PRESS RELEASES

Yahoo News : 22 January 2007

WELLINGTON (AFP) - A new institute has been announced in the name of Mount Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary to recognise people showing outstanding leadership.

Organisers said the Hillary Institute will be an internationally focussed body targeting people in mid-career. Full details will be revealed in November.

The announcement was made in Antarctica, where the 87-year-old Hillary is attending the 50th anniversary of New Zealand's Scott Base.

"The idea of the Hillary Institute takes its inspiration from Sir Edmund HillaryÂ's lifetime of personal achievement, and from his service to the Sherpa peoples of the Himalaya region," said spokesman David Caygill, a former New Zealand finance minister.

In 1953, Hillary became the first man to climb Mount Everest. Four years later he led a team overland to the South Pole.

Over the past 50 years he has dedicated himself primarily to the Sherpa people through the Himalayan Trust.

The Institute will have an advisory board with representatives from four continents. They will decide the winner of the international leadership award.

The board includes international leadership analyst and author Manfred Kets de Vries of the Insead Institute in France.

It also features Ray Anderson of Interface Inc, who was co-chairman of former US President

Bill Clinton's council on sustainable development.