The Power of Persuasion
Karen Tse | Legal Rights Activist
Whether it's called "values based" or "spiritual," persuasion via human connection is Tse's signature leadership style. No one is excluded, neither businessman nor prison guard. "You've just made a friend for life when you sit down and talk not only to the oppressed but the oppressor," says IBJ's James. "Once someone sees that, the dynamics change."
At IBJ headquarters, the few days that don't start with a short meditation session by candlelight and the soft ringing of bells end with them. "If you sit within the silence of your soul, and give it the time and the space, I think you know where to go--you know where to lead," Tse explains. "You can read a thousand books and have a thousand people tell you what the right methodologies are--but to be anywhere, you have to start from your center and your core. It's from that place of stillness where you'll know how to move forward and how to move others with you."
For Tse, the ethereal answer has been to focus on the mundane. China today has plenty of the laws necessary to protect human rights; what it's missing, Tse says, is implementation. "What needs to happen is for us as a community to stand up and say, 'We're going to do the ordinary work that makes this possible,'" she says. "It's not the glamorous work--it's the drudge work that makes the difference."
As IBJ's support structures expand, human-rights workers elsewhere have taken notice. A lawyer from Zimbabwe who volunteers in the group's Geneva office would not relent. "You must come to Zimbabwe. You must come to Zimbabwe," he told Tse regularly. "I said, 'I can't.'" But the man kept at it--in reports he wrote for IBJ, he'd add small notes to the top: "Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe." And then I realized," Tse says, "oh my God, this guy is just like me!"
Born: Oct. 20, 1964. Education: Scripps College, B.A.; UCLA Law School, J.D.; and Harvard Divinity School, M.Div. Family: Married, two sons. Advice: "You have to start from your center. It's from that place of stillness where you'll know how to move forward." Dirty Secret: Sometimes reads the Harvard Business Review for fun.
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