“In the wake of her death, rioting erupted throughout the country. The loss of the country's most popular democratic leader has plunged Pakistan into turmoil, intensifying the dangerous instability of a nuclear-armed nation in a highly volatile region.” 1

These are the words that complete The Academy of Achievement’s biography of Benazir Bhutto* where the Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, who breathed her last breath today, is listed as a “pioneer for democracy” – and that she was.

I had the honour of meeting Benazir Bhutto in September of 2006 at a global leadership institute at which she was a keynote speaker. Talking eye-to-eye, heart-to-heart, and hand-in-hand with Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was an experience that I have held as extraordinary in my heart – truly awe-some and inspiring. It is an experience that I am reliving with sadness and awe today, an exchange that still inspires me.

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was a true leader. A woman of heart, a woman of mind, a person driven by the courage and passion of heart to maintain democracy as a way of life on this globe and to defeat those determined to take the liberties of democracy away and to keep those liberties from those who have never known such freedoms of thought and the dreams associated with democracy.

Benazir Bhutto’s death, a life taken at such a young age, makes me re-consider – what are the values that I want to support and drive on my own journey?

Benazir Bhutto’s life – of living the values of which she wrote and spoke – of walking-the-talk – can serve as a source for all of us to make decisions each day to act in concert with the values that we proclaim as important to us, to choose to act in ways that support interests beyond our own, to act as pioneers of freedom, as pioneers for whatever values are important in our hearts – to align our movements with our intentions – to walk-the-talk – to lead in its truest sense – as in “to go before or with to show the way” as in leading people on a journey or “to guide in direction, course, action, opinion, etc.; …”2 as in bringing an individual or group on a mental or spiritual trek.

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was a leader who walked the talk of what it means to lead when she served twice as an elected leader - the youngest person – and the first woman - elected to lead a Muslim-majority state. And she walked the talk of a leader when she was not in elected office.

When I met her just one year prior to her return to her country (a return which she knew would jeopardize her safety and could mean the end of her life), this former prime minister was still in self-imposed exile from her beloved country. Without the authority of title or elected office, Benazir Bhutto was a leader as an individual. She captured the hearts and minds and held the attention of the group to whom she spoke that day at that global institute on leadership. Given the audience, that required true leadership.

This group was not an easy audience - mostly men – and all attendees in charge of large divisions or entire corporations listed on those Fortune lists, men trying to learn how to lead in a way that goes beyond slashing and dashing people or moving numbers to earn favor with “the Street” and investors on streets besides Wall Street, men trying to learn how to lead and engage people and still please that walled street.

And in such a skeptical male-dominated audience, Benazir Bhutto captured their brains and hearts with her intelligence, inspiration, devotion, real-world tales of prevailing over extreme challenges in pursuit of her goals to pioneer democracy, to live what was important to her, and to understand the forces motivated to decimate democracy.

In a lineup of leadership gurus who had studied leadership and put forth their own theories about what it means to lead – all men except for Benazir herself and one other speaker, the illustrious historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who spoke of her studies of Lincoln as leader – Benazir Bhutto was the only one of this dozen or so speakers who stood out as a true leader – as a source of inspiration and tenacity, as the most brilliant and thoughtful and not self-serving of all of the speakers.

And, despite her own years of studying at Oxford and also at Harvard where many of these gurus had studied or where they were professors, she did not ride on these laurels as the reason to listen to her. She did not need to. Because Benazir Bhutto had walked as a leader, and that day and for all of those years of exile without the title or elected role of leader, she still was a forceful and authentic leader, powered by heartfelt values that extended beyond self-interest, supported by facts and data to support her points, and driven by her stalwart and unflinching internal drive to fight for freedom and democracy, to confront and identify forces against freedom and democracy.

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was, as Senator John McCain, described “a transcendant figure” whose legacy will be difficult to carry on.3
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While others talked about ‘leadership’, she walked as a leader.
She appeared in a five-day lineup of leadership gurus who talked about leadership. The lineup included the highly-priced ‘edutainment’ gurus who bring leadership to Tony Robbins furor and humor. The lineup included the leadership gurus, the men who have studied leadership and written about leadership based on the research that their graduate students have assisted with –those gurus who have lived most of their adult careers in ivy-covered walls at the business schools supported by Harvard and Yale and Stanford – and who, for the most part, have never been held accountable for the job of engaging others to follow. While they had theories about leadership, they did not have the experience of leading under pressure – or in good times, for that matter - as had Benazir Bhutto.

At that global event devoted to understanding what it means to really lead in a global world, Benazir Bhutto stood out as the person who truly understood the challenges of leading others – of engaging people to move beyond self-interest to take a stand and fight for freedom, to fight for a world of collaboration across boundaries and beliefs of national borders, political parties, and religious dogma that separates us from our true and common human interests of aligning the planet for all to thrive and live freely.

Amidst leadership gurus who spoke about what leadership is – the theoretical gurus with points-of-view based on books - former Prime Minister Bhutto spoke from a different angle – and with a kinder and more gentle voice.

She did not yell and wave her arms in the style of those edutainment gurus coached on the art of public speaking. She did not present a deck of powerpoint slides to show her intelligence or to support why we should listen to her. She did not need such techniques to command our attention or to maintain her message in our hearts beyond her time on the stage that day.

Instead, Benazir Bhutto spoke as a person, an individual committed with the force of her heart and whose life supported her commitment to living her values of democracy and freedom.

She spoke as a leader about what it means to lead with or without title. She did not speak about leadership.

She did not state that she had been the youngest person – and the first woman - elected to lead a Muslim-majority state – and that she had been elected twice.

She did not speak or- or lament- her years of exile from her homeland.

She did not applaud herself for attending highly-esteemed educational institutions (both Harvard and Oxford) – these were all just historical data about herself, parts of her journey prior to that moment in which she stood in front of us.

Instead she educated us about the forces determined to defeat democracy and freedom and about the trends of increased terrorist support when certain regimes held power in her country – and the trends of a decrease in terrorist support when other parties held power in her country. And she told of her quest to ensure, protect, and spread democracy.

Benazir Bhutto did not look back with regret nor did she expound on principles of leadership or extol her own achievements of the past. Instead, Benazir Bhutto painted for the audience of hundreds a picture of the future – good and bad.

She spoke of the threats to democracy in a well-researched and thoughtfully-crafted presentation of the historical facts that documented how the ruling power in Pakistan had a significant impact on the ability of terrorists to thrive – or not, which was, of course, her strong preference.

With solid historical data, the Former Prime Minister painted the downside of the proliferation of terrorism during periods when her country had been ruled by one group and the upside of the intolerance for terrorists and the decrease in terrorism both within her country and surrounding countries when her country was under a rule that supported democracy as it had been when she held the role of Prime Minister.

The difference was startling, dramatic, and frightening. Her commitment to deterring the proliferation of terrorism and to ensuring freedom was apparent, dramatic – and frightening too.

After she had addressed the crowd, I had the honour of meeting Benazir Bhutto, of standing with her and looking in her gentle and knowing eyes. As we spoke, sisters of the same generation, she reached out and took my hands in her hands. My heart soared and it sank at the same time. I commented that she must know that should she return to her homeland that she would be both a symbol for freedom and hope for many and a target for violent retaliation and hatred by others. She understood, of course. And with her humble demeanour, she agreed in her low and gentle, oh so gentle voice.

And her determination to return to fight for all that had powered her to that very moment when we stood hand-in-hand was apparent in the energy that flowed from her heart and through our hands and into my heart. I knew that day that she would live and die in the name of freedom. And that she would be proud to do so and would never consider anything less for her life journey, for her life’s cause.

When I left her company, the cocoon that she had spun around us as she had given me her total attention, which is, after all, the gift that life has to offer and the ultimate gift that we can share with others, I felt inspired, touched - and a heartfelt deep-sigh kind of sadness, the kind we feel when we know that a die has been cast, that there is no looking or going back.

I knew that this remarkable woman, this woman of soul and spirit and heart and mind, would return in a nanosecond to her homeland where she would be a threat to those striving to overturn freedom and where she would be targeted by those who were determined to institute a terrorist-run regime. I knew that Benazir Bhutto would return to her home when the timing was right- even though it would not be the right time in terms of her having any assurance of safety or of holding on to her own freedom to live freely – or to live at all. And I knew that she would return with this knowledge – and that she would proceed forward with the passion of her heart, with the courage of her heart, fueling her.

And so today, when I first heard the news of a suicide bombing at a rally where Benazir Bhutto, this remarkable woman, had spoken, I was relieved as there was no tag line to suggest that she had been touched by the violence. And, then, later the news came in. She was gone.

Today is a sad day for all of us with the passing of a woman who was committed to freedom – to our freedom, a woman who put her life on the line to defend freedom and to fight the forces of terror.

What do you value – what would you put your life on the line for- something that is beyond the interest of your self or those who are closest to you – something that could ensure that the people inhabiting our planet can move beyond the differences that continue to separate us so that we can live in a true nature of co-laboring for common goods and goals?

To what will you commit your life and what are the actions – the walk of walking-the-talk – that others will see and remember when they recall being with you and the imprint you are making –or made – on this earthly journey that we call life?

“Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child… A long way from my home.”4

Looking forward,
Dr. Pam Brill

1. view link

2. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

3. Fox News morning interview 28 December 2007

5. Freedom by Richie Havens, a song with which he opened the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival celebrating music – and freedom…