Jan Hurwitch

Vita

Jan Hurwitch believes that participatory management and ethical leadership  are essential to successful organizational life, public administration and private enterprise responsibility, as well as a future based on cooperation, connection and compassion. Her personal commitment is to construct bridges among ideas, cultures, groups and individuals.

She grew up in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Laos, Germany and the Dominican Republic. In addition, as an adult, she has lived and worked in a number of other countries mentioned below. This multicultural life has convinced her of the importance of the role of compassion, tolerance and strengthening of human qualities in every type of initiative, be it profit or non-profit.

Summary of professional activities: Since 1975,  she has held management and leadership positions in NGO’s and at the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA-OAS) where for 6 years she was the Director of Institutional Transformation, after having been the country director for Jamaica, country director for Haiti and director of Human Resources.

She has directed a five-country program for microenterprise training in Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados, St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. Her workshops in leadership, creativity and scenario planning have been well-received in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia. And she has worked on institutional change management and conflict resolution in Mexico, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador and Haiti.

She is currently Executive Director of the Visionary Ethics Foundation in Costa Rica.