Here we support innovations and collaborations that change the way we solve global problems.
The Bellagio Center brings together people of diverse expertise and backgrounds in a thought-provoking and collaborative environment to promote innovation and impact on a wide range of global issues. We believe in the power and results of investing in and unleashing human capacity.
The Bellagio experience fosters a robust exchange of ideas between scientists and artists, theorists and practitioners, those who make policy and those who are affected by it.
- The Center infuses unorthodox, radical thinking into searches for solutions to critical social, political, health, environmental and economic issues.
- It encourages all to debate on globally relevant issues and push the boundaries of collective knowledge to translate theory into action.
- It fosters a dynamic interaction among the sciences, art, politics and literature to sustain an atmosphere of creativity and engagement.
The History
The Rockefeller Foundation’s proud history with the Bellagio Center began in 1959, when Ella Holbrook Walker offered her Italian villa “for purposes connected with the promotion of international understanding,” and Dean Rusk, the Foundation’s president, accepted her generous donation and embraced its enormous potential.
During the more than 50 years since, the Bellagio Center has served as a backdrop for many meaningful advances. The Center was a launching pad for ideas that underpin modern systems of international finance. It was a staging ground for efforts to mobilize an agricultural revolution that saved a billion lives in Latin America and Asia. It was the setting for negotiations and agreements that make it easier for people suffering from HIV/AIDS and other devastating deadly afflictions to access better vaccines and medications, more efficiently, in more places.
Today the world faces new economic challenges, different social strains, and unprecedented environmental threats. Therefore, the Bellagio Center’s work—and way of working—has never been more significant. The Center cross-pollinates disparate traditions of expertise, inquiry and innovation. It brings people together from countries far and wide, challenging them to find common ground and push the boundaries of collective knowledge and action.
