Who's fighting human trafficking? U.S. releases rankings

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN

Updated 0307 GMT (1007 HKT) July 28, 2015

(CNN)Cuba, Kenya and Saudi Arabia are doing better at fighting human trafficking. Egypt, Ghana and Bulgaria are doing worse.

That's according to the latest annual report from the U.S. State Department, which rates 188 countries on their efforts to stamp out trafficking in persons.

Secretary of State John Kerry says the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report aims to enlighten, energize and empower activists fighting the "human trafficking industry" across every continent.

But still, some of the 2015 rankings are controversial with rights groups questioning whether politics has trumped that ambition.

Malaysia, for example, has been upgraded, while Thailand remains on the list of worst-performing countries. Both are part of of people-smuggling route for Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar.

Mass graves holding the bodies of dozens of migrants were discovered in Malaysia earlier this year, after the cutoff for this year's TIP Report.

The report raises Malaysia to the Tier 2 Watch List from bottom-ranked Tier 3, where it fell last year, after two consecutive years of failing to do enough to address the issue.

The fall was an automatic downgrade, in compliance with rules introduced by the State Department in 2013 that dictate a country has to move up or down after two years on the Tier 2 Watch List.

Thailand was also demoted for the same reason, but this year remains on Tier 3, an apparent discrepancy for activists who were pushing for both countries to remain in Tier 3.

State of human trafficking

The U.S. State Department puts countries that do the most to fight human trafficking in Tier 1, and the least in Tier 3. Tier 2 includes a Watch List for countries in danger of dropping to Tier 3.

This year, 18 countries were upgraded and another 18 were downgraded. Those downgraded from the Tier 2 Watch List to Tier 3 included Belarus, Belize, Burundi, Comoros, the Marshall Islands and South Sudan.

Penalties for countries demoted to Tier 3 are at the discretion of the U.S. President, but could include restrictions on non-humanitarian assistance and funding.

Alongside Malaysia, upgrades from Tier 3 to the Watch List included Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea, and Uzbekistan.

Kerry said: "It is a battle against money. It is a battle against evil. It is remarkable that in 2015 we face a modern-day version of slavery."

Mass migrant graves

Two months ago, it emerged that deep in the jungle along Malaysia's border with Thailand were abandoned makeshift prisons once thought to hold migrants held for ransom by human traffickers.

The apartheid you've never heard of 02:38

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Alongside wooden cages were mass graves believed to hold the bodies of Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar, also known as Burma.

Similar macabre scenes had been earlier uncovered in jungle camps in Thailand, after a series of raids by Thai police. On Friday, Thailand announced it had charged 72 people with crimes of human trafficking and was looking for another 32 suspects still at large.

In May, Malaysia hosted talks with delegates from Thailand and Indonesia about how to address the growing crisis of migrants trapped on trafficking boats off the coast. Malaysia and Indonesia agreed to take the migrants in, provided they were given help to resettle them with one year.

However, the raids, arrests and talks came after the March 2015 cut-off for consideration in this year's report, which will raise questions as to why Malaysia was upgraded, yet Thailand remains on Tier 3.

Forensic teams exhume graves found at trafficking camps 03:30

Rights activists point out that Malaysia is one of the countries in negotiations with the U.S. as part of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. An amendment to the Trade Promotion Authority Act states a fast-track deal can't be done with a country that's on the Tier 3 list.

Phil Robertson, Asia division deputy director for Human Rights Watch, said: "Malaysia's record on stopping trafficking in persons over the past year is far from sufficient to justify this upgrade from Washington. Migrants are being trafficked and abused with impunity, Rohingya victims' bodies are being pulled from shallow graves at the border and convictions are down year on year. How can the State Department call this progress?"

He added: "The discussion on Malaysia is... a triumph of diplomatic writing trumpeting process rather than impact. This upgrade is more about the TPP and U.S. trade politics than anything Malaysia did to combat human trafficking over the past year. Sadly, this action does significant damage to the credibility of a report that is a critical part of global efforts to combat slavery."

Before the report's release, the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST) said any move to upgrade Malaysia would be "purely political and incredibly detrimental to combating human trafficking in that country."

Meanwhile, the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying its ranking "does not accurately reflect the significant efforts" made over the year. It said Thailand "translated its genuine political will to combat human trafficking into practical policies, effective implementation, and concrete results" calling the issue a national priority.

It added Thailand had cracked down on trafficking gangs and corrupt officials, and was tackling slavery in the fisheries industry.

READ: Why everyone hates TPP, Obama's signature trade deal

What the TIP Tiers mean

Tier 1: Governments fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act's (TVPA) minimum standards.
Tier 2: Governments do not fully comply, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance.
Tier 2 Watch List: Governments do not fully comply, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance, as well as other negative indicators.
Tier 3: Governments do not fully comply and are not making significant efforts to do so.
Source: U.S. State Department

Other notable changes on this year's list:

Cuba's promotion from Tier 3 to the Tier 2 Watch List comes just a week after restoration of the country's diplomatic ties with the U.S., which were frozen in 1961.

After three consecutive years on the Tier 2 Watch List, Kenya -- where Barack Obama has just made his first trip since becoming U.S. President -- made it back on the Tier 2 list. It follows last year's recommendation to increase the number of prosecutions, raids and inspections of potential trafficking hubs.

Saudi Arabia also made it off the bottom tier after making progress in prosecuting offenders and protecting trafficking victims. However, the 2015 report said that it was still not "proactively" investigating and prosecuting employers for withholding workers' passports and pay.

Of the downgrades, Belarus earned an automatic demotion to Tier 3 after two years on the Watch List, as did Comoros, an island off the coast of Eastern Africa, where the report says children are particularly at risk of forced labor.

Child trafficking is also considered to be a huge problem in Ghana, which dropped to the Watch List from Tier 2. The country is set to receive $5 million in U.S. aid to combat the problem after the signing last month of the Child Protection Compact Partnership. The money will be used to pursue offenders, rehabilitate victims and educate the public.

Egypt also dropped to the Watch List, following its poor record of addressing the sexual exploitation of women and children. This year's report said that while the country had set up a national anti-trafficking hotline, its efforts to address the problem focused on Egyptian nationals, not foreign trafficking victims.

Considered a corridor for men, women and children trafficked to Western Europe, Slovenia was downgraded from Tier 1 to Tier 2. The report said that while the country was trying to train law enforcement officers, prosecutions were at a five-year low and there had been no convictions at all during the year.

 

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Greece debt crisis: Greek voters reject bailout offer

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Media caption 'No' vote supporters have been celebrating in Athens, as Katya Adler reports

Greek debt crisis

Greek voters have decisively rejected the terms of an international bailout. he final result in the referendum, published by the interior ministry, was 61.3% "No", against 38.7% who voted "Yes".

Greece's governing Syriza party had campaigned for a "No", saying the bailout terms were humiliating.
Their opponents warned that this could see Greece ejected from the eurozone, and a summit of eurozone heads of state has now been called for Tuesday.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said late on Sunday that Greeks had voted for a "Europe of solidarity and democracy".
Referendum as it happened
"As of tomorrow, Greece will go back to the negotiating table and our primary priority is to reinstate the financial stability of the country," he said in a televised address.
"This time, the debt will be on the negotiating table," he added, saying that an International Monetary Fund assessment published this week "confirms Greek views that restructuring the debt is necessary".

But some European officials had said that a "No" would be seen as an outright rejection of talks with creditors.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the eurozone's group of finance ministers, said the referendum result was "very regrettable for the future of Greece".
Germany's Deputy Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said renewed negotiations with Greece were "difficult to imagine".
Mr Tsipras and his government were taking the country down a path of "bitter abandonment and hopelessness", he told the Tagesspiegel daily.

Analysis: Mark Lowen, BBC News, Athens

The partying by the "No" camp will go well into the night here and the government will be popping open the ouzo. Alexis Tsipras has called the eurozone's bluff - and it appears to have gone his way.
But the triumphalism won't last. There is still a sizeable chunk of the Greek nation deeply unhappy with what has happened. And the government will have to unite a divided country.
More than that, a deal with the eurozone has to be struck fast.
Greek banks are running critically low and will need another injection of emergency funds from the European Central Bank.
Given the bad blood of the past two weeks - Greece's Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, calling the eurozone's strategy "terrorism" - it will be hard to get back around the negotiating table. And with the banking crisis and tax revenues plummeting amidst the instability, Greece's economy has weakened again, making a deal even harder to reach.
The eurozone's tough rhetoric will continue. But Greece's government will have its answer prepared: we put your demands to a democratic test - and they were rejected.

Greece had been locked in negotiations with its creditors for months when the Greek government unexpectedly called a referendum on the terms it was being offered.
Banks have been shut and capital controls in place since last Monday, after the European Central Bank declined to give Greece more emergency funding.
Withdrawals at cash machines have been limited to €60 per day. Greece's latest bailout expired on Tuesday and Greece missed a €1.6bn (£1.1bn) payment to the IMF.

Robert Peston, BBC economics editor, Athens

Greek banks have stayed shut for a week

Greek banks are desperately in need of a lender of last resort to save them, and the Greek economy.
And sad to say no banker or central banker to whom I have spoken believes the European Central Bank (ECB) can fulfil that function - because it is struggling to prove to itself that Greek banks have adequate assets to pledge to it as security for new loans.
There are only two options. The Bank of Greece could make unsecured loans to Greek banks without the ECB's permission - which would provoke a furious reaction from Eurozone leaders and would be seen by most of them as tantamount to leaving the euro.
Or it can explicitly create a new currency, a new drachma, which it could then use to provide vital finance to Greek banks and the Greek economy.
Greece on verge of euro exit

Greek government officials have insisted that rejecting bailout terms would strengthen their hand, and that they could rapidly strike a deal for fresh funding in resumed negotiations.
Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has said that with a "No" vote, Greek banks would reopen on Tuesday.
He was due to meet senior Greek bankers late on Sunday. State Minister Nikos Pappas, a close ally of Mr Tsipras, said it was "absolutely necessary" to restore liquidity to the banks now the referendum was over.

Summit called

Some European officials sounded conciliatory after the vote.
Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni tweeted: "Now it is right to start trying for an agreement again. But there is no escape from the Greek labyrinth with a Europe that's weak and isn't growing."
Belgium's finance minister said the door remained open to restart talks with Greece "literally, within hours".
Eurozone finance ministers could again discuss measures "that can put the Greek economy back on track and give the Greeks a perspective for the future," he told the VRT network.

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Media caption Alexis Tsipras said his priority was to restore the "financial stability of Greece"

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he was consulting the leaders of eurozone member states, and would have a conference call with key EU officials and the ECB on Monday morning.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are scheduled to meet in Paris on Monday. A summit of eurozone heads of state has been called for Tuesday.
The European Commission - one of the "troika" of creditors along with the IMF and the ECB - wanted Athens to raise taxes and slash welfare spending to meet its debt obligations.
Greece's Syriza-led government, which was elected in January on an anti-austerity platform, said creditors had presented it with an "ultimatum", using fear to put pressure on Greeks.
The Greek government's opponents and some Greek voters had complained that the question in Sunday's referendum was unclear. EU officials said it applied to the terms of an offer that was no longer on the table.
The turnout in Sunday's referendum was 62.5%.
As the result became clear, former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who had campaigned for a "Yes" vote in the referendum, resigned as leader of the centre-right New Democracy party.

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Four years ago, Maria Leijerstam changed her life. She had a lucrative job, a beautiful London apartment overlooking the River Thames and a serious boyfriend. But she wasn’t happy. Age 31, she quit her job in business consulting, returned her company car, broke up with her partner and moved back into her parents’ house.
“I was sitting at their home wondering what to do next,” said Leijerstam. “Sometimes you need to experience these moments to know that you have to make a big change.”
Her first move was to cycle the length of New Zealand in 23 days. She then started her own adventure sports company, and become the first person to cycle to the South Pole, using her training as a rocket scientist to outsmart and out-cycle two male competitors.
Leijerstam has always been a traveller, albeit a non-traditional one. Her trips are usually built around multisport adventure races involving cycling, running and kayaking, or other slightly mad endurance tests, such as the Marathon des Sables, where she completed six marathons in seven days in the Sahara Desert, or cycling more than 600km across Siberia’s frozen Lake Baikal.
Leijerstam believes that travellers can better appreciate the beauty of a place if they use their own sweat to get there. Now she has her sights set on her most audacious journey yet: cycling across the Atlantic Ocean on a pedal-powered kayak. If you tell her it can’t be done, it will only strengthen her resolve to make it happen.

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Q: How did you get the idea to cycle to the South Pole?
I’d been looking at Antarctica for years, thinking I’d love to ski to the South Pole. I found out that no-one had ever cycled there and I wondered if it was possible. I researched the idea, and in March 2012 I cycled across Siberia’s Lake Baikal as a test. I then trained in Norway and Iceland and the momentum started to build. I think that pedal power is one of the most efficient means of human power, and so I wanted to see if this was true even on snow and ice where historically skis have always been favoured. About six months before I set off, in June 2013, I found out that there were two other cyclists, a guy from Spain and an American man, attempting to do the same thing as me, so I kept my plans very quiet.
Q: So there was no plan to compete against them?
Not at all. In fact, they left three or four weeks before me and finished a couple of weeks after me. I was reading their blogs before I left and I could see that they were not having a good time. They went on normal fat bikes, which is like an adapted mountain bike with thicker tyres.
Q: You helped design the recumbent bike you used. Did your background in maths and science give you an advantage over your competitors?
I’m good at working out complex problems. I fell off my bike at least 50 times while cycling Lake Baikal because of the extreme wind, so a lot of the bike design came from experience.
I also took a different route than my competitors. I don’t like following others. I’ve always been fascinated by polar explorers like Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott, and I looked at the side of Antarctica they came in on – the Ross Ice Shelf. On that route, you have to cross the Trans-Antarctica Mountain Range. I climbed from sea level all the way up to 3,000m. My route was much steeper but also shorter. Their route was around 1,000km and mine was 638km.

Q: Were you concerned that one of them was going to beat you to the South Pole?
I was, but I knew my preparation was spot on. It’s a massively expensive proposition to do this so I needed major sponsors. I had to use a lot of savings and borrow from family members so it was a very stressful time. Now I’m in debt. I have another 23 years to pay this loan off. I have to do a hell of a lot of talks at business functions to try to recoup some of those costs. There is no profit in these kinds of expeditions.
Q: You faced temperatures of -29C without wind chill. How do you prepare for that kind of bitter cold?
When I was cycling I wore a soft shell top with three layers underneath, and I didn’t have an inch of exposed skin. When I stopped, I’d put on a -50C down jacket. I did get a bit of frostbite one day when there was a gap between my balaclava and my goggles. Every night I’d take a photo of myself and look at it to make sure everything was basically still there. My feet suffered the most. When I did the Patagonian Expedition Race in 2013 I got frostbite on my toes, so I knew my feet would be a problem on the South Pole expedition. I had to stop and jump up and down to keep them going, and I burned an awful lot of energy just getting on and off the bike. It didn’t matter how many layers of socks I put on, my feet were cold all the time. I also had severe knee pain; that was the biggest killer.
Q: How did you cope being alone in extreme cold for 10 days?
The first few days I was on the Ross Ice Shelf with mountain ranges on my right, and that was spectacular and dramatic. Once I got up on the polar plateau though, it was just a blanket of white. The endless monotony was mesmerising. I loved just looking at nothing.

It’s so rare in life you get to think about nothing and look at nothing all day. It was 10 days of therapy, almost.

I had a solo tent that was just about big enough for me plus two of my bags. I did all my cooking in there. I’d sleep for five hours or so at night and cycle for up to 17 hours a day – it's 24 hour daylight in Antarctica at that time of year.
Q: What did you do when you crossed the finish line?
I could see the research station from about 20km away. That last stretch felt like an eternity. First, I stopped at the ceremonial South Pole, which is a big ball on a post with flags around it where everyone gets their photo taken. The actual South Pole is about 150m away. I cycled over to that as well, just to make sure I’d done it properly. I was delighted to have become the first person in the world to cycle to the South Pole, as well as set the new speed record for any human-powered journey from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole. My prediction that cycling could be more efficient than skiing was right!
Q: Did you celebrate with a nice meal and a comfortable bed?
No, not really. I slept for a day and half in my tent. Then we drove to the coast to fly out from Union Glacier. We got there on New Year’s Eve and celebrated in an ice cave with some Argentine and Brazilian scientists.
Q: You had the energy to party after cycling 10 days to the South Pole?
Absolutely! I actually went ski-touring for two days as well because I had a couple of days to kill before my flight out. The scenery is stunning. The mountains are gorgeous with a massive glacier pouring out of them on both sides.
Q: You traded a lucrative career for more freedom. Why?
I’ve had a very varied and exciting career, but I got to the stage where I was determined that life could be even more fulfilling. When I gave up my career I was working as the head of business improvement for a multinational IT company.

Leijerstam's specially designed recumbent bike.

"I’m not adverse to risk at all, and I get excited by new tough challenges."

I’ve got this big map of the world and I was always saying, “I want to go there and there and there.”
I’d wanted to work for myself for a long time but didn’t know if I was ready. I quit my job before knowing what I was going to do, and while I was cycling the length of New Zealand, I came up with the idea to start my business. I was already into adventure racing and adventure sports so I decided to start my own company to provide my kind of adventures to people at a simpler, local level.
Q: And cycling the length of New Zealand was your way to clear your head?
It was. I encourage anyone who wants to see New Zealand to do it on a bike. On a bike, you can detour whenever you want to. You don’t have to stick to roads if you have a mountain bike. Meeting people is so much easier from the seat of a bike than from a car. Of the 23 days I cycled there, probably 18 of those I was offered a bed in someone’s home. I had my tent but I only pitched it a few times. Also, having that feeling of being out in the fresh air, having done exercise all day, you go to bed at night feeling great about yourself. The North Island is often overlooked because people head straight down to the South Island, but it is absolutely stunning. The first bit up north, the Bay of Islands is beautiful. And then you have the stunning Coromandel Coast that is less touristy as well. The Abel Tasman Trail is also magnificent. Kaikoura is incredible because there were thousands of seals on the beach; they kept me entertained for a long time.
Q: You also travel the world to compete in multisport adventure races?
I’ve done multisport adventure races in the UK, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Patagonia, Chile and Ireland. I ran the Marathon des Sables, which is six marathons in seven days across the Sahara Desert. I realised then that I’m not very keen on extreme heat. The Patagonian Expedition Race is a good example of why I love to see the world while competing. We get to go to places where tourists don’t go. In Patagonia, we crossed mountains and rivers and places that are totally untouched, virgin territory.

This is a very different way to see the world.

Q: Don’t you ever just go on vacation and sit by a pool?
I’m not very good at those types of holidays, I prefer to do something active. A relaxing holiday for me is going sailing with my fiancé or my parents.
Q: What are the places you most want to return to?
I love Patagonia even though it rained incessantly when we were there racing. I’d like to return to New Zealand.
And I want to travel across Mongolia. The vastness of the region intrigues me. I’d like to experience the culture and see how the nomads live. I was selected to represent Great Britain in the 2009 Land Rover G4 Challenge finals in Mongolia, but due to the economic crisis it was called off. I'd like to organise my own trip there that is part 4X4 and part by bike. My fiancé is into 4X4 driving and I’m into human powered travel, so it’s the perfect combination.
Q: Where would you like to go next and why?
I love the cold and the snow, so Greenland and Iceland are high on my list. I’d like to pedal boat around the islands.
Q: What’s it like to be a woman in the world of adventure racing?
It is often joked that women are compulsory baggage because in many of these multisport competitions you have to have at least one woman on your team. At the start of these races, the men are usually the fittest, fastest and strongest. But as the days go on and fatigue builds up, that dynamic changes. Because of our makeup, perhaps because of the fact that we have children, we have this ability to retain a lot of energy for emergencies. The guys need to eat more and rest more, and as the days go on, the tables really turn. They say women have a higher pain threshold, that probably also has something to do with it. We just won’t give up.
Q: What’s next for you?
I am always looking for adventure and at the moment I’m considering cycling across the Atlantic Ocean. Pedal kayaks do exist, but to cross an ocean I’d need to design one with more stability to allow me to move around and sleep. It’s a bit bonkers, I know, but I really want to do it. I’m a huge fan of cycling, and this would be a great means of using human power to go somewhere. I’ve looked at the Tallisker Atlantic Rowing Challenge, which takes place every other year, and so my idea would be to set off at the same time as them to make a comparison between pedalling and rowing. They use big ocean rowing boats. I want to be able to use my legs rather than my arms – pedal power as opposed to paddle power.
Leijerstam's full documentary is available to purchase at whiteicecycle.com.
All information correct as of March 2015.

a world-class CEO.

By Leigh Gallagher

Photograph by Michael Lewis for Fortune Magazine 

 

How the home-sharing site’s co-founder hacked leadership and taught himself to be a world-class CEO.

Brian Chesky is drawing intently on a napkin. We’re sitting in the President’s Room at Airbnb’s airy, ultra-chic headquarters in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco. Other meeting spaces in the historic building, which the company moved to in 2013, are designed to replicate an Airbnb rental in Fiji or the war room from the movie Dr. Strangelove. With its wood-paneled walls, leather club chairs, and a model of a ship on the coffee table, the President’s Room retains the feel of the original executive quarters from 1917, when the building was built to house a battery factory. After a moment of serious sketching, Chesky holds up the napkin to show me his picture: It’s a boat. And, it must be said, for a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design it’s a rudimentary-looking vessel. But the quality of the drawing is not the point. I’ve just asked Chesky how his management style has evolved, and the boat is his answer.

“If you think about it, Airbnb is like a giant ship,” he says, holding up the napkin. “And as CEO I’m the captain of the ship. But I really have two jobs: The first job is, I have to worry about everything below the waterline; anything that can sink the ship.” He points to the scribbled line of waves that cuts the boat in half, and below that, two holes with water rushing in.

“Beyond that,” he continues, “I have to focus on two to three areas that I’m deeply passionate about—that aren’t below the waterline but that I focus on because I can add unique value, I’m truly passionate about them, and they can truly transform the company if they go well.” The three areas he’s picked: product, brand, and culture. “I’m pretty hands-on with those three,” he says. “And with the others I really try to empower leaders and get involved only when there are holes below the waterline.”
Watch: Airbnb’s founder on disrupting an industry

It’s a high-level, strategic way of thinking about management, something that sounds more out of the playbook of Jim Collins or Peter Drucker than a 33-year-old first-time CEO. And in fact there is an outside source for this bit of wisdom, but it’s not what you might expect. Chesky learned the boat theory from George Tenet, the director of the CIA from 1997 to 2004 and now a managing director at the investment bank Allen & Company. Chesky was introduced to Tenet a few years ago and asked to set up a meeting.

It may seem odd for Chesky, the CEO of the company that, along with ride-sharing giant Uber, has become the poster child for the so-called sharing economy, to seek advice from the man who signed off on the intelligence that led to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. But Tenet is just one of a long list of leaders Chesky has sought out since co-founding the home-rental website—some inside the box and some very far outside it. Others he’s reached out to for lessons include Berkshire Hathaway’s BRK.A Warren Buffett and Disney DIS CEO Bob Iger; a long list of tech luminaries that includes Apple’s APPL Jony Ive, LinkedIn’s LNKD Jeff Weiner, and Salesforce.com’s CRM Marc Benioff; and a separate group he’s taken posthumous lessons from, including Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, George Bernard Shaw, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. “It’s kind of like the old Robert McNamara saying,” says Chesky, referencing a comment about nuclear weapons by the controversial 1960s U.S. defense secretary to explain his own voracious pursuit of management knowledge. “There’s no learning curve for people who are in war or in startups.”

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Indeed, the past seven-plus years have been a combination of exhilarating, nerve-racking, and flat-out surreal for Chesky. Hatched in 2008 on a whim, Airbnb is now a massive platform that has been used by 40 million people. As this story went to press, the company was reportedly close to raising $1 billion in a new round of funding that will give it a valuation of $24 billion, a figure that exceeds the $21 billion market value of hotel giant Marriott MAR , which runs more than 4,000 hotels. Among so-called unicorns, tech startups with valuations of more than $1 billion, Airbnb trails only Uber (reportedly close to closing a new round of funding at a value of $50 billion) and Chinese phone-maker Xiaomi ($46 billion). Airbnb will reportedly bring in around $900 million in revenue this year.

It wasn’t so long ago that the preparation for running a company of that size came only one way: by working one’s way up through the ranks, demonstrating “leadership potential,” and then embarking on a years-long process of being moved through a series of CEO-in-waiting posts. But the current tech-industry climate has turned that thinking on its head. Young people with a single, powerful business idea are thrown into CEO positions by default and not by training, and it happens very, very quickly. And while no unicorn is without investors and other advisers offering plenty of opinions and advice, the CEO is largely on his own, steering the ship—and occasionally drawing it on a napkin.

Chesky, who in 2008 had never heard of an angel investor or read TechCrunch, knows this better than anyone. “It’s not natural for someone like myself to be at art school, to then be unemployed, and then five or six years later have this,” he says. “Nothing really prepares you for that.”

His solution, then, has been to hack leadership by going far and wide in search of best practices. So far, that approach seems to be working for Chesky, thanks in part to the fact that he has a temperament well-suited to the quest for mastery, as we’ll see. But the story of Chesky’s evolution as an executive also offers a window into the way the new economy has turned conventional CEO-ing upside down—and may offer a new playbook for leadership development.

Ask anyone who knows Chesky what he’s like, and he will say one of a few things: Intense. Focused. Really, really, really curious. As soon as we sit down to talk for this article—the first in-depth profile of Chesky himself, rather than the company—he starts quizzing me about the process. He’s surprised that he is actually the subject of an entire story. He wants to know how the day is going. I list the half-dozen executives I’ve already interviewed. “Wow, this feels like a 360-degree performance review,” he says. “The only difference is the whole world will read it.” He presses on: “What are the themes? Or do they come later?”

By now, the story of Airbnb’s origin is lore in Silicon Valley and beyond: In October 2007, Chesky and Joe Gebbia, two unemployed RISD graduates, were broke and staring at their rent due date. So they came up with the idea to pull some of Gebbia’s air mattresses out of the closet and sell sleeping space in their apartment to attendees of a sold-out design trade show. They called it the Air Bed and Breakfast. (The “continental breakfast” consisted of untoasted Pop-Tarts.) Three people bunked with them that weekend, and the idea got some attention on design blogs. A few months later their engineer friend Nathan Blecharczyk joined Chesky and Gebbia as the third co-founder, and in August 2008 the site debuted as Airbedandbreakfast.com, an online platform for people to rent out space in their homes. Chesky gravitated naturally to the role of leader, with Gebbia focused on design and Blecharczyk on technology.

Chesky, center, in 2012 with Airbnb co-founders Nathan Blecharczyk, left, and Joe Gebbia at the company’s former headquarters.Jake Stangel

Many experts and Silicon Valley luminaries were highly skeptical of the Airbnb concept at first. But the idea took hold, and the following spring the founders were accepted into the prestigious startup incubator Y Combinator, run by venture capitalist Paul Graham. They soon shortened the name to Airbnb and expanded from offering shared spaces to properties including entire homes and apartments, castles, boats, and tree houses. In November 2010 the trio got their first round of VC funding. Today Airbnb has roughly 2,000 employees operating out of 21 offices worldwide, and offers its service in 34,000 cities.

Ask Chesky what he didn’t know about management in the early days, and he barely knows where to start. “It’s kind of like, what did I know?” he says. But he had no choice but to plunge in; the company couldn’t wait for him. Chesky says he learned two ways: first by trial and error (“it’s the old adage about jumping off a cliff and assembling the airplane on the way down”), and second by teaching himself how to go deep on subjects fast—specifically, by using a process he calls “going to the source.”

Rather than trying to learn every single aspect of a particular topic, Chesky found that it was more efficient to spend his time researching and identifying the single best source in that area, then going straight to that person. “If you pick the right source, you can fast-forward,” he says. It’s an approach that has served him again and again.

Chesky and his co-founders’ first “sources” were their earliest advisers, tech entrepreneur Michael Seibel and Y Combinator’s Graham. Reading was also an early part of the regimen. For Chesky, a source may come in the form of a biography of a business hero such as Steve Jobs or Walt Disney. His primary book source on management technique is Andy Grove’s High Output Management. To learn the ins and outs of hospitality, he went to the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, a scholarly journal published by the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.

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As the company became more prominent, so did Chesky’s sources. Soon came meetings with Facebook’s FB Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s AMZN Jeff Bezos, and eBay EBAY CEO John Donahoe. He went to Bob Iger and Marc Benioff to ask how they push their executive teams to do more. From Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg he picked up tips about efficiency in scaling internationally.

A key aspect of Chesky’s sourcing theory is what he calls “synthesizing divergent ideas”—basically, going to unexpected sources for insight. To learn how to become an elite recruiter, for example, Chesky might skip talking to an HR exec and instead seek out a sports agent, whose business lives and dies by attracting talent.

Similarly, Chesky reached out to Tenet not for tips on global security, but for corporate culture: How do you create an open and transparent atmosphere when you’re in the business of secrets? From their conversation, he took away the importance of “walking the park,” Walt Disney’s theory of being a visible manager. Tenet told Chesky he would eat lunch in the cafeteria every day and sit at a different seat. Chesky says Tenet also taught him the importance of sending handwritten notes to employees. The former CIA chief told him that some of the most meaningful moments in his job were when he’d see a card he wrote an employee years ago still tacked on to his or her wall. And, of course, he gave Chesky the boat theory.

One of Chesky’s biggest source triumphs was his audience with Buffett. A little over a year ago, Chesky reached out and asked if he could travel to Omaha to have lunch, in part to talk about how Airbnb might help expand the number of rooms available in town during Berkshire’s annual meeting weekend. The discussion ended up lasting 4½ hours. Chesky’s biggest takeaway: the value of not getting caught up in the noise. “He’s literally in the center of Omaha,” Chesky says. “There’s no TVs anywhere. He spends all day reading. He takes maybe one meeting a day, and he thinks so deeply.” The experience made such an impact on Chesky that he went to the airport, and, afraid he would forget the conversation, immediately wrote a 3,600-word report and sent it to his team. For his part, Buffett says he sensed in Chesky a genuine passion for building his company: “I think he would be doing what he’s doing if he didn’t get paid a dime for it.” Buffett’s take on Airbnb? “I wish I’d thought of it.”

Communicating the various pieces of wisdom he picks up as he learns them is a key part of Chesky’s management style. Earlier this year he started a “Sunday night series,” a weekly all-company email summarizing a principle or lesson he’d learned. A recent three-part series focused on—fittingly—how to learn.

Chesky has been obsessive about his pursuits since childhood. “From a very young age, you could see that he didn’t just dabble in something,” says his mother, Deb Chesky. Brian grew up in Niskayuna, N.Y., outside Albany, the son of two social workers. (His sister Allison, five years his junior, is a fashion editor at Real Simple, which is owned by Fortune’s parent, Time Inc.) Chesky’s first passion was hockey. After he got a full set of gear for Christmas one year, he insisted on sleeping in it—pads, skates, stick, and helmet. Later a hobby of drawing and redesigning Nike sneakers grew into a passion for art. He would disappear to the local museum for hours to draw replicas of the paintings.

His natural leadership potential surfaced at RISD, where he served as the captain of the hockey team and was eventually selected to be the commencement speaker at his graduation. Chesky threw himself into the task, studying every commencement speech he could find; to make the experience less intimidating, the night before his address he stood at the podium and watched as the staff set up 6,000 chairs one by one. “Who does that?” muses Deb Chesky.

After graduation, Chesky’s friend and classmate Gebbia told him that he had a premonition they were going to launch a business together. “I said, ‘Before you get on the plane, there’s something I need to tell you,’ ” says Gebbia. “ ‘We’re going to start a company one day, and they’re going to write a book about it.’ ” Chesky first moved to L.A. to become an industrial designer, but soon decided to join Gebbia in San Francisco. Eventually, they ran short of rent money, and inspiration struck.

The biggest leadership lesson for Chesky so far came from the company’s most significant crisis to date. It started when a San Francisco host’s home was burglarized and ransacked by renters in June 2011. The company initially put forth a lackluster response from Chesky, but the host—a woman known as “EJ”—rebutted in a blog post his claims that the company had done everything it could to help her. Then Airbnb went silent, and the story got louder.

Inside Airbnb everyone had a different opinion on how to handle it. Some argued that taking responsibility would just open the door to more complaints; others said to put the truth out there; still others said the company should stay totally quiet. The situation dragged on for weeks. “I finally had this really dark moment and I got to the point where I wouldn’t say I stopped caring, but my priorities completely changed,” says Chesky. “And I basically said I should stop managing for the outcome and just manage to the principle.” He needed to apologize, Chesky felt, even if it might hurt the company.

Chesky composed a strongly worded letter accepting responsibility. “Over the last four weeks, we have really screwed things up,” he wrote. He not only said he was sorry but also announced that the company would be implementing a $50,000 guarantee. “All of this was against advice,” Chesky says. “People were like, ‘We need to discuss this, we need to do testing,’ and I said, ‘No, we’re doing this.’ ” He did have a key assist from one major source. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and an investor in Airbnb, added a zero to the amount of the guarantee, which Chesky had first set at $5,000.

Chesky’s primary takeaway from the experience was to stop making decisions by consensus. “A consensus decision in a moment of crisis is very often going to be the middle of the road, and they’re usually the worst decisions,” he says. “Usually in a crisis you have to go left or right.”

For his team, it was a defining moment in their confidence in him as a leader. “That’s when I really saw what Brian was made of,” says Joe Zadeh, head of product management. “That was the turning point where I had 100% confidence in this company’s leadership and was ready to take any challenge the world threw at us.”

Despite its rapid growth, Airbnb has endured plenty of challenges. The service runs afoul of local laws and regulations in many cities in which it operates. In its hometown of San Francisco, until recently, all short-term residential rentals without a permit were banned. Landlords, co-op boards, and urban neighbors are often hostile.

New York, which passed a bill in 2010 saying that owners or tenants can’t legally rent their apartment out for less than 30 days unless they’re living in the same space, has been a particularly tough battleground. The attacks on Airbnb got so bad in 2013 that Chesky went on a charm tour, meeting with dozens of politicians, hoteliers, real estate moguls, and influential members of the press. The tenor of the conversation in New York changed after the tour, but the city hasn’t budged on the law. Other markets, though, have been opening up: A new law in San Francisco legalizing short-term rentals went into effect in February. Nashville, Philadelphia, and San Jose have announced similar legislation, as have London and France. “I think we’re moving away from the divisive era into the more mainstream era,” Chesky says.

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Airbnb is often seen as a competitor to the major hotel chains. Chesky challenges that view and insists that hotels have continued to thrive even as Airbnb has grown. He says that these days Airbnb has a “pretty healthy relationship” with the likes of Marriott, Hilton HLT , and Starwood HOT . In 2013, Chesky recruited Chip Conley, founder of the Joie de Vivre hotel chain and a respected figure in the industry, to focus on hospitality. Conley says executives from four of the six biggest hotel chains have come to the Airbnb headquarters for a day of “immersion.”

But the more Airbnb grows, the more it has the capacity to take business from hotels. Last year the company launched Instant Book, a new category of listings that don’t require approval from the host and allow for immediate, hotel-like booking. Now Airbnb is making a push into business travel, including a partnership with travel management company Concur that has seen Airbnb land some 150 corporate accounts so far. It’s likely that the mainstream era will be just as competitive as the one Airbnb is leaving behind.

It’s a Wednesday in early February, and Chesky is standing on a stage at Pier 48 in San Francisco. This is One Airbnb, the company’s weeklong annual all-hands confab, and more than 1,800 employees are packed into the venue for Chesky’s keynote address. He talks about the importance of being “crazy”—of not “editing your imagination,” not listening to the voices that say something’s not possible. Safety questions, legal challenges, competitors—none of those things can destroy Airbnb. “The thing that will destroy Airbnb,” he says to thunderous applause, “is if we stop being crazy.”

Chesky is particularly obsessive when it comes to culture. In 2012, he asked another key source—the iconoclastic investor Peter Thiel—for the best advice he could offer. Thiel’s immediate answer: “Don’t fuck up the culture.” Thiel said it was almost inevitable that the culture would go awry once a company reached a certain size. So Chesky doubled down on his focus. “If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products,” he wrote shortly thereafter in a missive to employees. He welcomes new hires each week with an hour-long Q&A session in which he encourages them to be bold and to be “crazy.” His passion for his product occasionally verges on evangelism, such as when he tells employees they are there to “design the future world we want to live in.”

After years of his own executive education, Chesky has collected a cabinet full of philosophies, opinions, truisms—and a healthy dose of jargon. Chesky talks a lot about “up-leveling,” or pushing himself and others to think bigger. That’s not to be confused with “skip-leveling”—the process of talking to people at all levels of the organization. Chesky is also fond of discussing “step changes,” or single moves that have a great effect.

But Chesky is quick to acknowledge that he still has weak points. He takes too long to hire executives, he says, and also too long to acknowledge when things aren’t working out. Another skill he’s still perfecting: the art of listening. Chesky says that when he was 6 years old his parents had his hearing tested. “They thought I had a hearing problem,” he says. “Apparently I just had a listening problem.” Chesky is working on it, but says that he has so much energy and is so “action-oriented” that it can appear that he isn’t listening when he is. Investor Graham says Chesky’s approach may not be out of the Harvard Business School playbook, but it’s effective. “He’s sort of missing all the stuff they teach at HBS,” says Graham. “But he’s the kind of leader who leads people to do things that he himself believes in.”

In Andreessen’s view, Chesky’s biggest challenge is the sheer amount of information he has to process while growing such a fast-moving organization. “Some people lean into that,” says Andreessen. “Brian loves it. One of the things that makes him distinctive is he’s up for the challenge.” Andreessen says he views him as “one of the best new CEOs since Mark Zuckerberg.”

This has been something of a breakout year for Chesky. In April, he was on the Time 100, and his presence at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (seated at Fortune’s table) made headlines as a symbol of Silicon Valley’s growing presence in Washington. In May, President Obama appointed Chesky a presidential ambassador for global entrepreneurship.

Chesky and girlfriend Elissa Patel at the Time 100 in April.Photograph by Taylor Hill—Getty Images

Even as his profile rises, however, Chesky has been working on a new project: finding balance. He has learned that if he is going to stay in his job for the long run, he must develop techniques to “refill the reservoir.” The key source in that effort is Elissa Patel, his girlfriend of two years (they met on Tinder), who recently left photo app Frontback to start her own venture. They do yoga together every Thursday morning. And since Chesky’s apartment is still listed on Airbnb—yes, you can Airbnb the CEO’s pad—the occasional guest joins in. He and Elissa often do “staycations,” booking an Airbnb in a different neighborhood just to experience it.

Looking to the future, Chesky says that not a single one of Airbnb’s investors has pressured him to take the company public anytime soon. But he’s well aware of the expectation that an IPO will happen eventually. And he does offer a little hint on timing. “If we decided we wanted to go public, we’d want to give ourselves a couple years to really prepare, to have that runway,” he explains. “I always thought of it as a two-year project. And we won’t start thinking of that for at least a year, and maybe two years.”

That should give him plenty of time to get his sources lined up.

A version of this article appears in the July 1, 2015 issue of Fortune magazine with the headline “The Education of Brian Chesky.”

Why does Japan have such a high suicide rate?
By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes BBC News, Tokyo



Last year in Japan, more than 25,000 people took their own lives.

That's 70 every day. The vast majority were men.

Those figures do not make Japan's the highest suicide rate in the world in a developing country.

That dubious title belongs to South Korea. But it is still far, far higher than virtually all other wealthy countries.

It is three times the suicide rate in the United Kingdom.
Train tragedy

The grim self-immolation of a 71-year-old man aboard a Japanese bullet train on Tuesday has once again rammed the issue back in to the headlines here.

What drove a quiet, elderly man, to douse himself with fuel and set fire to it in a packed carriage on a speeding train?

As he tipped the liquid over himself he is reported to have shooed away other passengers, telling them it was dangerous.
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Media caption Footage showed the smoke-filled carriage - courtesy TBS

Some said there were tears in his eyes as he did so.

Now, as they start to dig in to his background, members of the Japanese media are turning up the tell-tale signs of a man on the edge. He lived alone and had no job. He spent his days collecting aluminium cans to sell for recycling.

Neighbours told reporters they had heard him smash a window after locking himself out of his dilapidated apartment.

Others said they rarely saw him outside, but could often hear the sound of a television playing. Poor, old and alone. It is an all too familiar tale.
Historical practices

"Isolation is the number one precursor for depression and suicide," says Wataru Nishida, a psychologist at Tokyo's Temple University.

When all else fails - some people feel - you can just kill yourself and the insurance will pay out
Wataru Nishida, Temple University

"Now it's more and more common to read stories about old people dying alone in their apartments," he says. "They are being neglected. Kids used to take care of their parents in old age in Japan, but not any more."

People often cite Japan's long tradition of "honourable suicide" as a reason for the high rate here.

They point to the Samurai practice of committing "seppuku" or to the young "kamikaze" pilots of 1945, to show there are distinct cultural reasons why Japanese are more likely to take their own lives.

To an extent Mr Nishida agrees.
Many deaths of elderly people in Japan may be suicides

"Japan has no history of Christianity," he says "so here suicide is not a sin. In fact, some look at it as a way of taking responsibility."

Ken Joseph from the Japan Helpline agrees. He says their experience over the last 40 years shows that elderly people who are in financial trouble may see suicide as a way out of their problems.

"The insurance system in Japan is very lax when it comes to paying out for suicide," he says.

"So when all else fails - some people feel - you can just kill yourself and the insurance will pay out.

"There is sometimes an intolerable pressure on the elderly that the most loving thing they can do is take their lives and thereby provide for their family."
Financial pressure

Because of this, some experts think Japan's suicide rate is actually much higher than reported.

A lot of lone deaths of elderly people are never fully investigated by the police.

According to Ken Joseph, the almost universal practice of cremating bodies here also means that any evidence is quickly destroyed.
Many Japanese men feel isolated from others

But it is not only elderly men in financial trouble who are taking their own lives.

The fastest growing suicide demographic is young men. It is now the single biggest killer of men in Japan aged 20-44.

And the evidence suggests these young people are killing themselves because they have lost hope and are incapable of seeking help.

The numbers first began to rise after the Asian financial crisis in 1998. They climbed again after the 2008 worldwide financial crisis.

Experts think those rises are directly linked to the increase in "precarious employment", the practice of employing young people on short-term contracts.

Japan was once known as the land of lifetime employment.

But while many older people still enjoy job security and generous benefits, nearly 40% of young people in Japan are unable to find stable jobs.
Isolating technology

Financial anxiety and insecurity are compounded by Japan's culture of not complaining.

"There are not many ways to express anger or frustration in Japan," says Mr Nishida.

"This is a rule-oriented society. Young people are moulded to fit in to a very small box. They have no way to express their true feelings.

"If they feel under pressure from their boss and get depressed, some feel the only way out is to die."

Technology may be making things worse, increasing young people's isolation. Japan is famous for a condition called hikikomori, a type of acute social withdrawal.

What is hikikomori?

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare defines hikikomori as people who refuse to leave their house and isolate themselves from society in their homes for a period exceeding six months
According to government figures released in 2010, there are 700,000 individuals living as hikikomori with an average age of 31
An overlapping group of people with the hikikomori, otaku are "geeks" or "nerds"
While hikikomori is mostly a Japanese phenomenon, cases have been found in the United States, Oman, Spain, Italy, South Korea and France

More about hikkomori

The young person affected may completely shut himself - it is most often a male - off from the outside world, withdrawing in to a room and not coming out for months or even years.

But that is only the most extreme form of what is now a widespread loss of direct face-to-face socialising.
Research showed that many Japanese men were not interested in a sexual relationship

A recent survey of young Japanese people's attitudes to relationships and sex turned up some extraordinary results. Published in January by the Japan Family Planning Association, it found that 20% of men aged 25-29 had little or no interest in having a sexual relationship.

Wataru Nishida points to the internet and the pervasive influence of online pornography.

"Young people in Japan have a lot of knowledge," Mr Nishida says, "But they have no life experience. They have no idea how to express their emotions.

"They have forgotten what it's like to touch a person. When they think about sex they have high anxiety and no idea how to deal with it."

And when young people do find themselves isolated and depressed, they have few places to turn to.

Mental illness is still very much a taboo here. There is little popular understanding of depression. Those suffering its symptoms are often too scared to talk about it.

Japan's mental healthcare system is also a mess.

There is an acute shortage of psychiatrists. There is also no tradition of psychiatrists working together with clinical psychologists.

People suffering from mental illness may be prescribed powerful psychotropic medicines but unlike in the West, this will often not be accompanied by a recommendation that the patient seek counselling.

The counselling industry itself is a free-for-all.
Suicide rates per country (per 100,000)
Country Total Female Male
Republic of Korea 28.9 18 41.7
Hungary 19.1 7.4 32.4
Japan 18.5 10.1 26.9
Poland 16.6 3.8 30.5
Belgium 14.2 7.7 21.0
Finland 14.8 7.5 22.2
France 12.3 6.0 19.3
Austria 11.5 5.4 18.2
Czech Republic 12.5 3.9 21.5
United States 12.1 5.2 19.4
United Kingdom 6.2 2.6 9.8

Unlike in America or Europe, there is no government-mandated system of training and qualifying clinical psychologists.

Anybody can set him or herself up as a "counsellor" and it's very hard for someone seeking help to know whether they actually know what they are doing.

It is not a happy picture, and while the suicide rate has actually begun to decline in the last three years, it is still woefully high.

Wataru Nishida says Japan needs to start talking about mental illness much more, and not just as something scary and strange that afflicts a few.

"When you see a television discussion on mental illness in Japan they still talk as if 'depression equals suicide'," he says. "That needs to change."
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