'One Person Can Make a Difference'

“One thing I have learned over the past 27 years is that one person can make a difference,” says John Walsh, the opening keynote speaker of Fusion 2010, at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas. Motivational speaker Walsh, who also hosts the long-running FOX weekly television series “America’s Most Wanted,” was speaking specifically about his successful efforts to raise awareness about America’s epidemic of missing and exploited children in the wake of the murder of his own son, Adam, by a serial pedophile in 1991.

Since then, despite the frequent reluctance of state and federal officials, Walsh and his wife have succeeded in honoring the memory of their slain son by spearheading creation of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the National Child Sex Offender Registry (NCSOR). The former organization facilitates distribution of information about missing children to law enforcement officials and the general public; the latter requires convicted sex offenders to be registered in a national database and their whereabouts made known to the general public. Currently, Walsh is lobbying Congress to enact legislation requiring DNA samples to be collected from those arrested for alleged felonies.

Walsh’s audience call to action was primarily intended to encourage advocacy for this pending legislation. However, he also encouraged attendees to advocate within their organizations for proactive embrace of the many changes sweeping the global business community. Many of those changes were detailed at the opening session by IAPP Executive Director and CEO Tom Bohn. For example, members of the so-called Millennial generation entering the workforce toady will hold an estimated 10 to 14 jobs --- by the time they are 38 years of age. This is having a huge impact on training and management practices.