Nicolas Berggruen

Who are we?

What can we do? What can the world do for us?

What can we do for the world?

I just feel very privileged and excited to be able to continue to ask those questions and try to answer those questions.

My engagement was always with full of ideas, and that’s why the Berggruen Institute was created, so that it could address human issues, human questions, human challenges.

The commitment to working on ideas – cultural, political, scientific, technological, human – in general is what drives our institute, but frankly drives me.

It’s also a part of our journey as humans, as civilizations to, in some cases, clash, but in some cases, hopefully over time learn from each other.

And I think that exchange, that engagement is part of the richness of being alive today by giving activities around things like political governance, reshaping capitalism in a way that’s empowering, sharing between cultures, the impact of technology on humans, on who we are, who we might want to become.

So these are very fundamental, but long-term questions.

Philanthropy is in some ways filling the gap between civil society and government, enabling society to take risks, to invest in areas where government may not be the right provider or civil society is not willing to venture.

The Giving Pledge was really a call for people who had, in this case, monetary resources to share these resources in a thoughtful way, take a long-term dedicated approach to giving away whatever financial resources they may have.

But really well beyond, it’s really a call to give their time, their energy, their ideas to the service of society.