Your Holiness, distinguished leaders, scholars, and friends,
It is a profound honor and privilege to stand before you today to recognize one of the world’s great spiritual and humanitarian leaders — Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar — as the 2025 World Leader for Peace and Security Award recipient.
From the very beginning, the Boston Global Forum (BGF) has sought to celebrate those whose leadership transcends borders, politics, and ideology — individuals whose vision uplifts humanity and reminds us of the moral foundation of peace. Gurudev, you embody precisely that spirit.
Through The Art of Living Foundation, you have touched millions of lives across continents — teaching peace not as an abstract ideal, but as a daily practice rooted in compassion, forgiveness, and understanding. You have shown that inner peace is not separate from world peace — that governance, technology, and progress must always be guided by the light of conscience.
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has dedicated his life to building bridges among faiths and cultures, to universalizing wisdom, and to nurturing compassion, love, and mutual understanding — toward a stress-free, violence-free world. Guided by the Gandhian principles of nonviolence, you have advanced reconciliation and healing in conflict-stricken regions such as Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, India, Iraq, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela.
At moments when our world feels fractured — by war, polarization, and fear — your voice has reminded us that reconciliation begins in the human heart. You have built bridges between nations and faiths, between reason and spirituality, and between humanity and nature.
The Boston Global Forum and the AI World Society (AIWS) are deeply inspired by your message that technology must serve humanity, not dominate it — that the intelligence of machines must always be guided by the wisdom of the spirit. Through the AIWS model, we seek to bring spiritual and interfaith values into the digital age — to build a world where innovation and compassion advance hand in hand. In honoring you, we affirm that the future of peace depends on both ethical innovation and moral imagination.
As we celebrate the tenth anniversary of this Award — whose past recipients include world leaders such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and President Emmanuel Macron — we see in you, Gurudev, a beacon of continuity: the union of spiritual leadership and ethical responsibility in an age defined by artificial intelligence and digital power.
On behalf of the Boston Global Forum – AIWS Family, we express our deepest respect and gratitude.
Now, the 2025 World Leader for Peace and Security, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, becomes a distinguished and esteemed member of the BGF–AIWS Family.
Your Holiness, your life’s work reminds us that peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the active creation of harmony — within individuals, among societies, and across our shared planet.
May your example continue to guide global leaders and citizens alike toward a more compassionate, secure, and enlightened world.
Congratulations, Gurudev, and thank you for your unwavering service to humanity.
Governor Michael S. Dukakis
Chair and Co-Founder, Boston Global Forum
Director, The Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation
Nguyen Anh Tuan
Co-Founder, Co-Chair, and CEO, Boston Global Forum
Director, The Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation
