One of the highlights of my pilgrimage to India has been meeting Ranjan Kumar, founder and president of the Gyanjyoti Rural Development Welfare Trust (site). Ranjan is a 22-year-old Indian Hindu whose passion and education is rural development. He aspires to become a member of the national government...

I have been privileged to visit two "Untouchable" villages while here on pilgrimage in India -- the first about four miles outside Bodh Gaya in Bihar province, and the other about four hours south of here, in the village of Dumri in Jharkhand province. Both experiences were essential to my...

Americans have been flocking to India in search of enlightenment since before America was founded. Europeans, too, the conscientious objector E.M. Forster and psychoanalytic Herman Hesse among them. So my trip -- my pilgrimage -- to follow in the footsteps of Buddha across Northeastern India is...

Recently I agreed to co-host the World Peace, Health and Culture Conference at the United Nations on behalf of Orphans International Worldwide (OIWW), which I founded 12 years ago. Peace, health and culture are essential to "raising global citizens," the motto of our orphan care program. My friend...

Most Americans think they know Haiti, that squalid, refugee-camp-ridden place somewhere south of Florida. Some Americans think they know Haitian-Americans, too: the maid in Miami, the health attendant in Manhattan, the taxi driver in Brooklyn. What many miss are the approximately 3 million professionals of the Haitian diaspora in North...

"Hahn-Bin, the World's Saddest Clown, Dies at 24." So proclaimed the faux New York Times article on each table before the performance began. It continued, "He committed suicide... just hours after the alleged murder of his ex-lover." So began one of New York's most mesmerizing, strangest and strongest musical performances...

My mother's words still ring out in my head, year after year. It was Thanksgiving 1998, Boston. I was continuing to complain about how traumatized I felt having experienced the Dicksonian conditions of the orphanage where I found my infant son Mathew in Indonesia. The warehouse institution was crib-to-worn-out-crib of...

Scene One: I meet an interesting Turkish-American professional at my college alumni reception and we chat about my foundation's interest in opening a Turkish Fund for women and children's social issues in Turkey. He volunteers to advise me -- great! Scene Two: I notice an intelligent New Yorker on the...

My father went to Andover, Dartmouth and Yale. My grandfather 12 times over signed the charter that created Harvard. Yet I attended the College of Wooster in Ohio -- my first choice, my only choice -- and three decades later I can say I owe who I am...

Although 200 guests were expected, 250 arrived to the United Nations's social club Aux Antilles's 21st annual dinner, this year to benefit the International University Center Haiti (Uni Haiti), in the Grand Ball Room of the Czechoslovakian cultural center known as Bohemian National Hall on Manhattan's...

My foundation opened its new office across from the New York Stock Exchange last week and for me, the biggest delight was the arrival of Joanne King Herring who was in town promoting her fabulous new book, Diamonds and Diplomacy: My Wars from the Ballroom to the Battlefield....

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was the place to be last week as maestro Amjad Ali Khan and his sons Amaan Ali Khan and Ayaan Ali Khan performed in a sarod symphony like none other. As His Holiness Dalai Lama has said,...

This week was a busy one for the Swiss Global Artistic Foundation (SGAF), led by the elegant and effervescent Heather de Haes, its president and founder. Two Upper East Side events were held back-to-back: a performance at the Swiss ambassador's one night, followed by a gala...

Léogâne, Haiti. Almost two years ago, an earthquake moved Haiti decades backward. Hundreds of thousands perished, and over one million were left homeless. Having first arrived in Port-au-Prince in 1999, and now on my 26th trip over the last 12 years, I have come to know Haiti not as...

A sea change in New York. Although I have attended the NYC Pride Parade since 1983 -- many as a marshal -- this one was different. As the lesbian on motorcycles thundered into view down Fifth Avenue I did something I had not done in 28 years. I burst into...

Sitting through the world premiere of When the Drum is Beating at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, I thought to myself, at last: the definitive movie on the real Haiti. The red carpet was far from the abject poverty that is much of Haiti, but...

More than 200 of the South Asian community's Who's Who in New York City, as well as special dignitaries and performers from India and around the world, crowded into last week's Remit 2 India's Light of India Awards at the historic Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue. The event --...

I recently met Manav Sachdeva Maasoom at a Chinese-Indian book reading in Manhattan (story) and he presented me with a copy of his beautiful hardback tribute to Emily Dickinson, Antonio Porchia, and Rabindranath Tagore that I did not have a chance to read until...

I know from traveling extensively that no company does more to get money from A to B, anywhere in the world, than Western Union. I have heard for years about the generosity of the Western Union Foundation. So, when I had the opportunity to interview Luella Chavez D'Angelo, President of...

Another natural disaster, another time to figure out the myriad options for helping in our own, small ways. Although I am devastated by the tragedies in Japan, where I studied in my youth, I did not jump into the donor fray earlier because I wanted to know what I was...