The Third Advent

Grégoire G. de Kalbermatten studied law in Geneva, international relations at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University in Bologna/Washington DC and political science at the JHU Baltimore Campus where he was one of the two fellows of the President of the JHU. A Swiss national, Grégoire de Kalbermatten started his career in the field of banking, credit and financial analysis. From 1980 onwards, as a diplomat of Switzerland in Rome, Vienna and Bern, his assignments in positions of increasing responsibilities related to atomic energy, economic and financial multilateral affairs. His decision to orient his work towards international development led him to serve the United Nations Development Programme at field level (Agriculture portfolio in Nepal) and New York HQ (chief of policy planning and evaluation as member of the United Nations Capital Development Fund's core management group). In 1993 he joined the United Nations Convention on Combating Desertification (Geneva & Bonn) where he was the Deputy Executive Secretary and, in 2007, OIC. He served the negotiation, design and implementation of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, a major instrument of the international community to restore vulnerable land based eco-systems and combat rural poverty in a context of climate change. He led over 300 missions over all five continents and organized events in some eighty countries of Africa, Asia, America and Europe. He was the chief organizer of global conferences at ministerial level in such areas as scientific cooperation, international development and environment protection.Having majored at JHU in political philosophy, his interest in global issues, international relations and cross-cultural integration was sustained by his personal search in the field of spirituality, influenced by his encounter with Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi in August 1975. He wrote books in the area of the phenomenology of consciousness and of philo-fiction. This interest is ongoing. He is member of the Board of Directors of the Centre for Evolutionary Learning and other institutions. He is married and has three children and grand children.