A quarter of a billion dollars was raised for Ireland during Kingsley Aikins’ twenty one years with the Kingsley Aikins has had a fascinating career promoting Ireland throughout the world, including:
- Five years in Australia working for the Irish Trade Board and the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) of Ireland.
- He played a key role in founding both the Australian Ireland Fund and the Ireland Fund of New Zealand.
- Kingsley subsequently served as Executive Director of The American Ireland Fund before heading up the Worldwide Ireland Funds, which have – to date – raised over three hundred million dollars for projects of peace, culture, community development and education throughout the island of Ireland.
Connecting the Diaspora
Kingsley now delivers expertise to many countries, including Haiti, through his consultancy firm Diaspora Matters and is a co-founding partner in Networking Matters. He was also invited by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to deliver a keynote address at the 2012 Global Diaspora Forum. In conjunction with the 2011 Forum, Kingsley produced a Diaspora Strategies Toolkit, which is available for download from his website.
‘Creative Clusters of Connected People’
In this exclusive interview, Kingsley tells me how he secured significant investment for Ireland from Roy Disney, why he credits the commitment of the US to the Northern Ireland peace process as nothing short of sensational and why he believes in ‘creative clusters of connected people’.
[youtube width=”640″ height=”360″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVwDRNNeHMs[/youtube]
Sincere thanks to Kingsley for sharing his wisdom and I would love to hear your thoughts on the importance of diaspora and networking in the comments section below.
Related: With the ‘Gift of the Gab’ The Irish Were Great Social Networkers Long Before Facebook Or Twitter
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