TheCEOVerse • Digital Edition
“Most Formidable Leader Making Waves in 2026”
Cover story
Sara Ting
Featured Profile - Sara Ting
A poem written in a personal journal in 1978 did not stay private for long. Four decades later, it still defines the woman who wrote it.
A Poem Written in Isolation Became a Movement in Motion
Nine years old, and Sara Ting was already asking why she was on earth. The question followed her into her twenties, through a search for a place of worship in 1970s Boston, where she was often the only Asian American face in the room. No one greeted her. No one said good morning. Service after service, she left the way she came in, unnoticed. She experienced what Mother Teresa described as the worst disease any human being can experience, “being unwanted.”
Then, on a grey day, riding the bus home, the sun broke through the clouds. A calm male voice told her it did not shine on her alone. It shone on everyone. That sentence became a poem, written into a personal journal in 1978. It sat there, private, for seven years.
A friend who worked in billboard advertising saw it in 1985 and could not shake it. What began as a poem on billboards sparked a citywide public service campaign promoting equality and unity, was displayed in the mass transit and aired on all three network affiliates, displayed across Boston’s transit system. New York followed in 1986. CBS and NBC picked it up too.
Two years later, a young woman told Ting she had hated the poem the first time she saw a 4’x 8’poster of the poem hanging at the YWCA of Boston. It reopened old wounds from growing up Asian American in a city that had not made room for her either. She kept seeing it, she could not ignore the poem every time she entered the lobby, and eventually she came to the realization she had to let go of the past and forgive. She learned forgiveness. That single reaction sent Ting’s mind toward the Middle East, toward how much forgiveness the world still owes itself. Six years later, World Unity Inc. was founded.
The Sun Poem, she has come to realize, was never meant for her alone. It belongs to the world now, its message timeless enough to matter more today than when she first wrote it. The children, she says, are depending on it.
Keeping Her Eyes on the Vision, Not the Obstacle
Ask Ting what has carried her through, and she does not reach for a long answer. Faith. Perseverance. Humility. The third one matters more than it sounds like it should. She keeps her eyes on the vision, not the obstacle in front of it, a small sentence for a woman who has spent thirty-three years chasing a landmark that still has not been built.
In Charge of Herself, Not of the Outcome
Ting does not describe her values as a checklist. She describes them as a division of labor. God runs the forces of daily life. She runs herself, her beliefs, and how she treats the people in front of her. Every morning starts with gratitude and a prayer for strength.
Equality, diversity, inclusion, belonging, none of it sits as abstraction. It rests on a simpler claim. Humanity comes first, and differences are not a divide to manage but the actual beauty of the thing. Compassion, patience, kindness, generosity, forgiveness, she lists them the way someone lists things they practice, not things they admire from a distance. Innovation and creativity get a mention too. Her spiritual grounding has not made her rigid. She still looks for leaders who think differently, on purpose.
Boardrooms, Classrooms and Conversations
Three formats. One intention. Turning awareness into action, whether the audience is a corporate boardroom or a second-grade classroom.
The centerpiece is a TEDx Talk, Uncover and Overcome All Unconscious Bias, offered free to public, private, and non-profit organizations. Ting’s claim is direct. Laws cannot remove unconscious bias. Neither can policy or technology. Individuals have to do it themselves, and the talk offers a way to start in seconds, backed by a forty-year track record. It has crossed 70,400 views and 4,300 likes on YouTube. Merck, AECOM, and JEOL USA have adopted it, JEOL within two days of encountering and other pioneering organizations driving change, Meet Boston, Boston Duck Tours, AAFCPA, Hyde Park Main Street, The Nubian Square Foundation, Law Office of Peter T. Morano, INOBAL, Media Cause, National Coalition for the Homeless and Write the World. Educational institution such as Babson College, Suffolk University, and Midwestern University use it too, alongside towns like Beverly, Fitchburg, Lowell, and Revere. Many more have joined the quiet movement that change must come from within.
Ting often returns to Einstein’s warning that a problem cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created it, that solving it requires standing on higher ground. The Sun Poem, she says, is that higher ground.
The stakes, in her view, keep rising. Bias touches every industry, every community, every nation, and most people carrying it do not know they are responsible for removing it. Social media has only sped up the damage, spreading stereotypes and disinformation faster than most people can question what they are absorbing.
For schools, there is Singing Equality across America and Around the World, built around the song “We All See the Stars” by John Ciambriello, inspired by the Sun Poem. Performed at the United Nations in 2015, the song has since reached more than ninety-six school districts, as far away as Namibia. One student said singing it makes him feel like he can do anything. A girl named Annie said the world would hear it one day and it would stop discrimination.
The third piece is a monthly podcast, where Ting interviews leaders across cultures and industries about the questions everyone eventually has to face.
Corporate response has followed a pattern of its own. Angela Dixon, Chief Diversity Officer at Berkshire Bank, called the TEDx Talk inspirational, concise, and brilliant. Shweta Patakkode, a healthcare professional, said it touched the heart of the listener and closed with a real call to action. Vince DiPofi, President of SSOE, needed only four words. Very inspiring talk, Sara.
The Site She Lost, The Mission She Kept
For thirty-three years, Ting and her organization have stayed dedicated to one initiative, building the World Unity Landmark. It is meant to stand as a beacon of equality, showcasing the Sun Poem, carrying words she calls timeless, universal, and transformative into future generations.
The hardest stretch of that journey came after sixteen years of working with stakeholders on a site World Unity Inc. had been officially designated to be part of, formalized through a memorandum of understanding. Then it was removed.
Ting does not dramatize the moment. She describes driving, not knowing whether she could keep going, when an NPR segment on Normandy Day came on the radio. Soldiers parachuting into gunfire. Others drowning under the weight of their own knapsacks as they came off the ships. Then, she says, a calm male voice spoke into her right ear. There is no gun pointing at you. Carry on. That was 2016. She has stayed on the same path since.
The World Unity Landmark, the project at the center of all of it, is now part of the design concept for the Dorchester Bay City Development in Massachusetts. Thirty-three years and counting.
A Tower That Earned Recognition Before It Was Built
The landmark does not exist yet. It has already been recognized, repeatedly, by people with no obligation to notice it at all.
In 1997, the Massachusetts House of Representatives honored Ting’s leadership toward what was then called the Sun Unity Tower, now known as the World Unity Landmark. The same year, Boston Mayor Menino issued a certificate recognizing the project as a symbol of equality, compassion, and hope.
The list since then runs long. Two Boston City Council resolutions, in 2018 and 2024, recognizing the Sun Poem’s role in encouraging self-reflection around shared humanity. Four resolutions recognizing World Unity Day, tied to grants from the Mass Cultural Council. A 2023 Official Citation from the Massachusetts State Senate, honoring her decades of work toward ending prejudice. A Boston Mountain Top Civic Service Award and a Governor’s Citation in 2021. In 2025, World Unity Inc. received a Global Unity Award, and Ting received the Beacon of Global Unity Award.
None of this funds itself. The organization’s major fundraiser, now in its 28th year, is what keeps the lights on, an annual gathering built to bring the Sun Poem alive in front of the leaders and communities who might carry it further.
Everyone Has a Purpose, Few Choose to Discover It
Faith in God comes first for Ting, love kept close for every person she meets, humanity as the ground she stands on before anything else. She sees people as human beings before any label attaches itself, and the Sun Poem, the one she wrote into a journal in 1978, is what keeps her rooted there.
Two prayers anchor her mornings, the Lord’s Prayer and the Prayer of St. Francis. Gratitude comes first, always. Focus on what she has, not on what she lacks. Stay humble.
She believes everyone is born with a purpose and with natural gifts to match it. Discovering them is the individual’s job. Not everyone does the work.
A Stranger by the Pond Already Knew Her Poem
Ting takes weekend walks around a pond near her home. She does not speak to everyone she passes. She lets the moment decide. One walk, she struck up a conversation with a young man and handed him a flyer for an upcoming event, The Sun Poem and Concert to Empower and Inspire Humanity. He told her he had walked past the poem many times, it hung at Bunker Hill Community College, where he was a student. He had no idea the woman standing in front of him had written it.
Children give her a different kind of proof. One told her the song makes him feel like he can do anything. Another said it reminds her to be friends with everyone. A third said, plainly, that one day the world would hear it and discrimination would stop. Hearing it back from them is what keeps pulling her toward more schools, more parents, more classrooms.
Adults write to her too. The president of a digital billboard company once wrote her to keep up her amazing mission, that the world needs it. It is a small line, but it is the kind that keeps her showing up for World Unity Inc. Responses to the TEDx Talk carry the same weight, enough of them that she has made it her business to push its adoption into cities, towns, and organizations everywhere, not just where it has already landed.
The Same Vision, A Bigger Stage Ahead
Ask Ting what comes next and she does not describe a pivot. She describes more of the same, at greater scale. The World Unity Landmark built and standing. The Sun Poem and the TEDx Talk known worldwide. The song taught in more schools, planting equality earlier in more children.
A one-hour program she created herself, rooted in the Sun Poem and built to help individuals grow more self-aware, overcome unconscious bias, and develop personally and professionally, particularly in leadership, is next in line. She wants it embraced across healthcare, technology, media, finance, and engineering, and hopes technology companies in particular say yes. Bigger stages, to keep telling a thirty-three-year story that has not finished yet, still on the same course she set decades ago.
Faith, Gratitude and a Line She Never Forgot
Ting’s advice to future leaders starts with a question, not a strategy. Why are you here? What is your purpose? Self-awareness comes before ambition, she says, and so does listening, humility, and a willingness to stay open. Gratitude, patience, perseverance, transparency. Empower others before yourself.
One line has stayed with her longer than most. She heard a Rabbi deliver it at a eulogy for a board member’s father. When you are born into the world, it means the world needs you.
She closes with a few lines from her own third book, Small Book with a Big Idea: 5-Minute Training to Empower You and Transform the World.
Dare to be as great as the sun. Dare to shine on everyone.
Four decades after a voice on a Boston bus told her the same thing, she is still repeating it, louder now, to more people than she once imagined would listen.