!

The Nobel Prize Gala in Stockholm’s City Hall on Saturday evening was the single most magnificently-orchestrated, elegant event I have attended. Descending the gently angled, marble staircase on the arm of an escort, my breath caught at the warmly lit, brick-lined expanse of the hall which had ceilings that seemed to reach to the heavens. Between different courses of food, graceful ballerinas danced on pointe along our tables and masterful violinists pierced the air. The event itself was the perfect marriage of great science rewarded, and pure glamour.
But this fairy-tale scene was not the climax of the festivities — the most moving and climactic moments occurred during the awards ceremony when the laureates were presented their medals by the King.
Seated on the stage in front of members of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, and across from the Swedish King and royal family, the Nobel laureates (which included five Americans) reflected the pride of a lifetime’s arduous experimentation and hard work. Whether it was the twinkle in Professor Saul Perlmutter’s eye every time his child made eye contact with him, or the way Professor Brian Schmidt lovingly winked at his wife, there was pure joy in the air.
Two moments in particular lit up the crowd:
Professor Ralph M. Steinman was part of the team of Professor Bruce A. Beutler and Professor Jules A. Hoffman, who received the Nobel Prize for physiology. Sadly, three days before receiving the news, Professor Steinman passed away to pancreatic cancer. Nonetheless, the Nobel Committee decided to award him the prize.
Dressed in black, his wife sat pensively throughout the ceremony and accepted the award on behalf of her husband. After three ceremonial bows—one to the royal family, one to the academy and one to the audience—Mrs. Steinman spontaneously kissed her palm and threw her arms into the air, looking up passionately at the sky and delivering a bittersweet gesture in celebration with her husband.
The second moment that defined the evening was the presence of the famed Swedish poet and Nobel Prize winner in literature, Tomas Tranströmer. Mr. Tranströmer is a hauntingly evocative poet, whose metaphors capture the minds of Swedes and literature aficionados around the world for decades. He suffered a stroke in 1990 that left him unable to speak and partially paralyzed.  But he continued to write. Upon receiving the prize, Mr. Tranströmer was wheeled to the center of the stage to thunderous applause. Although his facial movements are restricted, he began to glow and the strength of his smile radiated throughout the orchestra hall. At one point he shifted himself with such poise in order to sit up just a little straighter and a little prouder in his wheelchair in order to soak in the moment.  A truly noble Nobel moment!

The fortitude and grace of both Mrs. Steinman and Mr. Tranströmer personify the spirit that Alfred Nobel set out to establish through his legacy. A final thread woven amongst the fabric of these special moments was an enduring and powerful emphasis on the young generation to continue scientific exploration. We are in a global period where the environment is suffering and climate change issues can be a sore and contentious topic. But an enormous source of optimism for me was the excitement and proactive engagement among both the Swedish youth, and youth from around the world, who were present at the ceremonies.
Everywhere I went, young high school and university students described how inspired they were by the cutting-edge leadership on promoting new sources of sustainable energy of U.S. Energy Secretary, and 1997 Nobel laureate in physics, Steven Chu who was visiting to help celebrate the Nobel Prizes of professors Perlmutter and Shechtman, who are associated with U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories.  These students told me how excited they were to be studying science. I am confident that these young people will lead our world into a new century of preservation, conservation and sustainable development.

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We’re all in this together

On December 7, 2011, in Mark, by Ambassador Brzezinski
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Today marks the arrival in Stockholm of a person who personifies American leadership and great science:  Dr. Steven Chu, US Secretary of Energy. We at the U.S. Embassy are thrilled that Dr. Chu has come to Sweden for Nobel week.  Dr. Chu is a former Nobel Laureate, sharing the prize for physics in 1997.  He has run a national laboratory, is the holder of ten patents, and has published nearly 250 scientific papers — a background that spans invention, scientific collaboration, and real results on turning new ideas into action.

In announcing Dr. Chu’s selection as U.S. Secretary of Energy in 2009, President Obama said, “The future of our economy and national security is inextricably linked to one challenge:  energy.  Steven has blazed new trails as a scientist, teacher, and administrator, and has recently led the Berkeley National Laboratory in pursuit of new alternative and renewable energies.”

While I am not a scientist, I am passionate about the environment and where our world is going.  I feel most at home in the calm and stillness of nature.  There’s a place in Virginia where my family has gone for years, in the Blue Ridge mountains, for hiking and hunting, where the changing of the leaves marks the passage of time — and where every once in a while if one is very lucky one can see a black bear or wild bobcat.  When my family first moved to Washington DC in the 1970′s, the Potomac River used to freeze practically every year.  Now it rarely freezes at all.  I want my daughter and all of our children and grandchildren to live in a safe, prosperous and healthy world.  And I am very happy that the person in the United States leading our pursuit of alternative and renewable energy brings a genuine and accomplished scientific background to this challenge we all share.

I’ve been in Sweden as Ambassador for 19 days now.  One thing I hear from practically everyone is how important it is that we strive to find new solutions to energy challenges and global climate change.  It’s widely recognized that this is a challenge that does not recognize borders and national boundaries.  To make sure that we get the resources and technology to the countries that really need it, without losses through bureaucracy and corruption, the United States at this moment is collaborating with other nations, including Sweden, to put the essential mechanisms and governance in place to actually implement the important international agreements already made in Copenhagen and Cancun.

Here at the U.S. Embassy, we are working hard every day through the Swedish American Green Alliance (SAGA) to do things that make a difference — sharing technology, ideas and approaches and facilitating dynamic partnerships between Americans and Swedes.  And we want to welcome you to take part — please visit the SAGA website to see the best of what is happening on sustainability – in Sweden, in the United States, and more and more in partnership between our countries.  If you see something already happening in which you would like to be a partner, or have your own story to share so those who many want to partner with, or learn from, you can see it: send it to saga@state.gov.  Change starts with an idea, which by working together we can make reality.  But it means you need to share that project you are working on, or that “light bulb” idea in your head with the SAGA network so that we can all work together to tactically implement it.  We are all in this together.

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From Chicago to Stockholm

On December 2, 2011, in Natalia, by Ambassador Brzezinski
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As a young girl I was always a dreamer. Meeting new people, asking questions and telling stories helped my imagination and identity develop. Writing and blogging is my passion, and I’m very excited to share my story with you.

I grew up on the ethnically-rich southwest side of Chicago. Traditionally a haven for Eastern and Central European immigrants, by the time I was a young girl it was vibrantly multi-cultural. The first time our garage was burglarized, it was our Mexican-American neighbors who organized their sons and nephews to help us repair the damage, while the Lithuanian WWII émigré across the alley was my babysitter when my parents were in a bind.

I began competitively ice skating when I was my daughter’s age, two-and-a-half-years-old. The artistry, flow and majestic technical quality of the sport captivated me immediately. I would often skate six hours a day, waking up at 4am sometimes to skate before school and then continuing to practice skating, as well as ballet and weight training after school until the evening. Even though I quit the sport at age sixteen due to injuries and an aching desire to be a “normal teenager”, the discipline, mental organization and love for the arts has remained the core of who I am as a woman.

A commitment to sports also gave me stability and occupied the time that I was unable to spend with my parents. As recent immigrants to America, they worked incredibly hard. My father immigrated through Sweden on his way to America, and worked in Malmo cleaning shipping containers to pay for his travel to the United States. In Chicago, he worked nights managing a cleaning crew, while my young mother did administrative office work by day and took night classes for her masters degree in Business Administration. They are proof that America is the land of opportunity and that one can come here with nothing and produce so much through pure grit.

I’m ashamed to say that being the child of immigrants was something I often resented throughout my early life. I begrudged being marginalized as an outsider, and was even occasionally insulted in school by disparaging comments about “Polaks”. It was hurtful, but made me work even harder to excel in my academic work and sports.

My coming-of-age experience in the colorfully ethnic city of Chicago had an enormously formative affect on my identity. Today, I view my upbringing with great pride and hope to relay the essence of diversity and community I felt growing up through the Arts in Embassies program my husband and I are bringing to Stockholm. The program will focus on young artists and the way their art contributes to the fabric of Americana.

My husband shares a similar coming-of-age story as the child of Eastern European immigrants. Our shared values create a strong foundation for our daughter, who is our light and inspiration.

We yearn to be the best parents for Aurora, and have always dreamed of giving her an international experience. We wanted her to learn early on that the world is big, diverse and full of opportunity and amazing people.

Today, this dream is a reality and I’m so thrilled to be here in Sweden. The sense of duty and great honor I feel is unparalleled. Not only is it a bucolic land, but the Swedish culture embraces many of the principles that we hope to imbue upon Aurora; a sense of community, a duty to other human beings, a love of nature and its bounty, tolerance of all peoples and perspectives, and intellectual curiosity.

I hope you will be part of this new chapter in our lives, and help me give Aurora a great start. Please follow our stories through this blog, and join our adventure!

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