Young Leaders Programme: Directors
GIFT’s innovative leadership training scheme, the Young Leaders Programme, is extending its reach with the appointment of directors for North America and Europe.

Bill Lorenz, left, and Edmond Jurczek

William K. Lorenz, an experienced specialist in sustainable development and a management environmental consultant for one of the world’s leading environmental firms, will be responsible for promoting and marketing the YLP in the United States.

Edmond Jurczek is based in Switzerland where he has worked in the fields of information technology, environmental-, electrical- and (micro)system-engineering and the development of safety and quality surveillance systems for organisations. His role will be to promote and manage the programme in Europe.

The YLP addresses critical leadership needs for future leaders. It works to influence a fundamental shift in participants’ understanding of business and its influence and impacts outside the boardroom through life-changing field-projects that draw business, civil society, regulators, and communities together to search for practicable, long-term solutions to problems that arise from globalisation.

Mr Lorenz is an expert in water and air pollution controls systems, but has led a diverse career spanning 30 years in strategic planning, facility “streamlining” assessments, new marketing development, sustainable development programmes, chemical and waste management systems, property transfer site assessments, risk assessment programmes, policy analysis and development, and organisational assessment programmes.

Most recently, Mr Lorenz was a director with international consultancy Environmental Resources Management, having established environmental, health and safety services as a core business practice in that firm.

Mr Lorenz has successfully implemented strategic planning programmes for many Fortune 500 multinationals to integrate environmental health and safety into the mainstream of their businesses.

Mr Lorenz has written many papers on compliance programmes, wastewater, and hazardous waste issues. He has applied for and successfully patented an innovative solid waste disposal process.

Edmond Jurczek is the YLP’s director for Europe. Dr Jurczek runs his own company, ART-TECH Ltd, through which he draws on experience gained in a career in safety and quality surveillance to consult, train and manage projects in areas of integrated risk-management, sustainability, business excellence, social accountability and conformity assessment.

Dr Jurczek established the first Swiss safety and quality surveillance institute for Asia. He also created TSM Total Security Management, which is an innovative evolution of TQM Total Quality Management that emerged from Japan in the 1980s. TSM considers safety, quality, environment and ethics for products, procedures and persons, and brings together oriental awareness and occidental consciousness to risk management.

His innovation earned him an individual membership of the Swiss Union for Quality- and Management-Systems, SQS. He created and is chairman of the WOTC Foundation (World Organisation for a new understanding of Technology and Culture), which aims to contribute to governing globalised values and relations. Dr Jurczek is a mathematical physicist by profession.