Bridging the Two UN Cultures—Reform for the Future

The story of this book moves across Stephen’s life while working for the United Nations, confronting very dramatic events and experience, needing not only to deal with these events at a personal level but develop United Nations action to respond. This is Stephen’s Biography at its height, hopefully demonstrating his general values and ways of acting within his life in general. This chapter and Chap. 22 draw this life story to a close. This chapter takes the reader back to where Stephen’s story within the UN starts—back to the two cultures of the organizational frame he lived within and needed to deal with as evidenced through the whole book but particularly the Introduction and Chap. 2 . So before the more general ‘wrap up’ of Chap. 22 , this chapter brings to a close Stephen’s role in addressing and changing the organizational culture that was background to all the dramatic stories reported. The Director-General of UNESCO appointed Stephen in 2000 to lead the reform and decentralization of the entire UN Agency globally and be his Personal Envoy to the World in order to do this, an experience from which Stephen learned so much, and the ‘wrap up’ story of this chapter.