We live at a unique moment in human history. We—and, by “we” I mean practically all of civilization—have experienced roughly 70 years of widely shared prosperity, human development and even peace. Almost everyone alive today is better off than almost everyone who was alive in 1950, at the end of what essentially had been one devastating war that had started after the turn of the century.

Now, however, our prospects are less Great Expectations than maybe Bleak House to steal from Dickens. Accelerating climate change, disruptive technology, increasing conflict and war, massive numbers of displaced people seeking safety, the breakup of the post-war global order that framed and facilitated the great human advances of the past decades.

But there’s hope: human agency can change our course.

In this thought piece for New Thinking for a New World, Alan Stoga, Chairman of the Tällberg Foundation, shares exactly why and how the Tällberg Foundation supports global leadership through two initiatives: the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize and the Tällberg Leaders Mentoring Leaders program