Mohamed Sahnoun, formerly Senior Advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In 2009 Prof. Rajmohan Gandhi, historian and biographer of his grandfather Mahatma Gandhi, was elected president. In 2012 Dr Omnia Marzouk, a paediatrician originally from Egypt and now based in UK, was elected president. In 2014 Initiatives of Change was awarded the Ousseimi Prize for Tolerance. In 2019, Indian businessman Suresh Vazirani was elected president. Gerald Pillay, Vice Chancellor and Rector of Liverpool Hope University in England, took over from Suresh Vazirani in January 2022. Conference centres Initiatives of Change has centres in numerous countries. The largest conference centres are Mountain House, formerly the Caux Palace Hotel in Caux, near Montreux, and Asia Plateau, in Panchgani in India. Mountain House was a derelict hotel in 1946, when it was bought by 100 Swiss families, and restored as a place where the warring nations of Europe could meet. In the following years thousands came there, including German Chancellor Adenauer and French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman. At Caux many found reconciliation with former enemies, notably the French socialist leader Irène Laure who had been active in the French Resistance and who, thereafter, devoted herself to building Franco-German understanding. Edward Luttwak described the work of Caux as an "important contribution to one of the greatest achievements in the entire record of modern statecraft: the astonishingly rapid Franco-German reconciliation after 1945." In the following decades Caux welcomed people from African and Asian countries moving towards independence from colonial rule. In 1956, soon after Morocco became independent, King Mohammed V of Morocco sent a message to Frank Buchman: "I thank you for all you have done for Morocco in the course of these last testing years." In 1960 Archbishop Makarios and Dr Kucuk, President and Vice-President of Cyprus, jointly sent the first flag of independent Cyprus to Caux in recognition of the center's help. More recently, groups of opposing factions in the Great Lakes area of Africa, Sierra Leone and other areas of conflict, have met there. Also prominent in the center's programs have been meetings between management and unions. The Caux Round Table was launched there in 1986, and continues to meet there. It developed a program of Principles for Business which are now used widely in business and industry. Each summer the centre holds a series of conferences dealing with specific subjects, attended by both teenagers and adults. In 2008 the first Caux